Questions to Ask Any SAP Business One Partner Before You Sign (Including Us)

Choosing an SAP Business One partner means choosing the team that will design, host and support the system your business runs on, often for a decade or more. The software is the same whichever partner you pick. The experience of owning it depends on the partner, which makes the questions you ask before signing some of the most valuable minutes in the whole buying process.

This guide gives you sixteen questions to put to every partner on your shortlist, grouped into five themes, each with a short note on what a good answer sounds like. At the end, we answer them ourselves. Putting the same questions to every partner is the quickest way to see the differences that brochures smooth over.

Quick answer

The most revealing questions cover five areas: the partner's focus and track record, the people who will do the work, how the project will run, the cloud platform your system will live on, and the support you'll receive for years after go-live. Ask every shortlisted partner the same questions, meet the delivery team, speak to two reference customers who resemble your business, and look for specific, written answers. Specific answers are the clearest sign of a partner who has done this many times before.

The partner: focus and track record

1. How much of your business is SAP Business One?

A partner whose whole business revolves around SAP Business One brings real depth: consultants who work in the product every day, a support desk that knows it inside out, and leadership attention that stays on your system.

A good answer: a clear figure, and evidence that SAP Business One sits at the core of the business.

2. What accreditations do you hold, and what do they mean for us?

SAP and the major cloud providers accredit partners at different levels based on expertise, investment and customer outcomes. What matters is what sits behind each label.

A good answer: each accreditation named plainly, with an explanation of what it means for your project and your hosting.

3. Which customers like us can we speak to?

Sector and size shape almost every configuration decision, so experience with businesses like yours is worth more than a long wall of logos.

A good answer: two or three reference customers who resemble you in sector, size and complexity, offered readily, with freedom to speak to them without the partner on the call.

The people: who you'll actually work with

4. Who will work on our project, and can we meet them before we sign?

The consultants who run your project shape its outcome far more than the people who sell it.

A good answer: named consultants, an introduction before contract, and a clear picture of their experience with the product and the partner.

5. Does the team that implements our system also support it?

Continuity is one of the quiet strengths of a well-run partner. When knowledge of your build passes from project to support, issues are resolved faster, because the person answering already understands your setup.

A good answer: a described handover from project to support, with project consultants staying involved after go-live.

6. Where is your team based?

A UK business benefits from a partner who knows UK VAT, Making Tax Digital, UK reporting conventions and your working hours.

A good answer: where consultants and support staff are located, and how that maps to the hours your business runs.

The project: how your implementation will run

7. How do you run discovery, and what will you need from us?

Discovery is where a partner learns how your business really works, and it sets the quality of everything that follows.

A good answer: a described approach with workshops and outputs, plus a clear statement of the time your team will need to give.

8. How do you decide what to customise?

The strongest partners help you adopt SAP Business One's standard processes wherever they fit, and customise where it genuinely sets your business apart.

A good answer: a clear philosophy, with examples of when they'd recommend customising and when they'd recommend adapting a process.

9. How will you handle our data migration?

Clean, trusted data on day one is what builds confidence in a new system.

A good answer: who owns the cleansing, how many trial loads are planned, and how results are reconciled against your old system before sign-off.

10. What does a realistic timeline look like for a business like ours?

A partner who has implemented many similar systems can describe the shape of your project after an initial conversation. Our guide to what 'weeks, not months' actually looks like explains the drivers that set a timeline.

A good answer: the drivers for your business, an honest range, and the conditions that keep it on track.

11. What will the cost depend on, and what's included?

A clear proposal shows what's in scope, what sits outside it and what would trigger extra cost.

A good answer: cost explained through drivers you can see - users, scope, add-ons, integrations, data and support - with a price built after scoping your business.

The cloud: where your system will live

12. Who owns and operates your hosting platform?

Your finance, stock and operations will run on this platform every day, so it deserves the same scrutiny as the software.

A good answer: who built and runs it, which cloud provider sits underneath, and the accreditations that support it.

13. What uptime do you commit to in writing, and how is it measured?

Uptime is easy to promise and revealing to define.

A good answer: a specific percentage in the contract, how it's monitored and reported, and what happens if it's missed.

14. How are backups, security and disaster recovery handled?

Resilience is best judged by detail.

A good answer: how often backups run, where they're stored, how quickly the system can be restored, who owns security patching and monitoring, and when a restore was last tested.

Support: the relationship after go-live

15. What are your support hours, SLAs and escalation routes?

Support is where you'll spend most of your time with a partner, so it rewards close attention.

A good answer: priority levels with a response target for each, the hours covered, how to escalate urgent issues, and how performance against the targets is reported to you.

16. How do you handle upgrades and keep our system current?

SAP Business One customers with a valid maintenance agreement receive new versions and updates, and SAP provides at least five years of mainstream maintenance for each release family. Your partner plans and applies those upgrades.

A good answer: a described upgrade and testing process, plus regular reviews of your system with recommendations for improvement.

How to compare the answers

Ask every partner the same questions, ideally in writing, and lay the answers side by side. Look for specificity: names, figures, examples and documents. A partner who has done this many times answers quickly and concretely, and offers evidence before you ask for it.

Then test what you've heard. Meet the delivery team, take up the references, and ask those customers what support feels like two years after go-live. A shortlist of two or three partners is usually enough to see a clear winner. If you already have a partner and these questions highlight gaps, our guide to changing SAP Business One partner explains how a switch works.

How we answer these questions

We wrote this guide, so it's only fair to answer it. Ascarii is 100% dedicated to SAP Business One, with 15+ years of experience. We are an SAP Premier Partner and an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, and our customers rate us 4.9 out of 5. Our cloud platform runs SAP Business One on AWS with 99.995% uptime. Our team is based in the UK, at NETPark in County Durham, and works with manufacturers, distributors and professional services firms across the country.

The questions that depend on your business (timeline, cost, the team you'd work with and the references most like you) we'll answer specifically once we understand what you need. Book a discovery call and put all sixteen to us. Integrity is our first value, so if we're not the right fit, we'll tell you.

Frequently asked questions

How many SAP Business One partners should we speak to?

Two or three is usually enough. A short, well-chosen shortlist lets you go deep: meeting delivery teams, taking up references and comparing written answers to the same questions.

Does it matter whether a partner is UK-based?

For a UK business, local knowledge pays off every day: UK VAT and Making Tax Digital, UK reporting conventions, shared working hours and the option to meet in person when it helps.

Should we choose the software or the partner first?

Choose them together. SAP Business One is sold, implemented and supported through partners, so your experience of the software depends heavily on who delivers it. Evaluating partners alongside the product gives the truest picture.

What should an SAP Business One partner's proposal include?

Scope, timeline, the named team, what's included and excluded, the data migration approach, the hosting platform and uptime commitment, and support terms with a response target for each priority level.

Can we change SAP Business One partner later?

Yes. Your licences, data and configuration stay with your business, and moving to a new partner is a planned handover. Our guide to switching SAP Business One partners explains what moves, what stays and how long it takes.