Should your business acquire traditional on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions? Or should it invest in emerging software-as-a-service (SaaS) based ERP solutions?
Both options have benefits and both have risks. With on-premise, your business is far more likely to find a solution capable of meeting its broad collection of needs. The on-premise market segment is unquestionably more mature and well-developed. However, it's on the decline. Forrester Research has projected on-premise ERP license sales to decline 2.5% over the next 2 years.
In contrast, Forrestor projects the SaaS ERP market to grow by a 22% compound average growth rate over that same period of time. One reason why businesses are choosing SaaS is because of scalability benefits. They can more easily adjust their ERP spend - and computing capacity - in response to business requirements and market shifts. In contract, once an ERP license is acquire, it can't be returned for a refund.
Another SaaS benefit relates to IT administration - the ERP vendor assumes a significant portion of these duties. This means that companies can spend more time focusing on their core business and less time on IT troubleshooting.
However, there are business continuity risks that are inherent in SaaS that are essentially avoidable with a traditional on-premise ERP. With SaaS, companies supply their data to the vendors, who then process, store, and deliver that data - on demand. ERP respresents a company's central nervous system. Many businesses aren't as comfortable relinquishing control over their private, customer data, and their critical processing data.
In this analysis, SaaS ERP will be pitted against ERP across 8 categories. This whitepaper will allow you to see the comparisons for yourself. Ready to get educated?
