Agresso has reported a change in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) buying habits for the first time in fifteen years as companies look for a faster ROI in the face of a global recession.

 

The vendor recently reported strong third quarter global results with a 37 percent increase in revenues (28.8 percent in North America) including new orders in the $1 million-plus category.

 

Company officials point out that “this compares to market rivals like SAP (News - Alert), who announced an unimpressive nine percent year-over-year decline in new license revenues.”

 

“ERP buying habits are changing,” says Shelley Zapp, president of Agresso (News - Alert) North America, twisting the knife a bit harder: “The downward trend we see in SAP licensing revenues suggests that organizations are unwilling to invest in a product that hooks them into a never-ending cycle of need-spend-need-spend… unnecessary IT spending is no longer an option.”

 

Agresso officials cite a survey of nearly 900 users by Technology Evaluation Centers, aimed at determining the impact of ERP products on an organization’s perceived ability to make changes, reporting that 70 percent of ERP users feel “notably disadvantaged” by their existing systems.

 

According to another survey, conducted by the Business Performance Management Institute, only 11.2 percent of respondents could keep up with business demands to change processes.

 

Earlier this year, the TEC prepared a report detailing the ability of different ERP vendors to manage a list of business change scenarios. An analysis of these results determines that Agresso users “can expedite required changes to their ERP product to support over 95 percent of the change areas studied,” whereas SAP and Oracle (News - Alert) systems “require application development conducted by external IT consultants to support more than 95 per cent of these changes,” Agresso officials say.

 

A month ago TMC reported that Agresso announced an “ERP Healthcheck for Businesses Living in Change,” described as “an online tool which assesses the negative impact that systems lacking agility can have on an organization.”

 

Bet you didn’t know that was measurable.