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After go-live, the customer remains accountable for the business outcome and for deciding what its ERP customisations should do. The customer can assign day-to-day technical work to its internal team, implementation partner, or an application management services (AMS) provider. The ERP vendor maintains the software or cloud service within the boundaries of its product and contract; that does not automatically include maintaining customer-specific extensions.
The exact division depends on the ERP product, hosting model, and support agreement. Treat the roles below as a practical starting point, then confirm them against your agreement and the product’s service description.
What does “maintenance” include?
“Support” can mean several different jobs, and a contract may cover some without covering the others. ERP Research separates vendor maintenance of the underlying ERP from AMS for the customer’s implementation, including its customisations, integrations, and reports. ERP Research’s support-model guide discusses these distinctions; the agreement determines what a particular provider will do.
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- Break-fix: investigate and repair defects in custom code, integrations, reports, or configuration.
- Platform maintenance: maintain the ERP software or cloud service, including vendor-managed infrastructure where applicable.
- User and application support: handle user questions, incidents, and functional issues in the customer’s implementation.
- Enhancements: change or extend custom functionality, reports, integrations, or configuration.
When agreeing ownership, name the work rather than relying on a broad label such as “support.”
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How responsibilities are usually divided
The customer owns business decisions and validation
The customer decides what a customisation is intended to accomplish, prioritises changes, and confirms that the ERP still supports its business processes after maintenance or updates. It also needs to ensure someone understands application-level dependencies and can validate the effect of a change. This accountability does not require the customer to employ every technical specialist itself.
The internal team or AMS provider performs agreed application work
An internal ERP team, implementation partner, or specialist AMS provider can take on technical maintenance, incident response, configuration changes, and enhancements—if those tasks are within the agreed scope. Define service hours, response and escalation arrangements, access, and exclusions. Microsoft’s guidance on planning Dynamics 365 support emphasizes deliberate planning for application support, data maintenance, business-process knowledge, and specialist performance troubleshooting.
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The vendor supports its product within a defined boundary
Vendor support generally concerns the underlying product or service; it should not be assumed to include customer-specific code, configuration, or implementation defects. Cloud hosting can shift infrastructure and platform operations to the SaaS provider while leaving the customer responsible for operating and validating its extensions. Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations service description describes that division for that service. It is an example, not a rule for every cloud ERP.
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Likewise, SAP’s 2025 private-cloud roles and responsibilities document says that, under the arrangements it describes, certain post-update tasks that are not technical—such as application settings or manual code creation in the customer namespace—must be performed by the customer. That statement applies to the listed SAP private-cloud options, not to every SAP product or customer contract.
Which support model fits your organisation?
These models can be combined. For example, an internal team may provide first-line help, a vendor may maintain the ERP service, and an external AMS provider may support custom integrations and reports.
| Model | What it can cover | What to verify |
|---|---|---|
| In-house ERP team | Application support, business-process knowledge, customisation coordination, and testing, depending on the team’s skills and capacity. | Coverage during absences, specialist technical depth, service hours, and whether the team can maintain all custom components. |
| Vendor maintenance | Underlying ERP software or cloud service within the applicable product terms. | Whether customer-specific customisations, configuration, integrations, and reports are excluded or separately supported. |
| Partner or consultancy AMS | May include break-fix, enhancements, configuration changes, and service-desk work for the implementation. | Exact scope, response and escalation terms, access, knowledge transfer, and named exclusions. |
| Independent third-party support | Potentially an additional support arrangement for specified ERP maintenance needs. | Which product and custom components it covers, how it coordinates with vendor support, and all contractual limits. |
The comparison reflects the support categories described by ERP Research; it does not establish what a particular provider includes. The same guide gives an indicative estimate of around 18–22% of original perpetual ERP licence cost per year for vendor maintenance. That is ERP Research’s 2026 estimate, not a universal rate or a quote; actual contracts vary.
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How to assign ownership clearly
Name people or roles for decisions, coordination, and delivery. The goal is to prevent work from falling between the business, technical team, and support provider.
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- Business or process owner: approves the intended behaviour, prioritises change, and accepts the business impact.
- Technical owner: coordinates maintenance, dependencies, update impact analysis, testing readiness, and release coordination.
- Delivery team: performs the contracted or internally assigned work and documents changes.
Before handover, record the custom components and their owners; source code and build artifacts; integrations and dependencies; support access; testing and deployment approach; update obligations; escalation route; and work excluded from support. This is a practical checklist, not a universal vendor-mandated format.
What to check in the support agreement
Read the agreement alongside the product’s service description. Confirm each of the following in writing:
- Which customisations, integrations, reports, and configuration items are covered.
- Whether the provider handles defect repair, minor enhancements, user support, and release or deployment work—or only selected tasks.
- Who assesses update impact, performs regression testing, and approves deployment.
- Service hours, response and escalation terms, access requirements, and exclusions.
- Who supplies application knowledge and documentation, and how knowledge is transferred if a provider or key employee changes.
Because responsibilities vary by product, hosting model, and contract, no single responsibility matrix applies to every ERP deployment. The Dynamics 365 and SAP documents above describe specific services and arrangements; use your own current agreement to determine contractual entitlements.
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