How long does ERP implementation take?

Every Faxtor ERP project runs through the same four phases. Each one ends with something you can see and sign off before the next begins.

Added end to end, the phases come to 10 to 19 weeks. In practice they overlap: design on later modules continues while the first ones are being built, and modules go live one at a time rather than all on the last day. That is why most projects are live in 8 to 16 weeks.

Phase 1: Discovery (1–2 weeks)

Most business owners know their problems but not what is possible in software. So before anything is built, we sit with you and your department heads to map how work moves today: where orders come in, how stock is tracked, who approves what, and which Excel sheets and WhatsApp groups hold it together. You do not fill in a form; we have a real conversation about your business.

Your part: time with the owner and each department head, and copies of the sheets and reports you use now.

Phase 2: Design (2–3 weeks)

We set up the system with your products, price lists, approval rules and report formats, and design the owner dashboards around the numbers you check every day. Because Faxtor builds on FaxtorCore, a shared platform used across more than 20 industries, much of this is configuration rather than new code.

Your part: confirm masters and rules, and sign off the dashboard designs.

Phase 3: Build (6–12 weeks)

We build what is specific to your business, such as custom workflows, pricing logic or production stages, and connect Tally and any other tools you use. You see working software every two weeks, not a big reveal at the end. Feedback from each demo goes into the next two weeks of work.

Your part: attend the fortnightly demo and send feedback within the week.

Phase 4: Launch (1–2 weeks per module)

We move in your customer, product and vendor masters and opening balances, train each department on its own module, and go live module by module. A cut-over date is agreed in advance so the team knows when the old sheets stop and the new system starts.

Your part: make staff available for training and stick to the cut-over date.

You get a written plan with dates for each module before any build work starts.

This is an illustrative plan for a trading business that wants sales, purchase, inventory and accounts with Tally sync. It shows how the phases overlap and how modules go live in stages.

• Weeks 1–2 Discovery with the owner, sales, stores and accounts. Process map and module plan signed off.

• Weeks 3–4 Products, price lists and approval rules set up. Owner dashboard designed.

• Weeks 5–8 Sales and CRM built. Demos in weeks 6 and 8. Purchase and inventory design runs alongside.

• Week 9 Sales goes live. Sales team trained; customer master migrated.

• Weeks 9–11 Purchase and inventory built and demoed. Inventory goes live in week 11 with opening stock.

• Week 12 Accounts goes live with Tally sync and opening balances. Owner dashboard switched on.

By week 9, the sales team is already working in the new system, three weeks before the project is complete.

When an ERP runs late, the cause is rarely the software. These are the usual reasons.

• No single decision maker. When three people must agree on every approval rule, each sign-off takes a week instead of a day.

• Scope added mid-build. New modules requested during the build push every later date. Better to note them and add them after go-live.

• Messy data. Duplicate customers, inconsistent product names and missing opening balances must be cleaned before import.

• Going live everywhere at once. A single big-bang launch puts every department into training in the same week and makes problems harder to trace.

• Slow feedback on demos. Each fortnight of delayed feedback can add a fortnight to the end date.

• Old software with no way to connect. Some older tools have no API, so data has to be exported and mapped by hand.

• Start with your biggest pain. Pick the one process that irritates you most and go live with that first. Many owners start with a CRM.

• Name one owner for the project. One person on your side who can make decisions keeps sign-offs to days.

• Clean your masters early. Start tidying customer, product and vendor lists during discovery, not at launch.

• Go live module by module. Each department switches over when its module is ready, and the next one benefits from what was learned.

• Build on a proven core. FaxtorCore already covers orders, stock, invoices, approvals and dashboards, so the build focuses on what is specific to you.

A system only pays off when people use it every day. That is why we handle all the hand-holding ourselves: training each team on the screens they will use, sitting with them through their first live days, and staying close afterwards to make sure what we built is being used properly by the right people.

Hand-holding, training and aftercare

• Role-wise training. Sales, stores, accounts and management are each trained on their own module, using their own data.

• On-the-floor support at launch. We stay with your team during the first days of live use, so questions are answered on the spot.

• Usage check-ins. In the weeks after go-live we review how each team is using the system and retrain or adjust wherever work is slipping back to Excel, registers or WhatsApp.

• Training for new joiners. When new staff join, we help get them up to speed.

Go-live is not the end of the project. We stay on as your technology partner, fixing issues, making small changes and adding reports as your team asks for them. Hosting and support are covered by one fixed yearly charge. When the business grows, new modules are added to the same system, so nothing has to be rebuilt.

The first few weeks after each module goes live are when most small requests come in: a column added to a report, a change to an approval step, a new alert on WhatsApp. These are part of normal support. Larger additions, such as a new department or a new integration, are planned and dated the same way as the original project, so you always know when they will be ready.

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