Avoiding the Backdoors

Imagine walking into a market and asking the vendor for a potato. He smiles proudly and assures you that he has the finest potatoes in the region, affordable, flavorful, and exactly what you need. Everything sounds perfect.

Then the delivery arrives. Crates of sweet potatoes. Long ones, short ones, oddly shaped ones. Technically, still potatoes. Just not the potatoes you were talking about.

You explain that you meant regular yellow potatoes. The vendor nods, makes a note, and sends a second shipment. This time, they are yellow, but they are the wrong kind for the purpose you had in mind. You needed a firm potato suitable for slicing and freezing; instead, you receive a variety intended for mashing.

A new round of change requests begins. A new billing cycle follows. And all you wanted was a potato.

This is not a food story. It is a story about ERP vendor negotiations, and it plays out in boardrooms and project kickoffs every single day.

When buyers describe their needs loosely, vendors interpret those needs based on their own frame of reference. When vendors interpret loosely defined needs, gaps appear. And once gaps appear, change requests slip through them like water through a crack slow at first, then constant, then overwhelming.

The root problem is not deception or incompetence. It is ambiguity. The vendor is not necessarily wrong. The buyer is not necessarily unclear. But the two are rarely speaking the same language.

In technology projects, the equivalent of the word potato might be inventory control, or forecasting, or multi-warehouse picking, or production planning. These sound like requirements, but they are only categories. Each one includes dozens of variations, special cases, constraints, exceptions, and technical implications.

When those details remain unspoken, the contract becomes a blank canvas that both sides fill with assumptions. That is the moment a backdoor opens. And once it is open, change requests walk through one after another.

So the delays begin. The cost overruns accumulate. Frustration grows. And a project that should have strengthened the business instead becomes a lesson in the price of unclear communication.

This cycle repeats itself across industries because organizations underestimate the complexity of defining what they actually need. They believe a high-level explanation is enough. They assume the vendor will “figure it out.” They trust that the salesperson will translate their vision into precise technical scope.

But vendors do not live inside your operation. They do not know how your warehouses function, or which picking method you use, or how you want production batches to be costed, or what rules govern your pricing, or which processes are sacred. They cannot know unless someone tells them in the language of requirements, not anecdotes.

This is where a skilled, independent consultant changes the trajectory of a project.

A consultant’s role is to eliminate ambiguity before it becomes expensive. They translate daily operations into exact requirements that leave no room for misunderstanding. They break vague terms into specific definitions. They anticipate where assumptions typically arise and close those gaps before they cause trouble. They create clarity, discipline, and fairness in the negotiation process.

Most importantly, they protect the business from unintentional scope drift the silent killer of ERP projects.

Clear requirements do not limit a vendor; they guide them. They allow the vendor to quote accurately, configure correctly, and deliver predictably. They make pricing transparent and timelines credible. They reduce friction, disappointment, and the dreaded phrase: “This is out of scope.”

So before you sign a contract, before you choose a system, before you ask a vendor for your version of a potato, take the time to precisely define what that potato actually is. Shape, size, purpose, constraints, context. All of it.

You will save time. You will save money. You will protect your team from unnecessary frustration. And you will dramatically increase the chances that your project succeeds the first time.

The vendor is not the enemy. Ambiguity is.