At some point, most growing webshops outgrow the combination of spreadsheets, their accounting system and their store platform's built-in tools. Orders, inventory, purchasing, accounting and reporting start living in disconnected places, and someone on the team spends real hours every week reconciling numbers that should already agree. That's usually the signal that it's time to look at an ERP (enterprise resource planning system) — software that ties financials, inventory, purchasing and order data together in one place.
Choosing the wrong ERP, or implementing the right one poorly, is a genuinely expensive mistake: expensive in licensing and implementation cost, and far more expensive in the operational disruption of switching again a year or two later. This guide walks through how to think about the decision.
1. Get clear on why you actually need one
Before comparing any vendors, write down the specific problems you're trying to solve. Common triggers for e-commerce businesses include:
- Inventory numbers in your store platform don't match what's actually in the warehouse.
- Your accountant is manually re-entering order and sales data that already exists somewhere else.
- You sell across multiple channels (webshop, marketplaces, wholesale) and have no single view of stock or margin across them.
- You're spending disproportionate time on manual reconciliation, purchasing decisions, or month-end reporting.
- You're planning to scale internationally, add warehouses, or bring on more staff who need reliable, shared data.
An ERP is not a fix for a broken process — it will simply run a broken process faster and with more visibility into how broken it is. Fix or at least document your core workflows (order-to-cash, purchase-to-pay, returns) before you evaluate systems, not after.
2. Decide what "must integrate" actually means for you
For an online retailer, the ERP rarely stands alone — its value comes from how well it connects to the rest of your stack. Map out, concretely, what needs to talk to what:
- Your store platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, Mystore, or similar) — orders, products and inventory need to sync reliably, ideally close to real time.
- Your shipping and carrier setup — order status should flow both ways between fulfilment and the ERP, so stock levels and order status stay accurate without manual updates.
- Your accounting — this is often the actual center of gravity for an ERP decision. If your ERP and your bookkeeping live in different systems, someone is doing double entry.
- Your CRM and marketing tools — less critical for day-to-day operations, but worth checking if you rely on customer or order data for marketing automation.
Ask any vendor for concrete, working examples of the integrations you need — not just a slide claiming "seamless integration." A quick reference check with an existing customer running a similar setup is worth more than a demo.
3. Weigh cloud vs. on-premise, and total cost of ownership
Most new ERP deployments today are cloud-based, and for good reason: lower upfront cost, automatic updates, and easier remote access for distributed teams. But "cloud" isn't automatically cheaper once you account for the full picture. When comparing options, look at:
- License or subscription cost per user, and how it scales as you add staff.
- Implementation cost — data migration, configuration and training are frequently underestimated and can exceed the software cost itself in year one.
- Integration cost — whether connectors to your store and shipping systems are included, or need custom development.
- Ongoing support and maintenance — who do you call when something breaks during a busy sales period?
One option Norwegian businesses commonly evaluate is Visma Business NXT, a cloud-native ERP built for the Norwegian market with strong local compliance and accounting support. It's a solid fit for many growing webshops, particularly if you want an ERP and your bookkeeping partner working from the same system — but it's one option among several, and the right answer genuinely depends on your size, complexity and existing stack. Holio is a Visma Business NXT partner and can help assess fit as part of an honest, needs-first evaluation.
4. Build a shortlist and test it against real scenarios
Rather than comparing feature lists, test a small number of shortlisted systems against your actual scenarios:
- Process a sample order end-to-end, from checkout through fulfilment to the accounting entry.
- Run a return through the system and see how many manual steps it takes.
- Check how stock levels update across two sales channels at once.
- Pull a basic margin or profitability report and see how much manual adjustment it needs.
- Ask what happens during a data sync failure — can you see it, and can you fix it without support intervention?
This kind of hands-on testing surfaces real friction points that a sales demo tends to skip over.
5. Plan the implementation, not just the purchase
The system you choose matters less than how well it's implemented. A mediocre ERP implemented carefully, with clean data migration and well-trained staff, will outperform an excellent ERP rushed into production with dirty data and no training. Before you sign anything:
- Confirm who owns data migration, and how historical orders, inventory and customer records will be cleaned and mapped.
- Set a realistic go-live date that avoids your peak sales season — never launch a new ERP right before Black Friday.
- Plan a parallel run period where old and new systems both operate, if your volume allows it, to catch discrepancies before you're fully dependent on the new system.
- Budget time for staff training, not just system configuration.
6. Involve your accountant early
Your ERP choice has a direct, lasting effect on how efficiently your books get closed every month, so involve whoever handles your accounting in the decision from the start rather than after the contract is signed. If you work with an external accounting agency, ask them directly which systems they support well and which they've seen implemented badly — this kind of practical experience is hard to get anywhere else. Holio's own accounting department works daily with e-commerce clients on exactly this kind of systems decision, alongside our order and shipping platform for the operational side.
A short checklist before you decide
- Have you documented the actual problems you're solving, not just "we need an ERP"?
- Does it integrate reliably with your store platform and shipping setup, verified with real examples?
- Have you calculated total cost including implementation and integration, not just license fees?
- Have you tested it against real order, return and reporting scenarios?
- Is your accountant or accounting partner involved in the decision?
- Is your go-live date scheduled outside your busiest sales period?