In practice, stuck workflows are one of the most common frustrations organisations experience in the months following an ERP go-live. Purchase orders sit pending. Invoices await authorisation that never arrives. Requests disappear into queues no one is monitoring. The system is functioning exactly as it was designed to, but the design assumptions no longer reflect operational reality.
Understanding why workflows get stuck is the first step to preventing it from happening repeatedly.
The most visible cause of a stuck workflow is an approval that simply does not progress. This can happen for several reasons:
What makes this particularly disruptive is that the initiator of the workflow often has no visibility into what is happening. From their perspective, they submitted a request and it vanished. There is no status update, no escalation, and no indication of whether the problem lies with the person, the process, or the system configuration.
The underlying issue is usually one of governance. Approval workflows depend on the accuracy of the information behind them: who holds authority, up to what value, across which processes. When that information is not actively maintained and communicated, approvals become unpredictable. A request that should take hours can sit for days, not because of complexity, but because the routing has reached a dead end.
Master data is the foundation on which every ERP workflow is built. When it is incomplete or incorrect, the workflow has nowhere reliable to go.
A purchase order workflow may require a valid cost centre before it can be routed for approval. A supplier payment process may stall because the vendor record is missing a bank account or a tax reference. A goods receipt workflow may stall because the corresponding purchase order line is not correctly matched in the system.
These are not unusual examples, they are common occurrences in organisations where master data was migrated quickly at go-live, or where ongoing governance of that data has been inconsistent. The system is not malfunctioning. It is enforcing rules that were deliberately designed to protect data integrity. But if the data behind the rules is incomplete, the protection becomes a barrier.
The cost of poor master data extends well beyond individual workflow failures. It accumulates. Each incomplete record becomes a recurring point of friction, affecting every transaction that touches it until someone takes ownership of the correction.
Routing determines where a workflow goes next. It is configured at implementation based on a set of assumptions about how the organisation operates: who approves what, at what value thresholds, within which departments or cost structures.
Organisations change. People move roles. Departments restructure. Cost centres are added, renamed, or consolidated. If the routing logic in the ERP is not updated to reflect those changes, workflows will continue to be directed according to a version of the organisation that no longer exists. This is precisely where internal change management processes must connect with system administration, ensuring that structural changes are reflected in the ERP before they create operational consequences.
The result is transactions routed to the wrong person, to a role that has been removed, or through an approval chain that no longer reflects the intended segregation of duties. In some cases, the workflow completes without the right oversight. In others, it fails entirely because it reaches a point where no valid recipient exists.
Routing errors are particularly difficult to detect because they may not produce a visible failure. A workflow that routes incorrectly but still completes gives no obvious indication that the approval chain was wrong. It is only when someone reviews the audit trail, or when a compliance query arises, that the problem becomes apparent.
Every workflow participant in an ERP system operates within a defined role. That role determines what they can see, what they can action, and what authority they carry within the approval chain. When a user changes position, leaves the organisation, or takes extended leave, their role in the system may not be updated to reflect that change.
The consequences are twofold:
This is an area where the gap between human resources processes and system administration is most keenly felt. An employee’s change of role may be processed through HR within days. The corresponding update to their ERP authorisations, their approval limits, their routing membership, their system access, may happen weeks later, if at all. In the intervening period, every workflow that depends on that user’s role is operating on incorrect assumptions.
Each of these causes is distinct, but they share a common root. They all reflect a gap between how the system was configured and how the organisation is actually operating at the time the workflow runs.
ERP systems are precise. They process transactions based on the data and rules they hold at the moment of execution. If that data has drifted from reality, through incomplete maintenance, delayed updates, or governance that has not kept pace with business change, the system will behave in ways that feel unpredictable to the people using it.
The solution is not a technical fix in isolation. It is a discipline of ongoing change management and governance. Approval authorities need to be reviewed when structures change. Master data needs ownership, not just entry. Routing logic needs to be revisited after reorganisations. Role assignments need to be tied to HR processes, not left as a separate administrative task.
Organisations that treat these as continuous responsibilities rather than one-off setup activities will find their workflows running more reliably, their exceptions fewer, and their ERP investment delivering closer to its potential.
There is a useful principle embedded in every stuck workflow: the system is showing you where reality and configuration have diverged. That is valuable information, even when it is frustrating.
The organisations that respond to stuck workflows by investigating root causes, rather than simply unblocking the immediate instance, build ERP environments that become progressively more reliable over time. Those that treat each blockage as an isolated incident will find the same issues recurring, in different forms, indefinitely.
A well-governed ERP workflow is not a sign of a sophisticated system. It is a sign of an organisation that takes its operational discipline seriously.
If you found this article insightful, you may want to read What It Really Means to Be a Change Champion and Preparing for the Change That a Digital Transformation Project Triggers.
