An ERP Move Cannot Be Priced While Your Own Programs Beside It Are Unwritten.

The ERP specialist’s quotation has arrived. It covers the move from the version the firm runs today to one its maker still supports.

Most of it is clear: licences, the standard modules, training. Then there is one line near the bottom. “Custom programs and interfaces: to be assessed. Provisional sum.”

The finance head asks how many custom programs there are. The head of IT thinks about forty: reports, a label routine, an upload from the costing sheet, a nightly file to the transporter. Nobody has a list. Nobody is sure what half of them do, or which old server some of them still run on.

What We Found

For this article we went through the public record on the end dates beneath a manufacturer’s business: the maintenance dates of one older ERP product, the support dates of one database, and one survey on why firms do not replace old systems.

The ERP’s date is fixed, and for some versions it has passed. For one widely used older packaged ERP product, mainstream maintenance ended on 31 December 2025 for some versions, with no extension, and ends on 31 December 2027 for others, with a paid extension to 31 December 2030. The dates are the maker’s; the source we read them in is a firm that sells support for the product.

The layers beneath the ERP have dates of their own. For the database SQL Server 2016, extended support ended on 14 July 2026, with paid updates available to 17 July 2029. A firm’s own programs may read such a database directly.

Money stops these projects before they start. In one survey of about 500 IT professionals in the US, run by a firm that sells software services, more than four in ten named budget limitations among their reasons for delaying the replacement of old systems. That survey covers every sector, not manufacturing alone.

Our reading is that the part of an ERP move a specialist can price with confidence is the product itself. The part that defeats a quotation is what each firm built beside it over the years, which nobody has written down.

What Opens Up When the Move Can Be Priced

A provisional sum is usually treated as normal in a quotation. Our reading is that it is where the board loses control of the move.

• Quotes can be compared. When every specialist prices the same written list of custom programs, their totals mean the same thing.
• The result can be checked. After the move, operations can tick the reports, labels and files it relies on off a written list.
• The old machines come into the same plan. The list that names the custom programs also names what each stands on, so the servers and databases past their end date are counted, and the count can fall.

This is our reading. It is not a measured market figure.

Three Ways to Price an ERP Move, Weighed

Option	When it fits	What it risks
Accept the specialist’s quotation, with the custom programs as a provisional sum	The firm has few custom programs, and they are recent and documented	The least known part of the job carries a round figure, and quotes from different specialists cannot be compared
Ask the specialist to study the custom programs as the first phase of the move	The specialist knows the firm well, and the firm is content to choose one before the scope is known	The scope is written inside one supplier’s project, and other specialists cannot price against it
Write down the custom programs first, and give the specification to your own ERP specialist, or to several	The programs are old, many and unlisted, and the people who wrote them have gone	It costs money before any quotation arrives, by itself it moves nothing, and the list will force decisions about reports people are fond of

Where You Are Now, and Where You Should Be

This is the benchmark we would set before any work begins, and fill in at each stage.

Measure	Typical starting point	Where it should be	How it is checked
Your own applications and what each stands on	A label on a machine, and one person’s memory	Every application listed with the operating system, the database and the support date it stands on	The map of the system and the specification
Applications pinning each old machine	Found one at a time, in failed moves	Named for each machine	The risk register
Custom programs beside the ERP	”About forty”, priced as a provisional sum	Each specified: what it does, what it reads and writes, and who uses it	The specification
Programs no longer used	Moved at full cost, or found missing later	Marked by the people who use them, before any quotation	The specification, confirmed by your own people
How the ERP move is priced	Each specialist against a different guess	Your own ERP specialist, against the written specification	The specification, handed over
Applications that pinned a machine	Kept, untouched	Rebuilt one module at a time, each accepted by your own people	The traceability matrix and the record of each accepted module
Machines past their end date	Not counted	Counted, and falling at each stage	Reported at every review

The starting points above are what we expect to find. In an engagement they are replaced by your own position, taken in the first review. The targets are what we would work towards with you. They are not results we have already achieved for a manufacturer.

A small part of the filled-in benchmark might look like this.

Machine	Stands on	Applications pinning it	Status
Server beside the plant office	An operating system past its end date	Dispatch label and weighbridge program	Two of three modules accepted; old program still running; machine waiting for your team
Database server	A database past its extended support	Morning shortage report and costing upload	Specified; rebuild not started
Second application server	An operating system past its end date	None	Retired by your own team

The rows above are an illustration, not taken from a real firm.

How We Work With You, and What You Are Left With

1. We listen: a free Reliability Review. A first conversation about your applications, the ERP move ahead, and the custom programs nobody has listed. You leave with a short written note of what we found. You can start with a conversation about the system; we ask for read-only code access only when the assessment begins.
2. We research. We research your sector, the regulator’s position and what the public record says about firms in your situation.
3. We read the system and propose: the Legacy System Specification Assessment. Here the system is the custom programs you built or had built beside your ERP, and what each of them stands on. It produces a written specification of what it does, a risk register, a cost comparison between keeping and replacing the system, and a staged plan with a fixed quote. AI does a first pass, our senior engineers review it and trace it to the code, and your own experts confirm it. Code access is read-only and logged, never used for training, and deleted within 30 days of the evaluation ending unless we engage.
4. If you approve, we build. We replace a system one module at a time while the old one keeps running. Here that means the custom programs beside your ERP that pin an old machine, rebuilt on current technology; the ERP move itself stays with your ERP specialist. We never do a single cutover. A traceability matrix links every old function to its replacement. The work is billed by milestone, each milestone tied to a module you accept, and you can pause after any accepted module.
5. We review against the benchmark. Before work starts we set the benchmark above. At each stage we show you where each measure stands, and the filled-in benchmark is yours at the end.

The Review is free. Every paid step is fixed price, agreed at scoping. Stop after any step. The findings are yours. The assessment fee is credited in full against the first build stage if it starts within 90 days of the report.

This has a price. The specification costs money before any quotation arrives, and by itself it moves nothing: your ERP stays on the same version, with the same end date. A program written inside the ERP, in the product’s own language, is your specialist’s ground and may be outside what we read. We do not install, configure, upgrade or convert a packaged ERP product, change the customisations inside one, or carry out the move, and we are not a partner of any ERP maker. We do not upgrade, patch or retire an operating system, a database or a server. Every old machine is exactly as exposed as before until your own team retires it, and we promise no protection from attack. The older technologies we read include VB6, Delphi, AngularJS, PHP 4 to 8, Java 8, .NET Framework and classic ASP. We have no published case of this work for a manufacturer.

At the end you hold the specification of your own programs beside the ERP, the risk register, the traceability matrix for every module we rebuilt, and a filled-in benchmark that shows what each application stands on and how many old machines remain.

What changes for the business:

Role	What they gain
CEO	The ERP decision can be put to specialists and compared, because the firm can say what its own programs do.
CTO or CIO	A written record of every custom program beside the ERP: what it does, what it reads and what it writes.
CFO	Quotes for the ERP move rest on a written scope, so they can be compared, and fewer items are priced later as surprises.
CISO	The move off an unsupported ERP version is not held up for want of knowing what surrounds it.
COO	After the move, operations checks the reports and labels the plant relies on against a written list.

The cases in this article, and what IOanyT does about that kind of problem:

The case	What IOanyT does
For one widely used older ERP product, mainstream maintenance ended on 31 December 2025 for some versions, with no extension.	Our part is narrower than this. We do not install, upgrade or move a packaged ERP product. We write down the custom programs beside it, so your own ERP specialist can price the move against a written scope.
For SQL Server 2016, extended support ended on 14 July 2026.	We do not upgrade databases. We record which of your programs read the database directly, so your own team can plan the upgrade around them.

IOanyT is a consultancy with its own engineering team: we study the problem, recommend, and prove it by building only what you approve. We write down your side of the move, so the specialist you choose prices what is really there.

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