abas ERP

abas ERP is a long-established Karlsruhe-based ERP product focused on the discrete-manufacturing Mid-Market (mid-market), originally founded in 1980 as a custom-software house and progressively productised through the 1990s and 2000s. Since 2018 the vendor has been part of the Forterro group, a European private-equity-backed roll-up of mid-market ERP and PLM products. abas reports roughly 3,000 customers, predominantly in DACH, with a long-tenured customer base in mechanical engineering, automotive supply, plastics, metalworking and electrical engineering. The product is known for the flexibility of its variant configurator and the unusually long tenure of its customer base, with many installations running over a decade with successive upgrades on the same code base.

Functional strengths

abas ERP's genuine differentiator is variant configuration: the ability to model complex made-to-order and configure-to-order products with rule-driven option logic that propagates through quotation, order, production planning, BOM and routing. For discrete-manufacturing Mid-Market companies whose products are partially defined by customer specification at order time, this is operationally decisive. Production planning, capacity scheduling, shop-floor execution and quality management are integrated into the core product. The financials and standard back-office modules are competent rather than headline features — abas customers typically choose the product for the manufacturing side and accept the finance side as adequate. The product runs on its own proprietary database engine, which is unusual at this price point and means that adjacent ecosystem tooling (BI, integration) often arrives later than for products on standard SQL Server or Oracle.

Deployment options

abas ERP runs on the proprietary abas database on Linux servers, traditionally customer-managed on-premises. A partner-hosted private-cloud option is available and increasingly chosen by new customers. Multi-tenant SaaS is not part of the product strategy; like proAlpha, abas's discrete-manufacturing customer base values customisation depth that is incompatible with strict multi-tenancy. Customisation is delivered through abas's own development environment with a typed scripting language and integrated debugger; the development model has matured over decades but remains specific to the abas world rather than aligned with mainstream developer tooling, which limits the pool of available developers and partners.

DACH localisation

abas ERP carries deep DACH localisation as expected for a German Mid-Market-focused product. GoBD compliance (the German principles for proper digital bookkeeping) is built into the financials. DATEV (the German payroll and accounting standard) integration is natively supported. ZUGFeRD and XRechnung e-invoicing are covered. The Austrian and Swiss localisations are mature and used by a meaningful share of the customer base. Manufacturing-specific compliance (ProdSG, RoHS, REACH, automotive IATF 16949 documentation support) is well covered. The DATEV integration in abas is one of the better in the market segment, reflecting the product's long focus on Mid-Market finance teams.

Pricing model and TCO

abas's historical pricing is perpetual licence with 18 to 22 per cent annual maintenance, with newer cloud subscription pricing for the partner-hosted option. Public pricing is not available; named-user licensing combined with module and engine pricing for variant configuration, APS, PLM integration and warehouse management is typical. For a 100-user discrete-manufacturing deployment, all-in TCO over five years typically lands between 800,000 and 2 million euro, with implementation services representing 1 to 2 times the first-year licence cost. abas's implementation projects are often shorter than comparable proAlpha or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with KUMAVISION projects in similar scope, reflecting the partner network's familiarity with the manufacturing-Mid-Market template.

Selection considerations

abas ERP is a strong candidate for discrete-manufacturing Mid-Market companies of 50 to 500 users with substantial variant configuration requirements, particularly in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and automotive supply. It is less compelling for organisations needing deep multi-entity consolidation across many countries (NetSuite, S/4HANA fit better), for buyers who require a product on a mainstream SQL database for ecosystem reasons, or for service businesses and process manufacturers. The choice between abas ERP and proAlpha is typically determined by partner geography, specific industry sub-segment and the depth of integrated APS and PLM-ERP requirements.

Related Topics

• proAlpha ERP
• ERP for manufacturing
• ERP for machinery and equipment

Vendor homepage of abas ERP

Current view of the website https://abas-erp.com/de/produkte/abas-erp