Every ERP demo goes well. The consultant is sharp, the data is clean, the screens are fast. That tells you almost nothing, because the demo environment was built to succeed.
These are the ERP vendor questions we ask on behalf of clients. Not to catch anyone out, but because the answers reveal how the next eighteen months will actually go.
ERP vendor questions about the work itself
1. Who exactly will be on my project?
Names and roles, not titles. The person selling is rarely the person delivering. Ask whether the consultant in the room will be assigned, and what happens if they are not available.
2. How many implementations has this exact team completed in Jordan?
Regional experience is not local experience. Jordanian tax handling, JoFotara, Arabic documents and local payroll are learned on projects, not in training.
3. Can I speak to a client whose project went badly?
The best answer we ever received was a vendor who said yes and gave us a number. That single answer told us more than the reference who was thrilled.
4. What is the longest your team has supported a client after go-live?
A partner with no clients older than eighteen months either loses them or is new. Both are worth knowing.
About scope and change
5. What is explicitly not included in this price?
Ask for the exclusions in writing. Good vendors have a list ready because they have been asked before.
6. What happens when we discover a requirement mid-project?
There is no correct answer, but there is a revealing one. "We absorb small changes and quote for large ones, and here is where the line sits" is a functioning process. "That will not happen" is not.
7. Show me your change request from a real project
Redacted is fine. You are looking at how clearly it explains cost and impact to a non-technical reader.
About the local specifics
8. Show me a JoFotara submission working, today
Live, not slides. This is the single most common gap between what is promised and what exists in Jordan.
9. Print me an Arabic invoice from the system
Check number ordering, alignment and whether the totals block reads correctly right to left. Your customers will see this document more often than you will.
10. Where will our data physically live?
Ask for the region, and whether it can be moved later. Some sectors in Jordan have residency expectations that are easier to satisfy before go-live than after.
About the ending
11. If we leave in three years, what do we take with us?
Ask specifically whether you can export your full transactional history in an open format, and whether that is included or chargeable.
12. Who owns any custom code written for us?
Frequently ambiguous, and expensive when discovered late. Settle it in the contract, not in an email.
How to read the answers
Good ERP vendor questions are not about perfect responses. You are looking for specificity. A vendor who says "usually about three weeks, though it ran to five at a client with similar warehouse complexity" is describing reality. A vendor who says "that is straightforward" is describing a hope.
Ask these ERP vendor questions in the room, write the answers down, and compare them across vendors afterwards. The differences will be larger than the price differences, and they will matter more.
