The definitive guide to ERP selection
February 15, 2023
The ERP market has matured, with thousands of software options and vendors available. Since an ERP is not a system you can easily replace every five years, selecting the right one is an important decision. And even though experienced ERP consultancy can streamline ERP selection, it still requires a company’s active involvement.
ERP selection is a structured evaluation of multiple ERP platforms to decide on the best-fitting option for a company. A well-chosen ERP will bring the company multiple benefits, including integrated business processes, business workflow standardization, and enhanced productivity.
In this guide, we cover all aspects of ERP selection to help you make a sound choice and ensure successful ERP adoption.
A 7-step ERP selection guide
To help you choose an ERP solution that will bring maximum benefit to your organization, we’ve compiled this guide that walks you through every step of the selection process.
ERP selection is all about negotiations. If you want it to be successful, you should know what you need precisely, clearly understand the offered capabilities, and imagine what you can eventually get.
An ERP selection team is a group of employees (department managers, team leads, subject matter experts, shareholders, and partners) from different departments, business units, and locations. Their goal is to assist the ERP project team with software requirements and attend ERP vendor demos. Experts should be selected based on their competence, not job title, and should not be afraid to speak up and voice unpopular opinions. The team should also include employees who are quite familiar with your current processes and will use the ERP daily.
If there is no relevant experience in your company, you can consider hiring a professional consultant to help with ERP selection.
Note: If time allows, your company can encourage a wider discussion among employees and stakeholders. Another option is to delegate this decision to a smaller group of stakeholders who can drive consensus within limited timeframes and champion change.
Need help with choosing the optimal tech stack for your ERP project?
ERP selection criteria
We shortlist the main criteria for choosing ERP software regardless of a company’s size, industry, geography, user count, or technology landscape.
Product capabilities
Recommendations
To find an enterprise resource planning platform with the most suitable feature set, you have to draw up a clear and comprehensive list of functional requirements defining the future solution’s modules (CRM, project management, procurement, marketing and sales, ecommerce, supply chain management, etc.). You can gather them across the organization, narrow them down to the most crucial ones, and approve them with key stakeholders. This document can be further used as a checklist for ERP platforms evaluation.
Considerations
- Why do you need an ERP solution?
- What business workflows should be/can be automated?
- What is wrong with your current system, if anything?
- What areas of the business or functional areas lack visibility/reliable reporting?
ERP selection challenges
Challenge
Solution
All platforms promise to satisfy your business needs. How to choose the right one?
A surefire way to choose the best ERP technology is resorting to a professional ERP consultancy. In case you want to make a choice on your own, focus only on your specific requirement, not a general set of capabilities for your industry, and do not contact vendors unless there’s an established list of key requirements. Additionally, don’t try to negotiate with too many vendors – instead, shortlist three to five vendors and request further information from them.
Some of your decision-makers have already worked with a particular ERP. Do you need to use the same?
A structured approach to the ERP selection process and well-defined criteria can greatly help keep bias at bay. However, remember that an ERP project is a business project, where the executives should agree with each other.
Not all employees are excited about ERP and may not want to use it after the implementation.
To mitigate resistance to change among future ERP users, companies should gauge employees' attitudes beforehand and make sure to dispel their worries, stressing the benefits of ERP implementation. Proper user training and a change management strategy can make ERP adoption less stressful for employees.
ERP selection checklist
We’ve created a checklist of smart ERP software solution capabilities.
- Out-of-the-box functionality covers 80% or more of the solution scopeÂ
- Industry-specific functionality out of the box or as an add-on extensionÂ
- Deployment flexibility
- Transparent pricing
- Rich customization and integration capabilities (open APIs and pre-built connectors)
- Highly scalable
- Easy to use and intuitive
- Regular upgrades and updates
- Provided supportÂ
- Self-service capabilities
- Built-in BI capabilitiesÂ
- Mobile-ready
- Сompatible with emerging trends and technology (AI, ML, RPA, IoT)
