Page 306 - Using MIS
P. 306
274 Chapter 7 Processes, Organizations, and Information Systems
ERP Market
Company Rank Remarks Future
Epicor 5 Strong industry-specic Epicor 9 designed for exibility (SOA).
solutions, especially retail. Highly congurable ERP. Lower cost.
Microsoft 4 Four products acquired: Products not well integrated with Oce.
Dynamics AX, Nav, GP, and Not integrated at all with Microsoft
Solomon. AX and Nav more development languages. Solutions not
comprehensive. Solomon on integrated and product direction
the way out? Large VAR uncertain. Microsoft Azure hosts Oracle and
channel. SAP products. Conict with Azure hosting
of Microsoft ERP products.
Infor 3 Privately held corporation that Many solutions, not integrated, particularly
acquired an ERP product specialized for manufacturing and supply
named Baan, along with more chain management. Will evolve with
than 20 others. revolution in 3D printing practices.
Watch for public oering in 2014.
Oracle 2 Combination of in-house and Intensely competitive company with strong
acquired (PeopleSoft, Siebel) technology base. Large customer base.
products. Expensive. Flexible SOA architecture. Will leverage
strong technology base into innovative and
eective cloud-based solutions. Strong
challenge to SAP market leadership. Claims
number 1 in CRM.
SAP 1 Led ERP success with Technology older. Expensive and seriously
client-server hardware. Largest challenged by less expensive alternatives.
vendor, most comprehensive Huge customer base. Future depends on
Figure 7-16 solution. Largest customers. eectively migrating to cloud. Claims
SAP Characteristics Expensive. number 1 in CRM.
of Top ERP Vendors
industries. Over time, SAP, which first provided such solutions, and other ERP vendors cre-
ated dozens of such starter kits for manufacturing, sales and distribution, healthcare, and
other major industries.
Which Companies Are the Major ERP Vendors?
Although more than 100 different companies advertise ERP products, not all of those products
meet the minimal ERP criteria. Even of those that do, the bulk of the market is held by the five
vendors shown in Figure 7-16. This figure shows market rank rather than market share because
it is difficult to obtain comparable revenue numbers. Both Epicor and Infor are owned by pri-
vate equity investors and do not publish financial data. Their rankings are based on what little
sales data is publicly available. Microsoft’s ERP revenue is combined with its CRM revenue, and
its true ERP revenue is unknown. Similarly, Oracle and SAP combine ERP revenue with revenue
from other products.
Q6 What Are the Challenges of Implementing and
Upgrading Enterprise Information Systems?
Implementing new enterprise systems, whether CRM, ERP, or EAI, is challenging, difficult,
expensive, and risky. It is not unusual for enterprise system projects to be well over budget
and a year or more late. In addition to new ERP implementations, numerous organizations
