HomeServicesIvalua project rescue: a two-week diagnosis, then a reset
Ivalua project rescue: a two-week diagnosis, then a reset
When an Ivalua project has slipped and the steering committee has lost confidence, I start with a two-week, fixed-price diagnosis. It ends with a verdict, stabilise, recover or restart, and a 90-day plan. From €9,500, then a custom recovery.
When does an Ivalua project need a rescue?
When the plan no longer holds: go-live has moved, perhaps more than once, and the steering committee no longer believes the next date. Several of the signals below can be true at the same time. Ticking them is the quickest test; the risk check on the home page counts them for you.
What are the signals that an Ivalua implementation is drifting?
Each signal below is backed by a public source: the audits of Maryland’s eMMA programme on Ivalua, Ivalua’s own survey of system integrators, and the public interest report on Birmingham City Council’s ERP.
| Signal | What it looks like | Public evidence |
|---|---|---|
| No integrated plan | The integrator’s plan does not show your ERP team, data owners or key users | Maryland: no integrated schedule of state and vendor tasks, while the integration with the state’s accounting system depended on state tasks |
| Key users part time | Process owners give the project 20 to 30% of their time on top of their job | Ivalua names this allocation as a common pitfall |
| Scope grows by change request | Work orders approved one by one, never checked against a baseline budget | Scope expansion is the overrun cause most cited in Ivalua’s survey of integrators (65.2%); Maryland did not track payments on 36 work orders (about $8.6 million) against their approved cost |
| ERP round trip unproven | Purchase orders, commitments, invoice cancellations and reconciliation not tested together with finance | Maryland: eMMA changed the accounting system’s purchase order numbers; about 1,100 orders matched no eMMA order |
| Deliverables accepted untested | Sign-off and payment without functional validation; dates moved instead of enforced | Maryland: about $740,000 paid for deficient deliverables; delivery dates frequently adjusted |
| Filtered reporting, no go/no-go | Test results reach the steering committee late or softened; go-live slips without written criteria | Birmingham: test results did not fully reach the steering committee |
| Configuration turning into custom code | Custom alerts and queries, timeouts, a regression scope that grows every release | Complex configuration is cited as an overrun cause at 40.2% in Ivalua’s survey |
| Data behind the build | Duplicate suppliers, migration never rehearsed, supplier onboarding not started | Data and integration challenges are cited as an overrun cause at 41% in Ivalua’s survey |
On the home page risk check, three signals or more point to a health check, six or more to a rescue.
Sources: Maryland Office of Legislative Audits, May 2023 and December 2025; Ivalua, survey of 31 system integrators and implementation pitfalls; The Register on the Birmingham report, February 2025.
What does a public Ivalua project in trouble look like?
The State of Maryland’s eMMA programme is the best documented case, because its auditors publish their reports. It is not a project I worked on; it is useful because each of its problems can be read in the source.
- March 2019: a ten-year contract of about $38.2 million to implement eMMA on Ivalua, with an interface to the state’s accounting system (FMIS).
- February 2022: no comprehensive implementation plan and no integrated schedule of state and vendor tasks; six of seven phases delayed by 15 months to more than three years.
- February 2025: $32.5 million (85%) paid for a system that, in the auditors’ words, did not function as intended and mainly worked as a bid board.
- The integration: eMMA changed FMIS purchase order numbers, about 1,100 FMIS orders worth $35.6 million matched no eMMA order, and the auditors found about 2,100 invoices cancelled in eMMA after FMIS had paid them (the state answered that each had a duplicate and that no payment was improper).
- May and June 2025: in May, a $19.8 million contract with a different vendor was approved to complete the procure-to-pay functions and the FMIS integration; in June, the integrator’s contract was terminated.
Two points matter for any rescue. The state’s procurement office believed the state was partially responsible for the failure: client-side tasks count, not only the integrator’s. And the platform was kept: the second contract is meant to stabilise and enhance the existing Ivalua platform rather than replace it. That is the choice a diagnosis has to make explicit.
What does the two-week diagnosis deliver?
- A verdict among three options. Stabilise: the design holds, fix the delivery (plan, tests, governance). Recover: keep the platform and rework the parts that fail, often the interfaces, the data or the specific configurations. Restart: some decisions cost more to keep than to redo.
- The reasons for the verdict, area by area, with what I saw in the environments, the documents and the interviews.
- A 90-day plan: scope, plan and team reset, the first decisions the steering committee has to take, and the go/no-go criteria for the next milestone.
- A restitution to the sponsor and the steering committee.
A restart is a real option, not a failure. At BNP Paribas the group platform was rebuilt from scratch on v164 because v156 carried many complex specific configurations; the rebuild simplified them and redesigned the workflows, and it was delivered on budget and on schedule.
How do the two weeks run, and what comes after?
- Week 1: read the plan, the budget follow-up, the design, the test results and the environments; interview the sponsor, the procurement and IT leads, key users and the integrator.
- Week 2: check the interfaces and data against what the plan assumes, write the verdict and the 90-day plan, and present them to the steering committee.
- Then, if you want: I take the lead and reset scope, plan and team. That phase is priced on the plan, in a separate proposal.
What does an Ivalua project rescue cost?
The diagnosis costs from €9,500 excluding VAT, at a fixed price, for two weeks. The recovery that follows is custom: its size depends on the verdict, so I quote it once the diagnosis is done.
The experience behind it: three full-cycle Ivalua implementations at BNP Paribas, including a complete rebuild, hands-on from design to integrations, custom SQL and migration; a mixed team of 15 led on v156 and v164; and a portfolio of four concurrent software projects managed at Vallourec.
Frequently asked questions
Why do Ivalua projects fail?
The public sources point to the project more than to the software. In Ivalua’s own survey of 31 system integrators, the causes of budget overruns most cited are scope expansion (65.2%), data and integration (41%) and complex configuration (40.2%). Public audits add missing integrated plans, untested deliverables and ERP interfaces that do not round-trip.
Can you work alongside our current integrator?
Yes. A diagnosis needs the integrator’s view, and a recovery can keep the integrator, with a reset plan. The findings separate what belongs to the integrator, to your team and to the platform, so that nobody is blamed for what is not theirs.
Who do you work for during the diagnosis?
For you, the client. The diagnosis can be contracted directly with you rather than through the integrator, so that the verdict is free to say that the plan, the integrator’s work or your own organisation has to change, and the findings are yours.
What if the verdict is restart?
Then the plan says what to keep (data, interfaces, configuration that works), what to redo, and in what order. A restart does not mean losing what was built: on the BNP Paribas v164 redesign, the rebuild simplified the specific configurations and redesigned the workflows.
How soon can the diagnosis start?
Tell me your situation and your planning by booking a call or writing to me. The diagnosis needs read access to the environments and documents and a few hours of the sponsor’s and key people’s time; once that is in place, the two weeks start.
30 minutes. Your project, my honest read.
Tell me where the programme stands. You leave the call with a view on risk and the next step, whether or not we work together.