ERP Software is used everywhere, from a small business companies to large organizations. The experts of enterprise resource planning software claim the companies providing ERP service will continue to merge in future. The major players of enterprise software are providing services of e-commerce and CRM. The concept of ERP II is gaining popularity, where the ERP software will provide the companies with the competitive edge to get ahead of their competitors. The future enterprise software will come integrated with latest marketing strategies and business plans.
ERP II, Software-as-a-Service, application on demand and open source application are future trends. There are other many challenges faced by enterprise resource planning software.
1. ERP software will embrace internet technologies: The software will continue to use combined tools of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 in future. Microsoft has been trying to dominate the area of online enterprise software by introducing XML and similar software applications. Microsoft's data centric web technologies are getting more and more popular with the changing market needs. The use of internet technologies to get updated online data is gaining more and more popularity, and many buyers wish to have internet enabled services.
The online ERP packages that provide updated information of each and every minute of the changing business scenario will get more buyers. The data will be refreshed every time, automatically, without manual interruption on online ERP. There will be other types of services such as the software providing online alerts to the business partners located at various geographical regions and the future market of ERP software will have options for partner integration services.
2. Cost of ERP implementation will reduce: The price of hardware has reduced in last decade and software market is also facing cost issues. The software companies providing low cost solution will continue to dominate the market in future.
3. ERP SaaS: The enterprise solutions through SaaS offers low cost software implementation, where the company buying the software will not be spending money on data centre requirements, save money on hiring IT experts and buying hardware. ERP SaaS, provides software anytime and anywhere in the world, and the server is maintain by the provider company at its own location. CRM SaaS is also getting acceptance in market for providing easy software application.
4. ERP software designed on demands: The future of these software will also see growth of vendors that design ERPs on demand.
Some experts believe that in couple of years twenty five percent of the ERP market will be dominated by SaaS. Even biggest players such as SAP are approaching SaaS to get an idea about the new technology and its effect on current market. SAP has also announced to launch its SaaS products. Other major market players such as Oracle and Microsoft are also trying to analyze the effect of SaaS on this market. The future ERPs and business organization will have open database, where no data is hidden and data hiding will have no place.
