The ERP Surge of Hybrid Models - An Exploratory Research into Five and Ten Years Forecast

This study focuses in analysing firm strategies and planning to transition the usage of ERP on-premises to software as a service (SaaS), including hybrid models. The participants in this study where 53 C-level executives (such as CIO, COO and CEO) from EMEA region surveyed at the CEBIT 2014 event in Germany. Accordingly with these executives the move to ERP as SaaS is underway, and by 2025 only a minority of firms will stay with a single on-premises. However, these firms still have very limited plans on how to prepare the change in personnel readiness, business processes (re)engineering and technology architecture and SLAs. Also, the lack of clarity in vendors’ roadmaps is a major constraint to increased adoption of ERP as SaaS, when at the same time the main driver is the management pressure to reduce IT spend. Accordingly with the majority of the interviewed the hybrid ERP is strongly positioned for adoption in the next five years. However, moving all business functions to the cloud is something that is considered to be forecasted mainly in a ten years period. Moreover, outsourcing all ERP components is minor. This study also provides implications and recommendations on moving from traditional ERP on-premise to an ERP as SaaS.