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Insights — Enterprise software buying

Practical notes on enterprise software buying

This is where TechPeak Solutions GmbH publishes what we learn from enterprise software evaluations, integrations, and migration programs in Germany — written for buyers and IT leads who have to decide with incomplete information, not for a general audience.

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TechPeak Solutions GmbH — Munich Editorial desk

Editorial desk

Implementation work, not vendor marketing

Every piece on this page comes out of evaluations, integrations, and migration programs we ran with German mid-market and enterprise teams. We write for the reader who has to defend a decision in a steering meeting — not the reader who wants a vendor comparison table with a winner at the bottom. When a platform's position changes, we come back to the article and correct it rather than publish a new one and let the old version stand.

Where we have a commercial interest, it sits next to the piece that carries it — the same rule we write down on our editorial standards page. Where a claim comes from someone else's comparison, we name the source and the date.

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Reading index

Eight notes on the same decision

Short pieces, written for the buyer's chair. Every link opens in this page or a page on this site — nothing here points off-domain.

Evaluation method ≈ 6 min read

How to evaluate a platform without a feature matrix

Feature matrices reward vendors with long lists and punish buyers who use them literally. A better starting point is the process as it actually runs — including the exceptions that never make it into a requirements document. Compare platforms against those exceptions and against the integration work each will require. Two systems with identical feature coverage can differ by months of implementation effort once connections are counted.

See migration guidance

What this piece covers

Running the evaluation against live process exceptions rather than a requirements list

Counting the integration connections each finalist will require

Separating feature coverage from implementation effort

Integration ≈ 5 min read

The hidden cost of integration debt

Integration debt accumulates quietly. A point-to-point connector built to meet a deadline works, until the system on either end changes a field or a version. Then someone maintains five connectors that nobody documented, and a migration later has to reverse-engineer all of them.

The cost is not the build; it is the maintenance and the uncertainty it creates at exactly the moment you need clarity. Consolidating into a managed integration layer pays back most visibly during a migration, because the mapping from legacy to new is written down somewhere rather than reconstructed under deadline pressure.

See migration guidance

Contract ≈ 4 min read

Questions to ask before signing

Which system is the system of record for each data domain? Where does the data physically rest, and who can access it? What happens to the integration if we replace one of these systems in three years? Who owns the connection if the implementation partner changes? These four questions expose most of the risk in an enterprise software decision, and a vendor who cannot answer them clearly is telling you something. Ask them in the same meeting, and watch which answers get vague.

The four questions

Who owns the system of record for each domain?
Where does the data rest, and who can reach it?
What happens to the connections in three years?
Who owns the integration if the partner changes?

Sources ≈ 4 min read

Reading vendor comparisons critically

Vendor comparisons are usually written by someone with a stake in the outcome. That does not make them useless; it makes the incentives worth identifying before you rely on them.

Look for a stated method, a date, and a disclosure of who paid for the comparison. Absent those, treat the piece as a lead-generation asset rather than research. Our own editorial standards page explains exactly what we do on this point, including where we have a commercial interest.

Read our editorial standards

Compliance ≈ 5 min read

Compliance as a design input, not a review step

Teams that treat compliance as a review at the end of a project pay for it twice: once when the design changes and once when the schedule slips. Residency, retention, and role separation are architecture decisions, and they are cheapest to make in the first design meeting. In German enterprises these constraints are usually well documented already, in a policy someone wrote years ago. Finding that document before the design phase is worth the afternoon.

Three decisions that belong early

Data residency — where each record class is allowed to rest

Retention — how long each class can live in each system

Role separation — who may read, write, and delete

Selection ≈ 3 min read

Beginner mistakes in enterprise software selection

Buying the platform before defining the process is the most common error, and it is expensive. The second is scheduling integration as a later phase, after the master data has already diverged.

A third is assuming that a large vendor's ecosystem guarantees integration, when the connector still has to be configured, tested, and maintained. None of these mistakes are exotic, and all three appear regularly in programs that should have known better — usually in the same order, and usually discovered during the cutover rather than before it.

Practice ≈ 4 min read

How experienced buyers run an evaluation

Experienced buyers keep the shortlist short and the questions specific. They ask for a reference from a company of similar size in a similar regulatory position, not a logo wall. They insist on a documented integration design before commercial terms are agreed. And they separate the platform decision from the implementation partner decision, because bundling the two removes their leverage. The pattern is consistent: fewer vendors, sharper questions, and a written record of every answer.

Habits of the buyers who get it right

A shortlist of three, and a reference from a company of similar size

Integration design agreed before commercial terms

Platform decision separated from the partner decision

Architecture ≈ 5 min read

When to build an integration layer instead of a connector

A single point-to-point connector is fine when one system talks to one other system and neither is likely to change soon.

An integration layer earns its cost when three or more systems exchange master data, when the connections carry compliance obligations, or when a migration is foreseeable. The deciding factor is usually the number of systems, not the volume of data. If you are already maintaining four connectors, you are paying for a layer without getting one.

See integration solutions

Close low-angle view of a server rack panel with a cyan LED line across the seam — A rack corridor, Munich — the same room the articles come from

Our editorial position

An evaluation is a document, not a dashboard

We write for the reader who has to defend the decision in a steering meeting six weeks after the demo, when the vendor's marketing has already moved on. That reader needs the exceptions, the integration counts, the retention rules, and the answers written down — not a ranked list of platforms with a winner at the bottom. Everything on this page is meant to be usable in that meeting.

Questions on this page

Have a buying question you cannot answer with a vendor comparison?

Send us the decision you are in the middle of, and we will answer plainly — including where a platform you are considering is not the right fit. We do not write reviews on commission, and we do not put a platform on this page because the vendor asked.

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Address: Einsteinstr. 28, 81675 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49 30 9329 241
Email: [email protected]
Hours: Monday to Friday, 09:00 – 18:00

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