Furthermore, vendor consulting organizations generally do not want to sign up for extended projects. They are best engaged for single application projects rather than enterprise-wide initiatives. Vendor consulting groups often have less experience integrating their products with partner offerings or ERP systems, so these more complex implementations are best left to systems integrators. Even if the vendor consultants have experience working with products from other vendors, a systems integrator may be more appropriate, because integration projects often become political with respect to ownership of data, including the customer model. The systems integrator will concentrate on solving the problem in the best way for the business, not on the easiest or fastest way to bridge the applications.
Objectivity is the final important consideration.
Experienced systems integrators, because they implement the same vendor solution multiple times in different verticals, have a very good understanding of what the software can do, and what it cannot. They are able to make recommendations based on experience, while the vendor consultants may be influenced by their own marketing messages and claims. This not only adds to the price of the engagement, it ensures that future upgrades will be problematic. Vendor consultants will have a better sense of what the software is capable of, and how to best leverage the existing functionality to meet the needs of an organization. If a prospective project does not clearly fit one of the profiles above, consider engaging both groups.