Kudos to mid-tier vendor IFS and Cindy Jutras' new consultancy for doing some actual hard research on the impact of all this ERP graveyard business. They surveyed 200+ executives at manufacturing companies, and found some interesting data points on how all this M&A activity is actually playing out with real customers.
IFS' summary here, full PDF here. Cindy's blog writeup is here.
A lot of the findings tend to reinforce what a lot of us have intuited for some time ... but for me the real takeaway was the weakness of M&A as a long-term business model in ERP. I think of it as the difference between a short-term banking transaction (i.e. buying generic captive revenue streams for a couple of years) and a long-term customer retention strategy.
To pick on my favorite whipping boy, what is the (latest) long-term product strategy for a company like Infor? Are they going to make a real effort to rationalize all these disparate products, and provide a go-forward platform for all the customers they've acquired? Here, to me, is the key data point in the IFS/Jutras study. Of companies whose software vendor had been acquired, they asked about their software plans after the acquisition:
That's why we're seeing such a dramatic uptick in interest in open source ERP at companies like xTuple. Our users - whether they're community members using the totally free version, or commercial customers using one of its big siblings - are in control of their own destinies. They don't have to worry about picking up the Wall Street Journal one morning and seeing that their software partner has been gobbled up by EPINFORACLE. They have the source code, no matter what - and they are members of a thriving global community of users that is bigger than any one company.
IFS' summary here, full PDF here. Cindy's blog writeup is here.
A lot of the findings tend to reinforce what a lot of us have intuited for some time ... but for me the real takeaway was the weakness of M&A as a long-term business model in ERP. I think of it as the difference between a short-term banking transaction (i.e. buying generic captive revenue streams for a couple of years) and a long-term customer retention strategy.
To pick on my favorite whipping boy, what is the (latest) long-term product strategy for a company like Infor? Are they going to make a real effort to rationalize all these disparate products, and provide a go-forward platform for all the customers they've acquired? Here, to me, is the key data point in the IFS/Jutras study. Of companies whose software vendor had been acquired, they asked about their software plans after the acquisition:
- 68% were still using the product, and planned to continue doing so. These are the "banking" customers.
- 14% were still using it, but planned to replace it through a competitive process.
- 10% were no longer using it, and had replaced it with a product from a competing vendor.
- Only 8% had followed, or planned to follow, the acquiring vendor's upgrade recommendation.
That's why we're seeing such a dramatic uptick in interest in open source ERP at companies like xTuple. Our users - whether they're community members using the totally free version, or commercial customers using one of its big siblings - are in control of their own destinies. They don't have to worry about picking up the Wall Street Journal one morning and seeing that their software partner has been gobbled up by EPINFORACLE. They have the source code, no matter what - and they are members of a thriving global community of users that is bigger than any one company.
Well this is exactly simmilar to the NetScape Scenario.Back in the early 90s when netsacpe was the first truly made browser, its CEO announced that it will ultimately bring a new trend in Computing and online exp that could ultimately bring an End to MS market monopoly.But Sadly guys at MS lauched the IE and they made it freely available.Netscape ultimately lost but later its legacy Re emerged in the face of FireFox and Google.
ReplyDeleteSame stuff is happening in the ERP industry where the top players like SAP and Oracle are gobbling up minature and intermidiate players.But since cost is a mjor issue in thos ERP systems more and more ERP vendors are now making real good stuff and at relatively good price. The only hurdly for the smll ERP vendors is the privacy concern and lack of post deployment support.But there will come a time when the Open Source vendors would come up with something which will haunt the big players.