Marketing ERP products to education institutions

Looking for people to share you experiences in marketing an ERP product in the education space(schools/colleges/universities). What challenges you faced and how did you overcome them ?

I worked in technology acquisition and sales for a major University for many years. A few key obstacles you'll face:

1. Most large customers in the education market already have an ERP of some sort. You're gonna have to make a hell of a case for the benefits of your system. And these days, that usually means money. Improved features won't cut it. You need to save them dollars or man hours.
2. There's often a lobby of in-house developers who are invested in their own solution that they "maintain", and convincing them to abandon it in favor of your solution can be tough. You have to convince the grizzled die-hard programmer analysts. In some cases this may even mean their jobs are on the line if you makes them obsolete.
3. Data migration: how do you get their existing data into your system, and how much is it gonna cost them.
4. Long-term stability of your product. "Enterprise" solutions rarely come from startups. When a major enterprise needs a new solution they put out an RFQ/RFP and probably get many competing solutions. One of the common metrics is "how well is this gonna hold up over time". I've seen far superior products passed over because there were doubts that the company would exist 5 or 10 years on.

Hopefully those help you plan your product and your pitch a little better.