ERP Trends in 2010: A Manufacturing Perspective

First I want to thank all of those people who have read and commented on my blog over the past few months. Apparently there is a lot of interest in emerging trends and many firms are positioning themselves to take advantage of the perceived shift in the market. After reading my past few blogs a few organizations have contacted me to discuss my thoughts and to share with me what they perceive to be the upcoming trends for their respective industries/markets. One such firm, Software Advice, has shared with me some interesting facts regarding the Manufacturing Sector and trends that they see for 2010. I will comment briefly on these trends but I encourage everyone to read the article in its entirety at “2010 Manufacturing Software State of the Industry Roundtable” According to Software Advice “March was the eighth consecutive month of economic growth in manufacturing – the fastest growth the industry has seen since July 2004 (source),” as a result of this unexpected growth, IT insiders in the article share their thoughts on how this growth will impact purchase and implementation activity in 2010 and beyond. The chart below summarizes the major trends in Manufacturing Software as identified in the article.
Market Activity Increasing
Small and Medium enterprise Spending Increasing
Large Enterprise spending Flat
Food, chemical and customer packaged goods mfg Increasing
Aerospace, semiconductor and automotive manufacturers flat
The article suggests that Manufactures are starting to invest again in ERP and software. According to Software Advice, “buyer interest and purchase activity is up across the industry, from large sophisticated companies to smaller companies implementing an enterprise system for the first time.” They attribute this increased activity to two primary reasons: 1.             The 10-year anniversary of purchases made as a result of the Year 2000 (Y2K) date problem; and. 2.             Many companies are restarting buying processes that were deferred in 2009. The article further suggests that “leading up to the year 2000, fear of the Y2K problem drove migration from legacy manufacturing ERP systems to modern systems that used four-digit fields. Now, ten years later, those systems are ready for replacement.” I find this hypothesis to be very compelling particularly part 1. I hadn’t considered the Y2K phenomenon to be relevant but apparently it had more relevance in the manufacturing sector than I knew. As a result, I consider these to be two very compelling reasons for suppressing growth/spending until now. This is probably the most influential reason for driving growth in the manufacturing sector although, the article does point out three other very compelling reasons so I encourage you to read the article and draw your own conclusions. The article that I am referencing above is Part I of a two part series. In Part II (2010 Manufacturing Software State of the Industry Roundtable – Part II), Software Advice will “take a look at activity in the software as a service (SaaS) market, how vendors are adjusting prices to compensate for the economy, and whether manufacturers are implementing integrated ERP systems or best-of-breed applications.” If you are interested I encourage you to read Part II as well. Thanks for taking the time to join us this month and catch up on the current trends in ERP. Please join us next month we discuss Oracle’s new BI products and product direction. We will also discuss what we at DLT are doing to get our customers up to speed on these new products. Until then!