Questions to ask an ERP implementation partner before signing

Request a scope document that lists modules, document types, reports and integrations by name, such as sales order, delivery note, purchase receipt, sales invoice and credit note. Inventory alone is not a scope.

Find out what is excluded, how a change request is priced and who approves it, because a partner who says everything is included has not read your process. Ask for the exclusions list.

Meet the person who will run the project, check how many other projects share their week and ask to speak with one business they have already set up. Not just the salesperson.

Migration is where projects slip, so ask who extracts the old data, who cleans duplicate items and customers, and who loads the result into the new system. Demand a sample load first. Insist on a sample load into a test system, with a mapping sheet from old fields to new ones that your accounts head has read and signed.

A good answer names the totals matched on the cutover date: opening stock by warehouse, open sales invoices, open purchase orders and customer ledger balances.

A weak answer says you will supply data in the required format and nothing more, which leaves the cleaning, matching and re-checking of balances on your own staff. Budget time for it.

Every partner will say they can customise. What matters is which requirements stay as standard configuration and which become custom code that must be rewritten and retested at every upgrade.

Settle who owns the source code and whether you receive a copy, then check how each custom report is documented and what happens to it at the next release.

Push for a standard first approach. Change your process where the standard fits, and customise only where staying as you are costs money every month, such as a manual price list re-keyed for each quotation.

Training should be role based and use your own data, because a generic demo does not teach a store keeper how to post a goods receipt. Ask for guides in your language. Ask for a trainer on site in week one, plus a recorded session with screenshots of your own forms for staff who join later.

Go live support needs a duration, a named responder and a response time for a billing outage, so write all three into the contract. Sales call promises bind nobody.

One question gets forgotten. Who maintains the system after the project ends, and at what annual price, with which named contact and which written list of requests that fall outside support?

Watch for phrases like we will see during the project, it is a small change and we do this all the time. None can be checked later. None names a document.

Also treat as red flags a refusal to share a reference, no named project lead and a quote that cannot be split by phase. Confident partners write dates on paper.

Score each partner on the same sheet. Have the finance head, the warehouse lead and the sales manager fill it in separately, then compare the three sheets side by side before you sign anything.