ERP Strategy and Planning

Signs That You Need to Modernize Your Business Software Solution

ERP connects every aspect of your business: finance, sales, field operations, warehouse, projects, service, and leadership. Everyone pulls from the same real-time information, transforming your business into a truly connected community.

Beacon.li office workspace with desks, monitors, chairs, and indoor plants, representing enterprise software implementation and support operations.

The Support Insight That Moved Beacon.li’s CEO Toward Enterprise Implementation

Beacon.li CEO Rakesh Vaddadi built a support tool. His customers pushed him upstream. Now he is making the case that implementation failure is a knowledge transfer problem — and that the fix is capturing expert judgment before it walks out the door.

Security

Anthropic Expands Project Glasswing into Critical Infrastructure

Anthropic has expanded Project Glasswing to 150 additional organizations across more than 15 countries, bringing its AI-powered cyberdefense program into power, water, healthcare, communications, and other critical infrastructure sectors.

Analytics and AI

Recent Acquisitions Announcements Show Enterprise Software Vendors Are Buying the AI Execution Layer

Asana, Coupa, Salesforce, and Vertice are acquiring new AI capabilities to enhance their platforms by enabling more comprehensive enterprise workflows and intelligent automation that extends beyond current functionalities, presenting opportunities and risks for ERP leaders as they adapt to a fragmented AI landscape.

public sector ERP modernization AI readiness

Analytics and AI

ERP Technical Debt Is Blocking Public Sector AI. Here Is How to Address It

With nearly half of UK government technology spend consumed by maintaining legacy systems, DXC Technology's Derek Allison examines why ERP modernization, cloud adoption, and interoperability are now the critical foundations for closing the gap between AI ambition and operational reality in public services.

Future ERP systems will likely undergo a significant transformation, from static and reactive to dynamic, event-driven platforms powered by agentic AI, enabling them to execute workflows and interact autonomously across business processes. Image from Adobe.

ERP Strategy and Planning

Priority Software Bets Midmarket ERP Users Are Ready for AI That Executes

Priority Software enhances its cloud ERP with the release of V26.0, integrating embedded AI features, including an aiERP Companion and specialized agents for finance, sales, and supply chain workflows, aimed at minimizing manual tasks and improving decision-making efficiency.

Analytics and AI

IBM Positioned as Leader in Oracle Supply Chain Services as Enterprises Prioritize Resilience and AI

IBM is recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Oracle Ecosystem Services (2025–2026) for its comprehensive capabilities and strategic approach, emphasizing the necessity of integrated, end-to-end supply chain transformation amid increasing investment and complexity in the industry.

Financial Management

SAP’s Autonomous Finance Push Turns CFO Attention to Governance

SAP’s autonomous finance push is moving CFO priorities toward governance, controls, and AI-ready financial processes. For SAP customers, the opportunity depends on how well automation, GRC, and finance transformation connect inside ERP operations.

Analytics and AI

SAP Sapphire Interviews: SAP Executives Say AI Is Pushing ERP Back to the Center of Business Strategy

At SAP Sapphire 2026, Maura Hameroff and David Vallejo emphasized that AI is transforming ERP systems into strategic business frameworks that enhance enterprise decision-making by integrating industry knowledge and addressing fragmented data, thereby enabling companies to efficiently navigate modern challenges in supply chain management and overall business operations.

Analytics and AI

Private Equity’s ERP Upgrade Push Has a Controls Problem

Private equity firms are increasingly willing to fund cloud ERP modernization for portfolio companies, recognizing that outdated systems can significantly reduce valuation, thus emphasizing the importance of incorporating internal controls early in the transformation process to mitigate risks and enhance operational efficiency.

Deutsche Telekom German Sovereign AI Contract

Analytics and AI

SAP and Deutsche Telekom Put Sovereign AI at the Center of German Public Administration

Germany is implementing a public-sector AI strategy through a new SAP and Deutsche Telekom platform designed to deliver secure AI services and infrastructure for federal, state, and municipal administration, marking a significant shift towards shared digital infrastructure and sovereignty in AI governance.

Analytics and AI

BCG and Conduct Target Custom Code Complexity in ERP Transformations

BCG and Conduct have partnered to enhance ERP transformations by leveraging Conduct’s AI platform for early custom code analysis, aiming to streamline decision-making, reduce risks, and optimize costs in migration efforts.

SAP agentic AI manufacturing Hannover Messe 2026

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Q&A: Tirumala Rao Chimpiri on Why ERP Modernization Fails After Go-Live

Organizations often struggle with ERP modernization post-go-live due to inadequate focus on operational discipline, governance, and continuous improvement, where successful implementation doesn’t guarantee that workflows and processes have meaningfully changed or improved.

San Francisco skyline under a blue sky, representing Beacon.li’s AI platform for enterprise software implementation.

Analytics and AI

Beacon.li Launches AI Platform for Enterprise Software Implementation

Beacon.li launched Implementation Studio, a UI-based AI platform that aims to execute enterprise software implementation work inside target applications, with early traction likely in repeatable configuration, testing and hypercare workflows.

Analytics and AI

SAP Pushes Joule Toward Enterprise Execution, but Readiness Remains the Constraint

SAP is turning Joule into an enterprise execution surface, not just an AI assistant, but the layer through which ERP users interact with SAP data, agents, generated workspaces, voice, desktop tools, and cross-system workflows.

Manufacturing Systems and Automation

Organizations Must Confront the AI-ERP Reality Gap

The enterprise landscape is facing disruption as AI agents automate tasks and support decisions, but many organizations struggle to implement AI effectively due to outdated and fragmented ERP systems, necessitating a transformation that integrates AI and ERP capabilities.

Security

Sage-IDC Research Reveals SMB Cybersecurity Gaps in the AI Era

A Sage-IDC study reveals that while small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are significantly increasing their cybersecurity investments, a disconnect exists between spending intentions and actual implementation, exposing many to cyber threats due to a lack of governance and preparedness, particularly in the face of accelerating AI adoption.

Cloud Platform and Technology

Epicor Insights 2026 Makes Cloud Migration a Trust Test, and It Is Not Alone

At Epicor Insights 2026, the company faces its most consequential conference yet: with on-premises Kinetic development ending at the 2028.1 release, the pressure is on to demonstrate that cloud ERP migration is not just necessary for manufacturers and distributors — but genuinely worth it. This analysis examines how Epicor is addressing the trust gap through security governance, data architecture strategy, and change management, and what still needs to be proven on the conference floor.

Analytics and AI

SAP Sapphire Customer Keynote Shows AI Value Depends on Readiness, Data, and Standardization

At SAP Sapphire 2026, the customer keynote made a definitive case: AI value in the enterprise depends on readiness, data standardization, and clean core ERP foundations—not experimentation. Through transformation stories from Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, Levi Strauss, and Aeropuertos Argentina, SAP reinforced that organizations succeeding with AI have built the operational and data infrastructure to support it on SAP S/4HANA and BTP.

EU flag displayed on the glass exterior of the European Parliament building, representing ERP governance questions around the EU AI Act delay.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

What the EU AI Act Delay Means for ERP Governance

The EU AI Act delay eases some near-term compliance pressure, but ERP teams still need to build governance evidence around how AI is used across business processes.

ERP Strategy and Planning

‘The Real ERP Gap Isn’t Data or AI—It’s Decision Flow’: Tirumala Rao Chimpiri

Tirumala Rao Chimpiri, a senior ERP professional and Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Long Island Section, discusses in his article the persistent intelligence-to-action gap in ERP systems, arguing that structural issues—rather than lacking data or analytics—hinder organizations from effectively translating insights into coordinated actions.

Analytics and AI

Sapphire’s Post-Keynote Q&A Unpacks The Hard Part of the Autonomous Enterprise: Delivery, Governance, Trust

The post-keynote Q&A at SAP Sapphire 2026 put SAP's Autonomous Enterprise strategy under the closest scrutiny yet, with executives pressed on what's actually ready for production, how hybrid and on-premise customers participate, and why enterprises should trust AI agents inside live business processes. This ERP Today analysis unpacks SAP's answers on AI governance, the Knowledge Graph differentiator, cloud migration strategy, and API compliance controls.

Analytics and AI

SAP Sapphire 2026: SAP Business AI Platform Consolidates SAP BTP Stack to Solve Enterprise AI Fragmentation

At SAP Sapphire 2026, SAP introduced the Business AI Platform, unifying its AI, data, and application ecosystems into a three-layer architecture focused on governance and business context, aiming to position itself as the control plane for enterprise AI amidst growing interest in compliance and auditability from enterprise buyers.

Enterprise Architecture

Fixing Construction’s Margin Visibility Problem With ERP

The construction sector is grappling with economic challenges and operational inefficiencies, driven by material costs and supply chain issues, necessitating the adoption of construction-specific ERP platforms to enhance visibility and control over project costs.

Analytics and AI

‘Will SAP Be a Software Company in the Future?’ Sapphire 2026 Keynote Maps SAP’s New ERP Stack

At SAP Sapphire 2026, CEO Christian Klein declared that SAP is becoming a business AI company, introducing the Autonomous Suite, Joule Studio 2.0, a company memory layer, and centralized agent governance as the pillars of SAP's reimagined ERP stack.

ERP Strategy and Planning

OpenAI Launches Deployment Company to Bring AI Into Enterprise Operations

OpenAI has launched the OpenAI Deployment Company, a new enterprise-focused initiative backed by major investors and consulting alliances. The company will use Forward Deployed Engineers, or FDEs, to help organizations integrate AI systems into operational workflows at scale.

ERP Strategy and Planning

Why Late Change Management Dooms ERP Transformation Projects

Despite substantial investments in ERP and transformation programs across the public sector, a significant majority are predicted to fail in achieving their original business goals due to a lack of readiness for operational change, highlighting the need for organizations to integrate behavior change and process standardization.

Manufacturing Systems and Automation

The Role of an ERP Implementation Partner 

Modern ERP systems are crucial for business decision-making and fiscal success, making the selection of a capable implementation partner vital for effective planning, deployment and long-term support across the organization.

Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, where SAP Sapphire may clarify SAP AI access for ECC and cloud ERP customers.

Analytics and AI

Will SAP Open AI Access to Customers That Haven’t Moved to the Cloud?

SAP is reportedly preparing to open more AI access to some customers that have not moved fully to the cloud, including some SAP ECC users. The details could determine whether the move becomes a narrow transition offer or a broader shift in SAP’s cloud-first AI strategy.

ERP Strategy and Planning

Automating SAP Batch Genealogy, Material Certificates Through EDI Integration

Manufacturing organizations face challenges in managing material certification documents and batch genealogy across multiple plants, leading to delays and errors; however, by automating these processes one global manufacturer significantly improved operational efficiency, reducing manual effort by 4,000 hours annually and enhancing compliance response times.