Reframed a PIM pre-project into Orchestra, the commercial ERP trajectory for Chateauform' and its 70 venues

Product data and pricing lived in Excel files, integrated by hand into a CRM customized to the point of serving as an ERP. No workflow existed for creating or validating product data.

The impacts were documented: poor pricing agility, heavy manual workload, and sales advisors unable to compare prices between venues, which weighed on occupancy rates. Underneath sat a structural question: how to get out of a CRM serving as an ERP without betting the company on a multi-year big bang.

The framing ran in four phases, widening from the PIM question to the full commercial ERP trajectory:

• Flash discovery: document review, platform demos, and interviews across IT, catalog, pricing, BI, development, and order-to-cash roles.
• Needs and market scan: a functional mapping consolidated in a workshop with IT, plus a flash pre-study of 2 SaaS PIM solutions with contextualized demos and costing.
• Architecture and challenge: the target architecture clarified, then challenged with the business teams, Microsoft, and the client's integrator.
• Consolidation and restitution: a complete framing file with current and target architecture maps, 7 initiative sheets, a make-or-buy analysis, 3 roadmap scenarios, and an executive summary presented to the direction.

Each of the 7 initiative sheets covered impact, technical scenario, prerequisites, timing, and a budget range.

• The subject changed scale: from a PIM pre-project to an ERP trajectory owned by the direction under the Orchestra name.
• Volumes and timelines put on the table: 82,000 active companies, 300,000 contacts, 6 countries, 4 languages, with workstreams estimated from 3 to 36 months.
• The recommendation argued for immediate quick wins (2 Power Platform apps and a rebuilt pricing data model) plus a SaaS PIM right away, without waiting for the target ERP.

Key takeaway. Entering through a small subject and enlarging to the real one is what a useful framing does: the client got a full-picture trajectory it had never commissioned. Putting a budget range on every initiative moved the conversation to direction level.

The honest point: the client's culture leans strongly toward building in-house, and the case for buying was a central fight of the mission, still open at the end. A planned pre-study of PMS solutions was also cancelled along the way, a choice assumed in the deliverables.