An ERP is one of the longest-lived decisions a business makes. You will run your accounts, stock and people on it for years, and moving off it later is painful. Demos all look good, so the trick is to ask the questions demos don’t answer. Here are the twelve we would ask, and what a good answer sounds like.
Before you talk to vendors
Write down your five most important processes in plain words (for example: “a phone order becomes a delivery and an invoice; payment usually comes in 30 days”) and the three reports you most want every Monday. Bring them to every demo and ask to see your process, not the vendor’s standard script.
1. Does it cover our whole business in one database?
Accounts, sales, purchases, inventory, and production or payroll if you need them, should share one database. “Integrations” between separate products are a weaker substitute: they break, lag and disagree.
2. Can it follow our process, or must we follow its process?
Ask the vendor to change a form, add a field or add an approval step during the demo. If that needs a developer and a quotation, every future change will too. Good systems let a trained administrator do it, with changes previewed and recorded.
3. Where will our data live, and who can see it?
On the vendor’s servers (cloud) or on yours (self-hosted)? In which country? What does the software send back to the vendor? With self-hosting your data stays on a server you control; with cloud you depend on the vendor’s policies.
4. What will it really cost over five years?
Ask for licences for the number of users you expect in five years, plus set-up, migration, training, hosting, support and any paid add-ons. Compare monthly, yearly and one-time options; the cheapest first year is often not the cheapest five years.
5. How does it handle our compliance?
For Indian businesses that means GST returns, GSTR-2B matching, e-invoicing, e-way bills, TDS, PF and ESI. Ask exactly what the system produces for each and whether it files directly or prepares files for upload.
6. How is access controlled?
Look for roles with permissions per action, record scope (for example, a branch manager sees only their branch), field-level rules that hide cost prices or salaries, and checks that stop one person holding conflicting powers, like creating and approving the same payment.
7. Is there a trustworthy audit trail?
Every create, edit, delete and approval should be recorded with who, when and the old and new values. Submitted documents should be locked, with changes made by cancelling and amending, not by quietly editing the past.
8. How are backups made and restored?
Who takes backups, how often, are they encrypted, and can you restore one yourself? For self-hosted systems, also agree who keeps copies off the server. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup.
9. Is there a ready starting point for our industry?
Industry templates (retail, trading, manufacturing, restaurants, hotels, schools, clinics, services) save weeks. Check that installing one adds to your setup rather than overwriting it, and that you can preview what it will add.
10. What does implementation look like, week by week?
Ask for a plan: discovery, installation, configuration, data migration, training by role and support after go-live. A small single-company set-up can take days; a multi-company rollout takes weeks. Be wary of anyone promising everything for everyone in a day. Our ERP implementation plan walks through each step.
11. What support do we get after go-live?
Response times, channels, who you talk to, and what is included versus charged by the hour. The first three months after go-live are when you need help most.
12. Can we leave if we have to?
Can you export all your data in a usable format? Is there an API for integrations? Your data is yours; make sure the contract and the software both agree.
How Qila ERP answers these questions
We built Qila ERP with these questions in mind: one database for accounts and GST, sales and POS, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, HR and payroll; a no-code Designer for forms with as many fields as you need and approval workflows with five modes; self-hosted, with your data on your own server; roles with 13 permission actions, field rules and segregation-of-duties checks; a hash-chained audit trail; encrypted backups you restore from the screen; industry Qila Packs that only add, never overwrite; and a REST API. Licences come monthly, yearly or one-time, from $35 a month.
Bring your five processes and three reports to a Qila ERP demo and judge it on your own work. New to the topic? Start with the benefits of ERP software.
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