11 Questions to Ask Before You Sign an ERP Contract

The client was a mid-size manufacturer, 180 employees, operations across two GCC countries. They had run a reasonable vendor evaluation — demos, reference calls, a proposal comparison. The Business Central quote was competitive. They signed a 3-year contract at roughly $95/user/month for 40 users. Standard Business Central Essentials.

Eight months in, as the implementation team was configuring the production floor workflows, someone noticed that the manufacturing module — bill of materials, production orders, capacity planning — required Business Central Premium, not Essentials. Premium runs approximately $135/user/month. For 40 users over the remaining 28 months of the contract, that gap is $60,480. Plus a re-scoping conversation with the implementation partner. Plus the delay while the commercial terms were renegotiated.

Nobody lied. The Essentials vs Premium distinction is documented. The client's team did not ask the right questions, and the vendor's team did not volunteer the information. That is how ERP vendor evaluation failures work — not through deception, through the systematic absence of the right questions at the right time.

We now run through the following questions with every client before any contract conversation ends. Not as a negotiating tactic. As a prerequisite for signing.

1. 01

   What is included in the base license, and what requires an add-on?

   Vendors quote a per-user monthly price that sounds reasonable until you add the modules you actually need. Get a written list of every module you require and confirm each one's inclusion status and price before anyone signs anything. Business Central's Essentials vs Premium distinction alone can double your per-user cost — and most salespeople quote Essentials even when your operations clearly require Premium.

2. 02

   What does a typical implementation cost for a company our size, and who has done it?

   The software license is often 20–40% of total project cost. Implementation partner fees, data migration, training, and customisation make up the rest. Ask for three reference clients in your industry and company size range who will take your call. Not case studies — actual people you can call. If the vendor can't name three, that is the answer.

3. 03

   What is the upgrade path, and what does an upgrade typically cost?

   Cloud ERP vendors push frequent updates; on-premise vendors release major versions. Ask specifically: how often do major versions ship? What customisations typically break on upgrade? What did the last major upgrade cost your existing clients? For Odoo specifically, this question is critical — annual major releases with the potential to break custom modules is a real and recurring cost that almost never appears in initial TCO calculations.

4. 04

   Who owns the data, and how do we get it out?

   This question makes vendors uncomfortable. You want a machine-readable export of all your data, on demand, in a standard format — CSV, JSON, SQL dump. Some vendors make data export difficult or expensive by design. If they hedge on this, it tells you everything about the relationship they expect to have with you once you are locked in.

5. 05

   What is your SLA for support, and what does P1 mean to you?

   "24/7 support" in a contract often means a ticket queue with a response within 24 hours. For a production ERP, a 24-hour response to a critical failure is a full day of business lost. Get the specific response and resolution times for each severity level in writing — not in a sales deck, in the contract itself. Get the SLA terms, then ask what actually happened on the last three P1 incidents.

6. 06

   What is the typical Go-Live timeline for a company our size?

   Ask for P25, P50, and P75 timelines — not the best case. Any vendor who gives you only a best-case number is selling, not planning. Ask what the most common reasons for delays are. If the answer is "scope creep" without any elaboration on how they prevent it or how they communicate risk, you are talking to a vendor who will tell you it is your fault when you go six months over.

7. 07

   How do you handle localisation for our region?

   For companies operating in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or broader MENA: Arabic RTL support, VAT compliance, Zakat calculations, e-invoicing requirements under ZATCA, local payroll rules. These are not afterthoughts — they are core requirements that affect every transaction. If the vendor's answer is "we'll handle that in implementation," get the specific approach, the regulatory references, and the timeline in writing before signing. Localisation gaps discovered post-go-live are expensive.

8. 08

   What does the implementation partner relationship look like?

   Many ERP vendors are software companies, not implementation companies. They will hand you to a partner with varying levels of competence and varying levels of accountability. Ask who specifically will implement your system, how many implementations of this size they have completed, and — critically — whether the vendor will accept any responsibility if the implementation fails. The answer is usually no. At least know that going in.

9. 09

   What happens to our contract if you are acquired or change your pricing model?

   Salesforce acquired Slack. Oracle acquires everything. ERP consolidation is the norm, not the exception. Ask about change-of-control provisions and whether your contract terms survive an acquisition. Ask about annual price escalation caps — a 7% annual increase sounds modest until you compound it over a 5-year contract, at which point your year-five cost is 40% higher than year one.

10. 10

    Can we review the contract with our own counsel before any deadline?

    Any vendor who pressures you to sign before your lawyer has reviewed it is using the deadline as a sales tactic, not managing a real constraint. Quarter-end urgency, "special pricing that expires Friday," limited implementation slots — these are negotiating tools. If a vendor will not give you two weeks to review with counsel, walk away. A vendor worth signing with will give you the time.

11. 11

    What does a typical client look like at year three?

    Ask about renewal rates, expansion rates, and what clients typically wish they had done differently at the start. A vendor with a healthy, satisfied customer base can answer this clearly and will give you honest answers because the honest answers are good. One who deflects, pivots to case studies, or gives vague answers about "success stories" is telling you something important.

What to do with the answers

You are not trying to catch vendors in a lie. The goal is to understand what you are actually buying before you are committed to buying it. A vendor who answers all eleven questions clearly, specifically, and without deflection is a vendor who probably runs good implementations. The questions are a proxy for implementation quality.

If a vendor hedges on more than two of these, that is not negotiation — that is a preview of the relationship. The information asymmetry you experience during the sales process is the same asymmetry you will experience during implementation. It does not improve after the contract is signed.

One opinion that will get pushback: signing an ERP contract is more consequential than hiring a key employee. A mis-hire costs you six months of salary and some disruption. A wrong ERP decision costs you two to three years of implementation pain, productivity loss, and the total cost of the license plus a potential re-implementation. Most companies do more due diligence on a $50K hire than on a $500K ERP commitment. That imbalance explains most ERP failures more clearly than any technical assessment does.

The goal is to find out if they are the right partner before you are eight months and $200K into an implementation. Run through these questions in a single meeting. Take notes. Compare vendor answers side by side. The gaps between what they say and what they can commit to in writing will tell you more than any demo ever will.