About
Why The Practice Exists
Most ERP programs that disappoint don't fail in one dramatic moment, and they rarely fail because of the software. The same structural conditions show up on project after project. Every expert at the table works within their own commercial constraints, and those constraints, however well-intentioned the people involved, create blind spots. The implementation partner is managing a delivery team, a margin, and a client relationship at once. The vendor is protecting a renewal. The internal team is managing upward. None of that makes them bad actors. It makes them human. What it means in practice is that nobody in the room is positioned to give you the full, unvarnished picture, including the parts that reflect badly on your own organization's readiness. That isn't an accusation. It's arithmetic. And it's the gap I built Solven Advisory to fill.
What I bring is an experienced, unconflicted point of view, applied honestly wherever the problem sits. Sometimes the implementation is off track and the partner needs to be held to account. Sometimes the change orders are legitimate and the client needs to hear that. Sometimes the relationship between client and partner has broken down, and the most valuable thing is to help repair it, because changing partners mid-project is one of the most expensive and disruptive decisions a client can make, and it isn't always the right one. I charge a fixed fee, and my only interest is a program that delivers what it was supposed to. That focus on outcome rather than blame is what makes me useful to everyone at the table.
Commitment to the Outcome
The foundation of useful advice is simple: the person giving it should have nothing to gain from steering you in a particular direction. I've built the practice around that principle, applied with precision rather than as a blanket rule, because a blanket rule isn't always honest.
Where a fee from a third party could influence my advice, partner selection being the clearest example, I take no fees, commissions or payments of any kind from anyone in the supply chain. If I'm helping you choose an implementation partner, no partner pays me anything. That's written into the engagement letter before work begins, and it's why my recommendation means something.
Where a commercial relationship exists but has no bearing on the advice, I'll declare it in full before we start. You'll always know, and you can judge for yourself how much weight to give my view. I'll never ask you to trust me without giving you what you need to make that judgment.
What never changes is this: my advice reflects my genuine assessment of what's true and what's in your best interest. The experience behind it is there so that when the hard questions get asked, the answers are grounded in real experience: 35 years across every seat at the ERP table, a Chartered Accountant's training, the world's first Microsoft MVP for Dynamics AX, and almost ten years at one of the largest Dynamics partners in North America.
The transparency is there so you can trust them.
Use of AI
I use AI extensively and deliberately in every engagement. It's how one senior advisor delivers at a pace and depth that would otherwise take a much larger team: continuous project health monitoring, document analysis, risk-pattern recognition across large volumes of project material, change order evaluation, and board-ready reporting, running in the background all the time. You get the analytical output of a well-resourced advisory team, with the judgment and accountability of someone who has actually read everything the AI surfaced. I use it because the alternative, slower, shallower and more expensive, isn't good enough for the stakes of a major ERP program.
I'm equally deliberate about how it's used. No client data is used to train third-party models. No confidential project information, commercially sensitive material or personally identifiable data goes into public AI systems. I work only with enterprise-grade AI platforms that meet current privacy and data protection standards, under the same independence and confidentiality principles as everything else I do. When AI surfaces a finding, I validate it. When AI drafts a deliverable, I own it. The technology speeds up and deepens the work. It doesn't replace the judgment, experience or accountability you're paying for.
Who You'll Work With
You work with me, Debbie Altham. Solven Advisory is a single-principal practice by design: the person who sells the work is the person who does it. I'm a Chartered Accountant and the world's first Microsoft MVP for Dynamics AX, with 35 years across every seat at the ERP table, including 19 years as CEO of a two-country ERP practice and almost ten years as a senior director at a large Dynamics partner.
Think of me as the independent director on your ERP program. Whoever is accountable for it, a steering committee, a sponsor or an owner, is my board. I read the papers properly, ask the questions people inside the program won't, and make sure the people accountable for the outcome know what's true. The partner and the project manager run delivery. I don't.
A larger firm has overheads to recover, junior staff to keep busy on your account, and partner relationships to protect. I have none of those. But I'm never working from a narrow base. When an engagement needs capability beyond my own, I can bring in specialists I've known and worked alongside for decades: technologists with deep AI architecture experience, change consultants with proven records in resistant organizations, data specialists who have seen every kind of migration failure. They're introduced transparently, with the relationship disclosed, no referral fee taken, and a clear recommendation to evaluate them independently. The network is an asset. It's not a revenue stream.
The result is the judgment and accountability of a senior practitioner, backed by the reach of a seasoned industry insider, with the freedom to call it as it is, for the client and about the client.