How to choose an ERP for a manufacturing company: 5 steps

There’s a point in the life of every manufacturing business where growth becomes hard to keep under control. It usually means the system the company was built on can no longer keep up with today’s demands. If you’re losing whole hours to customers, suppliers, invoices and stock, you’ve probably reached the point where you need an ERP.

The hard part isn’t deciding you need one, it’s choosing well. And the choice doesn’t start with demos; it starts with how your shop floor works.

Below are the 5 steps we would follow if we had to choose an ERP for a factory in Romania today.

1. Write down, on one page, how an order moves through your company

The first instinct is to look at the software on the market. Before that, write down in detail the path an order takes: where your customers come from, how you prepare the quote, how you put it into production, how you deliver and how you get paid. At each step, check who handles it, what they use to do their job, and where time is lost or things get stuck.

It may seem like a lot of work, but it’s the most useful page of the whole project. It shows clearly what the software needs to do. Without it, it’s very easy to get distracted by features that would be nice to have and forget what you absolutely need.

Talk it through with your production manager and whoever handles purchasing. They may point out bottlenecks you weren’t even aware of.

2. Ask for a demo on your product, not the standard one

Any software looks good in a demo prepared in advance. To see whether it works for your processes, give the vendor a real product and a real order, and ask explicitly to see what matters to you. For example:

• the bill of materials and the cost that results from it;
• the work order, from release to finished product;
• how raw materials and scrap are handled;
• what happens when a material runs out halfway through an order;
• lot traceability, if your customers require it;
• how people on the shop floor report their work.

On that last point, if the answer is that reporting is done on paper and typed in at the office at the end of the day, you already know enough.

3. Check the ANAF requirements, and who keeps them up to date

The software must issue invoices through e-Factura (Romania’s mandatory e-invoicing system) and pull incoming ones automatically from SPV, the ANAF online portal, generate SAF-T (D406) and produce UIT codes for e-Transport, if you ship goods that require them.

Every vendor will tell you their software works with e-Factura, SAF-T (D406) and e-Transport. Ask to see them working, especially SAF-T, where most problems show up.

But the question that really matters is a different one: who makes the updates when the law changes, how quickly, and at what cost? ANAF’s rules change often, and you need to be ready before the deadline, not after.

4. Calculate the cost over 3 years, not the license price

Switching to a new system can look cheap, especially if you only look at the license costs.

The reality is different. The total cost includes licenses, implementation, data migration, staff training, support and any customizations. And licenses and support are paid month after month, so calculate the cost over 3 years. An offer can look cheap in the first year and cost you much more in the long run.

There’s one more cost few people factor in: your people’s time. They take part in the analysis, check the migrated data, learn the system and test it, all on top of their day-to-day work.

To know exactly what you’re getting, ask for a structured offer that lists everything the project includes, with estimated hours for each phase. Very cheap offers usually leave out data migration or training, and the difference shows up later as extras.

5. Choose the partner as carefully as the software

The same software works brilliantly in one factory and fails in another. The difference is usually the team that implements it. Before you sign, ask:

• Can you show me how you would actually handle a workflow from my factory?
• Who will actually work on the project, and how available are they?
• What does support look like after launch, how much does it cost and how quickly do I get an answer?
• Who owns the configurations and customizations if I want to change partners?

The last question matters more than it seems. With some systems you stay tied to a single vendor. Make sure that what gets built for you stays yours.

Warning signs: a fixed price given without seeing your processes, the promise that the software “does everything”, and a timeline the vendor can’t break down into phases for you.

Odoo: when it fits and when it doesn’t

Since we’re an Odoo partner, it’s only fair to be direct here too.

Odoo suits small and mid-sized factories that want sales, stock, manufacturing and purchasing in a single system and plan to grow. It isn’t the right choice if you only need invoicing, or if your industry already has a specialized program that everyone in the field uses. For example, we once spoke with a company in the meat industry and recommended they look for a dedicated system. They needed traceability per animal, carcass grading and cutting yield, and software built specifically for the meat industry does these things much better than a general-purpose ERP.