Few Points to Check before Choosing Your ERP Provider

A day after day technology keeps developing causing massive changes to the business. This digital change is offering the businesses great commercial benefits through the process of ERP implementation. The integration between technology and artificial intelligence in the ERP choices has brought many rapid profitable changes like data automation, integration, and improved analytics saving the companies' time, money, and efforts.

Therefore, the main subject nowadays is not to implement ERP or not, rather which ERP provider or vendor to choose to ensure coming up with the best end management results. A good ERP provider can offer you immediate but not guaranteed future results from the ERP implementation. 

The market is full of ERP choices such as open-source, closed-source, license-based, cloud-based and so on. Selecting the right ERP solution for your enterprise depends on knowing exactly your business needs, and doing a quick study about the advantages and disadvantages of each ERP solution. To do so you need to ask yourself these questions before buying:

After you're done with choosing the most suitable ERP to your business, you come across another crucial matter which is how to choose the right vendor. In fact picking the right vendor is as important as selecting the ERP. Because no matter how distinguished your ERP features are, if it's not properly implemented, there won't be any good results to gain after all. 

Going for a demo can be the easiest and simplest way to judge your ERP system and your ERP vendor. A Demo can give you an idea about how the ERP system will help in providing solutions to various problems that your business faces, and if the vendor will manage to deal with those problems conveniently for you.

Making sure that the vendor's ERP suits your business needs is not enough. You need to have an ERP provider by your side to supports you throughout the implementation and post-implementation phase. So, you should choose a vendor who can guarantee you a long-term commitment of support.

In this article we will provide you with some important points to carefully check. These points will enable you to choose the right ERP vendor to ensure having a successful ERP implementation at your workplace.

Familiarity with the different Industry Domains

No business is similar to one another. Each one has its own problems and difficulties. Therefore, you need to collaborate with an ERP supplier who has some experience in your industry, and capable of providing industry-specific solutions. Choosing vendors who have implemented projects in a field similar to your industry can better understand your business needs which saves a lot of time and effort, and minimize the scale of customization required. 

The basic solutions offered by ERP systems are the same; however an experienced ERP provider in managing the procedures and pitfalls your specific industry field can suggest many important add-ons to your business process. These recommendations can easily improve the ERP procedure by developing fast and efficient solutions.

Moreover, the ERP vendor you will deal with must be well qualified in every feature of the ERP modules including the strategic capacities which are key factors to developing your business. In some cases you may need to customize the features through coding. Therefore, also check the ERP vendor’s experience in handling ERP customizations.

The Team

Who will implement the ERP system you've bought is very significant. Therefore check whether the developers you met during the initial selection process are the ones to fulfill your project in the coming days or if they are here just to close a deal.

Dealing with a team of highly skilled developers and consultants grantees you great outcomes and closes the door to worries of any problems may occur in the application as they surely will be able to fix them quickly and properly.

Support

Implementing ERP goes under many stages, and each one requires a large deal of support from the service provider. Understanding how much support and other various online training the vendor is willing to offer will help your workers quickly learn and adapt to the application and enhance your business environment. 

If you don’t get a proper support during the ERP implementation GO-LIVE phase, it is likely to fail completely. From the very beginning discuss with your provider their support plans and the costs related. Here are some questions to ask your ERP provider:

Cost

Though most of the ERP frameworks have similar core modules in general, the cost of the ERP implementation process differs from one vendor to another according to the number of modules you'll ask for and the size of your business, so you need to examine the different cost offers the providers give you to choose a pocket friendly offer before buying the service.

Note that the cost of the ERP software includes its implementation charge, annual licensing and support. 

Development and deployment your ERP

There are various options for deploying an ERP application. You can either integrate it on the cloud, or on premises. Check if the vendor can provide the deploying option you are looking for and fits your business requirements. 

ERP service providers practice multi different methodologies, and a full understanding of them will help in properly assessing the quality and implications out of it.

Long-Term Service

Having the vendor's support during the implementation process is significant, yet it's not enough. Providing long time support is critical to ensure the movement of your business wheel. You'd better choose a service provider who has interest not only in your present situation, but also in your future.

To make sure the ERP provider has this interest you can check though various ways:

• Ask them straightforwardly during the meeting.
• Take a close look at their website
• See who their customers are and search out for references from corporations that are like yours. 

Well, the next step is to contact with those customers especially the ones with the same industry field, and see if they are content with the provider services, and how their ERP frameworks work. Ask them also if they faced any problem with the ERP provider, how they dealt with it if any, whether the supplier completed the implementation on time or not, and is the supplier easily approachable and willing to support on the long term. 

To conclude when searching for an ERP vendor who can provide you a successful ERP implementation process, many things must be taken into consideration. For example, the ERP provider must be closely familiar with your industry domain, having a team of well qualified developers and consultants, capable of offering different options of ERP deployment, offering a reasonable price for their services, and ready to support during the ERP execution and on the long run.

Key words: ERP implementation, ERP vendor, ERP Provider, ERP customization, open-source, closed-source, license-based, cloud-based, Boraq Group