ERP implementations still on hold, as economic woes continue
1 min read
ERP and enterprise systems generally are still being put on hold, due to the difficult economic climate, according to a study by the National Computing Centre.
The research, undertaken by NCC's online Evaluation Centre, suggests that in nearly a quarter of organisations (24%), all future ERP and enterprise software projects are on hold, while 41% are seeing projects postponed.
This compares to 29% of companies who are not experiencing any cutbacks and 6% who are increasing their investment in enterprise applications.
NCC also indicates that the implementation costs of ERP solutions are also problematic – greatly exceeding expectations in 18% of cases and overshooting in a further 53%.
But, says NCC, the real problem is in the length of time required to complete the implementation – with 24% of companies commenting that projects have massively overrun and 53% that anticipated timescales were inadequate. Only 12% of respondents apparently feel the implementation has been on time, with 6% lucky enough to report shorter than expected implementation times.
This very negative picture has had a knock-on effect on the time to cost-benefit of solutions, with 24% of NCC's respondents stating that this has greatly exceeded expectations and 24% that timescales have been disappointing.
Interestingly, more than half of NCC's respondents (58%) say they might now consider a 'software as a service' (SaaS) model in the future for ERP or enterprise solutions – as an alternative to conventional implementations. Currently, just 6% have adopted SaaS and a further 6% are evaluating this option.
Says Steve Fox, Evaluation Centre managing director: "In these challenging times it is more imperative than ever that ERP vendors demonstrate an effective return on investment for their software – and this includes making their systems easier to implement and manage."
