ERP

No guesses needed on the winning brand in this segment. SAP rules the roost

in the ERP segment, followed by Oracle at a distant number two. Microsoft barely

managed to get into the Users' Choice club this year with its Navision brand.

SAP had the strongest brand perception across all industry verticals we

covered this time barring BFSI and education. There, Oracle was dominant player,

but was ahead of SAP by only a small margin. Microsoft Navision's brand

perception was there across all segments except IT/ITeS and communication media.

What's the primary factor while choosing a particular ERP brand? We tracked

the answer to this question amongst those who already own SAP and Oracle, and

those who are likely to buy these two ERP solutions in the near future. The

answer was clearly brand value in both cases, which is not surprising because

both are well established brands. Second to brand value, the reason for current

ownership amongst SAP and Oracle owners was support and after-sales services, as

almost one-third respondents of respective brand owners gave it importance over

price and product reliability. But it's nevertheless interesting that

organizations didn't give top priority to the initial price, which is quite high

in case of ERP solutions.

SAP enjoys the highest brand loyalty at 37%, with 5% of its existing owners

likely to shift to other ERP solutions. Likewise, Oracle's brand loyalty was

31%, with 4% of its current owners likely to make a move to SAP. Navision had a

brand loyalty of just 20%.Overall, SAP enjoyed the highest Shift-In at 3.9%.

Just as in most other brands, there were a high number of respondents who had

no plans or were not sure of which other brand to switch to. This is bound to

happen because choosing an ERP solution is not an instant decision.