Midsized Companies Driving ERP Innovation-ERP Systems Development- Not Just SaaS Applications

ERP software, enterprise resource planning solution and enterprise systems traditionally catered to the large Fortune 100 manufacturing companies. The next target group for the big ERP vendors were in general the largest companies by size which fell under the list of Fortune 500 companies. If you were a large company but had fewer than a thousand employees you were treated as a second class citizen with respect to product customization and functionality. Even if you did have a budget deep enough to afford the intensive capital investment and resources required for an enterprise wide ERP systems you found the limited solutions available on the market lacked the features important to your company and everything needed to be customized during the implementation process which dramatically increased the time required for deployment and the expense of the integration. The “old” ERP solutions were difficult to connect with other outside applications that did a terrific job for companies in their respective areas and were subsequently aborted at great expense and disappointment to users or painfully forced to integrate with the new ERP infrastructure. In general, for smaller companies, the first wave of “big” ERP solutions did not return the same benefits that ERP systems were designed to facilitate. To add salt to the wound, smaller companies found the perpetual licenses of the big ERP systems to be outrageous. With maintenance fees upward of 25%, companies were finding that they were in essence purchasing a new ERP system every 4 years. In the last decade, however, given the large ERP software market opportunity that caters to mid-sized businesses, software vendors have focused developing products that cater not only to their size, but to their specific business and industry. Over 80% of midsized businesses surveyed recognize the benefits from a cost cutting, resource optimization and performance ERP solutions can bring to the table and they are willing to make the capital investments to get the right solution for their organization. Because these smaller organizations are focused on solutions that cater to their specific business, most of their buying decisions are based on referrals and references from colleagues or like companies in their industry. The recent slew of entrants in the ERP applications arena that are offering SaaS solutions or software as a service applications, are driving a lot of demand from the small to mid-sized business due to the significantly lower capital investment requirements and the dramatically shortened deployment timeframe ( 1 week versus 6 – 12 months). Although these solutions are getting a significant chunk of the ERP mid=size market, over half of the small to mid-sized businesses surveyed are wary about off-premise solutions due to security, lack and customization (too off the shelf). A list of companies that cater to the small to mid-size market are as follows in alphabetical order: Aggresso, CDC Software, Cincom Systems, Consona, Deltek, Epicor, Exact, Glovia International, IFS, Lawson, Profit Key International, QAD, SoftBrands, SYSPRO The “Big” ERP vendors also focusing on the small to mid-sized market are: Intuit, Infor, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sage. Regardless of what solution are available today, it’s clear that this sizable market with a strong demand for ERP solutions is an opportunity that cannot be ignored.