ERP Assessment and Selection

Expert guidance to ensure your selection matches your requirements, saves you money, and elevates your business.

You’re in the right place if…

Your current systems and ERP don’t align with your strategy and where you’re headed
You realize most ERP providers only promote one solution and, of course, they think that’s the one for you
Time and availability from you and your team doesn’t feel like it aligns with this significant business decision
Finance wants one thing, operations wants another, and nobody has the knowledge and experience to facilitate well and guide decisions
You’ve heard stories about being oversold on licenses or you simply aren’t sure how to negotiate well with ERP vendors
You don’t know how to tell if the timelines and costs you’ve heard are accurate

Our Process

The timelines noted below may be shorter or longer depending on your size and complexity. They represent the typical times needed for a mid-sized U.S. based business.

1. Discover & Assess

(weeks 1–3) Understand your business, challenges, and goals.

We start with what I call 20/20s—twenty 20-minute interviews across your organization. Not a survey, not a workshop. Twenty individual conversations, because the person keying orders knows things the org chart doesn’t. From there we select the evaluation team (typically 3–6 people: CFO, COO, CTO, Controller, and your key functional leaders), establish why you're doing this and why now, diagram your current systems and integrations, and catalog every spreadsheet that’s quietly holding a process together.

Then we document the constraints—transaction volume challenges, system limitations, redundant entry, access and usability problems, and the manual and paper-intensive work eating your team’s hours.

4. Select & Commit

(weeks 9–11) Choose the right ERP and the best implementation partner.

Once a selection is made, I help you negotiate license pricing and terms through to a signed contract. This is a valuable and important aspect of my guidance. I know what levers we can push with each ERP solution to secure the best deal.

Then the step most selection processes skip entirely: choosing your implementation partner. The same ERP succeeds or fails depending on who deploys it. I give you partner recommendations and setup interviews. We assess together. Since I’ve either written or reviewed hundreds of ERP SOWs, I’ll review every detail with you.

2. Define & Prioritize

(weeks 3–5) Build requirements and prioritize what matters most.

Requirements come from both your current and future state. We document needs, features, key processes and volume drivers, then categorize every requirement as Must, Should, or Nice to Have. This categorization helps us align across the business to ensure decisions are made based on priorities.

We also plan resources honestly: internal skills, people availability, budget, and a change/adoption assessment. Then we agree on scoring criteria, who gets to vote, and how the decision will be made. All of that is settled before you see a single demo.

5. Plan & Launch

(weeks 11–12) Plan for success and kick off your project.

Internal project planning and readiness, a communications plan for your organization, transition meetings to hand context to your implementation partner, and a formal kickoff. You don’t get handed a recommendation and wished good luck—you start the project with momentum, a plan, and my guidance.

3. Evaluate Solutions

(weeks 5–9) Compare ERP solutions and partners.

Working with you, I shortlist two or three modern ERP solutions with genuine fit and walk you through the pros and cons of each. We then align on demo outlines, so vendors demonstrate your key requirements instead of their polished canned script. We secure budgetary estimates for license and services from every candidate before demos (so no one wastes your time). Your evaluation team scores each demo against the requirements . Then we rank, review, resolve open questions, and eliminate.

What You Get

Current-state systems and integration diagram, including the spreadsheet inventory
A documented requirements matrix categorized Must / Should / Nice to Have
Defined decision criteria
Demo outlines built around your requirements
Scored evaluation of every candidate, with your team’s ratings and the reasoning recorded
Budgetary license and services estimates from each finalist
A negotiated license agreement
A selected implementation partner and signed SOW
A readiness and kickoff plan: resourcing, communications, and risks

Purposefully and Uniquely Objective

I hold solution relationships with all of the leading, modern ERP publishers and also with multiple implemention partners for each solution. This is how I’m able to be unbiased and get you access to experienced vendor resources. I’ve recommended for and against every mid-market ERP product. I’ll tell you when it’s the right fit and when it isn’t.

Why Me

Over 30 years leading multiple functions and technology initiatives in various sized organizations, including leadership roles at Fidelity Investments, Paycor, Velosio, and Allmerica Financial. I’ve been on all sides: running technology selections inside a company, leading ERP consulting practices, and guiding as an outside advisor.