ERP and WMS selection
Requirements that reflect your floor, a shortlist, scripted demos, and a recommendation with three-year costs.
Service · Lead
Fractional CTO
Most operations businesses have no one technical at the table when an ERP vendor presents, a customer demands EDI, or the server goes out of support. A fractional CTO is that person for a few hours a week: twenty years of warehouse systems, on your side.
The decisions are big and rare: which ERP, whether to leave Dynamics GP, how to answer a customer's EDI mandate, what to do about a SQL Server that Microsoft stopped patching. None justifies a full-time hire. All of them cost real money when guessed.
The retainer puts someone in the room who has run these decisions before, from the inside of warehouses that used packaged ERPs and ones built from scratch.
What it covers
The technical decisions, owned.
Vendor oversight
In the meetings, reading the statements of work, holding the implementer to the plan.
The sunset calendar
Dynamics GP, SQL Server 2016 and 2017, Windows Server 2016: a plan for each before the date forces one.
Roadmap and budget
A 12-month technology plan the owner can read, updated each quarter.
Risk and continuity
Backups that restore, access that is revoked when people leave, and the questions your insurer will ask.
Your IT provider, coordinated
The MSP keeps the desktops running; we make sure the systems strategy is someone's job.
How it runs
A standing rhythm.
Start
The assessment, if you have not had one, and a 12-month plan.
Weekly
Decisions pending, vendors in flight, what needs the owner.
As needed
Vendor demos, SOW reviews, incidents, the customer who wants EDI by Friday.
Quarterly
Plan updated, budget revisited, hours re-sized.
Common questions
Before you book.
How is this different from our MSP?
Your managed service provider keeps computers, email and the network running. This retainer owns the systems that run the business: the ERP, the warehouse, the integrations and the decisions about them. The two work together.
What if we need more hours one month?
Hours above the retainer bill at the contract rate, or you buy a prepaid block. Either way you approve every hour in the portal before it is invoiced.
Can you also do the building?
Yes, through fixed-price projects quoted separately, so advice and delivery stay distinct and you can take a recommendation elsewhere.
Which decision is on your desk right now?
Thirty minutes, no obligation. We reply within one business day.