The following content reflects themes, perspectives and concerns shared by participants during recent ERP demonstration sessions. Feedback from these sessions highlighted themes participants believe will be most important in selecting and implementing a future enterprise system, so this record is intended to help identify considerations that may inform evaluation and planning. It does not indicate institutional agreement with or endorsement of every comment, conclusion or recommendation.
ERP Demonstration Feedback
Executive Synthesis of Core Themes
Feedback from the ERP demonstration sessions highlighted broad themes about what participants believe will be most important in selecting and implementing a future enterprise system.
Participants were less focused on individual features and more focused on whether a future ERP solution can support the University of Michigan’s complexity, scale, and decentralized operating model. Across sessions, users emphasized the need for a system that is intuitive, integrated, reliable, and flexible enough to support varied business needs across the enterprise.
Participants are hoping for a modernized experience that improves reporting, reduces manual work, supports better decision-making, and streamlines business processes. At the same time, they expressed strong concern about the amount of standardization, governance, data cleanup, training, and change management that will be required to make any future solution successful.
The feedback gathered will help shape future requirements, evaluation criteria, implementation planning, and stakeholder engagement as U-M continues assessing potential ERP options.
Key Takeaways & Recommendations
Prioritize User Experience:
Participants consistently emphasized the importance of an intuitive, modern, and easy-to-navigate system. A future ERP should reduce unnecessary clicks, simplify workflows, improve search and navigation, and make routine tasks easier for users across roles and units.
Balance Standardization with Local Flexibility:
One of the most frequent themes was the need to support U-M’s decentralized environment. Participants recognized that some business process standardization will be necessary, but they also stressed the importance of preserving flexibility where local needs, regulatory requirements, union rules, academic operations, research administration, or clinical workflows require variation.
Strengthen Reporting and Analytics:
Participants placed high value on real-time reporting, dashboards, drill-down capabilities, forecasting, and self-service analytics. A future system should provide timely, accurate, role-based data that supports operational, financial, HR, research, supply chain, student, and executive decision-making.
Ensure Seamless Integration Across the U-M Ecosystem:
Participants raised questions about how a future ERP would connect with existing systems for the university, Michigan Medicine and its regional network. Strong integration with current platforms, historical data, external partners, and specialized systems will be essential to avoid fragmented workflows and duplicate efforts.
Validate Core Functionality Through Realistic Scenarios:
Users want to see how a future system would perform in real U-M business scenarios, not only in idealized demonstrations. Key areas for deeper validation include finance, grants, endowments, procurement, inventory, HR, payroll, benefits, timekeeping, student services, research administration, reporting, and cross-system workflows.
Address AI Governance, Accuracy, and Cost:
Participants expressed interest in AI-enabled functionality but raised questions about accuracy, security, compliance, transparency, human oversight, ethical use, and cost. Any use of AI should be governed carefully and introduced in ways that support—not distract from—core operational needs.
Invest Heavily in Change Management:
A successful ERP implementation will require comprehensive change management. Participants emphasized the need for clear communication, visible leadership, role-based training, user testing, documentation, office hours, dedicated support, and continued assistance before, during, and after go-live.
Prepare for Business Process Redesign:
Participants recognized that a future ERP implementation will require more than a technology replacement. It will require decisions about how U-M conducts work, where processes can be standardized, where exceptions are appropriate, and how governance decisions will be made and enforced.
Engage Diverse Impacted Groups Early and Often:
Ongoing input from schools, colleges, units, central offices, Michigan Medicine, finance, HR, procurement, supply chain, student services, research administration, faculty, staff, and administrative users will be critical. Participants want meaningful opportunities to shape requirements, review recommendations, test workflows, and provide feedback throughout the process.
Protect Data Quality, Ownership, and Historical Access:
Participants raised concerns about data migration, historical data, reporting continuity, data ownership, and long-term access. Clear plans for data cleanup, validation, migration, extraction, and governance will be necessary to build trust and reduce disruption.
Clarify Total Cost and Long-Term Sustainability:
Participants asked questions about implementation costs, licensing, AI pricing, third-party tools, integrations, reporting, support, and future enhancements. A full understanding of short- and long-term costs will be important when evaluating options.
Evaluate the Implementation Partner as Much as the Software:
Participants emphasized that the selected solution must come with strong partnership, guidance, and implementation support. The future vendor and implementation team should understand higher education, academic medical centers, research administration, decentralized governance, and the scale of U-M operations.
Overall Sentiment
Participants generally believe that a future ERP system has the potential to improve user experience, reporting, workflow efficiency, and institutional decision-making. However, they also recognize that success will depend on much more than software functionality.
The most important factors will be U-M’s ability to establish clear governance, redesign business processes (as necessary), prepare data, support users, manage change, and select a partner capable of guiding a complex institutional transformation.
Final Observation
The strongest theme across all sessions was implementation readiness. Participants want a future ERP solution that can support standardization without losing essential local flexibility, integrate across the university ecosystem, provide meaningful reporting and analytics, and serve as a foundation for long-term operational improvement.
The selected ERP solution must do more than meet functional requirements. It must help U-M navigate a major institutional transformation. The strongest candidate will be the vendor that can demonstrate practical readiness to support U-M’s scale, complexity, reporting needs, integrations, governance, and long-term change management.