Outsourcing ERP support: twelve questions to ask a delivery partner before you sign

Outsourcing ERP application support is a sensible decision for most mid-sized organisations: the alternative is an in-house team that is either too small to cover the platform or too expensive to justify. The decision that matters is which partner, and on what terms. Remote and international delivery models, including ours, can offer senior-led support at a sustainable cost, but only when scope, people, security and commercial terms are explicit. These twelve questions expose the gaps before you sign.

Scope and arrangements

1. Exactly which systems, modules and integrations are in scope, and what is explicitly out?

A proposal that says "Dynamics 365 support" is not a scope. Ask for a list: companies, modules, extensions, integrations, reports, environments. Ask what happens with a ticket about something not on the list. The best answer is a written service description you can hold them to and a change process for adding items later.

2. What are the priority definitions and response arrangements, and what do they depend on?

Beware of a single headline response time. Ask how priorities are defined, who assigns them, what the coverage hours are (and in which time zone), and what the arrangement is for problems that depend on Microsoft, SAP or a third-party vendor. An honest partner distinguishes response commitments they control from resolution times they cannot promise.

3. How is root-cause analysis handled, and who pays for permanent fixes?

If every ticket closes when the user can continue, you will be paying for the same incident repeatedly. Ask whether the workflow has a problem-management step, whether root-cause notes are delivered, and whether monthly capacity is reserved for permanent fixes and small improvements.

4. How are releases, updates and upgrades tested?

Business Central online receives two major release waves a year plus monthly updates. Ask whether the partner regression-tests your critical processes in a sandbox before updates are applied, whether you receive test evidence, and whether extensions are tested against preview releases.

People and delivery model

5. Who, by name, will work on our system, and are they employed by you?

The difference between a delivery partner and a broker is whether the people are employed, trained and supervised by the firm you contract with. Ask for named consultants, their certifications, and whether any work is subcontracted further. Ask what happens when a named consultant leaves.

6. Where is the work delivered from, and in which hours?

Remote delivery is not a problem; unmanaged remote delivery is. Ask where the delivery team sits, what time-zone overlap you get with your business hours, who the senior contact in your country is, and how escalations reach them. For a Dutch business, a team on UTC+1 (as in Ibadan) shares the working day; a team eight hours away does not.

7. How does knowledge transfer and documentation work?

Ask how the partner takes over knowledge from your current provider or key users, where documentation lives, and whether a knowledge base is part of the service. If the answer is "our consultants know your system", you are buying dependence on individuals.

8. What do the monthly service reviews cover?

A support service without a monthly review drifts. Ask for a sample service report: incident trends, backlog, risks, improvement recommendations, capacity used. Ask who attends from their side; a senior person should.

Security and governance

9. How do your consultants access our environment, and how is access governed?

The minimum: named accounts (never shared), multi-factor authentication, least-privilege roles agreed with you, access logging, periodic reviews and same-day revocation when assignments end. Ask whether an EU-hosted virtual desktop can be used so that data does not leave your environment, and whether the partner works within your conditional access and privileged access tooling. Our own approach is described on the security and delivery model page; use it as a benchmark for anyone else's.

10. Which agreements will we sign, and how are cross-border transfers handled?

For any remote partner, expect a services agreement, confidentiality terms and a GDPR data processing agreement. For partners delivering from outside the EEA, ask which transfer mechanism applies (typically standard contractual clauses), what technical measures support it, and how incidents are reported and within what timeframe. A partner who cannot answer this fluently has not thought about it.

Commercial terms and exit

11. What exactly does the fee include, and how do changes get priced?

Ask for the inclusions in writing: coverage hours, included capacity, service management, reporting, testing. Ask how larger changes are quoted, what the hourly rate for out-of-scope work is, and whether licences are itemised separately. Be suspicious of fees that look low until you read the exclusions, and of prices quoted without an assessment of your landscape.

12. What are the contract term, notice period and exit arrangements?

An initial term is reasonable; onboarding costs both sides. But ask what happens at the end: documentation handover, knowledge transfer to a successor, removal of access, return or deletion of data. A partner confident in its service will make leaving easy, because it expects you not to.

How to use the answers

Score each answer as written, vague or absent. Written answers belong in the contract. Vague answers deserve a follow-up question before signing. Absent answers are the risks you will discover later, usually at month-end. Three further observations from the buyer's side:

• Compare like with like. A fee for support that includes release testing, documentation and monthly reviews is not comparable to a fee for reactive tickets only.
• Ask for a short assessment before a long contract. A partner who insists on signing before looking at your system is selling capacity, not service.
• Talk to the senior contact, not only the salesperson. The person who will own your service reviews should be in the room before you sign.

For how we structure our own arrangements, see managed ERP and application support and the pricing page.