Vendors are the people who have developed the ERP packages. They are the people who have invested huge amounts of time and effort in research development to create the packaged solutions. If one studies the history of the ERP packages and finds out how each package evolved, it soon becomes evident that every ERP package grew out of experience or opportunity of a group of people, working in a specific business, who created systems that couid deal with certain business segments. Now with the ERP marke, place becoming crowded with more and more players entering the market and the competition becoming hot, today's ERP packages have features and functionality to cater to the needs of businesses in almost all sectors. The ERP vendor.s spent billions of rupees in research to come up with innovations that make the packages more efficient, flexible, and easy to implement and use. Also with the evolution of new technologies, the vendors have to constantly upgrade their product to be able to use the best and latest advancements in technology.
Role of the vendors
First and foremost, the vendor should supply the product and its documentation as soon as the contract is signed. Only after the software is delivered, can the company develop the training and testing environment for the implementation team? The vendor is responsible for fixing any problems in the software that the implementation team encounters. So the vendors should have a liaison officer who should constantly interact with the implementation team.

Another role the vendor has to plav is that of the trainer - to provide the initial training for the company's key users, people who will play lead roles in the implementation of the system. These key users are the ones who will define, together with the consultants, how the software is to serve the company. In other words, it is these in-house functional experts who will decide how the functionalities are to be implemented, as well as how to use or adapt the product to suit the company's unique requirements. So it is very critical that these key users are given a through training on the features of the package. Vendor's training should achieve the goal of showing the key users how the package works, what are the major components, how the data and information flows across the system, what is flexible and what is not, what can be configured and what cannot, what can customized and what should not, what are the limitations, what are the strengths and weakness and so on.

The consultants also have a role to play during this vendor training. They should participate in the training sessions to evaluate how'the users react to the reality that is starting to take shape from the detailed presentations and demos. Consultants should also ask questions that the vendors are trying to avoid and the users are unaware of. This is the best way to present the real picture to the users and it will also prevent the vendors from making false claims.

The vendor has other responsibilities also. There will be 'gap' between the package and the actual business processes. The. software might have to be customized to suit the company's needs. Customizing means altering the product so that it is suited for the company's purposes. The choice of whether to customize or not is the one that can have enormous impact on the project and it often constitutes a point of conflict between the consultants and the users. But if the decision to customize has been taken, it is the vendor's duty to carry out the necessary modifications. This is because only the vendor knows the product well enough to make the necessary changes without affecting the other parts. Moreover, the company should get a guarantee (in writing) from the vendor that despite the customization, it will be able to benefit from the future software improvements introduced by the vendor.