Asia Pac’s Enterprise Resource Management market to grow by 14.7% to $2.83 billion

And it is to remain strong with a 9.8% five-year CAGR forecast though 2015, says IDC.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) will be the largest contributor to ERM spending during the forecast period, with a share of 32.8% of the APEJ ERM market in 2011, and 35.3% in 2015, followed by Australia and India.

While spending for traditional Enterprise Resource Management2 (ERM) applications will remain strong through 2015, especially for areas that enable faster ROI, International Data Corporation (IDC) believes organizations will start looking beyond traditional ERM functionalities and delivery models, and will explore the adjacent areas that will help them drive real value to their business.

In an increasingly competitive market, organizations are faced with the need to respond to market and competitive moves very rapidly. "The need to streamline business processes and proactively manage human capital and assets will lead to increased Human Capital Management (HCM) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) investments in APEJ,” says Daniel Zoe Jimenez, Program Manager for Enterprise Applications and Information Management at IDC Asia/Pacific.

“Organizations not able to boost their productivity levels while keeping their cost down will fail to succeed in this challenging market. In line with this, we are seeing companies becoming more aware of the need to get a better understanding of their business performance, which will drive more attention to Financial Performance and Strategy Management (FPSM) applications," he adds.

In addition, IDC expects sizable application modernization activity in the region -- especially in the most mature markets -- since areas like HCM and EAM were not sufficiently covered by legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. Many organizations in APEJ implemented their first ERM systems to deal with Y2K glitches, and these systems are now being replaced or updated in order to support business expansion and deal with new business requirements.

Jimenez adds, "Older ERM applications might succeed at getting daily routine processing tasks done, but they will most certainly fail to efficiently support the required process changes and deliver business transparency. Clearly, upgrading to the latest version of a core enterprise application (e.g. ERP) should be a prerequisite for organizations willing to mitigate risks, control maintenance costs, reduce complexity, and standardize corporate governance activities."

Game-changing technologies like cloud computing, socialytics, and mobility are transforming the enterprise applications market, and will have a direct effect on ERM spending. These technologies are increasingly used by organizations in the region as facilitators to compete more efficiently.

"For example, organizations are starting to embrace social media tools in order to improve its customer, partner, and supplier relationships and internally, as a way to empower collaborative work," concludes Jimenez.