Business Intelligence will be the Top ERP Investment in 2007

Old stuff in ERP – the OLTP variety – is now going to take a slightly back seat for most IT shops in the companies. Business Intelligence and Analytics is going to be the most important investment area for the CIOs in the ERP area! That is what the AMR Research Report for the 2007 ERP Spending (titled “Enterprise Resource Planning Spending Report, 2006-2007”) says!

In the next 12 months, however, BI/analytics (25 percent), financial management (21 percent), and order management, manufacturing, and CRM from an ERP vendor (each with 20 percent) are the top five new functional areas that respondents contend will be covered by ERP software. It should be noted, however, that the remaining functional categories were each separated by no more than two percentage points from the next closest functional area. Companies designated BI/analytics as their most strategically important 2007 ERP software investment and the ERP software investment where they’ll spend the most in 2007 (15 percent, 20 percent), followed by manufacturing (14 percent, 10 percent), and customer management (13 percent, 9 percent).

Globalization (15 percent) and lean manufacturing (14 percent) are the two most important business issues survey respondents intend to address with their largest ERP investments, just slightly edging past business intelligence and visibility and control, both with 13 percent.

(Emphasis added)

And by the way, as the last post about SAP’s resurgence said, SAP is the dominant player. Consider this:

….SAP and Oracle top the list. Fifty-three percent of respondents are using SAP and in the next 12 months 55 percent will be considering them, while 51 percent are currently running Oracle (including PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems) ERP offerings and 43 percent are considering them.

(for more blog posts on Business Intelligence, please visit BImusings.com)