ERP assessment
Know what your operation needs before you buy an ERP
We map your operating, administrative and financial processes, pinpoint where time, control and margin are lost, and compare each need against what the Microsoft Dynamics 365 standard already solves. You receive an assessment with prioritized gaps and a roadmap, whether or not you decide to work with us afterward.
When this service applies
- You are evaluating an ERP and cannot compare the proposals
- You received quotes with different scopes that are hard to compare with each other, and none of them starts from your own view of what your company needs.
- The information you need to decide arrives late or does not add up
- Every area reports its own numbers, the close drags on, and decisions get made on estimates instead of data.
- Your current system did not keep up with growth
- What worked at a smaller volume now demands manual work, parallel controls and people dedicated to reconciling what the system does not resolve.
- A previous project did not deliver what was expected
- A system was implemented that people only half use. Before investing again you need to understand what failed: the product, the scope, the data or the adoption.
- You have to justify the investment to the board or to headquarters
- They are asking you for a business case with concrete problems, scope and risks, not a product presentation.
Expected outcome
An informed decision, with prioritized gaps and a realistic path
When the assessment is done you have documented how your operation works today, where the bottlenecks and duplications sit, which gaps an ERP has to close and which ones can be resolved by changing the process without buying anything. That base lets you compare proposals against your own criteria, size the effort and decide whether to move forward, in what order and with what scope.
Scope and deliverables
- Map of the key processes: operating, administrative and financial, with roles, inputs, outputs and the systems involved.
- Inventory of the bottlenecks, duplications, manual controls and risk points found, with their impact described.
- Fit-gap analysis between your needs and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central standard.
- Assessment of the current environment when you already run on Dynamics GP, NAV, AX or Business Central: configuration, customizations, integrations and continuity risks.
- Functional, technical and integration requirements expressed so that vendors can be compared like for like.
- Phased roadmap, with dependencies, prerequisites and decision criteria between phases.
- List of improvements your company can apply without waiting for the ERP, ranked by impact and effort.
- Identified project risks and proposed mitigation measures.
- Executive presentation of the findings and recommendations for leadership.
Work stages
Framing
We agree with leadership on the objective of the assessment, the areas included, the people to interview and the decision the result has to enable. An assessment with no decision attached to it rarely gets used.
Discovery
Interviews by area and a walkthrough of the processes as they actually happen, not as they are written down. We review the documents, the spreadsheets and the systems used along the way, including the ones nobody declares.
Fit-gap analysis
We compare each need against what the Business Central standard solves and what requires configuration, development or integration. Every gap is recorded with its impact and its alternative.
Standardization and alignment
We propose the standard form of each process, with clear roles and responsibilities, and review it against the business objectives leadership defined. This documentation later becomes the basis for the implementation scope.
Roadmap and business case
We rank the gaps by impact and effort, define phases with decision criteria and estimate the effort for each one. We separate what requires a project from what can be corrected right away.
Presentation and decision
We present the findings to leadership, answer the objections and leave the material so your company can decide independently. If you decide to move forward, this assessment feeds directly into the implementation scope.
Responsibilities
Your company
- Appoint an executive sponsor who defines which decision the assessment has to enable.
- Give us access to the people who execute the processes, not only to those who describe them.
- Share the existing documentation: manuals, org chart, chart of accounts, current reports and active software contracts.
- Provide read access to the current systems when the assessment includes a technical review.
- Validate the process map we capture before the fit-gap analysis.
- Define the business priorities the recommendations will be ranked against.
BETABOX
- Run the interviews and the discovery work without disrupting the operation.
- Document the processes as they actually happen and return them for your validation.
- Compare the needs against the Dynamics 365 standard and record every gap with its alternative.
- Point out the improvements that do not require buying software, even when that reduces the scope of a future project.
- Deliver the roadmap, the risks and the executive presentation.
- State the assumptions behind every effort estimate.
What is included
What is included
- A 100% complimentary assessment at its standard scope, delivered remotely, over the areas agreed.
- Interviews by area and a map of the key processes.
- Fit-gap analysis against the Business Central standard.
- Phased roadmap with risks and decision criteria.
- Improvement recommendations you can apply without waiting for the project.
- Executive presentation of the results.
What is not included
- Detailed process redesign, operating manuals and quality certification: quoted as specific consulting work.
- Accounting, financial, tax or legal audit.
- License valuation, formal project quoting or negotiation with Microsoft: those are later stages.
- Discovery for sites, companies or countries not included in the agreed scope.
- Data migration or data cleansing.
- On-site visits and travel expenses, unless agreed in writing beforehand.
- Implementation of the recommendations: that belongs to the corresponding service.
Success criteria
- Leadership can make a documented investment decision, with gaps, risks and alternatives made explicit.
- The critical processes are mapped and validated by the owner of each area.
- Every gap identified has a decision attached to it: standard, configuration, development or process change.
- Proposals from different vendors can be compared against one and the same requirement list.
- The improvements that can be applied immediately get executed, and their effect is measured against the baseline captured in the assessment.
- The scope of the later project is built on the assessment, without repeating the discovery work.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Does the assessment have a cost?
- The assessment is 100% complimentary at its standard scope. We work this way because a proposal written without knowing your operation is useless to everyone: to you, because you cannot compare it, and to us, because we would end up committing to an impossible scope. If your case calls for a larger discovery effort, because of the number of sites, companies or countries, we tell you before we start and it is agreed separately.
- Does this commit us to contracting the implementation?
- No. The assessment is delivered in full, with the process map, the gaps and the roadmap, and it is yours. You can use it to compare proposals from other vendors or to carry out improvements with your own team. Our interest is that if you do decide to move forward with us, you do it on a scope both sides understand.
- How is this assessment different from a product demo?
- A demo shows what the software does. The assessment starts from your operation: which processes you have, where time and control are lost, and how much of that the standard resolves. That is why the result includes recommendations that involve no software purchase at all, as well as the gaps no product covers without configuration or development. Demos come later, and they run on your own cases.
- Who do you need to interview, and how much of my team time will it take?
- We need to talk to the people who execute the process, not only to those who direct it: accounting, purchasing, sales, warehouse, production and IT, depending on the scope. The time per person is limited and scheduled in advance. The real effort goes into validating the process map we give back to you, and that step is what determines the quality of the result.
- We already have an ERP. Is this service still useful?
- Yes, and in that case the assessment includes a review of the current environment: configuration, customizations, integrations, data quality and continuity risks. The outcome may be to optimize what you have, modernize it or migrate. Often part of the problem is not the product but how it was configured or how it was adopted, and that can be corrected without changing systems.
- Does the assessment include a project quote?
- It includes an effort estimate per phase, with its assumptions stated, which is enough to size the investment. The formal quote is a later step and is built on the scope agreed from the assessment. We do not publish prices: every proposal answers to a specific scope.
Start by understanding your operation, not by choosing software
Book the complimentary assessment. We review your processes, show you where the real problem sits and hand you a roadmap you can use whether or not you decide to work with us.
Contact
Request a complimentary assessment
Tell us what your company needs and a BETABOX advisor will get in touch to schedule a call at your convenience. The initial assessment is 100% free of charge.
- +1 (754) 209-2071
- Bookings
- Book directly on the calendar