Go-live is the moment everyone stops looking. It is also the first moment there is anything real to look at.
Post implementation review
BDO services may be leveraged for assurance on the solution
A programme is scrutinised intensely until the day it goes live, and then almost never again. The steering committee dissolves, the integrator demobilises, the sponsor moves on, and the question of whether the organisation actually received what it paid for is quietly left open. Where a review does happen, it is often commissioned only once something has gone visibly wrong — by which point the contractual remedies have usually expired.
A structured review three to six months after go-live is cheap relative to the investment it examines and lands while the evidence is fresh, the contract still has teeth, and the implementation team can still be asked questions.
Whether the delivered solution matches the requirement that was signed. Whether the commercial arrangement performed as contracted — scope, change control, credits, retained obligations. Whether the control environment survived the transition, since implementations routinely break segregation of duties in ways audit finds later. And whether the data that migrated is sound, which is where the expensive surprises usually sit.
Reviews are only useful if the report is plain. A finding written to avoid offending the programme team helps nobody, least of all the team, who generally know already.
The delivered solution against the signed requirement, including what was descoped along the way and whether anyone decided that deliberately.
Contract, change orders, milestones, credits and retained obligations — assessed while remedies are still available.
Segregation of duties, approval limits, audit trail and access, tested rather than assumed to have carried across.
Completeness, accuracy and reconciliation of migrated data, which is where the costly surprises usually sit.
Interface failures, manual bridges and reconciliation effort that has quietly become part of the monthly routine.
Whether the support model is performing, and whether ticket volumes and resolution times match what was priced.
Where users have gone around the system, and what that reveals about the design rather than about the users.
The business case reopened and measured — what landed, what did not, and what the shortfall is worth.
Findings converted into a costed, sequenced plan with owners, rather than a list of observations.
Four to eight weeks, best commissioned three to six months after go-live.
What the sponsor needs to decide: whether to accept, to remediate, to dispute, or to proceed to a further phase.
Contract, requirement, change log, test results, support data and system configuration — documents first, opinions second.
Configuration inspected, controls exercised, data reconciled and interfaces traced. Stakeholder views are context, not findings.
Each finding sized: what it costs to live with, what it costs to fix, and what is recoverable from whom.
A report the sponsor can act on and the programme team can accept, written without euphemism.
Support the recovery plan where wanted, and verify closure rather than accepting assurance that it happened.
Clients are described by sector rather than named.