Many best practice articles suggest putting your best staff on the ERP implementation project, and then backfill for their ongoing day-to-day responsibilities. Do you find this practical; from your experience have you seen this actually carried out?

Yes. I think that it is practical and necessary to put your “best” on the project. The alternative is putting your “less than best” people on the project and setting up the system in a way that doesn’t set up that foundation for future success. We recommend that you don’t completely remove those individuals from their day to day role, but relieve enough pressure to allow participation in the project. (example 50-75%). Their day to day tasks then get pushed to others and eventually you will need to back-fill some of those lower level tasks that can’t be re-distributed.