Quick answer
After ERP go-live, use one issue register but separate urgent incidents, confirmed defects, data corrections, training needs and enhancements. Assign each item a business owner, business impact, next action and acceptance check. Use the first 90 days as a planning horizon—not a promised stabilization deadline—and reduce elevated support only when agreed operational criteria are met. Microsoft’s support guidance recommends explicit criteria for ending post-launch “hypercare.” (learn.microsoft.com)
The plan below is a proposed working template for finance, operations and IT teams. Its schedules, severity labels and measures are recommendations, not vendor service commitments. The worked example is entirely hypothetical.
1. Divide the 90 days into three decision periods
Start by agreeing what the team must protect: order processing, receiving, invoicing, payments and other processes critical to your organization.
Microsoft’s transition checklist calls for defined support responsibilities, escalation procedures, operating hours and criteria for starting and ending hypercare—the period of elevated support immediately after launch. Establish these arrangements before reducing project-team coverage. (learn.microsoft.com)
Use this proposed schedule:
| Period | Primary objective | Working rhythm | Required output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Days 1–30 | Protect operations and establish reliable evidence | Daily triage while disruption warrants it | Owned incidents, approved workarounds and initial baselines |
| Days 31–60 | Remove recurring causes and strengthen user capability | Frequent incident review; weekly improvement review | Tested fixes, targeted coaching and verified data corrections |
| Days 61–90 | Confirm support readiness and approve the next improvements | Weekly service and backlog review | Support handover, exit decision and funded next-stage backlog |
Do not wait until day 31 to correct a recurring cause, or until day 61 to prepare support staff. These are overlapping priorities.
Name a business process owner for each end-to-end flow. For example, the procure-to-pay owner decides whether invoice processing is working acceptably, while IT coordinates technical diagnosis. A support lead manages the queue; a change authority approves production changes. One person may hold several roles, but record the responsibilities separately.
2. Create one intake route with enough evidence to act
A help desk and ticket-management process are part of Microsoft’s published operational-readiness checklist. Use that foundation rather than leaving requests scattered across messages and personal spreadsheets. (learn.microsoft.com)
Your intake route can be simple. Require these fields:
- Business process and affected location: What work is interrupted, and where?
- Expected versus actual behavior: What should happen, and what happened instead?
- Timing and scope: When did it start? Which transactions or users are affected?
- Evidence: Record identifiers, error text and sanitized screenshots.
- Impact and deadline: Is a payment run, shipment or close activity at risk?
- Workaround: Is there an approved alternative, and what controls does it require?
- Ownership: Who coordinates resolution, and who accepts the business outcome?
- Next action and update time: What happens next, and when will the reporter hear back?
Keep sensitive financial, employee and customer information in approved systems. Capture enough context to investigate without copying unnecessary data into tickets.
For this template, use statuses such as New → Triaged → Investigating → Awaiting action → Ready for validation → Closed. Record the reason for any waiting status.
Link repeated reports to a parent issue, but retain the count of affected users or transactions. Ten reports of the same failure should not become ten independent fixes.
3. Separate issue type from operational severity
An incident describes interrupted or degraded work; its underlying cause may still be unknown. Classify the cause only when evidence supports it.
Use these proposed categories:
| Type | Diagnostic question | Appropriate response |
|---|---|---|
| Suspected defect | Does approved behavior fail under the intended conditions? | Reproduce, investigate and test a correction |
| Data issue | Is incorrect, incomplete or duplicated data driving the result? | Reconcile records and approve a controlled correction |
| Training need | Can a trained user complete the approved process with the correct access and data? | Provide task-specific coaching |
| Process or configuration gap | Is an agreed workflow, rule or responsibility missing or unsuitable? | Obtain a business decision and assess controlled change |
| Enhancement | Is the request for capability beyond the accepted operating scope? | Evaluate value, effort, dependencies and risk |
Then assign severity independently:
- S1—Critical: An essential operation cannot continue safely, or a serious security or data-integrity concern requires immediate escalation.
- S2—High: A major process or deadline is at risk; the workaround is limited or burdensome.
- S3—Normal: The impact is contained and a practical, approved workaround exists.
- S4—Low: Minor inconvenience or a discretionary improvement without immediate operational impact.
These labels are an internal template. Agree response expectations and escalation coverage with your actual support providers; do not assume they use the same definitions.
Avoid labeling an issue “user error” before checking permissions, input data, instructions and configuration. Equally, do not call an unfamiliar but correctly functioning control a software defect.
4. Establish baselines before declaring improvement
Microsoft recommends measuring post-launch adoption through feedback and direct measures, including transactions, alongside business measures such as inventory accuracy. Build your review around completed work, not just whether people sign in. (learn.microsoft.com)
For each measure, record its definition, owner, source, cutoff time and exclusions. Use an authorized report, query or controlled export available in your ERP; this template does not assume a particular reporting feature.
Suggested measures include:
| Measure | Definition to agree | Practical check |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice backlog | Received invoices still unposted at the daily cutoff | Separate approval waits, matching exceptions and other causes |
| Older invoice backlog | Unposted invoices above an agreed age threshold | Keep the age start date consistent |
| Inventory discrepancy rate | Counted item-location records outside approved tolerance ÷ records counted | Use comparable locations and counting methods |
| Correction rate | Transactions needing a defined correction ÷ transactions reviewed | Define “correction” and disclose sample selection |
| Repeat incidents | New reports linked to a known recurring problem | Retain recurrence information when merging tickets |
Hypothetical worked example: A distributor starts Monday with 120 unposted invoices. During the day, it receives 80 more and posts 70, with no other movements:
Closing backlog = 120 + 80 − 70 = 130 invoices.
Posting 70 invoices is not evidence that the queue is shrinking. The team must examine incoming volume and unresolved causes.
In a separate illustrative check, 8 of 100 counted item-location records fall outside the organization’s approved tolerance. The sample discrepancy rate is 8%. That is not an estimate of total inventory value error or proof of warehouse-wide performance.
If comparable pre-launch data is unavailable, say so. Establish a dated post-launch baseline rather than implying a before-and-after result.
5. Turn recurring questions into role-specific coaching
Microsoft’s handover guidance calls for transferring project knowledge to the support organization and reinforcing change after launch. Make coaching part of the operating plan, not an informal favor from the implementation team. (learn.microsoft.com)
For the hypothetical distributor, assign different exercises to different roles:
- Receiving staff: Record a partial receipt and verify the remaining quantity.
- Accounts payable staff: Identify why an invoice is blocked and route the exception to its owner.
- Inventory controllers: Trace a discrepancy through receipts, transfers, issues and authorized adjustments.
- Approvers: Find pending work and apply the organization’s delegation procedure.
- Support analysts: Reproduce a reported failure and distinguish access, data and workflow problems.
Use approved training data in a suitable non-production environment. Ask the learner to complete the task and explain the resulting record or status. Attendance alone is not the acceptance check.
For each coaching item, record the task, instructor, learner group, job aid and observed outcome. Link it to the originating tickets.
If several users struggle at the same step, investigate the process design and instructions as well as individual knowledge. Do not repeatedly retrain users around an unresolved system problem.
6. Build a backlog that separates restoration from improvement
Microsoft’s support-operations guidance recommends a clear process for reviewing, prioritizing and approving new requirements, alongside defined responsibilities for production changes. Keep operational restoration visible rather than letting it compete indiscriminately with feature requests. (learn.microsoft.com)
Use two connected work lists:
- Restoration and control: Incidents, urgent defects, data-integrity concerns and necessary corrections.
- Improvement: Recurring-cause removal, coaching, workflow refinements and enhancements.
The hypothetical distributor’s initial investigation produces this proposed sequence—not actual findings or results:
| Order | Backlog item | Accountable owner | Dependency and acceptance check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Investigate suspected duplicate receipt messages | Integration lead | Establish scope; test normal processing, retries and duplicate handling |
| 2 | Reconcile affected receipts, stock and related invoice exceptions | Inventory process owner | Confirm cause or safe containment; approve corrections and retain reconciliation evidence |
| 3 | Coach receiving staff on partial receipts | Warehouse manager | Validate the approved procedure; observe successful task completion |
| 4 | Assign invoice-exception owners and escalation routes | Procure-to-pay owner | Confirm each exception category has an owner and a deadline-based route |
| 5 | Investigate inconsistent item-unit conversions | Master-data owner | Confirm intended conversions; assess affected records and test downstream transactions |
| 6 | Assess a dashboard request | Finance reporting owner | Stabilize definitions first; assess available reporting, effort and access controls |
The sequence changes if new evidence changes the risk. A suspected integrity problem takes precedence over convenience improvements; a real control failure should not be postponed simply because the request is labeled an enhancement.
For nonurgent items, compare business impact, recurrence, control exposure, expected benefit, delivery effort and dependencies. Record the reason for each decision. “The loudest requester asked again” is not a prioritization rule.
7. Close changes with evidence and exit hypercare deliberately
For every production change, require a short record containing:
- Business reason and approving owner.
- Affected processes, integrations, data and access roles.
- Test cases and expected outcomes.
- Deployment responsibility and timing.
- Recovery or rollback approach, where applicable.
- Post-change checks and user communication.
- Acceptance evidence and remaining limitations.
Make the acceptance check broader than “the error disappeared.” For an invoice fix, verify the intended posting outcome and related records. For an inventory correction, retain the reconciliation and authorization.
Before reducing elevated support, ask:
- Are critical incidents resolved, with residual risks explicitly accepted?
- Can essential processes run within agreed operating expectations?
- Are temporary workarounds documented, owned and scheduled for review?
- Can normal support staff diagnose, escalate and communicate without constant project-team intervention?
- Have recurring tasks and relevant periodic events been checked?
- Does every remaining item have an owner, priority and next review date?
- Have process owners accepted the handover?
Microsoft’s hypercare guidance ties exit to criteria such as critical-issue status, process performance, service levels and support-team readiness—not simply elapsed time. (learn.microsoft.com)
At day 90, make an explicit decision: end elevated support, extend targeted coverage, or launch a separately governed improvement phase. Carry forward unresolved work with its evidence and ownership intact. The useful outcome is not an empty backlog; it is a controlled, explainable one.