Client Responsibilities in ERP Solution Selection
Client Responsibilities in ERP Solution SelectionThis document outlines what your team will be responsible for during the ERP solution selection...
ERP Selection Consulting
ERP Selection Built Around Your Business
Victoria Fide helps you cut through vendor noise, define what your business actually needs, and choose the ERP that fits — before you sign anything.
What this engagement covers
From business requirements definition through contract signature — including RFP development, vendor management, independent evaluation, and contract negotiation. Victoria Fide participates at every stage.
70%
of ERP initiatives fail to fully meet their original business case goals.
Gartner, 2024
The Highest-Stakes Decision in Your Transformation
No other decision in a technology transformation carries more long-term consequence than ERP selection. A poorly chosen system shapes your implementation timeline, your configuration costs, your training burden, and your organization's ability to operate effectively for the next decade. By the time the gaps become visible, the contract is already signed.
Most organizations go into this process under-prepared, relying on vendor demos choreographed to show exactly what buyers want to see. Panorama Consulting Group's 2026 ERP Report found that more than a quarter of organizations exceeded their project budgets — and points to a common cause: organizations discover fatal misfits late in the project, then turn to additional technology, scope expansion, and custom builds to compensate.
The selection phase is your highest-leverage moment. Once the contract is signed, that window closes.
Working for You, Not the Vendor
When the Vendor Guides the Selection Process, the Selection Process Serves the Vendor
ERP vendors are sophisticated. Their sales processes are refined. Their demos are produced to show you exactly what you want to see — and their references are clients who had positive experiences. None of that is surprising. Vendors are in the business of selling software.
The problem is that most organizations approach selection without anyone on their side who has seen this playbook before. Someone who knows which questions surface the real implementation risks, which contract terms deserve scrutiny, and which demo scenarios actually predict real-world fit.
Our Independence Policy
Victoria Fide has no financial relationship with any ERP vendor. We don't earn referral fees or placement commissions. Our only interest is finding the system that is genuinely the right fit for your business — which means we're equally willing to recommend against a vendor as for one.
How the Engagement Works
Our ERP Selection Process: From Requirements to Contract Signature
01
Assess Your Business
Victoria Fide works with your team to develop a clear picture of how your business actually operates today — your workflows, your pain points, and what a new ERP specifically needs to deliver. This work produces your business requirements and current-state process documentation: assets grounded in how you actually operate, defined by your business rather than by any particular ERP's strengths.
02
Structure the RFP
Your business requirements become the foundation of a structured RFP that forces vendors to respond to your specific needs rather than their standard pitch. Vendors who know their responses will be evaluated against specific, weighted criteria engage differently than vendors who believe they can win on demo production value alone.
03
Manage the Vendor Process
Victoria Fide manages vendor outreach, shortlisting, and coordination, based on documented criteria rather than on which vendor follows up most aggressively. Demo scenarios are scripted around your actual use cases, requiring vendors to demonstrate against your real transactions and edge cases instead of their curated highlight reel.
04
Deliver an Independent Recommendation
Victoria Fide evaluates vendors using weighted scoring combined with qualitative assessment from the demo process and reference conversations. The output is a clear, documented recommendation — and we'll tell you just as clearly when a vendor isn't the right fit as when they are. And if none of the vendors evaluated is a strong enough fit, we'll tell you that too — along with what's driving the gap. Sometimes it means revisiting a requirement. Sometimes it means widening the search. Either way, knowing before you sign is far better than discovering it after.
05
Support Contract Negotiation
The contract phase is where organizations frequently give back leverage they spent months building. Victoria Fide participates alongside your team and legal counsel — bringing the ERP-specific knowledge most legal teams don't have about where the risk is concentrated and what the contract language implies for implementation scope, support, and future costs.
What You Receive
Documentation That Works for You
Your business requirements — prioritized and structured, independent of any vendor's capabilities
Current-state process documentation — an accurate record of how your operations work today
A vendor evaluation record — the structured scoring, demo feedback, and reference findings that support and document your decision
An independent recommendation — Victoria Fide's clear, reasoned guidance on the right ERP for your business
A reviewed contract — with Victoria Fide's input on terms, risks, and negotiation outcomes
This documentation is yours. If your organization chooses to move forward without Victoria Fide's continued involvement, you have everything an implementation team needs to begin. If you continue with Victoria Fide through ERP Implementation Readiness and beyond, this work becomes the foundation of every subsequent engagement.
What Clients Say
Victoria Fide helped us select our ERP solution and prepare for our implementation. They reviewed our implementation plan and provided valuable feedback. One of the things we really appreciate about Victoria Fide is their corporate values. I am confident in their integrity and their expertise."
Brent Smith
CEO, The Aagard Group
I love that Victoria Fide is system agnostic. They aren't tied to anyone, and I could trust that they weren't getting a check from the software company to tell me to do things a certain way. I knew they were working for us and not the ERP provider."
Hubert Visee
President, Carlson AirFlo
The Experience Behind the Work
Victoria Fide's advisory team is led by Tory Bjorklund, who has been involved in technology implementations since 1987 — across manufacturing, distribution, and enterprise-scale organizations — and Adele Graser, who has guided complex ERP and digital transformation initiatives since 2014. The methodology Victoria Fide brings to every engagement is built from that combined experience, not borrowed from a framework.
Common Questions
ERP Selection Consulting
Answers to what executive leaders ask most before engaging.
How long does ERP selection take?
A typical selection runs three to four months, provided your selection team can commit roughly 30% of their time over that period. Much of Victoria Fide's process is built to protect your team's time. Scripted, scenario-based demos compress what vendors often stretch across full days into focused hours, and a structured evaluation framework reduces the back-and-forth iterations that drag selection out. The timeline depends most on your team's availability to participate in the workshops, demos, and evaluation sessions the process requires.
How much of our team's time will this require?
Selection is a collaborative process. Victoria Fide runs it, but the decisions are yours, and that requires real involvement from the people who know your business. Plan for your selection team to dedicate about 30% of their time during the engagement. That investment is concentrated in the requirements work up front, the demo sessions, and the evaluation that follows. Victoria Fide structures that time so it produces a decision efficiently, keeping your people focused on the choices that matter instead of unfocused vendor meetings.
We're already in a selection process. Is it too late to bring you in?
No. Organizations bring Victoria Fide in at different stages. Some come before any vendor contact, others mid-process when the demos have started to blur together or the decision feels driven more by vendor momentum than by fit. Wherever you are, Victoria Fide can step in, establish the structure that may be missing, and make sure the decision ahead is grounded in your requirements rather than the sales process. The earlier the better, though it's rarely too late to add objectivity before a contract is signed.
What does an engagement cost?
The investment varies based on the size and complexity of your organization. It is a fraction of what a misaligned ERP costs to implement, work around, or replace. A conversation is the best way to understand what an engagement scoped to your situation would involve.
The Right ERP Starts With the Right Process
Before the vendor sales process builds momentum — or before it goes any further — bring in an independent advisor who is working for you, not for the vendor. The first conversation costs nothing. The wrong ERP selection costs far more than that.
Where to go next
Ready to begin implementation? ERP Implementation Readiness →
Not sure where your transformation should begin? Digital Transformation Strategy →
Additional Resources
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