We have argued before that a partner tier measures commercial volume, not delivery quality, and that the badge belongs on the shortlist filter rather than at the final decision. That argument has an obvious sequel: if not the badge, then what. Here is the position, the criteria we believe a buyer should actually use to judge any implementation partner, including us.
1. Named, comparable, delivered work
Not a list of industries served or capabilities offered, both of which are free to claim. Actual named engagements, with described scope, in operations comparable to the buyer's. A partner who can point to specific work and let the buyer understand it is offering evidence. A partner who can only offer category words is offering a brochure. The buyer should ask for the former and notice when they get the latter.
2. How the partner talks about failure
Ask a partner what they do when an implementation goes wrong, and listen closely. A partner who has been doing this long enough, and honestly enough, has seen projects drift and has built discipline in response: a way of auditing a troubled system, an account of a real engagement that went sideways and what they learned from it. A partner whose every story is a triumph is either new or not being straight. The relationship with failure is one of the most predictive signals available, and it costs one question.
3. What the partner says happens after go-live
Ask who owns the system after launch. Ask whether knowledge transfer is practiced or just documented. Ask whether stabilisation is funded in the original scope or billed later as a separate phase. The answers sort partners into two kinds: those who treat an implementation as a project with an end date, and those who treat it as the start of an operating relationship. The buyer will live with the system for years; the second kind of partner is the one who priced for that reality.
4. Whether the partner will tell the buyer no
A partner who agrees with every scope idea, accepts every timeline, and nods at every requested customization is selling, not advising. The partners worth hiring will say when a requested module is the wrong call, when a timeline is unrealistic, when the honest assessment is that the business is not yet ready for what it is asking for. That willingness to disagree is not friction; it is the buyer getting advice instead of an order-taker. Its presence or absence is visible in the very first conversations.
5. Continuity: will this partner still be here, and still know the system
An ERP is a multi-year relationship. A buyer should ask, plainly, whether the partner will still exist in three years and whether the people who know their system will still be the people on it. A firm with stable teams and a real, sustained business is a safer multi-year bet than a firm that staffs by rotation or treats engagements as interchangeable. This is the one question the badge does partially answer, and it should be asked directly rather than inferred from a tier.
How to weigh them
None of these five is a checkbox; together they are a judgment. A buyer running a serious selection should put the same questions to every shortlisted partner and compare the answers, because the answers vary far more than the badges do. The partner with the higher tier and the vaguer answers is the worse bet, and a buyer who judges on these criteria will see that clearly.
The position, in one line
Judge an ERP partner on named work, an honest relationship with failure, a real answer about life after go-live, a willingness to disagree with you, and genuine continuity. Those five predict the outcome. The badge mostly predicts the badge.