Here’s a pattern we see constantly: a company invests serious time and money into ERP training. Everyone attends the sessions. And then three months after go-live, half the team is still confused, making errors, and asking the same questions they asked on day one.
So what went wrong?
The problem isn’t that your people are slow. It’s that most ERP training is structured in a way that almost guarantees people will forget it. The timing’s off, the focus is wrong, and nobody’s really set up to retain what they’ve learned.
Whether you’re about to go live or you’re already in the weeds wondering why your team is struggling, here are five tips — plus a bonus — that can fundamentally change whether your training sticks or fades.
Tip 1: Train by Role, Not by Room
The problem: Everyone gets the same training. The warehouse manager sits through AP workflows. The accountant watches warehouse picking demos. People tune out because the content doesn’t feel relevant to them — because it isn’t.
When you put everyone in the same room, two things happen. First, the training doesn’t apply to 90% of the audience at any given time. Second, the conversation gets hijacked. People start venting about old processes, airing grievances, and going off on tangents that derail the session. No decisions get made and nobody walks away knowing what they need to know.
The fix: Structure training around specific roles and responsibilities. Get only the people in the room who make decisions about that module and that department. You’ll get far more productive conversations, better questions, and people actually engage because the content is directly relevant to their day-to-day work.
Apply the 80/20 rule here. If someone is only going to remember 20% of their training, make sure that 20% covers the 80% of the value they bring. For a warehouse picker, day one needs to be: How do I receive stock? How do I pick and ship? How do I confirm a shipment? Everything else — cycle counts, returns, quarantine processes — can come later.
Tip 2: Get the Timing Right
The problem: Train too early and people forget everything by go-live. Train too late and people panic — they can’t absorb anything when go-live is next week.
Think about it this way: if you’re teaching the finance team about month-end close and year-end reconciliation on day two of the project, before a single sales order or purchase order has been entered into the system, they’re going to forget all of it by the time it matters. There’s a sweet spot, and finding it is critical.
The fix: Be strategic about your training timeline. Early in the project, focus on awareness sessions: here’s what’s coming and why it matters. Mid-project, move to business process and workflow training. As you approach go-live, shift to hands-on system training so people build competency for user acceptance testing. And critically, plan for reinforcement training after go-live — because people will forget things, gaps will emerge, and configurations may need adjusting.
One practical recommendation: build a dedicated training plan, not just a project plan. Project plans tend to be too high-level. A training plan drills into each topic and subtopic, sequenced in a way that matches your business workflow and the natural progression of the implementation.
Tip 3: Train Workflows End-to-End Before Screens
The problem: People get shown buttons and screens before they understand how the system supports the actual business process. They learn how to click without understanding what they’re doing or how their actions affect other teams.
Without that context, all they’re doing is memorising buttons. And the moment something unexpected happens on day one — and something always happens on day one — they’re completely stuck.
The fix: Build your training around end-to-end business processes, not isolated screens. Think order-to-cash, procure-to-pay — the big cross-functional flows that represent 80% of what your business does every day.
Put the right people in the room together. When you’re training order-to-cash, have the customer service person enter a dummy order. Then show procurement how to see the demand it generates. Walk through what happens in production, then warehousing, then shipping. This is what people will actually be doing — they’re not working on isolated screens, they’re part of an integrated workflow.
Use diagrams and visual workflows wherever possible. Most people retain information better when they can see the big picture. And critically, build your test scenarios around reality: include a missing price, a stockout, a customer PO that doesn’t match. No business runs perfectly on day one, so don’t train as if it will.
Tip 4: Build Knowledge Gradually
The problem: People are expected to be fully competent after a single training session. There’s a big difference between being trained and being competent, but most ERP project plans don’t acknowledge that.
People are coming from a system they know inside out. Suddenly the interface is different, the terminology is different, and they panic. It’s like years of skiing on an artificial dry slope and then being dropped on a real mountainside — the fundamentals are the same, but the environment is unfamiliar and it feels like starting from zero.
The fix: Set realistic expectations and build knowledge in layers. Don’t make your team think they’re supposed to be experts on day one. Schedule follow-up sessions in advance so people know there’s a safety net. Two weeks after initial training, get together for a debrief — it calms people down just knowing it’s in the diary.
Encourage users to get into the system on their own. Struggle a little. Come up with questions. That’s how knowledge builds. Any expert in their field will tell you their competence came from doing the work and learning from the mistakes — not from a single classroom session.
Invest in good documentation, training recordings, and potentially a walk-through tool layered on top of the ERP. Give people resources they can revisit independently so they’re not relying solely on their memory of a session from three weeks ago.
Tip 5: Start with the What and Why, Not the How
The problem: Training jumps straight into clicks and screens. People learn the mechanics without the context, and the first time something unexpected happens, they’re stuck with no idea how to troubleshoot.
Good training starts with the what — what are we solving? — and the why — why does this matter? When you frame training this way, people are mentally prepared. They’ve opened the filing cabinet in their mind, ready to store what you’re about to show them in the right place.
The fix: Before showing anyone a screen, explain the business reason behind it. Connect actions to outcomes: when you confirm this receipt, here’s what happens in the inventory module and the finance module. People who understand the why can troubleshoot when things go wrong. People who only know the how get stuck the moment the script doesn’t match.
Don’t start with “click this button to create a purchase order.” Start with: Why do we create purchase orders? What flows from this? What breaks if it’s wrong? How do I know I need to create one? This is where discovery pays off — if your partner did the hard work of understanding your business processes, they can tie every training session back to the real reasons behind the work.
This is also a perfect opportunity to do some internal process diagnosis. Challenge the way you’ve always done things. A good ERP partner who’s seen 50 businesses in your vertical will spot inefficiencies and suggest better ways. Be open to it — a little flexibility here makes training significantly easier downstream.
Bonus Tip: Identify and Empower a Super User
If you can identify someone internally who’s respected by the team, patient, good at explaining, and eager to learn the new system — empower them as your super user. This person becomes your internal resident expert, the bridge between your team and your ERP partner.
The reality is someone’s going to get stuck at 4pm on a Friday. They’re not calling the vendor — they’re asking the person next to them. If that person is a capable super user, you’ve just avoided a support ticket that costs you several hundred pounds or dollars an hour.
A word of caution: don’t just nominate someone. This is a heavy lift — the super user will attend nearly every training session, learn more than anyone else, and still need to do their own day job while supporting the wider team. Find someone who’s genuinely excited about the project, not someone you’ve voluntold. And incentivise them. A gift card, extra time off, public recognition — make it clear that the business values their contribution.
The Bottom Line
ERP training isn’t just a checkbox on a project plan. It’s where the ROI of your entire implementation lives. Get it right and your team hits the ground running. Get it wrong and you’re spending months on go-live support, debugging, and retraining — all of which could have been avoided.
Train by role. Get the timing right. Teach workflows before screens. Build knowledge gradually. Start with the what and the why. And if you can, get a super user in your corner.
If you’ve lived through ERP training that didn’t land — or you’ve got tips we missed — we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a comment or send us a message.
Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Contact: Peter Nicholson — info@petenicholson.co.uk
Contact: Nirav Shah — nirav.shah@adcirruserp.com
