By the time a go-live date reaches the board for approval, it usually already has momentum behind it - a plan, a vendor recommendation, a project team eager to finish. Momentum is not the same thing as readiness, and the two get confused more often than anyone on the steering committee would like to admit.
The questions worth asking
- Has data migration been rehearsed end-to-end, at production volumes, more than once?
- Are integration failure modes understood, or only the happy path?
- Does the testing evidence support the go/no-go decision, or does it just exist?
- Is there a genuine, tested fallback plan if cutover doesn't go as planned?
- Has business readiness - training, support model, day-one operating rhythm - been assessed as rigorously as the technical cutover?
Why an internal answer isn't enough
The people who will be judged on hitting the date are not the right people to give the board an unbiased answer to "are we ready." That's not about competence - it's about incentives. An independent go-live readiness review exists to separate the two: to give CIOs, CFOs and sponsors a clear, evidence-based view of data, integration, testing, cutover and business readiness before the date is locked in.
The cost of skipping it
The alternative - finding out during cutover weekend - is the expensive version of the same review. Independent assurance before the decision is materially cheaper than recovery after it, which is the same lesson that ran through the €35M recovery in our energy-sector case study: problems found late cost more to fix, always.
Our Go-Live Readiness Review gives boards that independent, evidence-based view - across S/4HANA and Salesforce programmes alike - before anyone signs off on the date.