Product guides
Seven questions school leaders should ask before choosing an ERP
A useful school ERP evaluation starts with questions about records, ownership, permissions, rollout, and family experience—not only the feature count.
Ask about the record that connects the workflow
Ask the vendor to show one student record moving from admission to roster, fees, attendance, assessment, and family visibility. If each module needs a separate import or duplicate identity, ask who owns reconciliation and how errors are surfaced.
Ask who can change and publish information
A school system should make responsibilities visible. Ask for a role map that distinguishes view, create, edit, approve, and publish permissions. Ask how the school reviews access when a staff member changes role or leaves.
Do not accept “role-based access” as a complete answer. Request a scenario: a teacher enters attendance, an academic head reviews a correction, and a parent sees only the intended published result.
Ask how the first phase will be tested
The strongest rollout questions are concrete. Ask for a migration sample, named school owners, training responsibilities, acceptance criteria, and a fallback plan for unresolved records. The school should know what happens when a test fails.
Score the answers while the demonstration is fresh. A useful scorecard records the scenario, evidence shown, configuration required, integration dependency, unresolved risk, and owner for the next check. This keeps a persuasive presentation from becoming an untraceable decision.
Ask for the answer in the language of the person who will operate the workflow. “The system supports reporting” is less useful than seeing who prepares a report, who checks it, who publishes it, and what a family or leader receives.
- Which five workflows are in phase one?
- Who signs off imported students, guardians, fees, and academic dates?
- How are duplicate records detected and corrected?
- Which support channel handles a term-start issue?
- What is explicitly out of scope?
Ask what families will actually experience
Request a parent journey, not just an administrator tour. Follow a family from login to attendance, grades, documents, notifications, and receipts. Confirm which actions are immediate, which require publishing, and which depend on a separate integration.
