BARC — Independent research for ERP and analytics selection

BARC, formally the Business Application Research Center, is an independent analyst and market-research firm headquartered in Würzburg. Founded by academics from the chair of business informatics at the University of Würzburg, BARC has grown into the leading German-speaking analyst house for enterprise software in the application-business and analytics areas. The firm publishes long-running survey studies such as The BI Survey, The Planning Survey, The Data Management Survey and the ERP-specific market overviews that European mid-market buyers use as a starting point for vendor evaluation. BARC's analysts speak German and English, the firm contracts under German law, and its commercial model is anchored in research subscriptions, paid advisory days and structured selection projects. For Mid-Market buyers seeking a vendor-neutral second opinion on ERP, BI or planning-software shortlists, BARC is one of the few options operating at meaningful scale inside DACH.

About

BARC operates from Würzburg with additional offices in the United Kingdom and Austria. The firm is independent in the sense that it does not implement software, does not resell vendor licences and does not take referral fees from vendors. Revenue is generated through research subscriptions, conference events (notably BARC Congress and BI & Analytics Summit), paid advisory engagements and benchmarking studies. Headcount sits in the low hundreds, with the analyst team distributed across thematic practice areas: BI and analytics, planning and CPM, data management, ERP, CRM, and increasingly artificial intelligence in enterprise software. The published research is built on multi-year survey data with thousands of respondents and on structured product evaluations conducted by the analyst team. Customers include German Mid-Market firms, large enterprises, public-sector buyers and a meaningful share of European vendors that subscribe for market-tracking purposes.

Service offering

BARC's offering for buyers covers four broad areas. First, published research — subscription access to comparison studies, market overviews, vendor profiles and the long-running survey series. Second, structured selection projects: BARC analysts run a vendor-neutral selection process for the customer, defining requirements, drafting RFI/RFP documents, evaluating vendor responses and orchestrating product demonstrations against a scripted demo storyline. Third, advisory days on strategy, architecture and organisational topics around BI, planning and ERP. Fourth, training courses and certification programmes for in-house analytics and reporting teams. Engagement models are transparent: fixed-price for selection projects, day-rate advisory for shorter engagements, annual subscriptions for research access. The firm does not implement software and explicitly maintains a separation between research and any vendor relationship to preserve its independence.

DACH positioning

Inside the DACH market BARC has a unique position as the largest independent German-language analyst firm in enterprise software. Comparable global firms such as Gartner and Forrester operate at higher price points and with a stronger U.S.-perspective, while German competitors such as Trovarit (Aachen) and Schwetz Consulting (Karlsruhe) overlap on ERP selection but do not maintain the same breadth of survey research. BARC's research is conducted primarily in German with an English-language summary layer, and the analyst team operates inside the European time zone, which matters for buyers running structured selection processes. Compliance and contracting work inside the German legal framework: GDPR-compliant data handling, German contract law, EU jurisdiction. For Mid-Market buyers the firm is approachable in scale and pricing relative to the global analyst alternatives.

Strengths and selection considerations

Strengths to consider: genuine independence from vendor sales channels, multi-year survey data that produces comparable longitudinal evidence, mature methodology for selection projects, German-language research and advisory, and a transparent commercial model. Limitations to consider: BARC's deepest research strength is on the BI, planning and data-management side; on classical ERP the coverage is solid but less detailed than dedicated ERP-selection houses such as Trovarit or Schwetz Consulting. For customers selecting an ERP, BARC works best as one of two or three inputs into the evaluation rather than the single source of truth. Buyers commissioning a BARC selection project should clarify in advance which analysts will be staffed, what the deliverable structure looks like, and how the demo scripts and scoring criteria are constructed.

Related Topics

• ERP selection advisors
• Trovarit

Vendor homepage of BARC

Current view of the website https://barc.com/