Support
Support from someone who already knows your system
The reason ERP support frustrates people is rarely response time. It is having to explain your configuration from scratch, to somebody new, every time something breaks — and then getting a fix that treats the symptom because nobody understood the cause.
- Named consultants, not a rota
- Agreed response times
- Monthly, with no long tie-in
The situation
What people tell us about their current support
Nobody knows our setup
Every ticket starts with describing the same configuration again, because whoever picks it up has never seen your system.
Fixes address the symptom
The immediate error goes away and the same class of problem returns the following month, because the cause was never diagnosed.
The implementer has moved on
The people who built it are gone, nothing was documented, and the current provider inherited a system they never understood either.
Small changes are treated as projects
A new report layout or an approval threshold becomes a quotation, a lead time and a change control process out of proportion to the work.
Upgrades keep being deferred
Nobody is confident what the customisations will do, so the version gets older and the eventual upgrade gets harder.
Nothing improves
Support is reactive. The same three issues generate most of the tickets and nobody has been asked to fix them properly.
How we do it
We learn your system before we support it
Support only works when the person answering understands why your system was set up the way it was. That knowledge has to be built deliberately, not accumulated by accident.
Every support arrangement starts with an onboarding review: your configuration, your customisations, your integrations and your data, written up into a system profile we maintain. That document is what lets a named consultant answer a question in context rather than working it out from the error message. You get a copy — it is your system, and if you ever move provider it should go with you.
Day to day you deal with named people rather than a rota. Response times are agreed in writing and matched to actual business impact: a posting failure at month-end is not the same as a report layout request, and treating them identically serves nobody. Where a fix would only mask a recurring problem, we will say so and offer the underlying correction as an option rather than quietly reapplying the same patch.
Support also covers the work that keeps a system healthy rather than merely running: reviewing the issues that generate the most tickets, testing your customisations before an upgrade, watching query performance as data volumes grow, and telling you when a process you are doing manually could be configured away. If we are not reducing your ticket volume over time, we are not doing the job properly.
What is included
- A named consultant who knows your configuration
- A maintained system profile document you own
- Response times matched to business impact
- Regression testing of customisations at upgrade
What it covers
What support includes
Day-to-day help
Questions, errors, posting problems and process queries answered by someone who knows your setup, within agreed response times.
Fixes and corrections
Diagnosis of the cause rather than the symptom, including data corrections done properly through supported interfaces.
Small changes
Report layouts, formatted searches, approval thresholds, new users and authorisations — handled as support, not as projects.
Upgrades
Planned version upgrades with your customisations and integrations regression tested first, and a rollback position agreed.
System health
Query performance, database growth, failing integrations and recurring errors reviewed before they become incidents.
Knowledge transfer
A maintained system profile and process documentation, plus training for new starters and super-users as your team changes.
How it works
From first call to steady state
Review
We examine the configuration, customisations, integrations and data before agreeing to support anything, so we know what we are taking on.
- Configuration review
- Customisation register
- Known issues logged
Stabilise
Anything already broken is dealt with and agreed before the ongoing arrangement starts, so you are not paying a monthly fee to work through a backlog.
- Backlog cleared
- Urgent fixes agreed
- Baseline established
Agree
Response times, escalation, scope and the named consultants, written down. Monthly, with no long tie-in.
- Written service terms
- Named contacts
- Escalation route
Support
Day-to-day support against those terms, with each issue diagnosed rather than patched and the system profile kept current.
- Logged and tracked
- Root-cause diagnosis
- Profile maintained
Review and improve
Periodic review of what is generating tickets, with recommendations to remove the causes rather than keep answering them.
- Ticket pattern analysis
- Improvement recommendations
- Upgrade planning
Detail
What we look after
Application
- Posting and document errors
- Authorisations and user setup
- Approval procedures and alerts
- Document numbering and period control
- Formatted searches and validations
- Print layouts and templates
Data
- Data corrections through supported interfaces
- Master data quality and duplicates
- Reconciliation differences
- Stock valuation queries
- Period-end and year-end routines
Platform
- SQL Server and SAP HANA health
- Query performance and indexing
- Database growth and archiving
- Backup and recovery verification
- Environment refreshes for testing
- Licence and user administration
Customisations
- Maintained customisation register
- Add-on defect support
- Change requests to existing builds
- Regression testing before upgrade
- Retiring customisations standard now covers
Integrations
- Interface monitoring and failure alerts
- Reprocessing failed messages
- Reconciliation between systems
- Changes when a connected system changes
Upgrades
- Version assessment and planning
- Customisation impact analysis
- Test environment upgrade first
- Regression test scripts
- Planned release with rollback
What changes
What good support looks like after six months
Fewer tickets, not more
Recurring causes removed rather than repeatedly patched, so volume falls instead of creeping upwards.
Context, not re-explanation
A named consultant who already knows why your system is configured the way it is.
Changes that happen
Small improvements handled as part of support instead of queued behind a quotation process.
Upgrades you are not afraid of
Customisations documented and regression tested, so the version decision is planning rather than risk.
A system profile you own
Documentation that goes with you, so you are never locked in by the absence of information.
How it works commercially
The arrangement
Onboarding review
A fixed-price review of your system before ongoing support begins. This is not optional — supporting a system nobody has examined is how bad advice happens.
Ongoing support
Monthly, based on the size and complexity of your system rather than a per-ticket count. No long tie-in.
Response times
Agreed in writing and graded by business impact. A month-end posting failure and a layout change are not the same thing.
Included
Day-to-day support, diagnosis, small changes, user administration, health monitoring and upgrade planning.
Quoted separately
Development work, new integrations, version upgrades and training programmes — quoted against a scope so you can decide on each.
Exit
Your system profile and documentation are yours. If you leave, they go with you.
Fit
Whether this is the right conversation
A good fit if
- Your current support does not understand your configuration
- The consultancy that implemented your system has moved on
- You are on an old version and nervous about upgrading
- The same issues keep recurring and nobody has fixed the cause
- You want small changes handled without a project every time
Probably not us if
- You need 24/7 cover including nights and weekends
- You want support without letting us review the system first
- You are looking purely for the lowest monthly figure
Common questions
Questions we are asked before a project starts
Can you support a system you did not implement?
Yes — it is most of our support work. We start with a fixed-price review of the configuration, customisations, integrations and data so we understand what we are taking on, and we agree anything that needs correcting before the ongoing arrangement begins. That way you are not paying a monthly fee while we work through somebody else’s backlog.
What response times do you offer?
They are agreed in writing and graded by business impact rather than applied as a single number. Something that stops invoicing or blocks a month-end close is treated differently from a report layout request. We would rather commit to a realistic tiered standard and meet it than publish an impressive figure we would have to qualify.
Are small changes included or charged?
Small configuration changes — report layouts, formatted searches, approval thresholds, users and authorisations — are part of support. Development work, new integrations and version upgrades are quoted separately against a scope, because they are projects and pretending otherwise leads to either bad work or an argument.
Do you handle version upgrades?
Yes. We assess the impact on your customisations and integrations first, upgrade a test environment, run regression tests against it, then plan the live release with a rollback position. The reason most businesses sit on old versions is uncertainty about what will break, and that uncertainty is removable.
Is there a minimum contract?
No long tie-in. Support runs monthly. We think a provider that needs a multi-year contract to retain clients has the incentives the wrong way round.
Related
Where to go next
Development & Add-ons
Bespoke work built on supported interfaces, and remediation of customisations you inherited.
Read more
Reporting & Analytics
Getting management reporting out of the system instead of out of a spreadsheet.
Read more
ERP + Accounting
Support for the system and the finance function that runs on it, from one team.
Read more
Not getting the support you are paying for?
Tell us what your current arrangement looks like and what keeps going wrong. We will tell you honestly whether the problem is the provider, the configuration, or something that needs fixing properly once.
Or call +44 7493 619245 — Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:30.