The pot of gold created by the growth in sales of enterprise resource planning–or ERP–software has spread far beyond the coffers of the companies that sell the massive software systems that unify and streamline disparate corporate computer systems into one.
A slew of computer system-makers, as well as computer consultants, are all enjoying the fallout from this booming industry.
The market leader in ERP software is SAP (Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung, or Systems Analysis and Program Development), a company started in 1972 by five former IBM employees in Mannheim, Germany. SAP is now the world’s third-largest software maker.
It is hard to say exactly how much sales of ERP systems contribute to the industry overall, but analysts estimate that for each dollar spent in ERP software, a company will spend between $2 and $5 to install and service the systems.