Business software Galicia: a map for deciding what your SME needs

The Galician business software market is saturated with offers that sell themselves as “the solution for your SME”. ERPs, CRMs, WMS, TMS, BPMs, MES, sector verticals, niche tools, low-cost solutions… Choosing badly isn’t about picking a bad product — it’s about picking the wrong category for your case.

This article is a decision map, not a catalogue. You won’t find recommendations for specific products (there are thousands of them); you’ll find the framework for knowing what type of tool fits your current operations and what the sensible order of implementation is.

The 6 types of business software a Galician SME might need

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). The “nervous system” of the company: invoicing, accounting, inventory, purchasing, production. You need it when you have more than three people touching accounting, stock and invoicing at the same time. Some well-known ones: Holded, Sage 50, Odoo, A3ERP.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Lead management, sales follow-up, sales pipeline, customer history. You need it if you have two or more salespeople and customer data is stuck in each person’s head or phone. Warning: in SMEs with fewer than 10 people, a badly implemented CRM is worse than no CRM at all — nobody fills it in and it turns into a graveyard of incomplete data.

WMS (Warehouse Management System). Locations, picking, packing, traceability. In Spain it’s sold as SGA; in international documentation you’ll see it as WMS — it’s the same thing. You need it if you have a warehouse with more than 500 SKUs or if order preparation time is a recurring problem. See 3 cases of logistics software in SMEs with a warehouse.

TMS (Transport Management). Route planning, vehicle assignment, cost per kilometre, on-route tracking. You need it if you have two or more of your own vehicles doing deliveries. Many SMEs skip it because they think it’s only for large fleets, but with three vans it already justifies a basic TMS.

Sector verticals. Software specific to a sector — construction, clinics, workshops, wineries, hospitality. You need it if your sector has very particular regulation or logic. Advantage: it fits 80% from day one. Downside: if you grow, it can fall short, and migrating away is expensive.

Custom software. The cases where none of the above cover your real competitive differentiator. See when it makes sense to invest in custom software and when it doesn’t.

The classic mistake in the Galician market

An SME with a warehouse in Pontevedra contacted us because it wanted to “change the ERP”. It had been sold to them as the solution to all their problems: slow invoicing, disorganised stock, orders that got lost, salespeople with no customer information.

The diagnosis identified three real bottlenecks:

• A warehouse with no locations or guided picking (nobody knew where anything was).
• Lack of structured sales follow-up — opportunities were being lost in each person’s head.
• Orders coming in via WhatsApp with no integration with the central system.

This is where two paths open up. The first: bolt three ad hoc patches onto the existing ERP and keep going. It works, but every integration is technical debt someone will have to maintain, and every ERP update carries a risk of something breaking. The second: migrate to a modern ERP designed from the ground up for SMEs with a warehouse, with real-time stock, integrated CRM and multichannel order intake as native capabilities — not extensions bolted on with sticky tape.

The real difference between the two paths isn’t just maintenance cost. It’s the compound effect: when capabilities live in the same ERP and share data in real time, each one multiplies the value of the others. The order-intake system checks stock before committing; the route planner knows which orders are ready and which aren’t; the CRM alerts the salesperson when a customer’s buying pattern changes. With loose patches that coordination doesn’t exist — each piece does its part but doesn’t talk to the others. An SME that starts with two or three modules of an integrated ERP doesn’t save two or three times what it would save with one — it saves far more, thanks to the network effect between modules.

In the short term, patches are cheaper. In the long term, migration is what scales, and it also unlocks efficiencies that loose patches simply can’t produce. The decision depends on how much growth you have ahead of you, how much accumulated technical debt you can afford, and how far your current ERP is from covering your operational reality.

How to prioritise what to implement first

Recommended order for a Galician SME with 10-50 people:

1. First: tidy up what you already have. Before buying anything new, audit the current use of the software you’re already paying for. The ERP you have probably has 40% of its functionality going unused.

2. Second: attack the most expensive bottleneck. If you’re losing 4h/day transcribing orders from WhatsApp, that gets tackled before “digitising the warehouse”. ROI is measured in hours recovered × cost/hour.

3. Third: integrate before adding. If you already have ERP + accounting + an online shop, integrating them is worth more than adding a CRM nobody’s going to pay attention to.

4. Fourth: consider custom only afterwards. Custom software is the last option, not the first. The cases where it’s the right call are a minority — but when it applies, it applies very well.

The business software ecosystem in Galicia

Galicia has a solid fabric of business software companies: large consultancies (Altia, Imatia, Tilsor) geared towards mid-sized clients and public administration, local integrators who implement standard solutions, and developers specialising in custom projects for SMEs.

What matters when choosing a provider is separating “selling software” from “solving the problem”:

• Product vendors will always conclude that you need their product.
• Independent consultants might recommend you buy nothing.
• Custom developers might conclude your case is one that’s solved with standard software.

Each type has its role, but knowing which one you’re hiring avoids surprises.

Next steps

If you’re not clear on which category you need, start with a diagnosis that delivers numbers, not by requesting quotes blind. And if you’re already clear you need custom software, the criteria for choosing the right team to build it matter more than the price.

At Rowan Tech we support Galician SMEs through this process. The initial diagnosis is free and always delivers an honest recommendation on the two paths: patching the current ERP or migrating to our ERP for SMEs with logistics operations (real-time stock, native integration of order channels, CRM and reporting from day one). We tell you, with numbers, which one fits your situation best. Let’s talk.