Cost, Inflexibility and Underperformance: Top ERP Headaches for UK Mid-sized Firms
The big hitters in enterprise resource planning (ERP) are failing to meet the needs of UK medium-sized firms, according to research by Intact Software, conducted by YouGov. The research shows that business management software is now widespread in medium-sized firms with 61% using at least one of the three most well-known brands: SAGE, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics. However, 75% of these respondents are experiencing problems and many want to replace their systems, citing maintenance costs (33%), inflexibility (19%) and underperformance (235) as some of the main issues.
Only 6% of the (18) SAP users and 8% of the (26) Microsoft Dynamics users surveyed like their system and don’t want to replace it. Upgrade costs may be driving this with 56% of SAP users and 38% of Microsoft Dynamics users citing problems in this area. More than half (58%) of respondents said that a main reason ERP implementations fail is because the software fails to match the business processes and 37% said the software is not fit for purpose.
The survey found that the top three problems encountered with business management software or ERP systems are:
Leeds-based electrical engineering company Scattergood & Johnson is the first firm to replace several of their business process tools with Intact iQ. Robert Hargreaves, CEO at Scattergood & Johnson, said: “We didn’t want to compromise our day-to-day business processes but we needed to improve information flow across our branches. After several previous attempts at replacing our systems we were cautious to put it mildly. Intact iQ provided us with a single system that replicated and integrated our processes across sales, finance, stock and purchasing. We are benefitting from the latest technology, including workflow and alerts and have every confidence that Intact iQ will improve our service levels today and support our growth tomorrow.”