The problem, in one paragraph
An ERP payment integration rarely fails outright. What happens instead is a slow underperformance that eats the timeline, then the budget, and then everyone’s belief that the project is going to finish. There are three early signs: key people stop attending, the access needed for testing and validation does not get granted, and decisions never get made. Once that starts, the team is choosing between two kinds of rework — guessing at the gaps, or stating something confidently without knowing it.
What is in it
Meeting 1 — the business. What the workflow actually looks like today, shown rather than described, even when it is a spreadsheet and three browser tabs. The screens, the fields, the entities to map to, and the real scenarios including the awkward ones. Recorded with permission so it can be turned into notes and mapping files afterwards.
Meeting 2 — the how. What works out of the box, what is configurable, and what genuinely has to be custom built, weighed against your scope and timeline. Testing, validation, and access to your sandbox or test instance. Bring your VAR or ISV to this one — API endpoints, the test database, and how the connection gets made are their questions.
Meeting 3 — the walkthrough. A swimlane view of every system and how data moves between them: a new customer’s payment processing, where a stored card travels, how a refund runs, how Level 3 validation happens, what occurs on a surcharge. Everyone looks at it, and that is the entire point of the meeting — this is where somebody says the form does not capture the billing address the tokenization needs, on a diagram instead of in production.
Who to invite to each, which the agenda lists — business roles, the people who do the work every day, and the vendors who can answer for the systems.
How to use it
Run the three meetings yourself, with us or without us. Most people do 30 to 60 minute sessions and get through all three inside a week. Some take a few weeks and that is fine, but a week is worth aiming for, because the momentum counts for something on its own.
You can also run them as one long meeting rather than three. The agenda works either way.