This is exactly the situation my company ran into. Don't hire a contractor, their incentive won't be aligned with your company and you'll overspend.

My company hired me to replace their terrible software vendor and by their own account it's been a clear success. I visit the factories and stores and work with the employees to tailor make the software for their needs.

We're finally about to hire our second developer next year using the money we've saved by ending out contract with our old software vendor.

We're even at the point now where we can sort of brag about it. Here's the customer story we did with Heroku: https://www.heroku.com/customers/leatherspa