Why Most ERP Steering Committees Don’t Actually Steer
If you’re sponsoring an ERP program, this feeling might be familiar.
You sit in steering committees listening to confident updates, dense slides, and technical explanations.
Everything sounds under control — yet something feels off.
The language is heavy with IT jargon.
Risks feel smoothed over.
Open issues sound “managed,” but rarely resolved.
And you leave the meeting with a quiet doubt:
Am I seeing the real picture?
That discomfort is usually not a lack of expertise.
It’s a signal that the steering committee itself isn’t designed to steer.
Steering Committees Are Often Built as Status Forums
Most ERP steering committees meet regularly, follow an agenda, and review progress.
They:
- Review timelines and milestones
- Acknowledge risks and dependencies
- Listen to explanations from project teams
- “Align” on next steps
And yet, the project continues to drift.
Why?
Because many steering committees are structured to observe, not to decide.
This pattern is common in ERP programs where governance exists on paper but lacks real authority — a theme explored further in FitGap’s analysis of ERP governance beyond theory.
The Real Failure Mode: No Decision System
In ERP programs, value is lost long before go-live when decisions are delayed, diluted, or avoided.
Common patterns seen in underperforming steering committees:
- Issues are “escalated,” but no one has explicit authority to decide
- Financial impact is discussed after scope, timeline, or quality has already slipped
- Risks are tracked, but not tied to thresholds that require action
- Accountability is shared — which means it is effectively owned by no one
Without a clear decision system, escalation becomes a ritual instead of a mechanism — often reinforcing the same human and organizational resistance patterns that derail ERP programs over time (read more).
Steering Committees Should Be Designed to Create Pressure
A steering committee creates value only when it introduces constructive pressure into the system.
That pressure comes from structure, not personalities.
Effective steering committees:
- Force explicit trade-offs instead of consensus
- Link decisions to economic impact, not just project comfort
- Make inaction more expensive than action
- Operate on predefined decision rules, not slide decks
When these elements are missing, governance becomes performative — not operational.
ERP Governance Is Not About More Meetings
Adding cadence, dashboards, or documentation does not fix weak steering.
What matters is whether the committee:
- Has clear decision rights
- Sees issues early enough to influence outcomes
- Connects scope, risk, and timelines to financial consequences
- Consistently enforces decisions made in the room
This distinction mirrors what FitGap often observes in ERP best-practice frameworks: structure only works when enforcement is real (see nuance here).
The Sponsor’s Role Is Not to “Get Smarter on ERP”
Project sponsors don’t need deeper technical knowledge to fix this.
They need a steering structure that:
- Surfaces reality instead of filtering it
- Translates complexity into economic terms
- Makes ownership visible
- Forces decisions at the right altitude
When the steering committee is designed properly, decision quality improves — even when the situation is uncomfortable.
Final Thought
ERP projects rarely fail because of software.
They fail when steering committees are unable to steer — not because people are incompetent, but because the system was never designed to force decisions.
Governance is not about oversight.
It’s about control.
And control only exists when decisions are unavoidable.
This article is part of the FitGap Finance series — a practical, business-first perspective on ERP governance, finance transformation, and decision-making beyond go-live.
🇫🇷 Une version française de cet article est disponible ici : https://www.fitgapfinance.com/comite-pilotage-erp-gouvernance
