How to choose an ERP system for a business in Ukraine: a step-by-step guide

Choosing an ERP is a 5–10 year decision, and a mistake costs not only money but a year of lost time. This guide is a process that protects against the most common traps.

Step 1. Map your processes before looking at systems

The most common mistake is starting with demos. Any modern system looks convincing in a presentation, and without your own list of requirements you're judging the show, not the fit. First record: which processes you run today, where the main pain is, which reports management needs weekly.

Step 2. Split requirements into "critical" and "nice to have"

A list of 200 requirements where everything is "important" doesn't work. The rule is simple: critical requirements are the ones without which the business stops. There are usually 15–25 of them. Everything else is negotiable — and the less customization it demands, the cheaper the project.

Step 3. Evaluate the vendor, not just the product

• Stability: what happens to the platform in 10 years? The 1C/BAS story showed this isn't theoretical.
• Ukrainian localization: taxes, reporting, currency accounting.
• Integrator ecosystem: who implements and supports, is there a choice of contractors.
• Update model: cloud platforms update automatically, on-premise updates are on you.

Step 4. Count cost of ownership, not the licence

Five-year TCO = subscription + implementation + customization + support + training + your team's internal time. A cheap licence with expensive implementation regularly loses to a pricier subscription with standard processes.

Step 5. A pilot instead of faith

The final candidate is verified with a pilot: one end-to-end process (say, order → shipment → payment) on your real data. Two weeks of a pilot say more than a month of presentations.

If Business Central is among the candidates, start with the platform overview and engagement models. And if you're moving off 1C or BAS, read the legal context of the ban first.