Disclaimer: this blog was written by a former tech person turned business person. I have no dog in this fight.

Let’s rewind to 2010. Instagram and iPads hit the scene, Blockbuster was laughing at Netflix’s pivot to streaming, and it was obvious who should be the ERP Project Sponsor: The CIO.

Today, it’s a hotly contested topic. Should the ERP Project Sponsor be the Chief Information Officer or the Chief Financial Officer?

(Sorry, COOs, I know you really wanted to run this one, but you’ll have to wait until the 2030s.)

Well, I’m happy to tell you that it’s a settled matter. We could end the blog post here with a simple, QED. It’s the CFO. Full stop.

…

But it’s never that simple, is it?

See, there’s what should happen. Then there’s what does happen.

If you’re in the ERP industry and you ask around, you’ll find a cheesy toothpaste-advertisement-like statistic, “Nine out of ten ERP professionals prefer implementing an ERP when the CFO is the ERP Project Sponsor!” (The tenth is on a PIP.)

Why should the CFO be the ERP Project Sponsor? User adoption and business process ownership.

If the CIO is the ERP Project Sponsor, we industry veterans have endured too many difficult projects wherein the business resists a system that IT is seemingly forcing on the business. A project that IT is pulling business users away from their real jobs to do. And when it goes live? Hoooo boy, did IT cause a ruckus!!

There’s another matter to consider.

With ERP – everything rolls downhill…. To Finance & Accounting.

They see it all and deal with all the mistakes that are made.

Purchase order entered wrong? F&A fixes.

GL coding incorrect? F&A fixes.

Inventory valuation incorrect? F&A fixes.

F&A might choose to reach out to other departments to get the fix in motion, but F&A is the department who sees the problem hit the GL and needs to make it tick and tie. They might also make adjusting entries and gnash their teeth at the culprits – but fixed, the problem must be.

And it might be F&A’s fault the problem occurred in the first place. Especially in an IT-led project where F&A didn’t take the time to understand the configuration, do the testing, and take ownership of the system before go-live. They might’ve been too busy dealing with their day jobs.

However, if the CFO is the ERP Project Sponsor, the sponsor will understand the pain that occurs from the “it all flows downhill” problem and will move mountains – and drain pipes – to address it.

When the ERP Project Sponsor is the CFO, there’s buy-in from the business. There’s ownership. There’s ERP Project success.

Case closed. The ERP Project Sponsor should be the CFO.