Schwetz Consulting — Independent ERP and CRM selection advisor

Schwetz Consulting GmbH is one of the longest-established vendor-neutral ERP and CRM selection advisors in the German-speaking market. Founded by Wolfgang Schwetz in 1985 in Karlsruhe, the firm has accompanied several hundred Mid-Market ERP and CRM selection processes over its history and publishes the annual CRM market overview that has become a reference work for the German CRM market. For ERP buyers Schwetz Consulting is most relevant when the customer wants a structured, vendor-neutral selection process led by an experienced advisor with no commercial alignment to any single ERP or CRM product. The firm does not implement software, does not resell licences and does not take referral commissions from vendors. Its commercial model is anchored in advisory fees paid by the customer, which preserves independence on the buyer side and creates a structurally different incentive from implementation partners that double as selection advisors.

About

Schwetz Consulting GmbH is headquartered in Karlsruhe and was founded in 1985 by Wolfgang Schwetz as one of the first specialised ERP and CRM selection advisories in Germany. The firm has remained owner-managed and operates with a small core team of senior consultants supplemented by associated specialists for specific industry or technology topics. Customer engagements are typically led by named consultants who stay with the project from kick-off through contract signature. The firm publishes the annual CRM Marktspiegel, a market overview that has been continuously updated for more than three decades and is referenced by Mid-Market CRM buyers, vendors and analysts. Adjacent publications and trade-press articles by Wolfgang Schwetz and his team are widely cited in the German enterprise-software community. The firm operates in German throughout, with selected English-language capability for international customer touchpoints. Customers are typically Mid-Market businesses in manufacturing, trade, financial services and selected service segments.

Service offering

The Schwetz Consulting offering is structured around vendor-neutral selection projects covering four phases. First, requirements analysis: workshops with the customer's functional and IT teams to capture business processes, pain points and target-state requirements in a structured catalogue. Second, market screening and longlisting: matching the requirements against the firm's current vendor knowledge to produce a longlist of typically 8 to 15 candidates, narrowed to a shortlist of 3 to 5 through structured screening. Third, RFP execution: drafting the RFP document, orchestrating vendor demonstrations against a scripted demo storyline, scoring vendor responses against weighted criteria, and producing a structured evaluation matrix. Fourth, contract negotiation: supporting the customer through commercial negotiation, total-cost modelling and risk allocation in the implementation contract. The firm does not implement software and does not provide ongoing post-go-live services beyond optional advisory support during early implementation phases.

DACH positioning

In the DACH ERP and CRM selection-advisory market Schwetz Consulting occupies a recognised position alongside Trovarit (Aachen), BARC (Würzburg) and several smaller specialist firms. The differentiators are the firm's longevity (one of the oldest specialist advisories in the market, founded 1985), the published CRM Marktspiegel that demonstrates depth of market knowledge, and the owner-managed structure that supports stable senior staffing on projects. The firm contracts under German law, operates inside the EU data-protection framework (GDPR), and is structurally suited to Mid-Market budgets — project fees are typically in the high five-figure to mid six-figure euro range depending on scope, materially below what global advisory firms charge for comparable selection projects. For Mid-Market customers selecting ERP or CRM, Schwetz Consulting is one of the natural advisory options to evaluate alongside Trovarit and BARC.

Strengths and selection considerations

Strengths to consider: genuine independence from vendor sales channels, deep market knowledge accumulated over more than three decades, owner-managed continuity with stable senior staffing, transparent fee structure and Mid-Market-appropriate pricing. The published CRM Marktspiegel is evidence of structured ongoing market tracking that supports the advisory work. For Mid-Market customers running structured selection processes the firm is a credible counterparty. Limitations to consider: the firm is small relative to larger advisories such as BARC or Trovarit, so the bench depth available for parallel engagements is more limited; in highly specialised industry niches (for example deep automotive Tier-1 supply scenarios or specialised process-industry verticals) industry-specialist firms or product-specialist advisors may complement Schwetz Consulting's broader expertise. For pure-IT-technical evaluations such as platform architecture or cloud-migration topics the firm is less relevant than dedicated technology consultancies.

Related Topics

• ERP selection advisors
• Trovarit

Vendor homepage of Schwetz Consulting

Current view of the website https://www.schwetz.de/