The ERP Trap emerges as organizations attempt to force all business processes through a single system of record. What begins as a sensible desire for operational consistency evolves into a rigid structure that often restricts rather than enables natural value flow.
Origins
As Bill Barlas, platform transformation expert, observes: “We’ve spent decades building systems that tell people how to work instead of supporting how they actually create value. Every ERP implementation I’ve seen starts with ‘How do we get people to follow the system?’ instead of ‘How do we build systems that follow how people naturally collaborate?’”
How It Creates Friction
Process Rigidity:
- All work forced through predetermined workflows
- Natural value flow interrupted by system requirements
- Flexibility sacrificed for consistency
- Innovation constrained by system limitations
Customization Spiral:
- Teams need customizations for basic value creation
- Each customization adds complexity and technical debt
- System becomes increasingly brittle
- Maintenance costs escalate
Integration Complexity:
- Disconnected modules mirror departmental silos
- Manual workarounds proliferate
- Data scattered despite “single source of truth”
- Coordination overhead multiplies
Systemic Impact
ERP systems often create organization-wide dysfunction:
- People fight against infrastructure rather than being supported by it
- Natural workflows get fragmented by system boundaries
- Customer experience suffers from internal process requirements
- Adaptation slows as system constraints multiply
Most critically, these systems force fundamental misalignment between how value naturally wants to flow and how software requires it to move.
Growing Friction
As implementations scale:
- Customization and maintenance costs rise
- Time to implement new capabilities lengthens
- System integration complexity increases
- Team frustration mounts
- Market adaptation slows
Hidden Costs
Beyond financial investment:
- Loss of natural value flow through forced processes
- Artificial barriers to customer experience innovation
- Growing resistance to change due to system constraints
- Rising costs of working around limitations
- Decreasing ability to adapt to market changes
- Competitive disadvantage from rigidity
The Pattern
- Organizations implement ERP as system of record
- Creates rigid processes restricting natural value flow
- Teams require customizations to enable basic value creation
- Each customization adds complexity and technical debt
- Entire system becomes increasingly brittle and expensive
The Alternative: Value-First Platform
Instead of forcing all processes through ERP:
- Recognize which processes truly benefit from rigid control
- Enable natural value flow where flexibility matters
- Build systems supporting rather than restricting innovation
- Measure value creation instead of process compliance
- Allow natural evolution without artificial barriers
Breaking Free
The path forward requires:
- Recognizing how systems fight against natural value creation
- Identifying where artificial process control creates friction
- Reimagining technology infrastructure to enable natural flow
- Building systems supporting rather than restricting evolution
- Creating conditions for sustainable value creation
This transforms ERP from central system of control to focused system of record for specific operational processes—allowing other systems to enable natural value flow where rigid control isn’t beneficial.