When the story of Lidl cancelling its SAP project broke in 2018, it caught the attention of many supply chain leaders. After seven years of work and an estimated €500 million spent, Lidl decided to revert to its legacy system¹. Since then, the project has become a touchpoint whenever we discuss why large transformation efforts come under pressure.
I find it useful not because it provides easy answers but because it raises the kinds of questions that supply chain leaders still ask today.
From what I’ve read, the intent went beyond an IT refresh. The goal was to simplify master data, integrate processes from supplier through to customer and give the business real-time measures and forecasts². On paper this sounds like exactly the kind of backbone many supply chains aspire to build.
It is tempting to read it that way. Reports at the time said the programme was the largest transformation in Lidl’s history and even won an SAP customer award during rollout³. For a business growing fast across multiple countries, a single integrated platform may have looked like the obvious way to scale. But what came through later was the danger of treating one system as a cure-all when its underlying assumptions don’t fully fit the business model.
Commentators give different reasons. Some point to the mismatch between Lidl’s approach to inventory valuation and SAP’s built-in logic. What looked like a technical configuration issue cut right across replenishment and reporting. Others focus on culture. Lidl has a strong discount heritage and was reluctant to bend tried-and-tested processes around a standardised ERP⁴. Others still highlight programme governance: a long timeline, heavy customisation and little flexibility once the early choices were made⁵.
For me the lesson is not that one of these views is right and the others wrong. It is that multiple layers - technical, cultural and managerial - all added pressure at the same time.
That’s a harder question to answer because Lidl never reached a full go-live. Unlike other high-profile ERP failures (Haribo, National Grid, Revlon, MillerCoors, Mondelez among others), there wasn’t a public disruption to store shelves. But internally, the ambition was clearly to modernise end-to-end processes, which implies that supply chain was central to the business case. The official statement given to staff said the strategic goals could not be achieved with reasonable effort and that the company would instead strengthen the legacy system step by step⁶.
In that sense, the impact may have been more about lost opportunity than visible failure. A half-billion euro write-off is significant but it did not derail Lidl’s growth or dent its competitive position.
There was turnover during the programme. Lidl’s CEO stepped down in 2017 and the head of IT also left around the same time. Whether those changes were caused directly by the project is not clear but the timing shows how much attention the programme attracted internally⁷.
This is perhaps the most important question for supply chain leaders. Was the project a chilling effect or did Lidl adapt and move forward? From what I can see, Lidl has continued to innovate but in different ways:
In planning and replenishment, Lidl adopted RELEX for demand forecasting and automation in Germany and beyond⁸.
In distribution, it has invested in automation and new regional DCs, including a highly automated facility in Luton that opened in 2023⁹.
On the customer side, Lidl Plus, a loyalty and data platform, has been rolled out across multiple markets since 2020, with additional features like self-scanning layered in over time¹⁰.
In other words, Lidl seems to have shifted from a single all-encompassing ERP upgrade to targeted initiatives in planning, logistics and customer data. The innovation story did not stop but the model changed.
I don’t see Lidl’s experience as proof that ERP cannot work. Without a reliable backbone with sufficient longevity, anything built on top of it is much less likely to prove a worthwhile investment. What I take away are a few open questions worth considering before embarking on similar journeys:
Are we assuming a new system will fix problems that are actually rooted in process or culture?
Do we have the ability to adapt if early assumptions prove wrong?
Is it safer to modernise incrementally in ways that can be tested and scaled, rather than betting everything on one programme?
How do we balance the reassurance of “one backbone” with the flexibility of modular innovation?
Lidl remains one of Europe’s retail success stories. The SAP project was a costly misstep but not a defining one. If anything, it shows how resilient the business model has been and how innovation can take different forms once lessons are absorbed.
For supply chain leaders, the case offers a chance to reflect: not “what would Lidl have done differently,” but “what questions should we be asking ourselves before we commit to the next big change?”
JP Doggett