Choosing an ERP — the questions SMEs should ask first

ERP projects have an outsized capacity to go badly. The vendors’ pitches are slick, the contracts are large, the implementation timelines slip, and the team that has to actually use the thing is rarely in the room when the decision is made. We’ve helped a number of SMEs scope, select, and roll out ERP and ERP-adjacent systems, and the projects that go well almost all start by asking the right questions before they look at a single demo.

What problem are you actually solving?

“We need an ERP” is rarely a real reason. Underneath it is usually one or more of:

• Inventory and stock are out of sync between systems.
• Finance is rebuilding the same data from spreadsheets every month.
• Customer-facing teams can’t see order history or fulfilment status.
• Reporting takes a week and the answers don’t reconcile.
• The current setup has reached the limit of who can support it.

Pick the two or three pains that are most expensive. Those are the criteria that should dominate the shortlist.

Build, buy, or assemble?

For most SMEs the answer is “buy” — but it’s worth being honest about the three options:

• Buy a single suite (NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, SAP Business One, Sage Intacct, Odoo). One throat to choke, broad coverage, but you adopt the vendor’s opinionated workflow.
• Assemble best-of-breed. A specialist accounting tool, a specialist inventory tool, a specialist CRM, glued together with integrations. More flexibility, more integration work, more vendors to manage.
• Build a thin core on top of existing tools. Sometimes the right answer is a small bespoke layer that orchestrates spreadsheets, accounting software, and a couple of APIs — and you save six figures of license fees.

Cloud-hosted or self-hosted?

For nearly every SME we work with, cloud-hosted wins. The total cost of running your own servers, your own backups, your own DR plan, and your own security perimeter is almost always higher than a SaaS license — and a lot less reliable. The exceptions are regulated workloads with explicit data-residency requirements, and even those are increasingly satisfied by a regional cloud tenancy.

What about implementation?

Three things to budget for honestly:

• Data migration. Cleaning the data is usually two to three times the work of moving it. Start now, even before you’ve picked a vendor.
• Process change. An ERP forces you to standardise. Decide which workflows you’ll bend the system to fit and which workflows you’ll change to fit the system.
• Training and adoption. The system is only as good as the team using it correctly six months in. Assume you’ll need real onboarding, not a single all-hands.

The honest conversation

Most ERP failures aren’t technology failures. They’re scoping failures, change-management failures, and integration failures. We’re happy to come in as an independent partner — vendor-agnostic — and help you make a decision you won’t regret in eighteen months. Sometimes that means pointing you at a SaaS suite. Sometimes it means a small bespoke build. Sometimes it means leaving the spreadsheets alone for another year and tackling something else first.