Choosing and working with implementation partners and consultants

To choose an implementation partner or consultant, first decide what you are buying: product depth, process design, a narrow technical task or extra hands. Then pick the type of firm that is good at that, and agree a pricing model that fits how well the scope is known.

Write a statement of work specific enough that both sides would describe "done" the same way. Plan from the start to finish the engagement able to run the system yourself.

Our disclosure

Lumina ERP is a consultancy, so we are one of the options this page describes. We have tried to keep the advice neutral, and the questions and red flags below apply to us as much as to anyone else.

Types of outside help at a glance

Outside help comes in five broad types, each with its own strengths and risks.

Type	What it is	Good at	Watch for
Publisher professional services	The ERP publisher's own consulting arm	Deep product knowledge, direct line to development and support, standard methodology	Higher rates, staff rotation, less attention for smaller accounts, bias toward the publisher's products
VAR or reseller partner	A firm authorized to sell and implement the ERP, often with add-ons of its own	End-to-end implementation, licensing and support in one place, industry templates	Revenue tied to license and add-on sales, and support quality varies by partner
Independent consultancy	A firm not selling licenses, working across products or clients	Neutral selection, process design, project rescue, second opinions	Depth varies by person, and it may lack direct publisher escalation
Freelancer	One independent professional	A narrow task: a report, a form, an integration, a data load	Single point of failure, availability, insurance, worker classification
Staff augmentation	Contract staff placed under your direction	Capacity: backfill a key user during the project, extra developers	You manage the work and own the outcome, and knowledge leaves with them

Decide what you are buying

Match the need to the type of help before you contact anyone.

You need	Usually best fit
A full implementation or re-implementation	Publisher services or a VAR partner, with an independent reviewer if the stakes are high
Help choosing an ERP or add-on	An independent consultancy with no license revenue at stake
A struggling project brought back on track	An independent consultancy, or a second partner, for an assessment first
Specific technical work (reports, forms, integrations, data migration)	A partner, consultancy or freelancer with named experience in your ERP
Your own people freed up to work on the project	Staff augmentation to backfill daily work while your people run the project
Ongoing help after go-live	A retainer with whoever knows your system, plus internal ownership

How to choose

1. Write a one-page brief. State the goal, the scope you know, the scope you do not, your ERP and version, deadlines and who on your side owns the work. Every candidate responds to the same brief, so you can compare answers.

2. Shortlist two or three firms of the right type. Ask peers, user groups and your ERP publisher for names. Check that each has done work like yours, at your size, on your ERP.

3. Meet the delivery team. Ask to interview the project manager and lead consultants who will do the work. Put their names in the statement of work.

4. Choose references yourself from their list. Ask for customers of your size and industry, one project that went badly and one customer who left. Call them.

5. Compare proposals on the same scope. Line up hours or fees by phase, assumptions, what is excluded and what your staff must do. The cheapest proposal often assumes you do more of the work.

6. Score the finalists. Weight fit, people, method, price and exit terms. The choosing a vendor page has a scoring approach you can reuse.

7. Negotiate the statement of work and master agreement. Use the checklists below before anyone signs.

Pricing models and when each fits

The right model depends on how well the scope is known and who should carry the risk of overrun.

Model	How it works	Fits when	Risk sits with
Fixed fee	A set price for defined deliverables	Scope is well known and stable	The firm, which prices in a buffer and resists changes
Time and materials (T&M)	You pay hours worked at agreed rates, plus expenses	Scope is uncertain or will evolve	You, unless there is an estimate, a cap and regular burn reports
T&M with a cap (not to exceed)	T&M up to a ceiling, with a change order for more	Scope is mostly known with some unknowns	Shared
Retainer	A monthly block of hours or a monthly fee for availability	Ongoing support, advisory, small enhancements	Shared, and unused hours often expire
Milestone or outcome based	Payments tied to accepted milestones	Clear, testable milestones exist	Shared, if acceptance criteria are specific

With invented figures, a distributor gets two quotes for the same data migration. Firm A estimates 400 hours at $175, or $70,000, on T&M. Firm B quotes a fixed $84,000, a 20% premium over the estimate.

Pay the premium if Firm A has a history of overrunning, or if your data is messy enough that 400 hours is optimistic. Skip it if the scope is simple and Firm B will treat every clarification as a change order.

A retainer of 20 hours a month at $160 costs $3,200 a month, or $38,400 a year. Check how many hours you used last year before you sign. A retainer you use half of costs twice its rate.

Writing a statement of work that holds up

A statement of work (SOW) is where most disputes are won or lost. Each item below should be in it.

• Objectives in business terms. "Invoices post to the GL without manual correction" is testable, but "configure AR" is not.
• In scope and out of scope, both listed. What is not listed will be argued over later.
• Deliverables, each with acceptance criteria. Name the document, configuration, report or integration, and how you will decide it is accepted.
• Named key people. Include a clause that they will not be replaced without your agreement, and a replacement at no cost for ramp-up.
• Your responsibilities. Staff time, data, decisions, environments. Missed customer obligations are the most common cause of change orders.
• Assumptions. Every assumption is a potential change order. Read them as carefully as the price.
• Timeline and milestones. Dependencies on both sides are shown.
• Change-order process. How changes are requested, estimated, approved and billed.
• Reporting. Weekly status, hours burned against estimate, risks and open decisions.
• Knowledge transfer. What training, documentation and shadowing you receive, and when.
• Ownership of deliverables. Who owns the code, configurations, documents and data (see below).
• Termination and transition. What you receive if either side ends the work early.

Handling change orders

Change is normal on ERP projects, and uncontrolled change is what breaks budgets. These rules keep it under control.

Rule	Why
Every change is written, estimated and approved before work starts	Verbal "quick changes" become invoices you did not expect
One person on your side can approve changes, up to a set amount	Stops the firm from taking requests from anyone who asks
The estimate shows the impact on schedule as well as cost	A small change can delay go-live
Track changes in a log with running totals	You see the project's real cost month by month
Separate true changes from defects	Fixing something the firm got wrong is not a change order

Who owns the deliverables

Under many service agreements, the firm keeps rights to its own tools, templates and pre-existing code, and grants you a license to use what it builds for you. That can be fine, but you need to know which is which. The table lists what to ask for by deliverable.

Deliverable	What to ask for
Custom code, rules, scripts, reports, forms	Ownership, or a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to modify it, with source delivered each release
Configuration decisions and setup	A configuration document written to your system, not a generic template
Data mappings and conversion scripts	Delivered to you, with the mapping document
Process documents and training material	Ownership, in an editable format
Firm's pre-existing tools and accelerators	A clear list, and what happens to your use of them if the relationship ends
Credentials and admin accounts	All in your name, in your password manager, never only in the firm's

Not legal advice

Intellectual property ownership, work-for-hire language, non-solicitation clauses and liability caps are legal terms. Have counsel review the master services agreement and SOW. See contracts, SLAs and data rights.

Knowledge transfer and avoiding dependence

The best engagement ends with your team able to run, support and change the system, and choosing to call the partner rather than needing to.

• Name an internal owner for every area from day one. They sit in design sessions as well as training.
• Have your people do the work while the consultant watches, before go-live. Cover configuration changes, report edits and month-end steps.
• Require documentation in your own repository. A copy in the firm's portal or someone's inbox is not enough.
• Keep all accounts, licenses and environments in your company's name. That includes cloud tenants, API keys and source repositories.
• Hold a formal handover. A checklist of what was built, where it lives and how to support it, signed by your owner.
• Record the design reasons. Why a setting was chosen matters as much as what it is, especially at the next upgrade.

Extra checks for freelancers and staff augmentation

Individual contractors are often excellent value, but they bring questions a firm answers for you.

The first is worker classification. The IRS weighs behavioral control, financial control and the relationship when deciding whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor (IRS, retrieved 2026-09-28). Staff augmentation through an agency usually moves employment obligations to the agency, but confirm it. The other checks are simpler.

Check	Why
Insurance	Ask for professional liability and general liability certificates
Access	Named accounts, least privilege, removed on the last day
Backup	Who covers if they are sick, on vacation or leave
Confidentiality	A signed NDA and a written agreement on ownership of work

Questions to ask any partner or consultant

1. Who exactly will work on our project, and what have they done on our ERP and version?
2. What is your revenue from licenses or add-ons you would recommend to us?
3. What do you assume we will do, and how many hours of our staff time does your estimate need?
4. What went wrong on a project like ours, and what did you change afterward?
5. How do you handle change orders, and what share of your recent projects ended above the original estimate?
6. What do we own at the end, and what stays yours?
7. How will you make sure we can support this ourselves after go-live?
8. If we part ways halfway, what do we receive and how long does transition take?

Red flags

Watch for these during selection and in the first months of work.

• The people in the sales meeting disappear once the contract is signed.
• A proposal is much cheaper than the others and carries a long list of assumptions.
• The proposal names no consultants, only "resources to be assigned".
• Recommendations always include the firm's own add-ons.
• Admin credentials are held only by the firm, or systems are registered in the firm's name.
• Documentation is promised "at the end of the project".
• The firm resists you calling any reference it did not pick.
• Change orders appear for defects in the firm's own work.

What a healthy partnership looks like

Once the work is under way, these are the signs it is going well.

Sign	What you see
Transparency	Weekly burn reports with no surprises, and problems raised early
Shared ownership	Your people make decisions, and the partner advises and builds
Honest scope	The partner tells you when something is a bad idea, even if it is billable
Growing independence	Each quarter you need them for less routine work and more for real change
Stable team	The same senior people over time, with handover notes when someone moves

Next steps

Write the one-page brief before you call anyone. It forces you to decide what you are buying and gives every firm the same starting point. That makes their answers comparable and exposes the ones that did not read it.