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2014 ERP Predictions: Analyst foresees better buyer education, growth in mobility and BI, and more project failures

by Bridget McCrea
Contributing Writer,

It's that time of the year when industry analysts and experts don their thinking caps and brainstorm their lists of top IT predictions for the year ahead. Panorama Consulting's Eric Kimberling doesn't disappoint in Top Ten Predictions for the ERP Software Industry in 2014, a look at what he sees in store for the coming year for ERP. Kimberling's top 10 predictions include:

  • The SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics vs. Infor, Epicor, and IFS battle continues. "For the first time in over three years, the big three vendors regained some of the market share they had lost, which we didn't anticipate," Kimberling states, noting that the "Tier I vendors appear to have the marketing and sales machines but plenty of Tier II vendors now have private equity backing so it could go either way." 
  • ERP failures persist. The author says ERP implementations are simply "too complex and too risky for all organizations to succeed," especially those that are overconfident in their own abilities or choose to leverage the support of subpar ERP consultants and system integrators.  
  • ERP buyers are becoming more educated. The upside of ERP failures is that they tend to educate (and scare) people about to embark on their own ERP implementations, says Kimberling. "Each SAP failure or troubled Oracle ERP implementation you read about serves as a case study of what not to do."
  • Mobility and business intelligence gain ground. "As companies look to get more out of their large investments in ERP systems," says Kimberling, "more will invest in mobile solutions and business intelligence software to get their ROI."  Indeed, in the Dynamics space both of mobile and BI have seen ...

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About Bridget McCrea

Bridget McCrea covers business and technology topics for various publications. She can be reached at bridgetmc@earthlink.net.

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