The Cotswold Company
Independent ERP evaluation across seven vendors, narrowed to two through structured discovery, customer reference calls and total-cost-of-ownership modelling. Substantial savings on licensing and services, plus favourable contract terms before a line of code was written.
What they were up against.
The Cotswold Company, a UK furniture retailer founded in 2005 as an eCommerce pure-play, now expanding into physical stores, had outgrown its back-office stack. Inventory, customers and product data lived in different systems with no single source of truth. Spreadsheets filled the gaps, and manual processes that worked at smaller scale were now blocking a five-year growth plan.
Replacing an ERP at this stage of growth carries real risk: many vendors obscure total cost of ownership and lock customers into roadmaps that don't match their direction. The Cotswold team needed an independent partner to evaluate options on the merits, not on the commission.
How we built it.
A mix of established market leaders and SaaS-first specialists. Functional and non-functional fit against documented requirements, with cost and timeline as primary shortlisting metrics.
Time with each shortlisted vendor probing what they were really offering versus what they pitched, exposing which products would meet long-term requirements and which were marketing-led.
Three references per vendor minimum, ~1 hour each with senior decision-makers, plus off-the-record checks. For a process often called “open-heart surgery”, the unfiltered conversations made the difference.
The chosen solution's configuration and integration architecture were defined in a paid discovery phase first. Agreements were only signed after, every cost and risk identified before commitment.
What it unlocked.
Savings negotiated on licensing and professional services, with favourable contract terms locked in.
Total cost of ownership, vendor roadmap, upgrade strategy and customer impact, all quantified up front.
The selected platform consolidates the three data silos previously holding back operations.
Discovery before commitment meant every cost and risk was on the table before signing.
Paul and the team have been instrumental in our recent ERP system selection project. Not only were they successful in negotiating us a substantial saving on our licensing and professional services costs, but they also helped gain us favourable contract terms. Their specialist experience has been invaluable.