In 2009, the Aberdeen Group surveyed over 1,100 small to midsize businesses (SMBs) to analyze their business goals, business challenges, and business strategies. The survey, which took place in 2009 Q4 and 2010 Q1, focused on the impact of the still-struggling economy on those business and their predictions for an economic recovery.

One of the baselines created for the survey included a determination of the adoption rates of several enterprise applications, including ERP. A surprising finding was that only 27% of the survey respondents had implemented an EFP solution. Of that total, 63% of respondents in the manufacturing sector, 72% of the distribution sector respondents, and 20% of the retail respondents had ERP in place. The top two reasons for implementing an ERP solution were 1) increased business growth and 2) cost reduction. Business growth is indirectly affected by ERP, but the cost reduction functionality more directly affects the bottom line.

        Properly implemented ERP solutions also give managers the ability to provide better customer services, to more quickly respond to customer demand, to better manage inventory of the company’s goods and services, and to support enterprise growth.

        The Aberdeen Group survey found that the majority of SMBs still use a variety of non-ERP solutions to run their businesses; and not surprisingly, spreadsheets top the list of business management tools, used by 92% of the respondents that do not utilize ERP. Fifty percent of the respondents who do not use ERP use some type of accounting application, and 37% use a variety of non-linked, non-ERP solutions. None of these other solutions offer SMBs the integration or efficiencies of a flexible ERP solution.

        Results from the Aberdeen Group survey yielded two major reasons that the respondents said were why they did not have an ERP solution:

1. 1)Forty-six percent felt that what they were presently using was meeting their needs, but they did feel that something more may be needed in the future.

2. 2)Forty-one percent felt that they were too small to need an ERP solution; their annual revenues were less than $25M.

Other contributing factors included the perceived cost, complexity, and effort for implementation of an ERP solution.