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On track to hit $78.4 billion in revenues by 2026, the global enterprise resource planning market is increasingly making its way into the supply chain management sector, where companies are leveraging their ERPs to both manage the current uncertainty and plan for the future.
All-encompassing systems that manage inventory, procurement, manufacturing, orders, projects, human resources and other core capabilities for companies, enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms continue to expand right along with their customers' needs. They've come a long way since manufacturers started using them to manage inventory in the 1960s, and were officially named "ERPs" by Gartner in the 1990s.
Fast-forward to 2022 and ERP software capabilities include all of the above plus supply chain, logistics, product lifecycle, risk and maintenance management (to name a few). And if a certain capability doesn't come "built into" the ERP, there are always application programming interfaces (APIs) available to connect the two and create a unified platform that shares the same data, insights and capabilities.
With the recent spate of supply chain disruptions, transportation snarls and labor shortages creating a bigger need for supply chain management (SCM) functionalities, ERP vendors have responded by bolstering their offerings in this realm. Concurrently, the best-of-breed SCM vendors have stepped up to the plate and refined their offerings, added new functionalities and even made them easier to connect to outside applications.
On track to hit $78.4 billion in revenues by 2026-up from $38.8 billion in 2018-the global ERP market is being driven by a greater need for operational efficiency and transparency in business processes, increased use of Cloud and mobile applications, and high demand for data-driven decision-making.
Increased demand from small- to mid-sized businesses plus the ongoing technological advancements on the part of vendors are also accelerating the adoption rates of these multi-faceted software platforms.
Staying at the forefront
Now squarely in their third year of a global pandemic, shippers of all sizes and across all industry sectors are investing in technology to help them address current challenges and begin to plan for the future.
Those with ERPs in place are enabling more functionalities-many of them related to SCM-while others are implementing platforms that help them work smarter, better, and faster in an uncertain business environment.
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