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Top 5 Questions to Ask ERP Software Vendors

Searching out inventory and accounting software for wholesalers and distributors is an important and involved project. When doing so, you want to select appropriate software vendors that best suit your company’s needs.

Here are the top 5 questions to ask ERP software vendors:

1. What’s the estimated cost of your ERP software?

It is always good to ask for ballpark figures of the full software and implementation costs. At the same time, you need to be honest and upfront with your software budget to vendors. By discovering the cost of software and comparing it against your budget, you’ll be able to realize if you can afford pursuing the software vendor as a potential candidate. For advice on setting a realistic budget, download our Software Buying Guide.

2. How is your software deployed - What deployment options do you offer?

There are two common deployment methods – Hosted (SaaS) and On-Premise. Once you understand each deployment method and select the one that best suits your company, it’s important to identify software vendors who use your chosen method. If software vendors offer both, it’s worth asking if you can easily switch from one deployment method to the other.

3. How often do you release new updates to the software?

One of the most common reasons for implementing new software is to enable growth. Therefore it’s vital that software companies are constantly developing and debugging the software to ensure they don’t fall behind and stay ahead of the technology curve. Upgrading your software on a periodic basis is beneficial to stay current and increase efficiencies.

4.  After-sales support – What are your support desk hours?

Depending where your company is located, you may be in different time zones than your software provider. It’s important to know what core business operation hours you’ll have for support assistance and identify which software vendors can meet your requirements.

5. What do their clients have to say?

With any significant purchase, it’s important to perform reference checks. Ask for a list of customers you can contact and ask them about their experience and relationship with their software provider. Why wait until the end of the process to do reference checks? Try taking a look at software vendors website as there may be a client testimonials page.

Now that you have 5 key questions to ask software vendors, download our Software Buying Guide to further understand important factors to consider when seeking out inventory management and accounting software for wholesale/distributors.