Get To Know Your Vendor

You want to ensure that the software vendor focuses on your business and has a customer base of companies with similar characteristics, processes, and problems. Ensure that the consultants from the software vendor have the experience of implementing the system in companies similar to yours and have not come straight from completing an implementation at a process company. 

You buy the vendor’s expertise, service, and support, not just their software. Does the vendor have a deep understanding of your industry and business issues? Not just the sales team but the implementation consultants and senior management as well. Remember, it's people who provide services. Interview the personnel who will actually be working on your project. The vendor may have many good people, but will you have access to them? Speak to their senior management. Do they really understand the issues facing job shops, machine shops, or make-to-order manufacturers today, or do they just talk in general platitudes? 

Your business system should help you run your business, not run you out of business. Feeling comfortable with your vendor is a key decision factor. After the dating game, you must get married; divorce can be expensive for both parties.

1. Can you talk directly with senior management, or are you relegated to the insulation layer of middle managers?
2. Will the software vendor allow you to interview the people supporting your implementation?
3. Can the vendor show multiple customers within your industry?