A paid ERP discovery week produces a much better output when the manufacturer arrives prepared. The same week of work — with prepared inputs vs without — produces a scope document that is either implementation-ready or requires a second cycle of clarification.
For most Singapore SMB manufacturers, the difference is one week. A prepared manufacturer gets a build quote at the end of Friday. An unprepared one gets a draft that needs another two weeks of back-and-forth before it is signable.
This is a checklist for the five days before the discovery starts.
Day 1: Gather the Master Excels
Every SG SMB manufacturer has master Excels. The pricing sheet. The customer list. The supplier directory. The production schedule. The quote register. The job costing tracker.
The day-1 task: identify every Excel that drives a daily decision, save a snapshot, and put them in a shared folder.
For each Excel:
- Who maintains it? (Name the person.)
- What decisions does it drive?
- How often is it updated?
- What breaks if it is unavailable for a week?
This exercise often surfaces the master Excels that the founder or senior staff member did not realise they had built around. Those are exactly the workflow surfaces the new system needs to absorb.
Day 2: Collect Sample Documents
The discovery process is more accurate when grounded in real documents:
- 5 recent quotes (covering your range of pricing complexity)
- 5 recent purchase orders
- 5 recent customer invoices
- 5 job cards or production records
- 5 batch records (if applicable)
- 5 supplier delivery notes (if relevant)
- Any quality documentation you produce per customer
These documents reveal the structure of your operation faster than any interview. The pricing structure shows up in the quote. The supplier coordination pattern shows up in the PO. The quality requirement shows up in the documentation.
De-identify customer or supplier names if confidentiality matters. The structure is what we read.
Day 3: List the Workflow Surfaces
Day 3 is the strategic decision: which workflow surfaces do you want the discovery to focus on?
A paid discovery week can cover 2-3 surfaces in depth or 5-6 surfaces at a high level. Both are useful — but the trade-off needs an explicit choice.
The surfaces most SG SMB manufacturers prioritise:
- Quoting and pricing — if pricing is in someone's head and quotes take days
- Production scheduling — if the whiteboard is the system and exceptions are constant
- Supplier coordination — if PO follow-up consumes hours daily
- Job costing — if margin is invisible until month-end
- Quality and traceability — if regulatory or customer audits are difficult
- Customer or supplier portal — if external-facing communication is overwhelming email
List the surfaces in priority order. The discovery will go deep on the top 2-3 and survey the rest.
Day 4: Confirm Internal Availability
A paid discovery requires access to the people who carry the business logic. Day 4 confirms their availability.
The people typically needed:
- The decision-maker (founder, owner, ops director) — 2-3 hours total, split across the week
- The senior estimator or admin who knows the pricing — 4-6 hours
- The production manager who runs the schedule — 3-4 hours
- The finance lead who handles accounting integration — 1-2 hours
- A shopfloor representative (if mobile workflows are in scope) — 1-2 hours
For a small SG manufacturer (30-100 staff), this is often 3-4 people. For a larger operation (100-300 staff), it can be 5-6.
Send the calendar invitations before the discovery starts. Reschedule once the discovery is underway and the value drops significantly.
Day 5: Pre-Discovery Documentation
The final preparation is a one-page summary document the manufacturer prepares for the discovery consultant:
- Business overview: what you manufacture, who you sell to, what makes your operation distinctive.
- Current systems: what you run today (accounting, inventory, spreadsheets) and what works/breaks.
- The problem statement: the specific operational pain that triggered the discovery.
- Success criteria: how you will measure whether the new system worked.
- Constraints: budget band, timeline target, anything that is non-negotiable.
- Stakeholders: who is involved, who decides, who is sceptical.
This document takes 1-2 hours to write. It reduces the discovery week's "context-loading" time from days to hours.
What Not to Prepare
A few common preparation activities that do not help:
Detailed requirements documents. The discovery produces this. Writing it in advance produces a wishlist, not a scope — and the wishlist drives cost and timeline expansion.
Vendor comparisons. If you have already evaluated SAP B1, Odoo, or other vendors, share the notes. But do not run a new vendor comparison before discovery — the discovery output makes the comparison more accurate.
Internal politics. Do not pre-decide the system features based on internal preferences. Bring the operational problem; let the discovery process surface the right features.
Technical architecture decisions. Cloud vs on-premise, specific database choices, hosting providers — these are decisions made during scoping, not before.
What Happens During Discovery
The paid discovery week typically follows this rhythm:
- Day 1 (Monday): Kickoff. Review the pre-discovery summary. Walk the shop floor. Sit with the planner. Observe how a quote is built.
- Day 2 (Tuesday): Deep dive on the top-priority workflow surface. Document data flows, exceptions, edge cases.
- Day 3 (Wednesday): Deep dive on the second surface. Map integration points with existing systems.
- Day 4 (Thursday): Draft the scope document and build estimate. Review with key stakeholders.
- Day 5 (Friday): Finalise the scope document, build quote, and delivery timeline. Decision: proceed with build, defer, or take the document elsewhere.
The output is a 10-15 page scope document with a fixed build quote that the manufacturer can budget against — produced in one week, not two months.
Start Canyon runs paid discoveries year-round for Singapore manufacturers. Book at startcanyon.com/discovery or see the full engagement comparison at startcanyon.com/engagements.