The next 12 months is set to see a fundamental shift in the way firms use enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, which will lead to suppliers reassessing their offerings.
This is according to analyst at Forrester Research China Martens, who said 2013 is set to be a good year for businesses looking for these tools due to a range of new deployment options and a wider range of applications.
She observed one key trend is that there will be greater opportunities for companies to access cloud-based ERP solutions. This could be highly useful to many firms, as this can help boost agility, improve efficiencies and cut costs much more than more traditional tools.
Ms Martens said the demand for this has been reflected by the fact ERP vendors are going "all in" with their commitment to cloud technology. At the centre of this will be software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that could help businesses take better control over all aspects of their operations. This market was fleshed out in
2012 with a greater range of solutions and this is set to continue into 2013, the analyst predicted.
One key area within this is likely to be SaaS financials, which Ms Martens identified as a market that is set to be in high demand from enterprise customers of all sizes.
"While some organisations may never move their financials to SaaS, others will look to fully replace on-premises apps with SaaS," she said, adding that a third option for some larger firms is a hybrid solution, where cloud tools are used at the divisional or
business unit level, with corporate headquarters retaining on-premises
applications.
The third key trend picked out by Forrester as likely to have a big impact in the coming 12 months is social collaboration and engagement. In the past, these tools have tended to be little more than 'Facebook for enterprise' solutions, but 2013 is likely to see vendors doing more to offer unique features that are better able to help employees across all areas of a business work together on projects to meet a common goal.
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