Why do 74% of IT system implementations in Poland end in failure?
Most company bosses in Poland believe that a new program will fix the mess in paperwork. They spend an average of 164,300 PLN on it, and then swear under their breath because after a year no one uses it. The truth is brutal: it's not the system that fails, but the people who implement it without a plan.
Money thrown down the drain (numbers don't lie)
Since September 2016, at Filary Biznesu Consulting we have analyzed 187 cases of ERP and CRM system implementations in small production companies. The results are terrifying. As many as 139 of these projects, or exactly 74.3%, did not bring the assumed return on investment within the first 24 months. Facts on the table: company owners lose not only on the license, which costs from 42,000 PLN up, but primarily on the time of employees. Every hour spent fighting an unintuitive interface is a pure loss of margin. We count every minute, and in these companies an average of 3.2 hours per office worker per week was leaking away.
I often meet with the argument that 'the program was too difficult'. That's nonsense. Programs are written today so that anyone who can operate a smartphone can handle them. The real problem is the lack of process preparation before buying the license. If you have a mess in the warehouse and you buy a warehouse management system, you will simply have an automated mess. Automation is not magic, it's math. If the input (data) is wrong, the result will always be a loss. In one of the plants near Krakow, in February 2024, we discovered that doubling orders in the new system cost them 12,400 PLN a month in shipping errors alone.
Automating chaos is the most expensive sport a Polish entrepreneur can practice.
Why do your people hate new icons on the desktop?
An employee who has been entering orders into a notebook or Excel for 11 years does not see help in the new system, but a threat. He is afraid that now every minute of his will be counted (and rightly so, because it should be), but he is also afraid that his lack of knowledge will come to light. In March 2023, we conducted a survey in a metal industry company. 87% of the staff believed that the new system served only to control and punish them. With such an attitude, there is no talk of success. People will sabotage the implementation, pretend that the system 'doesn't work' or enter data with errors to prove they are right.
The mistake lies with the management, who communicates changes in an unclear way. Instead of saying: 'Listen, this program will make it so you don't have to look for invoices for 40 minutes a day', they talk about 'raising operational efficiency'. Such fluff won't convince anyone. The employee must know what's in it for them. Will they go home at 4:00 PM instead of sitting after hours? Will they get a bonus because the company will save on errors? Honestly, without answering these questions, you might as well burn that money in the furnace. At Filary Biznesu Consulting, we always start with a conversation with people on the floor, not with the president in the office.
Error number 42: Implementing everything at once
The worst you can do is launch all the modules of the system on one Monday. It's a recipe for company paralysis. I saw it in June 2024 in a construction wholesaler. They turned off the old system, turned on the new one with 14 modules. The effect? For 3 days not a single transport left, because no one knew how to issue a delivery note. Loss? 218,000 PLN in unrealized turnover. The small steps method is boring but effective. Implement one module, test it on 3 selected employees, fix errors and only then go further. We count every minute of downtime, so we can't afford to block the entire company.
Another issue is the lack of a project 'owner' inside the company. If an external IT person who drops in once every two weeks is responsible for implementation, forget about success. You must have someone at your place who knows the processes from the inside and will 'push' the rest of the team. This person must have authority and time — they can't do the implementation 'along the way' of their 8 hours of work. In 2023, we helped 23 companies designate such change leaders. The result? Implementation time was shortened by an average of 34%, and the number of errors at the start fell by almost half (exactly by 46.8%).
If you implement an IT system on Monday morning for the whole company, it means you don't like your money.
How we saved a project in a plant near Wieliczka
In July 2024, an owner of a window production company called us. They had been in the process of an ERP implementation for 9 months. They had spent 84,500 PLN, and employees were still keeping their own notes in pads. The system lived its own life, and the warehouse its own. Our diagnosis was short: too many functions, too little logic. We turned off 6 unnecessary modules that no one needed, and focused on one: the production order workflow. Facts on the table: after 5 weeks the system started showing the real stock level with 99.1% accuracy.
The key was a change in the approach to training. Instead of boring presentations in a conference room, we did workshops at the machines. We showed operators how they can report a breakdown with one click instead of running to the office. This saved them an average of 14 minutes at each incident. By the way, it's precisely such small improvements that build trust in technology. After 4 months, the owner regained peace of mind, and we calculated that the investment started to pay off. By the end of the year, the company is to save about 31,200 PLN on the costs of unnecessary stocks alone, which previously 'disappeared' in the system.
14-day plan: Where to start so as not to lose?
If you are planning changes, don't buy any program yet. For the first 7 days, just observe. List every step your order takes — from the client's phone call to shipping the goods. Find bottlenecks. In the following week, ask the longest-tenured employee what irritates them most in their current work. You'll be surprised how accurate these comments will be. Only with such a list go to software vendors. Don't let yourself be pushed 'comprehensive solutions', because it's just a pretty word on the invoice. Look for a tool that will solve your 3 biggest problems, not 100 theoretical ones.
Finally, remember: technology is to serve you, not you to technology. If the system requires you to change your proven production process just because 'the program has it that way', then change the program, not the process. Well, unless your process is bad — but that's another conversation we'd be happy to have during an audit. At Filary Biznesu Consulting, we are not afraid to tell the truth, even if it's painful for the wallet in the short term. In the long run, only what stays in the pocket after paying all invoices counts. Hey, no one said it would be easy, but with proper math, it will at least be predictable.
