Erp Sap

As business tradition goes, Acquisition has also caught the ERP industry. The ERP history started with the onslaught of big corporations feeling the need for a single integrated application.

Their intention was to build a single integrated application, using the company¡¦s own IT infrastructure and resources. This single integrated application could then consistently make their data and information pass as a centralized control with adequate transparency and drastic cut in their costs right from their operational level to the maintenance level. This could then pave way and scope for future growth.

After such integrated Softwares were built by these corporations for their own needs, they were able to envision a huge potential of a prospective market.

These were now more popular as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) softwares that could be sold to other huge corporations which did not possess adequate IT resource or infrastructure. ERP then became a product-line in itself and the developing company a potential vendor to most such huge corporations.

It all started as specific ERP solutions, for specific industries and is still popular till this date. The terms SAP, PeopleSoft etc. are quite common synonymous vendor names in today¡¦s business. Ultimately, any vendor is very well aware that the primary base of any ERP Software would be the same.

All of them would definitely possess elementary modules such as HR, Materials Management etc. All that would be required would be customizations that would render an ¡¥Industry-specific¡¦ status to the ERP software and could be called as a separate product-line in it.

The developer will then acquire the vendor status; all that is required is a complete know-how and set of domain-specific experts in the specific industry. These consultants could develop a complete set of industry-specific modules; apart form the common ones like HR or Materials Management. And lo! You get to become a vendor for the ERP for the industry.

The developments in recent times have thrown out trends of Acquisition, more like any other business domain. We get to see many small ERP vendors being acquired by bigger ones, so that the big vendors get bigger with time.

The main hitch here is for the buyer, because with a new vendor who has acquired your older vendor means less of support for the existing product. Experts however feel that this trend has reduced vendor competition and seem to be more on the positive side. Even if there are just a handful of ERP vendors, there would definitely not be any reduction in competition in terms of pricing or new methodologies. Following is a list of a few open source ERP software providers: „h Adempiere „h Compiere „h ERP5 „h GNU Enterprise „h JFire „h OFBiz „h OpenBlueLab „h Opentaps „h Tiny ERP „h WebERP

Following is a list of proprietary ERP software providers

„h Product: 1C:Enterprise, released by 1C „h Product Accpac, released by, The Sage Group „h Product: 24SevenOffice Start, Premium, Professional and Custom, released by 24SevenOffice „h Product: Agresso Business World, released by Unit 4 Agresso