How Poor Requirement Gathering Breaks Odoo Projects

Odoo works, and companies across the UAE pick it because it’s flexible, modular, and cost-friendly compared with big monolith ERPs. Yet projects still derail, but with a twist. The reason behind the failure is not that the platform can’t do the job. We all know Odoo is an outstanding software. This happens because the project starts on shaky ground.

When requirements are fuzzy, rushed, or done from a single viewpoint, the rest of the implementation becomes a mess with patching gaps, retrofitting reports, and chasing user buy-in.

Well, that’s extremely expensive. Worse, in the UAE context, you also need to juggle VAT, upcoming e-invoicing rules, multi-company structures, and cross-border flows, all of which explode assumptions that weren’t captured during discovery. If you want Odoo to drive growth instead of creating another spreadsheet nightmare, you need to make requirement gathering the project’s centrepiece.

The failure pattern: assumptions dressed as scope

Too many projects begin with one common line - “We’ll figure out the details later.” That’s a design decision disguised as flexibility. When requirements are assumed rather than documented, every configuration turns into an educated guess. Those guesses produce a system that behaves exactly as configured, only the configuration is wrong for how your people actually work. You can end up with dozens of manual workarounds and parallel processes because the ERP solution doesn’t map to the way you work.

Common failures you’ll see in UAE Odoo projects

VAT and compliance surprises: The UAE’s VAT regime (introduced in 2018 and evolving since) creates specific needs, including tax on imports/exports, reverse charge, exemption handling, and audit trails. When requirements can't capture invoicing patterns like cross-border sales, free zones, or supplier-specific tax rules, VAT configuration breaks, and your finance team needs to struggle. Odoo supports local tax features, but only if the requirements map real transaction flows.

Multi-branch and multi-company confusion: UAE businesses often run several trade licenses and warehouses. Overlooking inter-company processes or branch-level rules leads to stock reconciliation errors, duplicate invoices, and wrong ledger postings.

Over-customization as a Band-Aid: Without clear requirements, teams often build custom modules to “fix” process gaps. That works short-term, and cripples upgrades long-term. Experts warn that reactive custom dev is a leading cause of future instability.

Poor data migration: If legacy data isn’t profiled and validated against defined reporting needs, migration can become a dump-and-pray exercise. Basically, the system will show numbers, but you can’t trust them as the base isn’t clear.

User adoption and testing gaps: When only managers define requirements, everyday users encounter broken workflows in UAT or go-live. That’s late-stage rework, and it kills momentum.

Where requirement gathering typically fails

Interviewing the wrong people: You need people who log receipts, update inventory, chase approvals, and run monthly reports. Otherwise, critical exceptions never make it into the design.

Accepting “standard” as the truth: If a partner insists “this is how Odoo works” without validating with operations, they’re fitting your business to the software instead of using the system to fit your business.

Skipping scenario-driven validation: Requirements should include scenarios like normal flows, frequent exceptions, and the rare but important edge case. If you can’t walk through those with stakeholders and get sign-off, you don’t have the requirements. Instead, you have assumptions.

These failings are the root cause of most ERP project derailments.

How to flip the script: requirements that actually prevent failure

Remember, to make an Odoo project successful, you need to start with outcomes, not the features. So ask what decisions people must make, what reports they can’t live without, and where the compliance risk lies. Use workshops to map the processes and have operations demonstrate current workarounds.

• Map end-to-end flows for core processes like sales-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and stock movements, and highlight exceptions.

• Document VAT and compliance scenarios explicitly (imports, free-zone sales, and reverse charge).

• Involve a cross-section of users for each flow and validate with accurate documents.

• Create test scripts tied to acceptance criteria before any customization begins.

• Only authorize custom development when configuration or standard modules cannot meet a documented requirement.

Make small investments now and enjoy massive savings later

Spending more time on discovery reduces cost and risk across the project. It may sound obvious, but project teams still rush discovery to get to “delivery.” That illusion of speed creates much larger slowdowns later. But in reality, rushed discovery equals extended timelines, cost overruns, and functionality gaps during go-live. So, investing in thorough, scenario-based requirement capture pays off at every stage, including testing, training, and support.

A few sharp questions to ask your software vendor right now

• How will you document exceptions, and who will validate them?

• Which VAT scenarios have you implemented for UAE clients?

• What’s the rollback plan if a migration batch fails validation?

• How will we measure success after go-live?

If your partner can’t answer these in operational terms, the risk is on you, not Odoo.

So, you can now see Odoo is not the problem. When an implementation fails, look first at the discovery phase.

Yes, you can fix a failed Odoo project, but it’s almost always harder and costlier than getting requirements right from the start. So before you blame the platform, get to know the real issue.

You can avoid this entire problem by staying careful and choosing the right Odoo partner.

Contact us today at Penieltech to discover the best way to implement Odoo and enjoy the software without chaos.