The ERP vendor that is the very best fit for your company is the one that has in-depth understanding of your industry and functionality specific to its unique attributes. That said, six of the most common companies that come to mind when one starts to evaluate potential software suppliers all have solutions for a wide variety of service and manufacturing operations and both private and public sector organizations. Assuming they have a solution that meets your needs, the answer of which is the best fit would seem to come down to cost and the vendors “sweet spot” in number of users served.

ERP vendor

Which ERP vendor is the best fit for a company your size?

A landmark study by Aberdeen group in 2007 surveyed 1680 manufacturing companies of varying sizes to pin down the cost and profile of their ERP systems. The study includes data on six leading Tier 1 and Tier 2 ERP vendors. Tier 1, of course, is comprised on SAP and Oracle. The other four companies surveyed were Epicor, Lawson, QAD and Infor.

One surprising piece of data from the research is that average software cost per user is relatively flat, from the smallest implementations to the very largest. Simple marketplace efficiencies and competitive pressures probably drive this. The four Tier 2 vendors clustered in a narrow range of $5,206 to $5,366 per user. That would enable prospective buyers to eliminate price as a key determinant. SAP was a bit higher, at $6,111 and Oracle the most expensive at $7,361, perhaps because their ERP systems sit atop massive databases.  One reason these costs might be clustered is that the average number of ERP modules deployed for all size vendors was in a very narrow range between 10.2 and 11.9. So companies large and small are determining that they have similar needs as they scale their ERP systems to meet their business needs.


Vendor    Ave. Users    Cost/User    Ave. Modules       
Epicor          62           $5,366    10.4       
Infor           120          $5,206    10.0       
Lawson        128          $5,261    10.6       
QAD            304         $5,271    10.4       
Oracle         834          $7,361    11.3       
SAP           1365         $6,111    12.4       
Source: Aberdeen, July, 2007            


OK, if the software costs are about the same regardless of from whom you buy it, and you are likely to wind up with a system of similar scale, in terms of number of modules deployed, regardless of the software vendor, is there some indication of which of these six vendors is the best fit for your company?

The  table above finally reveals the “crowd-sourced” answer to that question. The 1680 companies in the survey stratified the six software vendors by the size of the company’s user base. Companies with the fewest number of users, 62 on average selected Epicor. At the other end of the spectrum, companies choosing SAP had an average user base of 1,365.

This data can be used as a rough guide when preparing a short list of vendors to consider. These six names aren’t the only ones that belong on your list. But if you can imagine scaling to 1,000 users, Oracle and SAP should be at the top of your list. If, on the other hand, about 100 users seems like a more likely scenario, Epicor, Infor and Lawson would be a good fit.

Written by :

Don Cooper