How Big is the ERP Elephant? 200 Billion. But How Fast Will it Move?

During a talk at the latest iPhone Business Meetup (highly recommended!) someone asked:

"How big is this ERP/touchscreen tablet opportunity? Best guess?"

OK...according to the statistics available:

• 60 billion per year: current annual sales of ERP industry


• 200 Billion: Residual Value of ERP software -- legacy software that has been purchased in past 2 decades and is still in use.


• 25%: Potential value add by touch tablets and smartphones.

So, if we choose to use these numbers -- admittedly guesswork -- then the market opportunity is $50 Billion of legacy fixes, or $15 Billion/year of annual sales.

Of course total size is not the limiting factor in enterprise sales. The size is huge. It's an elephant.

The question is, how fast can we get this elephant to adopt a good new idea, even when that good idea is really easy to prove?

• Slow: Speed with which ERP market will adopt this great technology.

Elephantine rules are slow rules. The ERP market is difficult to change. But again, it's huge, so that is the tradeoff.

The strategy therefore is to pick the sector of that elephantine market that will be easiest to change, and focus our efforts there. What's the sharp stick we can poke with?

• Sharp Stick: The vertical market or product catagory which will prod the elephant most effectively (and allow us to build a viable business).