ERP plays a crucial role in UK business, but just 11 per cent of systems are considered ‘state of the art’, according to research.
More than 80% of UK respondents to a survey of business professionals by Redshift, on behalf of Epicor Software, said ERP was important or very important to their successful operation.
But many systems lack new collaborative functions and 60 per cent of UK business professionals rated their ERP systems as just adequate, or lower.
"Clearly ERP has an image problem and despite its long evolution there are still a lot of people who aren’t that happy with its performance," said Steve Winder, vice president UK and Eire at Epicor Software.
The lowest performing aspects of ERP in the UK – cited as very simple and basic – were finance, accounting and invoicing (by 27 per cent of respondents), maintenance and overhaul (by 25 per cent) and HR and payroll (by 24 per cent).
The survey also considered the future effectiveness of ERP. More than half (52 per cent) of UK respondents thought adding social media and collaboration tools was an important future development.
The research was conducted in summer 2014 among more than 1,500 business professionals working in organisations of 100-plus staff across 10 countries.