When NOT to Choose Sysgraft — An Honest Assessment

This is going to be an unusual blog post.

Most companies writing about their own product will give you a dozen reasons why you need what they sell, and perhaps one token paragraph about how “it is not for everyone.” This is not that post.

Sysgraft builds custom interface layers over existing ERP systems. We do it well. But we are not the right solution for every problem, and if you are in one of the situations described below, we will be the first to tell you to look elsewhere.

Here is an honest, specific, and genuinely useful guide to when you should not choose Sysgraft.

We are writing this because we believe that trust matters more than revenue. A client who hires us when they should have chosen Power Apps or a full ERP migration will end up disappointed — and they will tell others. A client who we honestly redirect to a better option will remember that candour. It is that simple.

If you work with Sysgraft, you will find that we say “no” more often than most consultancies. We turn down projects where we are not the right fit. We recommend competitors when they suit a client better. And we walk away from discovery sprints when the audit reveals that our approach will not work. This page is that philosophy in written form.

1. When Power Apps Is the Better Choice

If you need a simple internal dashboard for under 10 users, a basic approval workflow, or a quick prototype to test an idea, Power Apps is almost certainly the better option. It is faster to deploy, cheaper for small-scale use, and your existing Microsoft 365 licensing may already cover it.

Here are the situations where Power Apps wins:

• Small team, narrow scope: A single-screen dashboard for the finance team to view overdue invoices. Three to five users. Power Apps can deliver this in days.
• Quick prototyping: You need to validate a concept before committing to a full build. Power Apps lets you iterate fast with minimal investment.
• Simple approval chains: Purchase order approval, holiday requests, expense reports. Power Automate + Power Apps handles this well.
• Existing Power Platform investment: You already have Power Apps Premium licences and internal capability. Leveraging what you already pay for makes sense.

Sysgraft costs more and takes longer for these use cases. Our minimum viable engagement starts at £15,000, and our build process (discovery sprint, design, development, go-live) typically takes 4–12 weeks. For a two-screen internal tool, that is overkill.

The honest truth: We will tell you this before we quote. If your needs are simple and your team is small, we will recommend Power Apps or even a Google Sheet before we recommend Sysgraft. We would rather earn your trust by telling you the truth than win a project that is not right for you.

Read our full comparison of Power Apps vs custom code for ERP front-ends.

2. When You Should Replace Your ERP Instead

An interface layer makes your existing ERP look and feel better. It does not fix a fundamentally broken backend.

You should consider replacing your ERP if:

• Your current system cannot model your core processes. If you are running a manufacturing business on a system that does not support bills of materials, routings, or work-in-progress tracking, no interface layer can add those capabilities. You need a system that fits your operational model.
• Vendor support is ending with no upgrade path. If your ERP vendor has announced end-of-life with no migration path, you are eventually going to have to move. An interface layer on top of a dead system is a temporary fix at best.
• You have genuinely outgrown the platform. Your Sage 50 was fine when you had 10 employees and £2m turnover. At £20m with 80 staff across three sites, it is not going to cut it, interface layer or not.
• Data integrity is fundamentally broken. If your transactional data is unreliable, duplicate-ridden, or inconsistent, an interface layer only makes those problems more visible. Fix the data first.

We audit your ERP during the discovery sprint. If we find that your system is fundamentally unfit for purpose, we will tell you. And we will recommend you speak to an ERP implementation partner rather than proceeding with us.

To be concrete: if your Bill of Materials module cannot handle multi-level BOMs, no interface layer can add that capability. If your inventory valuation method does not match your accounting requirements, an interface layer will not fix the numbers. If your system has a hard limit of 50,000 stock items and you have 52,000, we cannot solve that.

In these cases, the right conversation is not “how do we make this look better” but “what system should we move to, and how do we manage that transition.”

3. When a Full ERP Migration Is the Right Call

There is a specific category of business that needs a full migration rather than an interface layer. It tends to look like this:

• Rapid growth from £5m to £50m+. You have outgrown not just your software but your processes, your chart of accounts, your warehouse structure, and your reporting. A migration gives you a chance to rebuild your operational model from scratch.
• Multi-entity complexity. You have acquired three companies in five years and are running four different ERP systems. An interface layer cannot solve that. You need a single source of truth.
• International expansion. Your current ERP does not handle multi-currency, multi-language, or multi-tax-regime requirements, and it never will. A modern cloud ERP with proper global capabilities is the answer.
• Industry-specific requirements. If you are in a niche industry with specialised compliance, traceability, or regulatory requirements that your current ERP cannot meet, no amount of interface work will bridge the gap.

That said, ERP migrations fail at alarming rates. Gartner reports that more than 55% of ERP projects fail to meet their objectives. Panorama Consulting puts the figure closer to 60%. If you do need to migrate, choose your partner carefully and budget for the true cost: software licensing, implementation fees, data migration, business process re-engineering, change management, training, and post-go-live support. A £300,000 licence often comes with £200,000+ in implementation costs.

We can help you assess whether migration is truly necessary, and if it is, we can recommend implementation partners who specialise in that work. We do not do migrations ourselves, so our advice on this topic is genuinely independent.

4. When an Off-the-Shelf ISV Add-On Will Suffice

For many standard business needs, there is already a well-built, well-supported add-on available on AppSource or the Sage Marketplace. Buying an add-on is almost always cheaper and faster than custom development.

Consider an off-the-shelf add-on when:

• You need standard functionality. Credit card payment processing, shipping integration, e-commerce connectivity, basic CRM. These are commodity needs with mature solutions.
• Your requirements match the product. If the add-on covers 80–90% of what you need out of the box, buying it and adapting your process slightly is nearly always the better financial decision.
• You want vendor support. An add-on comes with documentation, updates, and support. Custom development puts the maintenance burden on you (or on us, via our subscription).
• You need it fast. Most ISV add-ons can be installed and configured in days, not weeks. No discovery sprint, no design phase, no development cycle.

Custom development is overkill for commodity needs. If a £200/month AppSource app solves your problem, spending £30,000 on a custom build is not smart. We will tell you that.

5. When You Should Hire a Larger Consultancy Instead

Sysgraft is a small, specialist consultancy. We build interface layers. We do not do full ERP implementations, enterprise-wide system integration, or global multi-site rollouts. For those projects, you need a larger firm.

You should engage a larger consultancy when:

• You need system integration across 10+ platforms. If you are stitching together ERP, CRM, WMS, HR, payroll, e-commerce, POS, and three legacy systems into a unified architecture, you need a firm with breadth across all those domains.
• You need full ERP implementation services. Data migration, business process re-engineering, change management, training, go-live support, hypercare. These are large, multi-disciplinary programmes that require dozens of consultants.
• You are a global enterprise requiring multi-site rollout. Coordinating a system deployment across 15 countries with different regulatory environments, languages, and business units is a scale of project that demands a tier-one consultancy.
• You need ongoing managed services at enterprise scale. 24/7 support, SLA-backed incident response, dedicated account teams. These are capabilities we do not offer.

Firms like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, and specialist partners like Columbus or DXC Technology are appropriate for these engagements. We are happy to recommend them when the situation calls for it.

6. When Your Budget Is Under £15,000

Our discovery sprint alone costs £3,500. A full build project typically starts at £15,000 and ranges up to £60,000+ depending on scope. Plus there is a monthly subscription for hosting and maintenance.

If your budget is under £15,000, we are not the right fit. Here is what you could do instead:

• A single report or minor UI tweak: Your existing ERP partner or an independent consultant can handle this for a few hundred to a few thousand pounds.
• A Power Apps solution: As discussed above, for simple internal tools, Power Apps can deliver at a fraction of the cost.
• Excel-based automation: For some reporting and data-entry use cases, well-designed Excel workbooks with Power Query can bridge the gap.
• An ISV add-on: Subscription-based add-ons often cost £100–£500 per month, well within a £15,000 annual budget.

We do not want to be the provider who says “yes” to every budget. Our model works when there is genuine scope for a well-designed interface layer. For smaller projects, we will suggest better options and, if appropriate, point you to freelancers or smaller agencies who can deliver what you need.

7. When You Have No API Available

Our entire approach depends on having an API to connect to. If your legacy system is truly locked down with no API, no database access, no OData endpoint, and no third-party connectivity layer, we may not be able to help.

This situation is rarer than you might think. Most modern ERP systems (Business Central, Sage 200, OrderWise, SAP Business One, NetSuite, etc.) expose REST APIs. Even older systems often have ODBC drivers, OData feeds, or third-party middleware that provides programmatic access.

But there are exceptions:

• Truly legacy on-premise systems with no API layer and no upgrade path. Think DOS-based or early Windows-era systems with proprietary data formats.
• Industry-specific vertical systems that were built as closed ecosystems with no integration surface.
• Systems behind strict on-premise security policies that make external API calls impossible.

We audit this in the discovery sprint. Before you pay for a build, we authenticate against your system, enumerate available API endpoints, and test reads and writes against your real data. If the API does not exist or does not support what you need, we will tell you upfront. No build price is issued without a live API audit.

In our experience, roughly 80% of ERP systems we evaluate have a usable API. For the remaining 20%, the options are limited: replace the system, explore middleware solutions that can add an API layer (such as middleware platforms that provide OData or REST wrappers over database connections), or look at database-level integration (which carries its own risks and limitations around data integrity and upgrade paths).

8. When Your Timeline Is Under Two Weeks

Our process follows a structured approach: discovery sprint (3–5 days), design and UX phase, development (4–12 weeks), testing, and go-live. The fastest we have ever delivered a production-grade interface layer was four weeks, and that was for a deliberately limited scope.

If you need something this week, we are not the right partner. Consider:

• Power Apps: For a simple screen, this can be built in days.
• An existing ISV add-on: Already built and ready to configure.
• A short-term workaround: Sometimes a well-structured Excel export process can fill the gap while you plan a proper solution.

We prefer to under-promise and over-deliver. Our 4–12 week timeline accounts for discovery, iteration, testing, and proper go-live support. Rushed builds create technical debt, and we would rather not build something we are not proud of.

Even our discovery sprint alone takes 3–5 days. That includes time on-site observing your team, auditing your API, mapping workflows, and producing wireframes. We do not skip that phase because it is where we validate whether our approach will work for you. A rushed discovery means a flawed build.

If your deadline is genuinely urgent, here is what we suggest: use a temporary solution to bridge the gap (even if it is imperfect), then engage us for a proper build on a timeline that allows for quality. A Power Apps prototype that works today is better than a rushed custom build that breaks next month.

9. When Internal Development Is the Better Path

If you have a strong in-house development team with capacity, building internally gives you more control and builds internal capability that serves you long-term. Here is when internal development makes sense:

• You have a capable team with available bandwidth. If your in-house developers have the skills and the time to build and maintain an interface layer, that is almost always the better long-term investment.
• You want full control over the roadmap. With an external partner, you are one of several clients. With an internal team, you set the priorities.
• You want to build institutional knowledge. An internal team that builds the interface layer understands it intimately and can maintain, extend, and evolve it without depending on an external provider.
• Your requirements are highly specific and evolving rapidly. If you are iterating quickly on new features and the scope changes week to week, an internal team can react faster than any external partner.

That said, building internally is not always the right call either, and it is important to be honest about the downsides. The opportunity cost of diverting a senior developer from revenue-generating work can be significant. A developer costing £600–£800 per day spent on an interface layer is not building your core product, improving your e-commerce platform, or optimising your internal tooling.

There is also the retention risk. If the developer who built your interface layer leaves, you are left with orphaned code and knowledge gaps. An external partner provides continuity that an internal team may not.

And many SMEs we work with do not have a development team at all. If you do, and they have the capacity, we will encourage you to build it yourselves — and we are happy to provide advisory support or a discovery sprint to help you scope the work, validate your API approach, or review your architecture. We do not need to build it to help you build it well.

10. Decision Matrix: Sysgraft vs the Alternatives

To make this practical, here is a decision matrix that summarises when each approach makes sense:

11. When Sysgraft Is the Right Choice

To be fair and balanced, let us also cover when we are genuinely the right choice. It is a specific but valuable sweet spot:

• You are running a capable ERP (Business Central, Sage 200, OrderWise, etc.) that handles your core processes well.
• Your ERP has a viable API that exposes the data and operations you need.
• Your team is frustrated with the user interface, navigation, and speed of the ERP.
• You have a budget of £15,000–£60,000+ for a custom interface layer.
• You need the result in 4–12 weeks, not 9–18 months.
• You want a customer-facing portal, a role-specific staff dashboard, or both.
• You value modern UX, real-time data, and a professional-grade interface.
• You want to keep your existing ERP investment rather than replace it.

The common thread across all these scenarios is that your ERP is fundamentally sound but your team鈥檚 experience of using it is poor. The data is correct, the processes work, but the interface gets in the way. Your team exports data to Excel to do their real work. Your customers call your salespeople because they cannot find order information online. Your management team has to wait for weekly reports when they need real-time visibility.

If that describes you, we should talk. Our discovery sprint will confirm whether we can help, and we will give you a fixed-price proposal that covers exactly what you need.

If none of that describes you, we hope the guidance above helps you find the right path forward. Whether that is Power Apps, an ISV add-on, a migration partner, or an internal build, we want you to make the right decision for your business.

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