What happens when
the audit doesn't come first.
A print and embroidery business. £154,000. 18 months. And what the £10,000 audit would have prevented.
Don't let this be your storyA growing business. A decision made too quickly.
A £2.4m print and embroidery business with 18 staff. The owner had been running the business for 12 years and had outgrown the original system. The decision was made to invest in a new eCommerce platform and connect it to the existing ERP.
The platform was selected based on a sales demo and a recommendation from another business owner in a different sector. The ERP vendor was asked whether integration was possible. They said yes.
No independent audit was done. No vendor brief was written. No integration scoping was completed before contracts were signed.
18 months. £154,000.
How the costs accumulated, month by month.
What a one-day audit would have found
Every one of these findings would have been visible in a single day on site. The audit costs £10,000. The total cost of not having it was £154,000.
The ERP's API capability was limited to a specific version that the chosen eCommerce platform didn't support
The existing ERP had an eCommerce module already — it had never been activated or explored
Two alternative platforms were better suited to the business model and had native ERP integration
The business's order data wasn't clean enough for any integration to work without significant preparation
Three manual processes could have been automated within the existing system at no additional cost
The audit exists to prevent exactly this. One day. Six areas. Everything it costs you in writing — before you commit to anything.