Rescuing a $261 Million University ERP Programme

A leading Group of Eight research university had invested four years and AU$261 million in a student administration and finance ERP implementation. The programme had stalled across three consecutive failed go-live attempts. Governance was fragmented across twelve competing faculties, vendor accountability had collapsed, and the Board was facing pressure from the Australian government's Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. Staff morale across the 8,000-person institution was at a critical low. The university required an independent executive to assume full programme authority, renegotiate the vendor relationship, rebuild the governance model, and deliver go-live within a twelve-month window before the next academic enrolment cycle.

Precision Consulting embedded a Programme Recovery Director with direct accountability to the Vice-Chancellor and Council. The engagement began with a structured 30-day diagnostic covering vendor contractual obligations, integration architecture, data migration completeness, and change readiness across all faculties. A revised delivery model was established: single point of vendor accountability, fortnightly executive steering with binding escalation authorities, and a faculty change network of 140 champions across all twelve academic divisions. Technical delivery was restructured around a parallel-run approach that eliminated the binary go-live risk that had caused the three previous failures. Precision Consulting introduced a risk-based go-live framework drawing on AS/NZS:4360 methodology, ensuring every critical-path dependency carried a tested fallback position before sign-off.