Building assets and protecting them are two very different disciplines. Both are equally important.

If we keep building assets but make no plan to maintain and protect them, it is only a matter of time before we lose them. When that happens, we also lose the effort and resources that went into creating them in the first place.

Organisations are particularly poor at protecting digital assets.

Millions are invested in ERP implementations. Go-Live is celebrated. Success is declared. The project team moves on to the next initiative.

But the asset that was just created slowly gets neglected.

Continuous improvement stops. New staff are not properly trained. Optimisation is ignored. Advanced modules remain unused. Over time, employee turnover and weak governance erode the system. Workarounds appear. Spreadsheets return. New ways of working emerge outside the system.

Eventually the same complaint surfaces: “The ERP doesn’t work.”

So the organisation starts again — another system, another implementation, another round of investment.

The real problem was never the system.

The problem was the absence of a plan to protect and strengthen the asset after it was built.

You are not done when the system goes live.
You are done when you have a plan to protect it.