Top 6 ERP Software Vendors
In today’s age of digital transformation, the top ERP vendors are:
This is because more and more businesses are taking advantage of the benefits of ERP software. In fact, most businesses can’t afford to pass up on the automation, integration, and efficiencies offered by a fully integrated business management platform.
What is ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are an integrated suite of business applications designed to automate the back-office functions of your organization, including financials, sales, and operations. Financials handle accounting functions such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, and fixed asset management. Operations include things such as sales orders and contact management.
Read More: What is ERP and How Do ERP Systems Work?
Why Do I Need An ERP Vendor?
Since ERP software is built to help a company succeed, there are plenty of top ERP vendors that can help ensure your investment pays dividends. As of 2018, the ERP software market was valued at $35.81 billion. This number was projected to grow up to $78.40 billion by 2026; growing at a rate of 10.2% each year. Due to the size of the market, there is an overwhelming number of ERP vendors that can act as experts in your industry.
Which ERP vendors will work best for you? It might be easy to look at a list of the world’s largest software companies by revenue and market capitalization, but that doesn’t tell you which ERP vendor would work for your unique needs.
Whether you are a mom and pop store ready to take your business to the next level, or a large business with multiple brick and mortar locations, many top software developers have a large network of specialized value-added resellers (VARs) that can help you through the sale, setup, and future support. If you follow the do’s and dont’s of selecting an ERP vendor, you’ll be prepared when deciding between your top few choices.
In no particular order, we’ve compiled our list of the top ERP vendors. These companies were chosen due to their market presence, the number of available solutions they have, and their appeal to a multitude of users and industries.
Top ERP Vendor: Microsoft
Microsoft has been a leader in the ERP software market for many years through its Dynamics product offerings. These ERP solutions provided a fully integrated tool for financials, supply chain, operations, reporting, manufacturing, and human resource activities.
Some of the most popular ERP solutions of the past 20 years have been from Microsoft, including Dynamics NAV and Dynamics AX. Prior to their launch with Microsoft in 2005, the Dynamics products were run by independent companies, Solomon and Axapta, before being acquired by Great Plains Software, which Microsoft later purchased in 2001 to create Dynamics GP.
Today, Microsoft Dynamics GP is still one of the leading on-premise solutions Microsoft offers. The others have transitioned into Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. Many of Microsoft’s offerings now try to become industry-focused or provide an app-based approach that lets you customize your solution to fit your needs. Their yearly release waves highlights plans and key milestones that allows software owners and users to see what positive changes are arriving for the systems months in advance.
Top ERP Vendor: SAP
SAP has been a leader in business applications since the launch of its first ERP system in 1972. Today, the company has over 425,000 customers in over 180 countries and employs over 100,000 people worldwide. They offer dozens of ERP solutions for seemingly every size of business and every type of industry.
ERP solutions from SAP give your business access to tools designed to simplify your business processes and gain an advantage over your competitors. This is provided through integrated financial management, supply chain management, and CRM tools. Most SAP ERP software is scalable, allow you to adjust the package towards your unique needs.
Regardless of the size of your business, SAP has a worldwide ecosystem of over 21,000 partners that can help you buy, build, implement, service, support and run the SAP solution that best fits your unique needs. For small and midsize (SME) businesses that have concerns working with such a large company, SAP provides local partners that can help you face-to-face and handle local regulations.
Top ERP Vendor: Oracle
Oracle is one of the largest software companies in the world, selling database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products. They are most known for their own brands of enterprise systems that handle ERP, human capital management (HCM), CRM, and supply chain management (SCM). Oracle Cloud Applications are built on machine learning that helps enable fast innovation with a modern UX and customer-first approach.
After a number of acquisitions in the early 2000s, Oracle became a leading ERP company with its Oracle Fusion and Oracle E-Business Suite product lines. Oracle ERP Cloud was released in 2012 and has quickly become one of the most preferred Oracle solutions. And in 2016, Oracle acquired NetSuite, one of the best cloud ERP software options on the market.
In acquiring JD Edwards and PeopleSoft in the mid-2000s, Oracle pivoted the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solution (also referred to as JDE) to meet the needs of the medium-sized company that was not currently covered by their E-Business Suite.
Top ERP Vendor: Sage
Sage Group is the third-largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software, but the largest supplier to small businesses. The founders started the company in 1981 with a focus on providing estimating and accounting software tools to small businesses.
While Sage does offer ERP software for larger businesses, they still have numerous offerings for small to midsize companies. Their acquisition of Sage Intacct in 2017 allowed them to still have a strong financial management software package while continuing to improve on their enterprise solutions. These ERP options are highly modular and customizable, allowing users to streamline their processes.
On top of strong accounting and financial management, all Sage ERP solutions can offer features to assist with inventory, manufacturing, business intelligence, and distribution needs. They also have a strong foot in the Construction industry; Sage offers a “Contractor” and “Construction and Real Estate” version of their 100 and 300 ERP options, respectively.
Top ERP Vendor: Epicor
Epicor has been a leader in ERP systems for over 25 years, with a primary focus in manufacturing, distribution, retail and services industries. Like many enterprise software companies, they have their origins in financial accounting before beginning to integrate CRM tools into their packages. Following acquisitions in the late 90s and early 2000s, Epicor transitioned into expanding its manufacturing capabilities. By 2005, Epicor Vantage 8.0 was released as their first manufacturing-focused option.
Since 2006, Epicor has been a world leader in ERP software. All of their solutions provide a modular architecture, letting you customize which features are required and implemented without sacrificing the performance quality.
Epicor has been making a strong push towards the utilization of the internet of things (IoT), mobile solutions (accessible via Apple iPhones and Android smartphones), and analytics and Big Data via integrated BI tools.
Top ERP Vendor: Infor
Infor has been one of the leaders in cloud-computing since 2010 when they begin an aggressive push towards modernizing their product lines and providing a solution for virtually every industry. Today, their CloudSuite line of products includes over a dozen sub-industry options for manufacturing, distribution, field service, and consumer packaged goods (CPG).
Infor’s ability to provide an ERP software for every industry is in part due the number of acquisitions they’ve been a part of since their inception in 2002 as Agilsys and ultimate rebrand to Infor in 2004. Today, Infor provides ERP software to over 68,000 organizations worldwide. This is largely in part to their large network of software partners. With over 2,100 ERP vendors selling their product in 47 countries, Infor is consistently a vendor that companies consider when changing ERP systems.
