Speak to many knowledge workers under 30 and you won’t find too many fans of traditional ERP. It’s slow, painful and boring ‒ nothing like the latest pay-as-you-go cloud applications they’re all used to. But ERP isn’t going away any time soon. It runs too many global businesses, for one, including some of the poster children of the new economy. According to Magic Software MD Hedley Hurwitz, what will change is the way it’s purchased and rolled out.

“From a core systems perspective, we’re quite a long way from abandoning traditional ERP,” says Hurwitz. “But the commercial model will change dramatically: there will be more emphasis on cost benefit, value for money and closer tracking of milestones. Traditionally, an ERP customer has taken a huge risk upfront after one too many conversations on the golf course and then attempted to get value out of it over the next two years. Auxiliary systems are where ERP will lose its grip ‒ the CRMs and the things that are not core. GLs and stock management are a long way from moving to the cloud. It’s very tempting to consume web services that cost $100 per month without messing with your core systems.”