ERP market leaders, SAGE, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics, are not delivering says new research

18 October 2011, UK – The big hitters in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) are failing to meet the needs of medium-sized firms, according to new research published today by Intact Software, conducted by YouGov. The research shows that business management software is now widespread in medium-sized firms with 61 per cent using at least one of the three most well known brands, SAGE, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics. However, 75% of these respondents are experiencing problems and many want to replace their systems, citing maintenance costs (33 per cent), inflexibility (19 per cent) and underperformance (23 per cent) as some of the main issues.

Only 6 per cent of the (18) SAP users and 8 per cent of the (26) Microsoft Dynamics users surveyed like their system and don’t want to replace it. Upgrade costs may be driving this with 56 per cent of SAP users and 38 per cent of Microsoft Dynamics users citing problems in this area.  More than half (58 per cent) of respondents said that a main reason ERP implementations fail is because the software fails to match the business processes and 37 per cent said the software is not fit for purpose.

The research coincides today with the launch of Intact Software’s next generation ERP platform, Intact iQ, a highly customisable business management/ERP solution that Intact claims can be delivered and implemented up to 80 per cent faster than competing products.

“ERP systems should fit a business – not the other way around. It is very worrying to see that for many medium-sized companies, the solutions currently available are by and large failing to deliver,” said Paul Marry, CEO Intact Software. “We respect that customers want to run their business the way they want it to be run and believe Intact iQ offers them a real alternative; a framework that flexes to cost-effectively and quickly create an entirely customised solution, growing and adapting to satisfy present and future needs.”

The survey found that the top three problems encountered with business management software or ERP systems are:

1.Costly to upgrade (30 per cent of respondents)

2.Costly to maintain (22 per cent of respondents)

3.It is inflexible and cannot adapt to meet changing business needs (20 per cent)

Leeds-based electrical engineering company, Scattergood and Johnson is the first firm to replace several of their business process tools with Intact iQ. Commenting on the deployment, Robert Hargreaves, CEO at Scattergood & Johnson said, “We didn’t want to compromise our day to day business processes but we needed to improve information flow across our branches. After several previous attempts at replacing our systems we were cautious to put it mildly. Intact iQ provided us with a single system that replicated and integrated our processes across Sales, Finance, Stock and Purchasing. We are benefitting from the latest technology, including workflow and alerts and have every confidence that Intact iQ will improve our service levels today and support our growth tomorrow.”