Through acquisitions and functional enhancements, ERP vendors have largely staved off competition from specialized applications and microservices. Today’s big players will continue to swallow up cutting-edge capabilities and grow market share as one-stop providers. On-premises support will disappear as services increasingly move to the cloud.
2018 prediction
ERP vendors are building advanced technologies into their products, but that won’t forestall competition. Look for the landscape to shift as new players enter the ERP space with specialized applications and microservices that sit on top of (and integrate with) ERP platforms. Cloud-based ERPs will help ensure you’re constantly updated on the latest release.
2021 reality
As specialized applications and microservices have grown more sophisticated, ERP providers have upped their game, adding new features and buying competitors at a rapid pace.3 Competition exists mainly in cloud-based solutions that offer user-friendly interfaces for onfinance
professionals. The dominant vendors do several major systems updates per year, incorporating cognitive functionality like sensing, AI, ML, and robotics.
2025 implications
Big vendors will continue embedding advanced capabilities, bringing more data into the ERP footprint, while dispatching threats to their business model. They’ll start adding blockchain to mitigate cyber risks, pushing distributed ledger technology deeper into finance operations
and lowering its cost of implementation. The cloud-based financial ERPs will move from back-office cost centers to front-office drivers of business value.
