Just as common, training typically occurs at the end of the implementation cycle, when activities are often running late and being compressed. So training, too, gets squashed in as a last-minute activity. "One of my favorite questions," Klein says, "when speaking at user seminars is to ask, 'How many people would go about their training differently on their next implementation?' Seventy-five percent of the people put their hands up and say that next time they'd allow more time for it, and that they'd tailor it more around their own business processes."

A typical result of such skimping, says David Beresford, executive director of one of Europe's premier SAP rescue services, systems implementation consultancy Diagonal, of Farnham, England, is that users often fail to appreciate the consequences of their actions—with disastrous results. Informal practices that worked just fine in the era of paper procedures or standalone legacy systems can have catastrophic effects on an integrated ERP environment.

"The classic example is the sales order process," says Beresford. "In the past, people could put in the wrong price, the wrong customer, the wrong delivery point—and somehow, the business coped. Now, surprise, surprise, they don't get their invoice paid. And it's even worse if the wrong product is entered. What people need to understand is that the sales orders are now automatically linked to the manufacturing and accounting functions."

They didn't understand this at A-dec, a privately held dental equipment manufacturer headquartered in Newberg, Ore., which went live with a Baan system in 1997. "We made the mistake of teaching everybody how to do their job but nothing else," says Director of IS and CIO Keith Bearden. "Everybody knew the keystrokes to do their job, but that was all. They didn't understand the ERP process, the degree of integration and the importance of data being right. A clerk would enter an order incorrectly and manufacturing would start making it. Changes to sales orders after we'd started manufacturing were a real problem."

Six months later, Bearden threw in the towel and conceded that users needed better training. But how? Baan ran a course, but it lasted a week, cost $5,000 per head and, Bearden decided, wasn't about A-dec's business processes. So the company decided to develop a course itself, using instructing staff from Portland State University's business school. "Folks from the university came to the business, talked to people about how we operated and worked with a team from inside A-dec to develop the course and then give it," says Bearden. In all, some 450 employees went through the one-day course during the summer and early fall of 1998.