Field Guide No. 03 · First Edition 2026
A working reference for the leader accountable for an ERP decision — sponsor, CFO, COO, transformation lead or programme director. The modules, the master data spine, the integration patterns, the controls fabric, the roles and the programme rhythm — and the five decisions that compound for the next decade.
12
modules, with their value streams
18
roles with decision rights
10
industry dial-ups
5
decisions that compound
Aligned to TOGAF Phases B and C, PMI Program Management, BABOK Strategy Analysis and COBIT APO.
You are about to sign an ERP contract, and the operating-model commitments inside it have not been written down.
Your programme is in configuration, and decisions are being made in a workbook rather than in a forum.
You have inherited an estate where nobody can produce a current integration catalogue.
ERP is not a software selection. It is a structural commitment to how the business will run for the next seven to ten years — the chart of accounts, the org structure, the master data model, the integration spine, the controls fabric. The software is the smaller decision. The system of record is the operating model. Anything else is theatre.
Two of the five decisions that compound. The rest of the guide is behind the form.
The operating model in numbers. Owned by the CFO; reviewed by the COO; approved by the sponsor.
How the business will measure itself for the next decade. The segment dimensions — entity, function, region, product, project, customer; the account-number structure and depth; the cost-centre hierarchy and its alignment with the position hierarchy; the mapping rules that translate operations into ledger postings.
Who owns each class. Who can change structure. What the data governance forum's remit is.
For each master data class — customer, vendor, item, GL, position, asset, project, location — three decisions: who is the named accountable owner; who has authority to change structure versus authority to change records; and what the data governance forum looks like, who chairs it, and what its escalation path is.
Three more compounding decisions, and eleven sections, behind the form.
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If you are planning a system migration, portfolio reset, or complex multi-vendor delivery, we can help you make the trade-offs, establish the governance, and build a way of working your team can sustain.