Most ERP buying advice is written for companies with an IT department, a project manager and a year to spare. If you run a trucking, rental or field-service company with 15 trucks and an office of three, that advice doesn’t help much. You don’t need a 90-page requirements document. You need to know which questions separate a system your crew will actually use from one that ends up as an expensive login nobody opens.
This is a practical checklist for choosing an ERP when you have fewer than 50 people. It’s vendor neutral. Use it on any system you’re looking at, including ours.
Why the choice matters more at a small company
Big companies can absorb a bad software decision. They have people to work around it. A small company usually can’t.
Implementation research keeps finding the same thing: projects go wrong when the fit between the system and the business isn’t tested early. In its 2026 ERP Report, Panorama Consulting Group found that more than a quarter of organizations went over their project budgets, and that additional technology needs were the leading cause. One of its consultants put it plainly: organizations often discover “fatal misfits” late in the project.1 Panorama’s own list of why ERP projects overrun includes choosing a system that doesn’t fit your processes and then paying to customize it, optimistic vendor estimates, thin training, and underestimating data migration.2
Academic research on smaller firms points in a similar direction, with a twist. A study of ERP projects at Belgian small and mid-sized enterprises, published in the Journal of Enterprise Information Management, found that most of the success factors seen at large companies also apply to SMEs, but that smaller firms rely relatively heavily on consultants for knowledge and experience, and need to be able to change how they operate quickly.3 A study of five Canadian SMEs in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management looked for the factors that separated successful implementations from unsuccessful ones, and found some that ran against what the research on large companies would predict.4
The takeaway for a small company: the person who sets you up matters as much as the software, and you should find out early whether the system fits how you already work.
The checklist
1. Where is your data hosted?
Ask which country your data is stored in and where the backups are kept. For Canadian businesses this isn’t just a privacy preference. The CRA says you must keep records at your place of business or residence in Canada, and that records kept outside Canada and accessed electronically from Canada are not considered to be kept in Canada. It can grant permission to keep electronic records outside Canada, but you have to ask for it.5 Your accountant can tell you how this applies to you. It’s much easier to ask the vendor now than to sort it out during an audit.
Ask: Where is my data stored? Where are the backups? Can you put that in writing?
2. How long does setup really take, and who does it?
Look for a straight answer measured in days or weeks, not a range that starts at “it depends.” Then ask who does the work. Given how much small companies lean on outside help,3 “here’s a login and a help centre” is a different product from “we’ll load your customers, rates and services with you.”
Ask: Who loads my customers, rates and price lists? How long until we dispatch a real job? What does onboarding cost?
3. Can your crews use it without installing anything?
This is the question that decides whether the system gets used at all. If your operators have to download an app, create an account and remember a password, some of them won’t, and the paper tickets come back. Ask how a crew member sees a job, updates its status and adds photos from their own phone.
Ask: What does a crew member need to install? What happens when they change phones? Can I see it on my phone right now?
4. How is it priced?
Per-user pricing can look cheap for the office and get expensive once you add every driver and operator. Per-company pricing is easier to plan but may have tiers. Neither is wrong. What matters is that you price it with your real headcount, including seasonal crews.
Ask: What would I pay with all my office staff and all my crews on it? What happens in the slow season? Are setup, training and integrations extra? Is there a contract term?
5. Can you get all your data out?
You should be able to export your customers, jobs, invoices and payments in a common format at any time, without a fee and without asking permission. The CRA’s guidance on electronic records says that if you’re asked for records, the copy must be in a non-proprietary, commonly used data interchange format.6 That’s a good standard for your own exports too.
Ask: Who owns the data? How do I export everything? What happens to my data if I cancel?
6. What does it connect to?
List the systems you already rely on: your accounting software, card payments, text messages, email. For each one, ask whether the connection exists today or is “on the roadmap.” Only count what you can see working.
Ask: Which connections are live today? Which ones cost extra? What does the data look like when it arrives in my accounting software?
7. Is there an audit trail?
When a customer disputes an invoice, or a rate changes and nobody knows who changed it, you want a record. The CRA describes an audit trail as the information needed to recreate a sequence of events related to a business transaction,7 and says electronic records must show a trail from the source documents to the summarized accounts.6
Ask: Can I see who changed a ticket, a rate or an invoice, and when? Are voided invoices kept or deleted? Do quote revisions keep the earlier versions?
8. Does it fit how you work today?
This is the “fatal misfit” question.1 Bring three real jobs to the demo: a simple one, a messy one and a monthly rental or recurring one. Watch the vendor run them from quote to invoice. If they need custom work to handle your normal week, that’s the misfit, found early.
Ask: Can you run my real jobs in the demo? What would need customizing? What’s the cost of that?
A one-page version
| Question | What a good answer looks like |
|---|---|
| Where is the data hosted? | A specific country, in writing, backups included |
| How long is setup? | Days or weeks, with named people doing it |
| How do crews get in? | A link on their phone, nothing to install |
| How is it priced? | A quote using your real headcount, with extras listed |
| Can I export everything? | Yes, in a common format, any time |
| What does it connect to? | Live connections you can see in the demo |
| Is there an audit trail? | Who changed what, and when, for tickets, rates and invoices |
| Does it fit my jobs? | Your real jobs run in the demo without custom work |
Red flags
- The demo only uses the vendor’s sample data.
- Nobody can tell you where your data is stored.
- Crews need an app, an account and a password before they can see a job.
- Export means “contact support.”
- The price changes once you mention how many drivers you have.
Where Dispatch fits
We built Dispatch for companies in this size range, so here are our answers to the same list. Your data is hosted in Canada. We set up your services, rates and customers with you, and most companies are dispatching real jobs within a day or two. Crews open a link on their phone to see their jobs, update status and add photos, with nothing to install (see crew phone access). Dispatch keeps an audit trail of who changed what, and voided invoices stay on record (see reports and audit trail). It’s not accounting software. It hands your accounting software clean invoice data instead of someone retyping it.
If you want a broader look at whether you need an ERP at all, start with why a small service company needs an ERP. If you’re already comparing systems, book a demo and bring your three real jobs.
Footnotes
-
Panorama Consulting Group, “Panorama Consulting Group Releases Latest Study of ERP Implementation Outcomes Across the Globe” (The 2026 ERP Report), March 4, 2026. https://www.panorama-consulting.com/panorama-consulting-group-releases-latest-study-of-erp-implementation-outcomes-across-the-globe/ ↩ ↩2
-
Bill Baumann, “Why ERP Projects Go Over Budget [And How To Prevent It],” Panorama Consulting Group, 2024. https://www.panorama-consulting.com/why-erp-projects-go-over-budget-and-how-to-prevent-it/ ↩
-
Doom, Milis, Poelmans and Bloemen, “Critical success factors for ERP implementations in Belgian SMEs,” Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 23, no. 3, 2010, pp. 378-406. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410391011036120 ↩ ↩2
-
Brent Snider, Giovani J.C. da Silveira and Jaydeep Balakrishnan, “ERP implementation at SMEs: analysis of five Canadian cases,” International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443570910925343 ↩
-
Canada Revenue Agency, “Where to keep your records, for how long and how to request the permission to destroy them early,” Canada.ca, 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/keeping-records/where-keep-your-records-long-request-permission-destroy-them-early.html ↩
-
Canada Revenue Agency, “IC05-1R1 Electronic Record Keeping,” Canada.ca, 2020. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/ic05-1/electronic-record-keeping.html ↩ ↩2
-
Canada Revenue Agency, “Review of business systems and keeping audit trails of business transactions,” Canada.ca, 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/keeping-records/review-business-systems-keeping-audit-trails-business-transactions.html ↩
