Core Responsibilities
The project manager turns implementation objectives into an actionable plan and ensures each team understands its responsibilities. The precise scope depends on the dealer’s business model, locations, existing applications, and the capabilities included in the project.
- Scope and planning: Define project deliverables, milestones, resource needs, dependencies, and acceptance criteria with business leaders.
- Stakeholder coordination: Schedule decisions and workshops with sales, purchasing, warehouse, delivery, finance, IT, and implementation consultants.
- Data and integration oversight: Track customer, vendor, product, inventory, and open-order migration alongside accounting and reporting integrations.
- Testing and readiness: Coordinate end-to-end testing, user training, issue resolution, and go-live approval.
- Progress reporting: Maintain project status, action items, decision logs, risks, and budget or resource updates for sponsors.
For example, when a dealer changes how customer deposits are handled, the project manager coordinates sales and finance so the process is tested from order entry through payment recording, invoicing, and reconciliation.
Planning the Implementation Lifecycle
A Hedberg project generally moves through discovery, requirements definition, configuration, data preparation, integration, testing, deployment, and post-launch support. The project manager establishes entry and exit criteria for each stage so stakeholders can verify readiness before proceeding.
During discovery, the team documents current workflows and agrees on the intended operating model. Configuration and migration planning translate these requirements into system settings and prepared data. Testing then checks complete business scenarios, including routine transactions and exceptions such as partial receipts, order amendments, returns, and delivery changes.
When the project includes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or another ERP, the manager coordinates integration scope, data ownership, migration timing, and reconciliation responsibilities. The ERP Implementation Guide for 2025 offers useful planning context for deployment stages, project timelines, and implementation procedures. The manager should also ensure that ERP-related work has named owners and that finance validates the movement of relevant transaction and accounting data.
Financial Controls and Approval Management
Project decisions can affect purchasing commitments, inventory valuation, customer deposits, vendor invoices, and financial reporting. The project manager should involve finance early to confirm how transactions will be recorded, approved, reconciled, and reported. A consistent chart of accounts structure also helps ensure that general ledger entries and management reports use the appropriate company, department, cost center, or project dimensions.
Manager Approval is the authorization a designated manager provides before a transaction or business decision proceeds. During implementation, the project manager coordinates the definition of approval thresholds, delegated authority, and escalation routes. Manager Approval Verification checks whether the required authorization has been provided by the appropriate person, while a documented Manager Approval Policy establishes who can approve which transactions and under what conditions.
These controls should be tested using realistic scenarios, such as a purchase order above a spending threshold or a customer credit adjustment requiring additional authorization. Clear approval records support accountability and make it easier for finance teams to review transactions during audits.
Managing Timelines, Resources, and Project Risks
The project manager maintains a schedule that reflects task dependencies, resource availability, decision deadlines, and testing requirements. A useful project register records each issue or risk, its business impact, its owner, the agreed response, and the next review date. This gives sponsors a practical view of where intervention or a decision is needed.
Good project governance includes regular status reviews, controlled scope changes, and documented acceptance criteria. Teams should distinguish a proposed change from approved work so additional requirements can be assessed for their effects on timelines, staffing, training, and financial controls.
Compensation research can also help organizations define the role appropriately. The 2026 AP Manager Salary Benchmarking Report provides salary benchmarks and pay drivers for accounts payable managers by company size, industry, and location; it is useful context when staffing finance operations, although it is not a direct benchmark for a Hedberg project manager.
Measuring Project Success
Project success should be assessed through delivery performance and the quality of the resulting business processes. Useful measures include milestone completion, open issues by severity, test-case pass rates, training completion, data reconciliation results, and the number of post-launch corrections required.
The project manager should also coordinate with finance and operations to monitor outcomes after deployment. For instance, if the project aims to improve billing timeliness, the team can compare the time between delivery confirmation and invoice creation before and after launch. More reliable billing information can improve cash flow forecasting and help finance anticipate receipts, supplier payments, and short-term liquidity needs.
Measures should have defined owners, consistent reporting periods, and an agreed baseline. A completed technical deployment is only one milestone; the project should also confirm that employees can complete their tasks and that management receives dependable operational and financial information.
Summary
A Hedberg Project Manager coordinates the people, plans, decisions, data, integrations, testing, and controls required for a successful system implementation. By setting clear milestones, managing dependencies, involving finance, and measuring operational outcomes, the project manager helps furniture dealers prepare their teams, maintain transaction integrity, and align technology changes with business performance.