55% of mid-market companies cannot change their ERP software without IT consultants

UNIT4, provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC), has announced findings of a new international research project undertaken by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) which surveyed 307 senior managers from a range of industries about their ERP and enterprise applications' ability to support business change.

One of the key findings was that 55 per cent of mid-market companies (with 100-1000 FTE) said they cannot make data and business process changes to their ERP software without bringing in external consultants which costs time and money. A similar survey conducted by analyst firm IDC at the end of 2009, showed substantial business disruption occurs to non-Agresso ERP solutions when any significant changes are required.

"The situation has not improved," said Ton Dobbe, VP Product Management, UNIT4. "A survey by CFO Research conducted around the same time as the IDC study showed that users of traditional ERP systems required more than twice as much help from IT professionals to make changes, whereas Agresso Business World is designed to accommodate change easily without costly consultants and code-level programming. But it is not only about the time and the resources, to the contrary: The longer it takes to make a business system (ERP, Finance,..) change the greater the disruptive impact to the organisation and this incurs millions and millions in hidden cost i.e. losses. ERP is the backbone of many organisations and where they struggle to adapt their systems to changes in the business, they will be over-spending, and not only on IT resource, without ever really meeting business requirements."