Häufig gestellte Fragen
Who holds the largest ERP market shares in the DACH region?
According to common industry estimates, SAP is considered the clear market leader in the DACH region, followed by Microsoft Dynamics as well as DATEV, Sage, Oracle, proAlpha and abas in the single-digit range. How high SAP's share actually is depends strongly on how the market is delineated: in the enterprise segment and by installed base, figures of roughly one third to 40 percent are cited, whereas in the classic mid-market the shares of individual vendors are considerably lower and the landscape is far more fragmented, with more than half of the market going to smaller industry-specific and long-tail solutions. The exact figures vary considerably depending on the study source (for example IDC, Lünendonk, Trovarit) and the definition of the market, which is why they should be understood as rough orientation rather than official statistics.
Who is the largest ERP vendor worldwide — SAP or Oracle?
In the DACH region, SAP remains the leader by adoption, but globally the picture has recently shifted. According to the market researcher Apps Run The World, Oracle overtook SAP for the first time in 2024 with around 8.7 billion US dollars in ERP revenue versus roughly 8.6 billion US dollars for SAP, narrowly topping the global ranking by vendor revenue. Oracle's growth was driven above all by Fusion Cloud ERP and the NetSuite platform, acquired in 2016 for around 9.3 billion US dollars. The ranking thus depends heavily on whether revenue, installed base or a particular region is used as the yardstick, which is why blanket statements about the market leader should always be tied to the specific reference measure.
Which ERP systems are currently growing the fastest?
The strongest growth is shown by cloud-native and SaaS-based solutions, such as Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and SME cloud vendors like weclapp and Xentral. Industry analyses now attribute well over half of ERP market revenue to cloud models — some studies put the cloud share at around 70 percent — while on-premise classics with slow cloud migration tend to lose market share. Other beneficiaries are vendors with API-first architectures and composable ERP approaches, as well as Microsoft, which is strongly driven by the spread of the Microsoft 365 stack. Specific growth rates vary by source and segment, but the fundamental trend towards cloud and stronger integration is consistent across the studies.
Which is the best ERP system — and how do you recognise it?
There is no universally best ERP system, since what matters is not the largest functional scope but the fit with your own business processes. The decisive factors are the functional fit within the standard, the vendor's industry expertise and reference customers, the ability to integrate with the existing IT, and the total costs over the planned period of use. A structured selection combines a requirements specification, a demo with your own data, reference visits to comparable companies and a proof of concept on two to three critical processes. Analyst reports and satisfaction studies provide orientation but do not replace your own requirements analysis and hands-on testing.
What does the classification into Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 mean in ERP?
The tier classification groups ERP systems by typical company size and complexity, not by quality. Tier 1 (such as SAP S/4HANA, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O) addresses large enterprises and corporate groups, often from around 1,000 employees, with multi-year projects and correspondingly high total costs; Tier 2 targets the mid-market with shorter implementation times of around 6 to 18 months; and Tier 3 serves smaller companies with lean solutions that can be introduced more quickly. There is, however, no universally binding definition of the tiers, and the boundaries are fluid, because many vendors run several product lines for different tiers. For selection purposes, the tier assignment is therefore only a first filter that must be supplemented by industry and process fit.
What do the Trovarit study, Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave say about ERP systems?
These reports evaluate ERP systems from different angles and complement each other. The DACH-focused Trovarit study ERP in der Praxis 2024/25, with over 1,700 surveyed user companies, measures user satisfaction and gave the software itself a good average grade, while at the same time criticising a noticeably declining service quality of hotline and support. Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave, by contrast, assess vendor strategy and market position and, depending on the segment, list vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday or IFS as leaders. Importantly, such reports are always only an indicator and do not replace your own research including a proof of concept.