March 23, 2011 9:00 AM

The 2011 ERP Report shows some interesting trends that began last year and continue into this year. For example, the accelerating adoption of SaaS and the increased focus on business case and benefits realization are both trends that aren’t too surprising in this economic environment.

However, two trends in particular stand out in our recently published report. First, implementation durations and costs both decreased fairly dramatically in the last year. This year’s report, which was based on data collected in 2010, shows that implementation durations fell from 18 to 14 months over the last year, while the average total cost of ownership fell from 6.9% to 4.1% of implementing companies’ annual revenue.

These numbers may seem surprising on the surface, but the detail behind them helps provide some clarification. While it is partially good news that companies are not spending as much on ERP implementations as they have in years past, the bad news is that many companies are cutting corners in their attempts to do more with less. This is partially reflected in the fact that the percentage of companies that took more time and money than expected compared to years past. For example, the percentage that took longer to implement than expected jumped from 35% to 61%, while the percentage of budget overruns escalated from 51% to 74%. These numbers suggest that even though implementation costs and durations decreased, more companies beginning their projects with unrealistic expectations at and are blowing their budgeted time and resources at an alarming rate.

A second surprising metric from this year’s report is that Oracle was selected at a higher rate than all other ERP vendors since we begin tracking this data in 2006. Although SAP is still short-listed at the highest rate (38% vs. 32% for Oracle), Oracle is selected 22% of the time (including eBusiness Suite, Peoplesoft, and JD Edwards), followed by SAP (19%), and Microsoft Dynamics (14%). While SAP is still considered the leading ERP vendor in terms of market share, might this data be a leading indicator for Oracle beginning to take market share from SAP?

Learn more about our 2011 ERP Report by viewing the partial excerpt from a recent overview presentation below. In addition, you can download the full report and view the full presentation in our ERP Resource Center.

Blogger Profile: Eric Kimberling

With over fifteen years of consulting experience, Eric Kimberling has a wide range of professional expertise in companies ranging from the SMB market to large corporations. Eric’s background includes extensive ERP software selection, ERP organizational change, and ERP implementation project management experience.  Twitter: http://twitter.com/erickimberling   Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/erickimberling

Posted by Sue Ansell at March 23, 2011 9:00 AM

Categories: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

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