Advanced Manufacturing Research Inc. has been tracking the stock-price performance of 33 software companies in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market. In 1996 the industry as a whole showed a 16.4% stock gain, and the companies in the top third averaged a 94.3% surge. AMR's field of vendors encompasses supply-chain management, ERP, manufacturing execution systems and electronic commerce/EDI-together comprising a $12 billion annual market that's expanding faster each year.
According to Bruce Richardson, director of research at the Boston-based consulting firm, the market is now clearly separating into two tiers. "There are companies openly going after the Fortune 500 applications and a lot of others in the middle- and small-manufacturer market," he says.
Some companies are still privately held, but AMR says the presence of large, publicly traded manufacturing software companies is a sign of success for the industry. The hottest performers on the AMR index were Ross Systems, Manugistics and Aspen Technology. Of the ERP companies specifically, Oracle and Baan led with the biggest stock gains.
Where is this all going from here? "We expect to see the first real surge for supply-chain management applications," says Richardson. Also expect advanced planning and scheduling as well as front-end systems like sales configuration and customer service systems to become hot commodities.
AMR has added 29 more companies to its survey for 1997, for a total of 62.
The 33 Companies AMR Followed in 1996
- American Software: Supply chain, accounting, planning
- Aspen Technology: Process management
- Baan Co.: Process/discrete ERP
- Base 10 Systems: MES for process and pharmaceutical
- Catalyst: Warehouse management and logistics
- Computer Associates: ERP
- Consilium: MES
- Datalogix: Process ERP
- Datastream: Plant maintenance
- Dataworks: ERP
- Documentum: Document management
- Effective Management Systems: ERP, MES
- Fourth Shift: ERP
- Gensym: Process management
- Harbinger: Electronic commerce/EDI
- Infinium: Process ERP
- Interactive Group: ERP
- Interleaf: Document management
- Manugistics: Supply chain management, logistics
- Marcam: Process ERP
- Oracle: ERP
- PeopleSoft: ERP
- PowerCerv: ERP
- Premenos: Electronic commerce/EDI
- PSDI: Plant maintenance
- Ross Systems: Process ERP
- SCT Corp.: Process ERP
- Sterling Commerce: Electronic commerce/EDI
- Symix: Discrete ERP
- System Software Associates: Discrete/process ERP
- Indus Group: Plant maintenance