There’s a lot of advice floating around about how to choose the right ERP for your business: Determine the features you need. Get internal buy-in. Figure out your budget.

I’m not denying that these are important factors — they absolutely are. But at the end of the day, there’s one that might matter more than the rest, and that’s the data. An ERP's true value lies in its ability to seamlessly integrate, manage, and export data across all systems.

This is rarely the framework that finance teams use to inform their decision-making. After having been through a few ERP selection processes myself, I think it all boils down to three key questions: 

1. Can I get all the data into the system?

In other words, will the ERP seamlessly connect with the systems your team already uses? Without this, you can expect to spend a significant amount of your time manually syncing or reconciling data between systems, which nobody wants.Or even worse, it can create serious problems in your workflows. 

I recently talked to a company that had trouble getting Salesforce to integrate properly with their ERP, Intacct. As you might imagine, this created significant issues. It meant contracts had to be entered manually, which caused delays in invoicing, data entry errors, and late payments. 

Here are key integrations to consider: 

• CRM integration: It is critical your ERP integrates with your CRM — whether it be Salesforce, HubSpot, or a next-gen platform — to support invoicing, revenue recognition, and SaaS metrics.
  
  
• Bills and expense management: Your ERP should handle data from your existing expense management tools like Airbase, Ramp, Brex, or Rippling.
  
  
• Invoice management: Integration with platforms like Stripe for invoice handling is essential, especially if your business processes a lot of invoices.
  
  
• Usage data: If your product or service depends on usage data, your ERP should easily import and manage this data.
  
  
• Tax data: Tax software is becoming increasingly important and complex. So make sure your ERP can integrate with these tools as well, whether that’s Avalara, Anrok, or TaxJar. 

I think it’s important to note that while every ERP promises hundreds of integrations, the quality of execution varies widely. Kevin Fennessey, Director of Finance at OpenSpace, agrees: “The difficulty of getting information in—both with human hands and through the apps you’re using—is painful. For example, QuickBooks might technically integrate with a tool like Ramp, but you have to do all your coding in Ramp before syncing it over. Once the data is in QuickBooks, it’s not possible to reclassify it.”

Look for the platform that enables these critical integrations with minimal friction—whether that means avoiding costly consultants or reducing reliance on third-party tools just to get basic integrations up and running.

2. Can I manage all the data once it’s in the system?

Once the data is in the ERP, it should be flexible and functional enough for your team to work with. Many ERP solutions fall short here, according to Fennessey: “One big pain point is when systems force small accounting teams to spend days fighting with the software to do simple things like creating a bill or classifying expenses. Their time is limited, and ERPs need to streamline these workflows.”

I’d pay special attention to the following functions:

• Custom reporting: Some ERPs have limited custom reporting options, which leaves teams in a sticky spot when they need to report by department or by product line.
  
  
• Invoicing & billing management: Any company that deals with multi-line items, recurring contracts, or variable payment terms needs a flexible billing system. Without this, you risk mismanaging revenue recognition, which can lead to headaches during audits or end-of-year reporting.
  
  
• Book closing: Look for ERPs that allow you to trace journal entries from invoices or contracts through to the General Ledger. This capability helps accounting teams shorten the book close cycle, quickly assess how each transaction impacts the books, and address questions about expense increases or shifts in revenue sources. 

So what happens when an ERP lacks these functionalities? QuickBooks, for instance, doesn’t support automated invoicing schedules, forcing finance teams to manually adjust billing terms or add new services mid-contract. This leads to errors and becomes increasingly time-consuming as the business scales.

3. Can I get the data back out of the system?

Data is only useful if you can get it back out of the system. You need to be able to export data easily so that it’s usable with external tools. Here’s what to look for:

• Integration with BI & FP&A tools: Your ERP should integrate smoothly with business intelligence tools like Snowflake or Tableau, as well as your FP&A platform such as Mosaic, Runway, Drivetrain or Aleph. This integration is essential to generate meaningful insights from financial data, which, in turn, enables more strategic decision-making.
  
  
• Excel export quality: Many ERPs  are infamous for poorly formatted Excel exports, often full of merged cells that complicate analysis (if I had a dollar for every time I unmerged cells…) So if your team still uses spreadsheets for data analysis, keep this in mind when vetting vendors.
  
  

This question is especially important for SaaS companies. At my prior startup, we ran into a roadblock with ARR reporting because our NetSuite instance did not fully integrate with Salesforce.

To build the monthly ARR report, I had to pull data manually from Salesforce and spend hours each week manipulating the data in Excel. Not only did this take up a ton of my time, but my leadership also had no way to interact with the report. Any time they had a question, I had to perform additional analysis and come back later with the answer. 

Make data the focal point of your ERP decision-making process

Choosing and implementing a new ERP (which is a blog post for another day) is one of the most painful processes finance teams have to go through (some might even refer to it as PTSD). With a strong checklist — you can use our ERP selection template as a starting point — and a primary focus on data, you can increase your chances of having a smoother process and better outcomes down the line. 

If having control over your end-to-end data is a top priority when choosing an ERP, Rillet may be the right choice for you. Schedule a call with our sales and product team here. 

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