ERP Buying Market Trends

By Ryan Ayers
Updated: September 06, 2011

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions have been a part of the business systems and solutions landscape for quite some time, and have undergone several evolutions as they have grown to incorporate more components. Today’s ERP solutions have a greater degree of specificity than ever before, while allowing companies to maintain a more accurate and clearer picture of their daily activities and progress toward goals. Recent developments in ERP solutions have allowed more businesses than ever before to take advantage of the features offered within these systems, allowing for faster and more controlled growth, and a greater level of planning and operational control.

ERP as an SaaS Solution

One of the roadblocks to an effective ERP solution for many businesses has been the cost and maintenance involved in a premise based or proprietary ERP solution. A newer crop of Software as a Service (SaaS) ERP solutions has effectively opened the door for many companies that have been unable to utilize these systems in the past. These services offer comprehensive ERP solutions (often customizable to a certain degree) to their customers at a per-user or per-month rate. This pricing arrangement is generally much more cost effective for smaller businesses and allows for a comprehensive system to be put in place without the need for a huge initial software investment.

Cloud and Mobile Give ERP More Reach

The adoption of Cloud and Mobile technologies (and the advancement and refining of both) has also increased the effective reach of ERP systems for many businesses. These two approaches to a decentralized office have allowed companies to effectively monitor and control operations remotely without the need for time-consuming and redundant procedures to be set in place. These applications hold enormous promise for the future evolution of effective ERP solutions because by nature they allow for a more time sensitive and lower cost option that fits the workflow of today’s businesses.

Increased Vertical Specificity

ERP solutions have been designed with almost any industry in mind, allowing businesses to take full advantage of their systems by virtue of the systems themselves having accurate parameters. Rather than having to adjust your operational controls, or to force your employees to adapt to the nature of a system that was not designed with your business type in mind, you should have little difficulty in finding an ERP solution that is geared toward your industry. This translates into more accurate targeting, better information flow, and greater relevance of the features included in these industry specific ERP systems.

Finding an ERP solution to fit the specific needs of your business has never been easier than it is now. Most of the current crop of ERP offerings have incorporated trends like the ones above in order to make their products more accessible and more relevant to specific businesses. These steps in the evolution of ERP solutions have allowed today’s businesses, both large and small, to better operate in today’s dynamic and inherently mobile business climate, and have also allowed room for the further evolution and improvement of future iterations of these systems.