Author: Andrew Holmes in: Implementations
ERP implementations have a reputation problem. Ask the owner of a small or mid-sized manufacturer why they hesitate to replace spreadsheets, legacy software, or an aging ERP solution, and implementation risk sits near the top of the list.
The horror stories are easy to find, with multi-year timelines, armies of consultants, ballooning budgets, and disruptive go-lives. Acushnet Holdings, the roughly $2.6 billion company behind Titleist and FootJoy, now provides a public example of how large an ERP implementation grows at enterprise scale.
Acushnet began implementing new global cloud ERP software in 2024, and public job postings identify the project as a greenfield SAP S/4HANA implementation. By the end of 2025, Acushnet had disclosed about $74 million in ERP-related spending, and in August 2026 the company raised its expected spending for the year to $35 to $40 million.
Disclosed and expected spending now tops $100 million with implementation still underway, which helps explain why ERP implementation failure worries manufacturers considering new software. The lesson from Acushnet is to size your ERP project to the problem you need to solve.
Acushnet’s existing ERP environment includes Infor M3, and the company had invested significantly in it. Public consultant profiles describe a worldwide Infor M3 acceleration and migration project running from 2021 through 2023.
In 2024, Acushnet started another multi-year global ERP initiative. Its SEC filings don’t name the vendor, but its job postings describe a global SAP S/4HANA greenfield implementation spanning manufacturing, supply chain, finance, integrations, and other business processes. The scope goes well beyond a software upgrade; Acushnet is running a global business transformation.
No single number answers what an ERP implementation should cost, because company size, complexity, number of locations, scope, customization, data migration, and implementation model all move the total.
Acushnet sits at the extreme end of the range. The company reported $11 million in incremental ERP-related operating expenses and $12.6 million in capitalized implementation costs in 2024, and those figures reached $10.5 million and $38.2 million in 2025. Adding $1.9 million of related IT spending in 2023 brings disclosed spending through 2025 to about $74.2 million.
At the start of 2026, Acushnet expected to spend another $30 to $35 million during the year, and by August it had raised the estimate to $35 to $40 million. At the top of the range, cumulative spending through 2026 would reach about $114 million, and the filings say implementation continues beyond 2026.
Acushnet’s disclosures on timing have shifted too. Its 2024 annual report said additional implementation activities would continue in phases over the next three years, and its 2025 annual report extended this to the next several years.
The risk disclosures changed as well. In 2024, Acushnet warned investors of possible “time delays or cost overruns” during implementation, and in 2025 the warning became “additional time delays or cost overruns.”
Acushnet hasn’t published its original budget or schedule, so these changes don’t show how far the project has moved from plan. Combined with the scale of spending, they make the project’s economics worth a close look.
Public evidence doesn’t show Acushnet’s Infor M3 environment failing to run the business, and the company was investing in it right before the SAP project began.
Acushnet frames the rationale around broader goals. According to its SEC filings, the company wants to integrate global operations, strengthen supply chain and finance capabilities, find additional operating efficiencies, and support what it calls a broader digital transformation. Acushnet is using SAP as part of a larger effort to redesign and standardize how a global enterprise operates, which is a different job from replacing software that stopped working.
The implementation runs alongside major changes elsewhere in the business. FootJoy historically made most of its footwear at a joint-venture facility in Fuzhou, China. Production shifted to Vietnam during 2024, the Chinese facility stopped production in January 2025, and Acushnet recorded $18 million in restructuring charges tied to the supply chain initiative.
In 2026, Acushnet formed a new joint venture with its longtime supply partner to source materials and contract FootJoy footwear manufacturing in Vietnam. It also launched a voluntary retirement program in 2025 to reduce operating costs, recording another $13.7 million in restructuring costs.
Acushnet is changing its manufacturing and sourcing footprint, restructuring parts of its organization, standardizing global processes, and replacing the transactional backbone of the business all at once. This combination explains much of the complexity, and it shows how enterprise ERP projects grow so large.
Consider a hypothetical $110 million ERP investment. Ignoring financing costs and the time value of money, recovering the investment alone would take about $11 million per year for a 10-year payback, $22 million per year for a five-year payback, or $37 million per year for a three-year payback.
The real hurdle sits higher. Implementation spending lands years before some benefits arrive, the finished ERP solution carries ongoing software, infrastructure, support, and staffing costs, and internal employees assigned to the project carry an opportunity cost.
Some benefits of a broader transformation also belong to other initiatives. When a manufacturer cuts costs by moving production, restructuring its supply chain, or reducing headcount, those savings don’t count as returns on its ERP investment.
Acushnet’s disclosures don’t provide enough information to judge whether its transformation will earn an attractive return. They do show the scale of economics behind enterprise ERP transformation.
A high cost or long timeline doesn’t make an ERP implementation a failure on its own. The test is whether the project meets its business objectives and delivers enough value to justify its cost and risk.
Acushnet’s annual report shows how high the stakes run. The company says successful ERP implementation is critical to obtaining and delivering products, serving customers, maintaining accurate books and records, reporting financial and operating results, and otherwise operating its business. It lists the risks of implementation problems, including information loss, operational disruption, further delays, added costs, and issues with financial reporting and internal controls.
Public companies routinely include this kind of language for major technology projects, and it still makes an important point: the cost of an ERP implementation failure extends well beyond the implementation budget. A disruptive go-live hits production, inventory, shipments, customer service, and eventually revenue, so manufacturers are right to take implementation risk seriously.
Perspective matters here. Acushnet generated about $2.6 billion in revenue in 2025, sells multiple major consumer brands, and runs manufacturing, sourcing, distribution, and commercial operations around the world, all while redesigning global processes and parts of its supply chain during a greenfield SAP implementation. Most small and mid-sized manufacturers need ERP software to solve a different problem.
A $30 million machining company needs to know whether it has enough material for tomorrow’s production. A $75 million metal fabricator wants to stop scheduling the plant in spreadsheets. A coating operation needs lot traceability, inventory control, and a clear view of the shop floor. A growing manufacturer needs finance, purchasing, inventory, production, quality, and shipping working from the same information. These are real ERP problems, and none of them requires a $100 million project.
Start with the business problems you need to solve, and give the implementation a clear scope, measurable objectives, and a realistic path to go-live. Leave behind processes you keep only because “that’s how we’ve always done it,” keep the project from turning into an open-ended consulting engagement, and migrate the data you need instead of every year of history you have.
Bring in the people who run the business early, train users before go-live, and validate processes against real operating scenarios. Measure success by business outcomes instead of by whether the software got installed.
When you evaluate vendors, ask a few direct questions:
OnRamp was built inside Mancor, a Tier 1 automotive fabricator, so our implementation model comes from running a plant instead of a consulting playbook. Our own team handles implementations in-house, and the people doing the work know the product and manufacturing. We follow a defined process designed to get manufacturers operational within months, and 100% of our customers achieve their stated business goals within 12 months.
The goal is ERP software that improves how you run the plant, without the implementation becoming a second job for your team.
Stories about $100 million ERP implementations carry a risk of their own, because they convince smaller manufacturers that replacing outdated software is too expensive, disruptive, or risky. So the spreadsheet and the unsupported legacy application stay in place, production information stays fragmented, employees keep entering the same data in multiple places, and management keeps making decisions without reliable, current information. Standing still carries its own costs and risks.
Acushnet’s SAP transformation shows the extreme end of ERP complexity. If you run a small or mid-sized manufacturer, treat it as a reminder to choose ERP software and an implementation model sized to the business you run, and leave the blueprint to global enterprises.
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Our efforts began as an internal project of Mancor Industries when we identified the need for a more cohesive ERP system to manage the complexity of multiple plants, multiple products, multiple customers and multiple functions.
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