Head to Head: ERP struggles to re-invent itself

NEWS ERP vendors need to take new concepts such as ecommerce and integrate them into customer systems as quickly as possible. That's the message from a recent Head to Head interview on Silicon.com, where Lawrence Wilkes, principle analyst at Butler Group, and Ernie Gunst, UK managing director at SAP, discussed the future of ERP. Wilkes, principle analyst at the Butler Group said new developments such as the growth in ecommerce and the use of call centres, must be taken seriously. Companies must integrate new ideas into their existing business processes as quickly as possible, and ERP vendors have so far failed to help them enough, he said. "It's the classical problem - how fast can we respond to change? So as new issues and new requirements come along, the ERP vendors - certainly some of the smaller ones - are caught in the same trap as any end-user organisation is. They can't respond to those new requirements quickly." SAP's Ernie Gunst believes all ERP companies have a direct responsibility to help their customers move their businesses forward. "I think what we should all keep in mind here, is that our customers are betting their business on our software. So, there is nothing worse than just riding the wave of hype and then two years down the road - thank you very much, we were on the wrong wave," he said. For the full 'Head to Head' interview, see the ERP channel [http://www.silicon.com/erp ].