There are plenty of SAP implementations that seemingly go off without a hitch. This was not the case with Spar, which by the time the dust had settled, had lost around R2 billion in sales in its 2023 financial year, which was more than the cost of its implementation, estimated at R1.8 billion.

The company pressed the go-live button at its KwaZulu-Natal distribution centre on February 1 2023. Almost immediately, it became clear that something, in this case a number of things, was terribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that warehouse staff had to revert to manual processes to get the stock out to stores. All the planning and preparation that Spar had done came to naught. There had been a lengthy period of change management in the form of training, consultations with business leaders, and buy-in from middle management.