Over the decades Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has become backbone of business corporations. In wake of intelligent factories and intelligent operations getting enabled by device proliferation and IoT, ERP is shifting to be more nimble and agile. I would like to table the following trends in IoT that are defining the evolving ERP space.

1. Cloudification of ERP: The need from ERPs to provide mobile applications and cloud based software that allows employees to use the tools while away from the office. This trend switching ERP from classical licensing towards “as a service” model.
2. Emergence of Industrial Internet or Industrie 4.0: In the era of IoT/IIoT the networked interconnection of things , which are often equipped with ubiquitous intelligence coupled with Smart Factory, not only represent new systems that need to be interconnected with the EPR software, but also potentially new business segments. Amidst fluid developments, ERP systems will play a defining role in the future of Machine to Machine connectivity which is blurring boundaries between virtual and physical systems. Hence IoT drive the evolution of the ERP software in the future by making ERP flexible, intelligent and real-time
3. Componentization of ERP with APIs to provide cross functionality: Componentization of ERP is another important phenomena. The larger ERP systems should offer tone down versions of their core products. ERP can enable business agility as smaller and standalone products partner across platforms with APIs providing cross functionality between products.
4. Need for real time data to enable analytics led business: As ERPs head towards IoT and cloud adoption, fast growing small and midsize businesses trying to keep up with the needs of consumers. The larger organizations are trying to take factory and supply chain decisions beyond four walls of the organization while their employees and decisions maker are on the move. So it is essential for ERP to connect unstructured data from devices with structured data in the business and must be able to process, analyse and show all this data in real time. This require ERP vendors to invest in high performance computing, pervasive connectivity, web services, and other trends” in order to stay alive in IoT era.

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