The ERP projects became cheaper and shorter

Panorama Consulting Group issued the new report on the market of ERP systems covering the period of 2010. One of the main trends about which it is told in the report, all this big adaptation of SaaS of model in ERP sector: 17% of respondents already addressed its use.

Traditional vendors supported this trend by the fact that began to propose actively solutions which allow to use SaaS off-site (announced use of such model to 24% of respondents). The most part of the companies – 59% - use on-premise ERP.

Also in the report data are provided in comparison for 2009 and 2010 at the cost and duration of ERP projects. For this period the average cost of such project fell from $6.2 million to $5.48 million. Average project duration decreased 18.4 months up to 13.4 months. The period of payments was reduced from 2.7 to 2.5 years. And the percent of costs for implementation of ERP from revenues of the company made 4.1% (earlier there were 6.9%).

Researchers draw conclusions that economic recession as is positive, and negatively affected ERP the market. On the one hand, the companies became more attentive to the expenditure for IT. With the friend of the party more than a half noted that projects did not keep within in advance stipulated time frames and had other problems. In comparison with 2009 (35.5%) in 2010 already 61.1% of projects lasted longer than planned.

Perhaps, profit increase of business from implementation of ERP became the most unusual indicator of 2010. If in 2009 two of three companies indicated that they received 50% and less from the planned profit after implementation of the project, then in 2010 42% of the companies were got from 51% to 100% of profit. Analysts explain such success with universal use of business cases: in 2010 only 3% of the companies did not use them.

Collected by them data, however, did not allow to select any vendor leading in the market. SAP, Oracle and Microsoft were those vendors most of which often joined in short-lists of implementations.

Standard ERP systems include modules of management of finance, logistics, production, sales and others, but very often the companies should adapt systems for features of the business nevertheless. For 70% of percent of the companies in 2010 the key module was financial and only for 11% - retail. The PLM module was key for 18% of the companies, and BI – for 31.5%.

As top trends which will prove in the 2011th year analysts call: the growing role risk of management, management of changes in the organization. Besides, the role of use of business cases and management of ROI will increase. At the same time the number of claims to vendors and unfortunate projects will grow. ERP vendors will continue consolidation, medium and small business will use more SaaS. Year will be successful for cloud computing and CRM systems. Also in focus of attention there will be BI.