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Competition heats up in the ERP market

Business | Sponsorship | Technology

Oracle may be the 800lb gorilla in the Enterprise Resource Planning market after acquiring and integrating many key competitors in the last ten 10 years but remaining competitors are stirring. Perennial rival SAP with two new young joint CEO’s looking to remodel the company for the cloud based age might provide a new challenge. Meanwhile ex Oracle executive and architect of many earlier acquisitions Charles Phillips, now CEO of Infor, has agreed to buy Lawson Software, one of the few major remaining independent vendors, in a deal for $2 billion that could create a major new threat.

SAP are highlighting a new culture of innovation to make the company and it’s software more relevant to businesses both and large and small. Infor will obviously need many of the integration skills in terms of engineering and sales demonstrated earlier by Phillips to create the desired result from the Lawson purchase. But what role will marketing and sponsorship play, given the previous and current activities of both of the two largest players?

The Oracle sponsorship of the the winning America’s Cup entry was driven more from the the personal ambition of the founder and CEO Ellison. But for the next edition of the event perhaps the company needs to step up its activation and integration into the business. Certainly discussion of a more inclusive event for the next challenge suggests the potential for a different approach. Perhaps the team will even use Oracle software rather than the NetSuite offering that was their previous platform!

SAP perhaps has a bigger challenge to reinvent its position and image. With sponsorships in F1 with McLaren as well as tennis and golf in Europe and the US, there should be plenty of opportunity to reinvigorate the activation of these partnerships to reflect the new innovative and agile business. The remaining question is how relevant and powerful could sponsorship be in raising the profile and building key relationships at Infor?

See the BBS businees pages for a recent interview with the joint CEO's of SAP, http://www.sinequanon-intl.com/news-views/article/competition-heats-up-in-the-erp-market/

Chris Ritchie

 

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