What’s Ahead for Enterprise Resource Planning?

For many years, beginning in the 1990s, Enterprise Resource Planning has been the foundation of manufacturing companies.  Aberdeen Group’s Sector Insight report credits ERP with creating a hub for visibility, collaboration and vitality. Agile decision making from today’s manufacturers means systems must be able to keep up.

The five year outlook for ERP systems will see a change that will benefit end-users. ERP is evolving to enable collaboration and greater access to vast amounts of customer and production data. Is this the death of ERP systems? Yes, for difficult to change, cumbersome systems.

Andy Kyte, a Gartner research analyst, mentions how, “enterprise customers are replacing some ERP functions with SaaS, business process outsourcing, and best-of-breed applications.” The report from Gartner: The Rise of the Postmodern ERP, sees a market that has been energized with the emergence of Saas vendors.  Out-dated ERP systems – the ones that are heavily customized, expensive and difficult to upgrade –are being left behind.

So is ERP as a whole outmoded? Not quite. Gartner is not predicting that customers will completely move away from ERP, but will instead embrace a new model.  According to an article in CIO, in about five years, hybrid ERP environments to be the norm, with significant elements of functionality shifting to the cloud. Elements that pertain to manufacturing and financial functions will most likely continue to remain on-premises due to the complexity of the processes.  Manufacturers, according to the Aberdeen report,  will still need ERP to deliver timely information to key decision makers.

“Providing employees with data can minimize costs and allow organizations to be agile when steering the organization to innovate and stay ahead of the competition,” the findings show.

Is it time to reconsider and ERP system that is slowing you down? Get agility and remain competitive with the right ERP system. Talk with one of our ERP experts with any questions you may have.

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