Microsoft Dynamics increases ERP market share

Number two spot in top ERP market share rankings claimed by Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics has passed by Oracle Cloud to reach the second-from-the-top spot in the ERP market share rankings published by Panorama Consulting. The other three top-tier ERP providers are SAP Hana S/4, Oracle Cloud, and Infor CloudSuite. SAP has the largest market share, 21 percent, closely followed by Microsoft Dynamics with 19 percent.

Some references in articles covering this report confuse Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the entire Microsoft Dynamics family, which also includes Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV, GP, and SL. Dynamics 365 makes ERP and CRM capabilities familiar from the on-premise Dynamics solutions available in the Azure cloud. Of course, it’s not just a change of venue – in Azure, you can also benefit from the wealth of analytics and other solutions that become available with your cloud subscription.

ERP market share as a vote of confidence

Panorama talked to companies that completed their ERP implementations between October 2015 and November 2016. That means their survey includes organizations which deployed their ERP system before Microsoft Dynamics 365 reached the larger market. Possibly, the results might be even more favorable for Microsoft Dynamics if Dynamics 365 would have been available throughout the period considered in the survey.

Increasing ERP market share for Microsoft Dynamics may be partly a result of sales and marketing and familiarity with Microsoft products. But it also confirms the direction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 as powerful cloud ERP that is highly usable and workload-driven. You don’t implement a gargantuan software system over many months, including important and less-needed capabilities. Instead, you bring discrete workloads onto ERP at your preferred rhythm.

Our solutions are going to follow the same efficient, modular approach. Many STAEDEAN solutions are already available for Dynamics 365 and others will soon be ready.

Cloud ERP is about innovation and user enablement more than cost efficiencies

According to Panorama Consulting, the average implementation costs for SAP and Oracle both increased while Infor’s decreased. Infor had the fastest ROI generation and SAP the longest payback period.

No doubt these findings are important to companies thinking about deploying ERP. But, when it comes to the cloud, considerations of fit and functionality may be more important to many. While, during the first few years of the cloud boom, cost savings were often promoted as the main advantage of moving to the cloud, a more nuanced view has taken hold.

Companies we meet now often tell us that, if implementation costs and long-term TCO were essentially the same, they would still prefer cloud ERP. Reason one: the productivity enablement for employees who can access ERP capabilities and information from anywhere. And, second: the leading cloud service providers’ investments in data protection and application security that would be out of the reach of most companies.

ERP and other critical systems in the cloud outperform on-premise technology especially for the more innovative and data-intense operations. If you create new products and services for their customers, the cloud offers easier access and more secure collaboration capabilities. If you need to store and process large masses of data, cloud-enabled agility and data management resources are powerful and becoming more so every day.

Do you want to take a bet on next year’s ERP market share rankings?