Why Enterprise IT Projects Take 6 Months (And What to Do About It)

If you’ve kicked off an enterprise IT project and the timeline already feels longer than you planned for, you’re not alone. Most organizations expect things to move faster than they do when it comes to their technology.

What actually happens between the first conversation and a signed order? And why does it take so long?  The reason usually comes down to one thing: what looks like a straightforward project is almost never just one thing.

In this article, we’ll walk through each stage of procuring new technology, what the work entails, and why it takes the time it does. By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of what to expect and how to plan around it from the start.

We’re an IT solutions provider, which means we have a built-in interest in making this process sound straightforward. It isn’t always, including the back-office steps, the relationship-building, and the design work that most vendors don’t talk about. The more you know going in, the smoother it goes.

Why Does an Enterprise IT Project Take So Long?

Enterprise IT projects take six months or more because what looks like one project is almost always several: hardware, software, professional services, consulting, and training, each with its own procurement process, lead time, and dependencies that have to be resolved in sequence.

Think about the difference between a transaction and a solution. A multi-million-dollar IT purchase made up of 10,000 standardized devices can move quickly. Each unit is the same, the procurement path is well-worn, and there’s not much to figure out. But a multi-million-dollar purchase of a complex system with interdependent parts is a different beast entirely. Darren Armstrong, Enterprise Solutions Consultant at PC Corp, puts it this way: a solution at that level involves “a lot of consultation with both the customer and with the vendor” and “usually a much longer sales cycle.”

Take a company that wants to deploy an AI-powered customer service chatbot. On the surface, it sounds like a software project. But the chatbot needs somewhere to run. That means hardware, like servers, storage, and networking infrastructure. And once you add hardware to the picture, you’re also looking at professional services to configure and integrate everything, consulting to define use cases properly, and training so the team can actually use what’s been built. Each of those components has its own procurement process, lead time, and dependencies. 

What Pre-Sales Design Work Has to Happen Before a Single Product Is Ordered?

Before anything gets procured, there’s a design and architecture phase that most organizations don’t think about. But that pre-purchase work is where the project either gets set up for success or problems.

Peter Somoya, Enterprise Solutions Consultant at PC Corp, describes what this actually involves. Before any products are selected, the team needs to understand your existing environment and requirements: “We start to understand volume, capacity, size, frequency, cycles. All that type of stuff.” From there, he says the work shifts to identifying what needs to be procured (hardware, software, services), and assembling it into a coherent solution.

That process includes technical vetting with manufacturer teams and narrowing down exactly what you need. Part of what makes this phase take time is the sheer range of options involved. An enterprise IT solution can draw from dozens of product categories, manufacturers, and service types, and narrowing that down requires real design work, not just a product lookup.

“As an IT solution provider, I’m more like a [department store] and I’ve got 50 aisles,” Peter says. “Which aisle do you want to go down? And then when you go down those aisles, do you just want to buy servers? Or do you want to buy a complete solution that could involve all those different aisles and I’ll help act as your guide?”

Using that department store metaphor, an organization who hasn’t figured out which aisles they need can’t get an accurate timeline. And unlike a retail purchase, nothing here comes off the shelf ready to use for an enterprise IT environment. It has to be designed around your specific infrastructure and goals.

Why Does the Procurement and Vendor Setup Process Take Longer Than Most People Expect?

This is where most organizations feel the delay and don’t understand why. The design work is done. The scope is clear. Why hasn’t anything been ordered yet?

More Is Moving Than You Realize

It’s because a sales conversation kicks off a chain of back-office activity that isn’t visible to you. New manufacturer and software provider relationships may have to be established, credit checks run, and vendor accounts configured before a single product can move. 

The Value of Starting Small

Additionally, if you’re bringing in a new vendor for the first time, expect the initial scope to be smaller than you’d planned. Starting smaller gives both sides a chance to see how the relationship actually works before the stakes get high. It also gives the vendor a chance to understand your environment in practice, because even a thorough design phase can only tell you so much. How a solution actually performs once it’s integrated into your specific infrastructure sometimes only becomes clear once something is deployed. As Darren puts it, the goal is to get to a point where both sides are ready to ‘move up the food chain a little bit and try something that’s a little bit trickier.’

Responsible procurement needs to run on its own timeline regardless of how urgent your project feels on your end. Organizations who push vendors to skip or compress these steps often find themselves mid-project with a manufacturer relationship that isn’t set up correctly, or an ERP configuration that has to be redone. The delay you avoided at the start shows up later, usually at a worse time.

How Do You Build the Real Timeline into Your Planning from the Start?

Most of the delays that catch organizations off guard when sourcing new technology are predictable, and preventable if you plan for them from the start. Here’s how to do that.

• Define the scope before you start the clock. The design and architecture phase takes time, but it’s time that protects you from ordering the wrong thing.

• Start vendor conversations earlier than feels necessary. Back-office processes, credit checks, ERP setup, vendor relationship establishment, run in parallel with design work, not after it. If you wait until the design is complete to engage your vendor, you’re adding weeks to your timeline for no reason.

• Factor in the relationship-building phase with new vendors. The trust that makes a vendor effective at large scope takes time to develop. Build that into your timeline.

• Add a buffer for what you don’t know yet. A timeline of six months assumes your requirements are already well-defined. If you’re still working through what you actually need, that definition work adds time.

• Consider whether an existing relationship can fast-track things. Jeffrey Jansen, Vendor Relationship Officer and Enterprise Solutions Consultant at PC Corp, notes that when someone who’s worked with PC Corp before moves to a new organization, they often bring that relationship with them. A manufacturer endorsement can do the same thing. Established trust compresses the timeline. If you have a contact who’s worked with your vendor before, that’s worth knowing about early.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a six-month timeline typical across all types of enterprise IT projects?

No. Simpler, well-defined procurement, like adding servers to an existing fleet from a known vendor, can move faster. The six-month figure applies to complex, multi-component solutions where hardware, software, services, and training all have to come together. If your requirements aren’t fully defined yet, expect the timeline to run longer than six months. The more components involved, and the newer the vendor relationship, the longer it tends to be.

What’s the difference between a statement of work and a procurement deal?

A procurement deal covers the acquisition of hardware and software. A statement of work governs the services that go around it: implementation, configuration, consulting, training. On a complex project, you’ll often have both, and they’re negotiated and signed separately. The statement of work typically can’t be finalized until the design phase is complete, which is one of the reasons the overall timeline is longer than you may expect.

What typically causes an IT procurement project to stall mid-process?

The most common stall points are scope changes, internal approval delays on the buyer’s side, and procurement surprises, like a vendor needing to establish a new manufacturer relationship that nobody anticipated. Incomplete requirements at the design stage are another frequent cause. If the scope isn’t locked down before procurement begins, changes mid-stream will push the timeline out.

What’s a realistic first step in IT procurement for a buyer who’s just starting out?

Start with a conversation, not a quote. Before any pricing is meaningful, both sides need to understand what the project actually involves: the scope, the components, and the constraints. A good vendor will spend time on that before they put a number in front of you. If the first thing you get is a quote with no design conversation behind it, treat that as a signal.

How do you know if your IT vendor is actually being realistic about the timeline or just stalling?

A vendor who’s being realistic will be able to tell you exactly what’s happening at each stage and why it takes the time it does. They’ll have specific back-office or design steps they can point to. A vendor who’s stalling tends to be vague about what’s actually holding things up. Ask for a stage-by-stage breakdown. If they can’t give you one, that’s worth knowing.

Get Your Procurement Timeline Right From the Start

The organizations who come out of the IT procurement process with the least friction are the ones who stopped treating the timeline as the enemy and started planning around it from day one.

If you’re still working through what you need to strengthen your IT environment before you can even start the clock, that’s actually the right place to begin. Our article How Do I Know What Kind of IT Procurement Support I Actually Need? walks through how to figure out where to start and what kind of support you actually need.

Our PC Corp team has been guiding Alberta enterprise organizations through complex IT projects for over 40 years. If you’re trying to scope a project or figure out where your timeline actually starts, a short conversation with our team can give you a clearer picture before you commit to anything. Contact us to get started.