The results are interesting, but not surprising:

• Businesses are still clinging to top vendors (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics)
• 30% of top vendor implementations last longer than expected (13.2 months on average)
• 53% of top vendor implementations are over budget
• most customers, 75%, are “fairly satisfied” or better with their vendor while only 23% are “fairly unsatisfied” or worse
• 69.8% of customers do not realize 50% of the benefits they are expecting from their implementation

Cloud ERP News Analysis

Top tier vendors should give their sales, service, and public relations people a very large bonus. We say this because most businesses (70%) do not get the results that they want to realize, yet say they are fairly satisfied (75%) with thier vendor. This includes both the timeframe for delivery as well as the features that are delivered.

The VAR Steps In

Maybe ERP customers are satified because the value added resellers (VARs) that deliver these solutions are able to develop a good personal relationship and fix problems as they arise. If the solution is not delivered on time, the VAR is there to pick up the pieces and explain that this is typical of all systems. Thus the customer becomes “fairly satisfied” (54%) instead of satisfied or very satisfied (21%).

A Real Alternative?

Until recently VARs have not had an alternative for distributing a solution other than the ones offered by the top vendors. VARs that want to distribute a web-based or SaaS solution have had to deal with direct competition from vendors, unfamiliar business models, and less-flexible platforms which minize the amount of customization they can provide.

Recent launches of web-based and SaaS software solutions which are tailored to VARs will improve delivery times and have the potential to improve customer satisfaction. These products give VARs the ability to offer clients an alternative to the client-server solutions which are responsible for not delivering on all customer expectations.

The 2011 Report

Once VARs have a viable alternative based on modern architectures, they will be able to speed delivery times and provide flexible solutions which will meet customer expectations. This in turn will raise customer expectations while driving higher satisfaction. The impact will not be immediate (implementations take 13 months), but improvements are on the way.