How an evaluation runs
Six steps, from the people who decide to the decision itself. Select a step to see what happens in it and what you take away from it.
Steps
Step
Decision owners and goals
Who decides, on which criteria, by when. Evaluation is a project with a sponsor, not a series of demos.
What you take away
The evaluation plan: your company profile, an owner and a date for every step, and the weight of each dimension.
Step
Scenarios from your transactions
We take real documents (last month's Polish euro invoice, a year-end asset schedule, a service job with parts, an intercompany sale) and script them as demo scenarios.
What you take away
The requirements behind the scenarios: questions from the ACURATE question bank and your own, each marked must, should or could.
Step
Scripted demonstrations, scored
Vendors demonstrate the scenarios, not their roadmap. Every dimension gets evidence, not impressions.
What you take away
The Request for Information for the long list, and the Request for Proposal with a workbook in which every vendor answers every requirement in the same form.
Step
Architecture decision
Platform-versus-best-of-breed boundaries are set here, so integrations are designed rather than discovered.
What you take away
A cheat sheet for each platform on the shortlist that we implement: what it covers, where its documentation is, and what to ask in its demonstration.
Step
Total cost over five years
Licences, implementation, integration, upgrades, internal administration, training, change.
What you take away
The commercial part of the Request for Proposal: the licence model, the total cost over five years and the limits on price increases, asked of every vendor in the same way.
Step
Decision and handover
A documented recommendation, and a draft Target Operating Model that the implementation starts from on day one.
What you take away
The decision on record: the scores and the weights behind them. The draft Target Operating Model comes with an evaluation we run, never with the kit, because it is implementation work.
Selection is where projects are won or lost
Every ERP carries a view of the business, and a feature list hides most of it. Why systems differ
Software selection is where ERP projects are quietly lost. Panorama Consulting's 2026 report found that among projects over budget, the most common cause was an unexpected need for additional technology: a misfit discovered after signing. Selection is the cheapest moment to be rigorous and the most expensive moment to be casual. Why an evaluation framework at all
A demo shows you what the vendor wants you to see. An evaluation shows you what you will live with. So we score every shortlisted system on the same evidence, taken from your own business, before anyone signs.
ACURATE turns the selection into a project with a sponsor, criteria and a deadline. It suits a company replacing its ERP as much as one choosing its first professional system. It stops at the selection: the implementation is a decision of its own.
Seven dimensions decide fit
ACURATE scores a shortlisted system on the things that decide fit, not on the length of its feature list:
Region fit
the accounting formats, tax mechanics, audit files, banking protocols, payroll boundaries and collection rules of every jurisdiction you operate in, today and in your growth plan.
Industry fit
how the system follows your margin: production, distribution, assets, people-time, and the mixed models where most systems break.
Size fit
whether the organisation you have can administer the system you are buying.
Platform
data-model flexibility, interface generation, API completeness, extensibility without forking, deployment choice.
Protection
security, privacy and legal resilience, including where the data lives and how you would leave.
People
the end users' expectations, the partner ecosystem, and who picks up the phone in year three.
Price
the model as much as the level: user-based and code-based pricing punish adoption and experimentation; transaction-based pricing tends to follow value.
You weight each dimension from 0 (not at all) to 5 (decisive). The weights go into the Request for Proposal, so every vendor knows what counts before it answers. Why ACURATE is the right framework
What we score against
The seven dimensions say how we score. The capability map says what we score against: five domains and fifteen capabilities that an ERP landscape has to cover, with the transactional spine running through the middle. Every shortlisted system is drawn onto this map before a single demo is scripted: which capabilities the platform owns natively, which belong to best-of-breed applications, and which are out of scope.
Scroll sideways to see the whole map.
Select a capability to see what it covers.
Product lifecycle
Designs, versions and retires the products and services: specifications, bills of materials and engineering changes.
Process areas it serves
None of the sixteen process areas; it runs beside them.
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Supply chain
Plans supply against demand: forecasts, replenishment and where the stock should be.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Client relationship
Wins and keeps customers: contacts, campaigns, leads, opportunities and quotes.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Project portfolio
Chooses and steers the projects: priorities, budgets and capacity across the portfolio.
Process areas it serves
None of the sixteen process areas; it runs beside them.
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Human resources
Looks after the people: hiring, contracts, time and absence, skills and performance.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Purchasing
Buys what the business needs: requisitions, framework agreements, purchase orders and receipts.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Warehousing
Keeps and moves the stock: locations, waves, picking, packing, loads and counts.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Sales & shipping
Takes the order and sees it delivered and invoiced: contracts, orders, deliveries and invoices.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Quality & repairs
Proves the quality and keeps the assets running: inspections, deviations, maintenance and repairs.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Accounting
Records and closes every transaction: receivables, payables, revenue, assets, the general ledger and its reports.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Planning & analysis
Sets the plan and explains the gap: budgets, forecasts and the analysis of the actuals against them.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Manufacturing
Runs production on the shop floor: work orders, routings, capacity and the time and material they use.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Customer service
Answers the customer after the sale: cases, service levels, warranties and returns.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Professional service
Delivers work as projects: staffing, time and expenses, billing and the margin per project.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Payroll
Pays the people: salaries, commissions, social insurance and the postings to the ledger.
Process areas it serves
Closest MBPC end-to-end process
Connected to
Every question in the ACURATE question bank is filed under one of these capabilities, or under the system as a whole. That keeps the requirements, the demonstrations and the scores on the same map.
What you take away: the evaluation kit
The ACURATE question bank holds requirements we have written for ERP selections. Each states what the system or the vendor does. It carries a category (functional, technical, service, legal or commercial) and a priority: must, should or could. You choose the requirements that apply, adapt them and add your own.
Every evaluation produces a kit of documents in Word and Excel, compiled from your company profile, your requirements and your weights:
- An evaluation plan with the six steps, their owners and their dates.
- A Request for Information, for the long list.
- A Request for Proposal on functional, technical, service, legal and commercial requirements, with an Excel workbook for the vendors' answers.
- A cheat sheet for Odoo and one for NetSuite, when they are on your shortlist.
The workbook has one sheet per category. For every requirement, the vendor picks one of six responses: standard, configuration, extension, third party, planned or not available. It explains the choice and gives a reference.
All other columns are locked, so every answer arrives in the same place and the answers compare line by line. Capability and dimension have columns of their own, so the answers can also be filtered by either. A summary sheet counts the responses.
The documents come in our house style, in the look of a familiar ERP, or in your company's own Office theme.
In the client area. You work on your evaluation in our client area, signed in: you request access, we invite you, and you accept the client area terms. It stays open for the period we agree, and every change reaches the next download of the kit. When it closes, you can still read and download it for 90 days; we write to you 30 days before it is deleted.
Your documents serve your selection
The client area terms let you use what you build with ACURATE for your own ERP selection. You may:
- download the documents, adapt them and give them your own design;
- send them to the vendors and partners you invite to answer, present or quote, who may use them only for their answer to you;
- include them, with the vendor's answers, in the contract with the vendor you choose, so that its commitments are on record.
Your own requirements, processes, volumes and scores stay yours, without these limits. The templates, the question bank and the scoring stay ours, and the reference to ACURATE stays on the documents.
The documents are not a basis for implementing or running the system unless we lead or take a substantial part in that project, or agree in writing. A consultancy that accompanies your selection receives them only with our written consent. The terms decide; this is a summary. Client area terms, section 6 (in German)
Reviews inform the questions, not the scores
User reviews on G2 and Gartner Peer Insights tell you what other companies experienced. The Gartner Magic Quadrant and the Forrester Wave are analysts' evaluations of a whole market. None of them has run your transactions. In an ACURATE evaluation, they shape the questions you ask; the scores come from the scripted demonstrations.
Your requirements, not our resale list
We implement two platforms, Odoo and NetSuite, and we say openly where each one fits. We are an official Odoo partner. We say so up front, because it is the first question to ask any adviser. The two platforms we implement
ACURATE scores every shortlisted system on the same evidence, against your requirements, not against our resale list. If neither of our platforms fits your requirements, the scores show it.
The evaluation ends with the decision. Process analysis, process maps and the Target Operating Model belong to the implementation, which we run with ACUCANON. How we implement