Can enterprise software mature gracefully?
By Roberto Michel, editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
When I first began covering enterprise and supply chain management software trends back in 1996, the market was still relatively young. The term ERP was still gaining acceptance, and some 30 vendors with national presence were vying for the attention of manufacturers looking to replace legacy systems or adopt their first enterprise management software package.
The intervening eight years have been tumultuous. The ERP market is now much more concentrated, but remains vital, in large part through incorporating solutions for supply chain management. The B2B software boom advanced a new generation of collaborative software that permanently will benefit productivity. There's been consolidation among software vendors, but that's not the story line that really matters over the long haul.
Enterprises now have a stronger foundation of core transactional systems, and many are beginning to gain major benefits from newer collaborative applications. There is innovation and growth in the markets for enterprise, plant, and supply chain management software, working off of a foundation of installed ERP systems and data. The market's way of growing old gracefully will be via innovation around its edges, and improved interplay between ERP and collaborative systems.
Take, for example, initiatives such as lean or RFID. Even lean purists acknowledge the value of an enterprise system for orders, financials, and what's more, longer-term planning, while using lean add-ons for managing production. RFID also relies on the integrity of the underlying data in transactional systems like ERP and warehouse management.
End users are finding ways to make incremental improvements. Most ERP vendors recognize this and are coming out with new solutions in areas like lean, business intelligence, and sales & operations planning that appeal to companies looking to exploit data in their core systems.
There also exists a newer generation of vendors for things like collaborative manufacturing and plant intelligence or lean—which are perfectly happy to exist on the edges, and integrate with installed systems. Users would have nothing less.
Waxing nostalgic about the market is natural for me at the moment, since my status is shifting at MSI. I'm embarking on a freelance career, and will in the future be writing for MSI as a contributing editor. MSI also is pleased to announce the addition of Gary Ruderman as senior editor.
I'm confident that the best is yet to come in the use of enterprise, plant, and supply chain management software applications. The market is more mature and more focused on users, vertical industries, and practical solutions—and that's for the better. While for software vendors, the second half of the 1990s were boom years that may never be relived, the golden era for increasing productivity from the use of enterprise software still lies ahead of us.
