When you realise you need an enterprise resource planning solution for your business, you enter into an intensive period of evaluation as you seek to choose an ERP solution which will work for you and fit your business. Once chosen, you then need to select a supplier and again this is a critical time as you seek a reliable and knowledgeable partner to work with.
Should you choose to talk to us to find out more about the SAP solutions we can provide to you, you’ll embark on a well defined engagement process – a time during which we will ensure you are given as much information as possible to enable you to make a confident decision about what is best for your business.
If you are thinking of working with us at Codestone, we’ve summarised below some of the main aspects of the onboarding process:
Finding out more about us
Having confidence in your supplier means being sure they understand your business and your requirements from an ERP solution, together with understanding their solution and pedigree. To this end, our initial engagements start with a mutual sharing of information, understanding all there is to know about each other.
Colin Scott is one of our hugely experienced Business Development Managers that many of our customers get to know when they first start discussions with us. He told us what a customer can expect from their first meeting with him: “To start with, I am going to ask you lots of questions about your business and in return I’m going to tell you a bit about us how we do things. We are long standing and we are experienced in the ERP market. We have just won the accolade of SAP’s number one partner for net new names in 2016, which means that we have implemented more systems in three out of the last four years than any other partner in the UK and Ireland.”
Making the right decision
It’s really important that as a customer you understand who you are working with – to try and establish if this is a company that fits with your own. Colin continues: “We currently have in excess of 50 customers who have been through this process originally with another partner. They have bought SAP Business One and then subsequently fallen out with the partner for a variety of reasons and need Codestone to put things right. I always position choosing the right partner as a key area because that is where, I believe, we will beat the competition. For example, no other partner offers true UK based 24/7 support.”
Finding the best solution
From there, discussions will turn to the various SAP products that we offer. This includes the applications SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign and the SAP certified add ons that complement these solutions. These are solutions ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, who have either outgrown their previous software or are embarking on using an enterprise resource planning solution for the first time. We’ll also discuss the various ways in which SAP can be deployed to your business, either as a managed service, through the cloud or on premises.
Progressing to contract
After our initial meetings and presales workshops also, we will provide you with a business proposal. This summarises exactly what Codestone and SAP can do for your business and at what cost.
If you want to proceed you’ll be assigned a consultant who will come and do a much more detailed workshop with your company. They will deliver a more detailed statement of works that comes with a checklist so you have an easy to understand guide to how your SAP solution will be put in place. Once you are happy with this we will combine the Statement of Works with a Master Services Agreement to crystalise the relationship between the two companies.
Choosing an ERP solution is a big decision and our engagement process, which we have only briefly summarised above, is designed to be as thorough as possible to help you to make that decision – find out more about our approach here.
If you want to start your own journey with Codestone, then please get in touch with us today to connect with people like Colin and move towards implementing SAP software which will help to move your business forward.