Why Mirador Chose Customer Intimacy as a Strategic Discipline

At Mirador, our strategic aim is to enable the continuous business process improvement of our customers through ERP software.
In the world of midmarket ERP, success isn’t about being the lowest-cost provider or having the flashiest features. Multiples of what’s saved on a cheap ERP implementation is lost in wasted materials or poor inventory management, faulty project or job costing, and a lack of real-time data to drive informed decisions on the shop floor and the board room — and everywhere between. Flashy features from more horizontal providers look great in demos, but end up fitting the company to the system, not the other way around. They’ll pitch this as a virtue claiming “best practice,” which really just means “industry average.” We believe in becoming a true partner to our customers, helping them navigate complexity with tailored solutions, deep expertise, and a long-term commitment to continuous improvement.
ERP systems aren’t plug-and-play. They touch every aspect of a business—from production to inventory, finance, and customer service. They are the system of record. Each company has its own workflows, challenges, and strategic goals that make up its unique competitive advantage. A generic ERP system constantly drags a company toward generic operations.
That’s where customer intimacy comes in. It’s the discipline of deeply understanding each customer’s business, industry, and evolving needs. It means investing the time to learn how they operate, collaborating on customizations and product roadmap, and staying close well after go-live to ensure continued success. This kind of relationship doesn’t scale easily. It takes patience and steady, deliberate investment.
We’ve found that the midmarket is underserved when it comes to this level of care. Many ERP providers chase scale through standardization, leaving customers to adapt themselves to rigid systems. At Mirador, we go the other direction—we adapt to our customers. Our product management process is customer-driven. A refrain in roadmap meetings is that “we have 1,000 of the best product managers in our customer base.” We foster a service culture built on listening and responsiveness.
Choosing customer intimacy also aligns with how we view the role of ERP software: not as a product, but as a strategic lever. When implemented thoughtfully, ERP can improve competitiveness, enable growth, and strengthen the customer’s position in their own market. That can’t happen without a provider that truly understands their business.
In a category increasingly dominated by short-term thinking and financial engineering, we’re committed to long-term partnerships, local presence, and building trust over time. Customer intimacy isn’t just our strategy—it’s our identity.