Companies ranging from $10MM-$60MM aren’t adopting mid-market ERP software as fast as many implementers thought. What is even more confusing is the companies that are hesitant to buy into the mid market ERP space are the exact companies that need these platforms.
We at Clearinity have heard the pushback firsthand from clients. Between the “we are not big enough for an ERP yet” to nixing the idea because they believe the system will be too complicated, mid-size companies are struggling to find an inventory solution that fits their problems.
Yet, mid-market businesses are in need of a holistic solution for their production, inventory, and fulfillment needs. They seek more than what inventory management software systems can provide, and are still relatively tight on resources. What’s even more frustrating for these companies is that many of the inventory management systems that catered to mid-market are being acquired and ultimately unusable for them.
So what is the hesitation towards moving toward the mid-market ERPs? Is the “dilemma” really about technology? Or is the hesitation around adoption because the mid-market ERP marketing hasn’t differentiated enough from traditional models?
We want to dive in and help you uncover where mid-market ERPs are headed and why we believe it’s not the technology but your business that is the problem
Death Valley – Where your technology and your processes don’t align
A mid-market business is a loose term, and fairly newer in the ERP industry. For context here we believe a mid-market business falls above a Stage 4 business maturity. The government defines a mid-market business as any business that is making above $10MM top-line revenue yearly and has more than 10 employees.
Prior to the introduction to this term, ERPs often were associated with large enterprises (i.e.: above $100MM trailing 12-month top line revenue). This has caused a lot of confusion around who mid-market ERPs are intended for. Mid Market ERPs were designed for businesses that didn’t fit the standard ERP models (truly enterprise in every sense), and needed something more flexible and modern to work against.
The mid-market stage of business is where ecommerce companies start to search for us here at Clearinity. Ecommerce companies have often found themselves struggling to find a solution in the traditional ERP space because of the server, the expense, and the lack of API integrations needed to keep ecommerce companies moving fluidly. Moreover, traditional ERP systems often got a bad reputation for the slow evolutions of workflows or features, and the incredibly disjointed business practice paradigms they are often built off of.
Today, mid-market ERPs are finding the answer to ecommerce problems by providing flexibility and scalability in inventory technology for modern businesses. They are creating holistic environments for ecommerce companies to unite their supply chain and their customer management processes. Additionally, they are easing the resource constraints on mid-size businesses by making it much more affordable to implement than traditional ERPs.
Mid Market ERP Solutions Today
Mid-market ERP solutions today greatly differ from traditional models. Here are a few benefits of mid-market ERP solutions:
- They do not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
- Are cloud-based
- Will grow with your business
- Offer quicker iterations on development
- They eliminate siloed teams or processes which saves you time and money
Most mid-market ERP solutions will be great for companies that have:
- Quick iterations on products such as apparel
- Manufacturing companies that have complex manufacturing workflows
- A need for real-time, transparent data to make critical decisions more quickly.
Here at Clearinity, we recommend our mid-sized companies looking at ERP solutions, to start looking at their processes. This will be the biggest hurdle when it comes to migrating to these systems. Moving off of a best-of-breed system will mean more communication between departments, and will mean new development of the processes that were happening on multiple platforms.
While we still have room for the mid-market ERP industry to evolve and grow, we confidently believe that these are solid solutions for the companies we work with.