ERP Service Providers — the five categories DACH buyers actually need
An ERP project is rarely delivered by the software vendor alone. Around the licence sit four to six distinct service categories, each with its own market and its own success criteria. This page lists the five categories that matter for German-speaking mid-market buyers and links into our dedicated sub-directories.
The categories are independent: a single project usually involves a selection advisor, an implementation partner, a hosting provider, an integration specialist and a training partner — sometimes overlapping, but rarely combined in one supplier. Buyers who shop for a single ‘ERP partner’ for everything tend to overpay and to lock themselves out of the natural escalation paths.
Selection advisors
Independent selection advisors guide buyers through the requirements-document phase, the long-list and short-list cuts, the demos and the contract negotiation. Their value is methodology and benchmark data, not vendor allegiance. The good ones declare their vendor incentives openly and decline mandates where their independence is compromised. Typical fees in the DACH mid-market range from EUR 30–120k for a full selection cycle, less for compact projects. See our selection advisors directory.
Implementation partners
Implementation partners are the vendor's certified consultancies that actually deliver the project: requirements analysis, customising, data migration, training, hypercare. Quality varies more than buyers expect — a single vendor will have partners ranging from outstanding to barely competent. Reference checks against the partner's own customers in the same industry segment matter far more than the partner's tier badge from the vendor. See our implementation consulting directory.
Hosting partners
Hosting partners run the ERP infrastructure for customers that want to leave the data centre without going SaaS. The German hosting market is dominated by a handful of regulated providers — T-Systems, Plusserver, IONOS Cloud, noris network, gridscale — complemented by vendor-specific hosting specialists for proAlpha, abas, oxaion and the Sage product family. Selection criteria are BSI C5 attestation, data-residency commitments and the operational responsibility matrix. See our hosting partners directory.
Integration specialists
Integration specialists build and operate the interfaces between the ERP and the surrounding system landscape — CRM, e-commerce, WMS, MES, banking, DATEV, EDI, supplier portals. Modern projects increasingly use iPaaS platforms (Workato, Boomi, Azure Logic Apps, Lobster) rather than point-to-point code, and integration specialists usually carry deep expertise in two or three of these platforms. See our integration specialists directory.
Training and change management
Training partners deliver user training, key-user enablement and adoption coaching around go-live. The honest mid-market practice is to budget training as a separate workstream from the implementation, with a separate provider where possible — a partner that delivers both the implementation and the training has an incentive to under-invest in the training side. Change-management consulting overlaps with this category and is most relevant in larger or politically sensitive migrations. See our training providers directory.
Related Topics
- Selection advisors
- Implementation consulting
- Hosting partners
- Integration specialists
- Training providers
Frequently Asked Questions
Can one partner cover all five categories?
Some can claim it; few deliver it well. The market reality is that selection advice and implementation are conflicts of interest by construction, and that hosting and integration are technical specialisations not many consultancies invest in. A ‘full-service’ partner is usually strong in implementation and adequate in the others. Buyers benefit from at least two separate providers across the five categories.
How do we compare implementation partners objectively?
Reference checks with the partner's customers from the last 24 months, in your industry, at your size. Ask about scope creep, escalation behaviour, key-personnel changes and the realised vs planned go-live date. Vendor-supplied references are screened; reach out via LinkedIn to the actual customer project leads listed in case studies.
When is a selection advisor worth the fee?
Above roughly EUR 500k total project budget the methodology and benchmark data of an experienced selection advisor usually pay for themselves through better contract terms and avoided dead ends. Below that, a structured internal process based on the ERP RFP process playbook and the requirements-document template covers most of the upside without the external fee.