The Future of ERP

The Future of ERP
November 15, 2006
By James Maguire

The dream of enterprise resource planning systems is that a single application can track and monitor all of a business’s functions. In a perfect world, a manager opens a single ERP app to find data about any aspect of the business, from financials to HR to distribution schedules.

Alas, we’re not there yet – or at least most companies aren’t.

Looking at the ERP landscape, “there still tends to be a lot of disparate components, that are either homegrown or older packages,” says Forrester analyst Paul Hamerman.

Moreover, there are still a lot of gaps in ERP systems, particularly in industries where ERP functionality has grown up from its historic origins in manufacturing. There are even gaps in core ERP areas, Hamerman tells Datamation, “where they just haven’t done a particularly good job, in areas like budgeting, and recruitment…where the vast majority of customer use something other than their ERP vendor.”

But despite the challenges, the movement toward a global ERP system is a key factor shaping the future of enterprise resource planning.

“It’s a trend that’s going on, and most companies are going in this direction: Read more about The Future of ERP