What happened at Renishaw?
On 23 September 2026, the British metrology manufacturer Renishaw presented its annual results: a record year with revenue of 815.8 million pounds, driven by demand from the semiconductor industry. The risk section of the same report contains a paragraph that is instructive for every internationally organised company. The rollout of the new global ERP solution Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been paused. Renishaw is reviewing its system configuration, business processes and programme governance, has appointed global process owners and leads, and has engaged external advisers to carry out a diagnostic of the core solution (Renishaw, Final Results, stock exchange announcement of 23.09.2026).
In the analyst call on the same day, management was more explicit. The go-live in the UK had been very painful, it had taken ten months to get out of hypercare, and the design was not fit for the further rollout to the other countries (transcript on Investing.com, 23.09.2026). The pause runs until the end of the calendar year (ad-hoc-news, 26.09.2026). Renishaw has not disclosed any costs.
How can you tell that the pilot design does not hold for the other countries?
Renishaw is not a special case but the most common pattern of international rollouts. The pilot country is built for itself. It is usually the headquarters, the team knows the processes, decisions are made quickly, and many of them are made under time pressure shortly before go-live. What passes as a pragmatic solution in the first country becomes a requirement in the second country that does not fit there.
The warning signs show early if you look for them. Hypercare does not end because new exceptions appear almost every day. The list of deviations for the second country grows longer than the list of what can be adopted. And the steering committee discusses individual fields and documents instead of dates and goals. How a template has to be built so that it also holds for the second and third country is described in detail in our article on the global template for the ERP rollout.
Pausing is not a defeat. It is often the cheapest decision in the whole project, provided it is clear what the pause will settle.
When is pausing right, and when is adjusting enough?
Not every difficulty in the first country justifies a pause. Adjusting during the running rollout is enough as long as the problems lie in the pilot country and can be solved there: missing training, a report that is wrong, an interface that needs rework. The template is still right in that case, only its first implementation has gaps.
Pausing is right when the template itself is the cause. Three questions help with the decision. Can the processes of the second country be mapped in the existing design without creating a separate variant for each country? Is it settled who decides on deviations? And does the data foundation, meaning items, customers, dimensions and number series, hold across all legal entities? Anyone who answers two of these questions with no will roll out the same problem again with every further country, and at a higher cost.
Carrying on feels like discipline in this situation. Dates have been communicated, country teams scheduled, budgets approved. But every country that goes live on a design that does not hold will have to be converted a second time later.
What has to be settled during the pause?
A pause only helps if it has a result. Renishaw names the three areas itself: configuration, business processes and programme governance. The order is decisive. Processes first: which processes are the same across the group, which are deliberately local, and where does the business really differ? Only then does the configuration follow. Anyone who starts with the configuration repairs the pilot country a second time.
Then governance: who decides on changes to the template, how quickly and by which criteria? And finally the question of what the next country will be measured against before it goes live. A go-live based on status reports easily leads into a long hypercare. The second country needs verifiable criteria, as we describe them for go-live readiness in Business Central .
Why do global process owners belong before the first go-live?
The most revealing sentence in the report is the one about the process owners. Renishaw has created global process owners and leads, and it has done so now, after the first country. That is right, but late. A global template only becomes one when someone is responsible for keeping it global. Without this role, the project team decides in the pilot country, and it decides for the pilot country.
A process owner for sales, procurement or finance answers before the first go-live the question that would otherwise only be asked in the second country: does this solution also apply there? That costs some time in the first country. It saves time in every one that follows.
How we support international rollouts
We have been supporting ERP projects for more than 25 years, many of them international, with rollouts in up to 25 countries. Business Central is our home. Our principle: the template is designed for the second and third country, not for the pilot country, and the process owners are in place before the first country goes live. If a rollout is already under pressure, we help decide whether adjusting is enough or a pause is wiser, and with what the pause needs to settle. How we set up international rollouts is described on our services page.
Is your rollout about to reach the second country, or is the first one not yet running smoothly? Then we are happy to look at the template together with you. The first conversation is about your situation, without a presentation and without a proposal.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a rollout pause last?
There is no fixed duration. Renishaw has given itself until the end of the year, roughly three months. More important than the duration is a clear result: a template that demonstrably maps the processes of the next country, and fixed decision paths.
Does the pilot country have to be re-implemented after a pause?
Not necessarily. It is often enough to align the pilot country with the revised template. A re-implementation usually only becomes necessary if the data foundation or the company structure has to be built fundamentally differently.
Who should decide on a pause?
The steering committee together with management, not the project team alone. At Renishaw, the CFO and the Group Operations Director sit on the steering committee. The decision needs a basis that does not come from the project team alone, for example an external diagnostic.
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