The ERP market has seen more than a few shifts since the pandemic. Software buyers have become more selective and practical. They’re less likely to buy into broad transformation jargon and are now more about functionality, visibility and ERPs that fit the business they already run.
ERP buying got more deliberate
As long-winded as the internet makes it seem, the average ERP selection time across all businesses is only 18 weeks (though this has increased by 3 weeks since the start of the data collection period). Naturally, selection cycles are longer in larger organisations, which is to be expected once more stakeholders enter the process.
That same pattern shows up in the buyer mix. Manufacturing still dominates the market, but the rest of the demand is spread across services, distribution, construction, retail and healthcare. The other useful signal is that many buyers are not replacing a mature ERP at all. About 32.7% of businesses in the dataset were already using an ERP before the selection project began, while many others were moving on from accounting software like QuickBooks or older legacy systems.
The brief changed
The reasons for selecting ERP became more focused over time. Greater functionality, support for growth, and increased efficiency stayed near the top, but the data shows a shift away from vague “we need to grow” language and toward a more operational mindset.
That shift has changed what buyers ask vendors to prove; a team that wants better process control will care more about workflows, reporting and implementation support than one that’s simply looking for a ‘modern’ platform. You’ve likely seen this shift in language throughout vendor marketing materials too.
As for deployment options, cloud ERP is now the default preference for many projects; cloud preference moved from 56.2% on average in 2020 to 63.3% in 2025, while installed/on-premise remained a small minority throughout the period.
Buyer indecision also narrowed. The share of projects where the answer was “either” fell over time, which suggests more buyers now enter the market with a clearer deployment preference.
Reporting and business intelligence moved up the list
The strongest feature trend in the report is the rise of BI and analytics. It moved from 15.6% in 2020 to 68.3% in 2025, which is a major change in what buyers expect from their ERP. So much so, in fact, that businesses undergoing ERP selection projects specifically for better reporting and BI support rose from 2.56% to 14.4% overall.
That doesn’t mean other core features are no longer a priority. Accounting still anchors the selection process, inventory management is still a core requirement, and procurement is still a common request. However, the balance has shifted toward systems that help buyers see what is happening and make decisions faster, which coincides with the big sales pushes around real-time data and AI-assisted forecasting tools.
Document management also surged in the middle of the period, which fits the broader move toward remote collaboration and process standardisation. Sales stayed relatively steady, which suggests that revenue teams are still part of ERP planning, but they are not usually the main driver.
Smaller organisations more readily invested in their tech stacks
The buyer profile shifted slightly toward smaller organisations. The share of 0-49 employee businesses rose from 42.2% in 2020 to 46.6% in 2025, while the 500+ segment declined from 18.9% to 15.1%.
Revenue tells the same story. Buyers under $10m in annual revenue increased from 37.8% to 44.5%, while the $100m+ group declined from 21.2% to 17.8%. That doesn’t mean enterprise demand disappeared, but rather the market widened, and smaller organisations increasingly began treating ERP as a realistic next step rather than a distant goal.
Shortlists became less top-heavy
Sticking with that last fact, the comparison stage still revolves around the best-known vendors. Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft, Sage, SAP, Epicor, Infor, Acumatica and Odoo all feature in the shortlist data, but the field no longer feels as concentrated as it did earlier in the early 2020s.
The content buyers want mirrors that behaviour. Comparison content leads at 39.2%, pricing follows at 27.8%, and selection guides come next at 16.5%. At face value, buyers are not looking for general ERP education so much as help narrowing a choice, though that ought to be taken with a pinch of salt due to AI overviews now answering more general queries (for better or worse) before buyers actively start shortlisting.
Budgets followed complexity
The average budget per user is $8,528, but larger organisations, naturally, spend more:
Hosting also affects budget. Installed projects sit at $6,000 per user and those without a preference sit at $8,500, while cloud leads at $10,500. That doesn’t mean cloud is always more expensive, but it does show that cloud ERP buyers usually budget more fully for implementation and first-year services.
Industry makes a difference as well. Healthcare leads at $13,000 per user, followed by oil and gas at $12,500, while retail is at $7,500. Distribution and manufacturing sit above the average too, largely because their requirements tend to include more specialised logistics, warehouse, production, or custom workflow needs.
What this all means
ERP buying has become more specific, more cloud-orientated and more focused on control. Enterprise software buyers still care about core finance and operations, but they now expect the system to improve decision-making as well.
For vendors and their content teams, that means the best material is direct, comparative and useful.
For buyers, it means the selection process should start with the processes they need to improve, not the features they want to list.
For more statistics and a full overview of the ERP market, download the full Software Path 2020-2025 ERP Project Report.
