Comparative test gives good report for almost 40 ERP solutions
An ERP solution is sometimes referred to as a company's "central nervous system", as it plays an important role in the efficient processing of all daily business transactions. And it plays this role well, according to the experience of around 2,000 user companies from German-speaking countries, which were surveyed on satisfaction with their ERP solution by analysts from the consulting firm Trovarit for the eleventh time since 2004 in the course of the current "ERP in Practice" study. The study shows satisfaction ratings for almost 40 ERP solutions.
With a total of more than 20,000 participants to date, the study "ERP in Practice - User Satisfaction, Benefits & Prospects" (www.trovarit.com/erp-praxis) is the largest vendor-independent exchange of experience among ERP users. The comparative test has been conducted every two years since 2004 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The Trovarit Research team is supported by an international group of experts. Among others, the Research Institute for Rationalization (FIR) at RWTH Aachen University, the Center Integrated Business Applications (CIBA), 2BCS AG (Switzerland) and Der ERP-Tuner (Austria) are represented in this group.
Comparison test shows stable satisfaction
The evaluation of the ERP solutions shows that user satisfaction has remained stable compared to 2020. However, with regard to the overall assessment of the software partner's services both during ongoing operation and during implementation, satisfaction has dropped significantly. There are software providers, for example, where the range of the rating for solution and service is up to two school grades.
ERP as People Business
This result shows how strongly the ERP business relies on the competence and commitment of individual employees in the consulting and support of ERP vendors: The large number of sales or acquisitions of ERP vendors in recent years has resulted in considerable restructuring on the vendor side. Due to personnel changes and altered responsibilities, relationships between ERP user companies and "their" consultant, which have often grown over many years, have been affected, often to a considerable extent. The fact that such changes have such a strong impact on user satisfaction suggests deficiencies in the professionalism of the ERP vendors' service. At least if one understands this to mean a stable quality of service that is largely independent of the skills of individuals. Apparently, in many cases there is still a lack of efficient structures, standards and methods for implementation projects or for release upgrades, troubleshooting and support in day-to-day business, as well as for consulting on deployment optimization.
Winners and Losers in ERP Satisfaction
This year's comparative test confirms the now well-established finding that "lean" ERP solutions, pronounced industry solutions and/or solutions from smaller vendors with relatively small customer bases score best overall in terms of user satisfaction. The top-ranked solutions in the portfolio - work4all, syslog.ERP and ISSOS PRO - all meet at least one of these "conditions".
The best solutions among the larger installations, on the other hand, are only found in the midfield. One reason for this is the high level of requirements in conjunction with noticeably greater effort for implementation, maintenance and (end) user support. Infor's CloudSuite, the successor to Infor LN, is the best performer this year. In this respect, Infor CloudSuite (Infor CS) not only makes up ground lost two years ago in terms of satisfaction with the maintenance partner, but also surpasses the significantly better satisfaction results from 2018.
Criticized for mobility and performance
Despite the overall high level of satisfaction, the study also reveals weaknesses in details that definitely burden the everyday lives of ERP users and administrators: Despite a slight improvement over previous years, "Mobile usability of ERP software" continues to score the worst of all the satisfaction aspects examined, with an average score of 2.76. Apparently, the measures taken by the software providers (e.g., increased conversion to web technologies with Responsive Design) are not yet having an effect. On the one hand, there are large differences between the individual ERP products. On the other hand, the expectations with regard to mobile access seem to be rising almost as fast as the performance of the ERP software in terms of "mobility". The user assessment of the "performance" and "stability" of the ERP software has deteriorated noticeably compared to 2020. On the one hand, the fact that the graphical interfaces of the solutions require more computing power certainly plays a role here. More important for both aspects, however, is possibly the fact that in recent years many users access the ERP software from the home office via the Internet. Limited bandwidths and unstable Internet connections also affect the ERP software.
New trend topic: sustainability
Among the "usual suspects" such as data and information security or usability/ergonomics, a new topic was added to the list of topics and trends: sustainability. After all, about 36 % of the participants approve of the topic "sustainability" with questions around energy efficiency or also CO2- As a result of numerous political and legislative initiatives (e.g. EU CSR Directive, Agenda 2030, Supply Chain Sourcing Obligations Act), but also increasingly as a result of growing pressure from customers, more and more companies are striving to make progress in the area of climate neutrality, for example, and to be able to demonstrate this progress.
Source and further information: www.trovarit.com
