Before replacing your CRM or ERP, check whether the software is the problem
Before replacing your CRM or ERP, find out whether the software is actually the problem. Most of the time it is the thing everyone can agree to blame.
The sales team says the CRM is useless. Look closer and the CRM has no records for a third of the pipeline because nobody is required to log a call. That survives a migration. The new system will be useless in exactly the same way, at four times the licence cost, after nine months of implementation.
The ERP reports are wrong. The reports are wrong because the product codes were entered three different ways over a decade. The new ERP will import the same three ways, and the first quarterly report out of it will be wrong for the same reason.
Process, incentives, data quality and adoption all move to the new system unchanged unless someone fixes them first, and fixing them first is cheaper, because you can do it in the system you already own.
So before the RFP, run a test. Pick the three complaints that are driving the replacement and ask, for each: could we fix this in the current system if we changed a rule, cleaned the data, or made one person accountable? Try it for a quarter.
Sometimes the software really is the problem. You will know because the complaints survive the test. And you will migrate with clean data and working habits, which is the only way a migration has ever gone well.