By .S.Suren
There has been enough debate and discussion on many blogs on how the downturn is likely to affect the ERP Industry and so on. However what can we expect in this industry once the global economy begins to look up again, everything needs to change sometime and so will this.
It was a given that there are certain industry solution of leading ERPs that will continue to be in high demand for the next few years at least, however that was before the global turmoil that caused the recession of the century, so now where do these industry solutions stand. As the “Only thing that is certain in this world is change itself” – as Mgt Guru Tom Peters says, we can expect that these industry would pick up again for the lost time, however there will be many changes that will be forced upon these industry when it comes out of its bad patch, and ERP Vendors should by then have realized the best way to cope with this change in terms of, the implementation methodology of projects after this period of lullness, ERP Selection patterns of potential customers, etc. Trying to follow the same approach of an ERP Implementation would not be bringing in any change, it’s probably too early for anyone to forecast what this change should be, but by keeping options open you could just be a step above the rest.
By now you are probably wondering what these industries we are talking about could be? Let me give you a heads up. Related industries to areas such as Transportation, Energy, Consumer Durables and Banking and Financial Services are likely to be those that will be the main hunting grounds for IT Service Providers.
It is important that with all that is happening around the ERP Industry, we shouldn’t get carried away and lose track of optimizing software architecture and service methods such as SOA and SaaS. Since these would definitely form the platform on which future solutions will be designed on.
Given all of the above, some of the other important areas that need to addressed when the economy picks up again would be such things as middle ware and tools deployable within the industry concentration, support for openness and standards with integrated systems, industry applications strategy would be very vital and last but not the least the mid market strategy, on how best to approach this segment, it’s not necessarily going to be the big firms that are going to be looking for new system but rather the middle market ones, that was how the trend was before the global economic meltdown and that’s how it will be again on the other side as well.
Hope you found this post informative and interesting. I shall update more on this topic and focus on how individual consultants new to the ERP Consulting field should prepare themselves for the time to come.
Have a nice day!!
Any suggestions, comments and questions can be sent to ssurenlk@msn.com.
