We include small vendors in our system selection projects but only when we believe that they have a good client base, are really good for a specific industry and are using recent technology. A small company can also be a successful company and there are benefits to being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. You will see lots of small/unknown companies on our ERP portal at https://www.180systems.com/services/erp-business-case/.
But what about the concern that a small vendor will be acquired or if the small vendor is facing financial difficulties? Financial problems may be temporary – for example the vendor might have just rewritten their software to support multi-tenant architecture which is a big change supporting cloud computing. As a consequence, development costs may have gone up and their revenues have gone down as they are recognizing revenue over a longer period of time. However even if the small vendor is ripe for acquisition, it would be a big mistake for the acquiring company to abandon the system when there are many happy clients and the system has a strong/current underling technology.
Our solution blends the benefits of what a large company (Microsoft) does best with our highly specialized industry focused functionality and business intelligence so customers connected to their business, their staff, their industry, while keeping up with never ending changes to technology.