What Are the Key Steps for Selecting the Right ERP Software?

About this issue

Start with the Business Decision

What should a business understand before it selects its next ERP system? ERP News Magazine Issue 12, dated October 2020, approaches selection through strategy, process knowledge, technical fit and the capacity to implement change. The anniversary issue brings together contributors with different views of cloud architecture, industry functionality, cost and partner relationships. Customer examples show how these choices connect to warehouses, manufacturing operations and growing service businesses.

Selection Perspectives

Zoran Radumilo, IFS President for Global High Potential Markets and COO for Western, Southern Europe and Latin America, recommends reviewing processes before evaluating software. Industry fit, scalability, integration, usability, reference customers and a realistic implementation plan follow from understanding the problem. Andy Haack, Managing Director at Enginatics, adds a systematic requirements assessment and consideration of the costs of maintaining existing systems. His contribution treats cloud and on-premises choices as questions of fit rather than a universal answer.

Tim Oberschlake, Vice President of Consulting Services at Avaap, argues that cloud selection must begin with corporate goals and the people and process changes required to achieve them. Lucy Thorpe, Head of Content at InCloud Solutions, considers research, functionality, trustworthy implementation partners and continuing support. Stevie Hay, identified as Group Vice President at Aptean in the article, similarly warns against reducing an RFP to a feature checklist. Strategic outcomes should shape the evaluation.

Steven Otwell, Director of Payments at Kyriba, focuses on bank connectivity, liquidity visibility and financial controls as design decisions within ERP transformation. Tom Brennan, CMO at Rootstock Software, examines cloud characteristics, platform coherence, low-code customization, mobile access and online communities. Rootstock CRO David Stephans adds a pre-selection readiness checklist. Kalyani Chaudhari, Marketing Manager at Sage Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, discusses needs, market research, ownership costs, demonstrations and a goal-aligned implementation plan. These contributions are articles and expert panels, not a series of new executive interviews.

Manufacturing and Warehouse Customer Stories

MenaBev, a PepsiCo franchise bottler in Saudi Arabia, goes live with Infor WMS at its Jeddah facility, with SNS managing implementation. The account describes integration with automated material-handling and production systems across receipt, manufacturing, storage and shipping. It reports an implemented solution while presenting further automation and capacity benefits as expectations, without a measured post-go-live percentage improvement.

Masters Gallery Foods appears in Epicor's content-management recognition announcement. Its testimony concerns controlling documents and reducing errors using Epicor ECM, formerly DocStar ECM. This is a qualitative customer example within analyst-recognition news, not a separate ERP rollout or quantified return calculation.

Terry Onica, QAD's Director of Automotive, presents GHSP's adaptive ERP program. The supplier undertakes an ambitious 18-month global deployment after nearly two decades on its previous system. The account reports greater visibility of worldwide manufacturing capacity, accounts-payable automation and improved reporting, connecting shared data with operational responsiveness. No numerical productivity uplift is supplied.

Three Distinct NetSuite Implementations

Suzy Strutner's implementation article begins with Fulton & Roark, a men's grooming-products business. The company moves from spreadsheet inventory and desktop accounting to NetSuite in a reported three-week implementation. It reports correcting bookkeeping issues and supporting approximately 50% year-over-year sales growth without extra headcount. These are customer-story claims, not an experiment demonstrating that ERP alone caused sales growth.

N&N Moving Supplies adopts NetSuite as it expands to multiple locations and a larger workforce. Its account connects integrated time and financial information with more accurate payroll and reports an 84% reduction in payroll processing time. The result belongs to this named case and is not presented as a general outcome for every implementation.

Green Rabbit, a perishable-goods logistics provider, replaces disconnected QuickBooks, Excel and email processes with NetSuite. The article reports a three-month implementation and the ability to handle tens of thousands of daily orders across three warehouses. Its statement about tripling order volume describes potential system capacity, not achieved volume growth. Assertions of error-free information remain vendor/customer claims rather than a guarantee.

IoT and Wider Transformation

Jai Suri, Oracle's Vice President of Product Management for IoT and Blockchain Applications, describes five SaaS IoT application areas. Noble Plastics illustrates detecting equipment problems and robot miscalibration, while Titan illustrates inventory visibility across Oracle ERP, SCM and IoT applications. Each is a named application example with qualitative reported benefits, not a newly measured financial case.

Juergen Kraemer, Software AG's General Manager for IoT & Analytics, argues that IoT projects need both internal teamwork and suitable external expertise. Colin Elkins, IFS Vice President for Manufacturing Industries, examines circular manufacturing, returns, refurbishment and serialized core management. SAP's selective-data-transition article considers an alternative to purely greenfield or brownfield S/4HANA migration; an unnamed beverage example remains unnamed. Todd Kuhns's Acumatica contribution addresses leadership and IT buy-in before implementation begins.

Product, Ecosystem and Community Developments

News covers Oracle Exadata Cloud Service X8M, Acumatica's UK expansion with Pinnacle, and Epicor ECM's Nucleus Research recognition. D. Scott Beaver discusses NetSuite financial automation and planning enhancements, while SAP-sponsored IDC research forecasts partner-economy growth. Dr. Isabella Holst previews Software AG's conXion event. The issue brings these developments back to a common selection question: which combination of processes, architecture, partners and organizational commitment can serve the business now while leaving it able to change?