The Ultimate 2014 ERP Selection Checklist

As is the case with any large investment, planning and research is crucial to selecting the right ERP system for your business. The best place to begin (and end) this research and planning is with our ultimate ERP selection checklist.

2014 ERP Selection Checklist

• Have you written down your goals for ERP?
• Have the other stakeholders written their goals?
• Have you all agreed on final goals and prioritized them?
• Have you placed a dollar value on the benefits you expect and reached a consensus?
• Have you found at least one ERP that seems to meet all your top priorities and most of the remaining priorities?
• Have you received ballpark pricing estimates and is the potential ROI enough to continue?
• Is the potential ROI irrelevant because you have no choice but to get an ERP?
• Are those reasons in writing and is there agreement?
• How much customization will you consider or will you insist on an out-of-the-box ERP?
• What other systems will the ERP need to integrate with? Internal? Customers? Suppliers?
• What added hardware or network development will be needed? How much will that cost?
• Do you have the IT staff already to support the ERP?
• Have you considered a cloud or SaaS ERP?
• Who will be your implementation project leader?
• Who will be your executive champion?
• How much time will be needed? Who will do the necessary work? Who will do their current jobs?
• What outside help will you need? What tasks? Who will provide that help?
• Have you received references from your prospective vendors?
• Have you contacted those references? Did you ask them what problems they ran into? Is there anything they would have done differently?
• Have you contacted peers in similar businesses? What ERP do they use? Would they recommend it?
• What will annual maintenance cost from the ERP? What is included? What else will you need?
• Will you also need a support agreement with your ERP seller? What is included?
• Have you asked about different levels of support?
• Can you phase in the implementation or should you go all at once?
• Have you planned your communication strategy to keep your employees in the know during ERP selection and Implementation?
• What training and other support will your employees need?
• Have you thought about where the employees saved through the ERP improvements will go?
• Is your head splitting yet?
• Is there ticks aplenty on this ERP selection checklist?
• What’s holding you back? Get started.

In addition to our ERP selection checklist, we have written a detailed guide to surviving the ERP selection process - download your free copy now.