ERP Software Suppliers

The ERP market has continued to grow over the last 10 years. While it was once only the domain of Fortune 1000 companies, Enterprise Resource Planning has now caught the attention of small to medium sized companies. The growth rate of Enterprise Resource Planning has reached over 30% since the end of the 1990s.

Because this tool has become so important for a large number of companies and organizations, it is important to understand the suppliers who make it available to them. The foundation for ERP technology was introduced in the early 1970s. An organization called SAP was created by engineers who had worked for IBM, and it became one of the largest ERP vendors in the world.

The software created by SAP is R/3, and it was created for the purpose of assisting companies with their logistics and accounting processes. In addition to this, SAP also offered a number of tools that dealt with human resources. Over time, SAP has extended its services to include supply chain maintenance and data warehousing solutions. The second most popular ERP software company was PeopleSoft. The area where this company became most prominent was human resources. It eventually placed an emphasis on tailoring its products to the service sector, and they wanted to help organizations deal with their costs and expenses. One reason why SAP and PeopleSoft had a great deal of success is because they extended their product line to suit the needs of a changing market.

There are a number of other suppliers that have made important contributions to the ERP industry. Some of these companies are J.D. Edwards and Oracle. Oracle has sold ERP tools since the late 1980s, and these tools were designed to work with their databases. Oracle has focused on selling their products to consumer goods firms and manufacturing companies. Because of this, they have become a formidable adversary to companies such as SAP. However, Oracle has had a number of problems over the years. Many of these problems are a result of reorganizing the structure of the company as well as the uncertainty of their newer products.

Another ERP supplier that has become quite popular is Baan. Baan is a company based in the Netherlands that sells ERP logistics tools to companies that wish to avoid doing business with SAP. They have spent a great deal of effort focusing on software suppliers that are relatively small. One of the most powerful advantages of this strategy is that a broader variety of products were introduced. The firm called J.D. Edwards is a company that has sold software for many years. However, they did not officially become a public company until the 1990s. When the launched the OneWorld ERP tool, they became a powerful force in the market, and they have earned billions of dollars in profits.

There are the four ERP vendors that have made a tremendous impact on the industry. However, it should be noted that there are a host of smaller companies. Because the largest vendors have placed an emphasis on working with Fortune 500 to Fortune 1000 companies, this has left open a market that was not tapped for many years. The smaller ERP vendors are catering their services to smaller businesses. Some of the companies which have done well in this area are Infinium Software, QAD, and PowerCerv. The software sold by these companies will require a great deal of customization if they are to be used properly.

However, they have assisted these smaller businesses by offering their products at a much lower cost. In addition to this, the software can be implemented within a short time frame.

The lost cost of the software combined with the rapid implementation time has allowed smaller businesses to compete against companies that are much larger. Many of the larger ERP vendors have recognized this market, and are working hard to tailor their services towards it. Because many large companies have already implemented ERP, the large vendors need to make profits by moving into another market, and the next logical step is small to medium sized businesses. To compete with the smaller software vendors, the larger ERP companies must be able to introduce products that are competitive in cost and implementation time. The companies that do this successfully are the firms who will survive in the changing market.