Comparing the Giants: An ERP Comparison of SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft

When it comes to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), three companies are the clear leaders in the industry.’ SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft each have significant market share, with much greater coverage than the 4th place company.’ No ERP comparison is truly complete without looking at each of these three companies, so a quick review of each of these is provided below.

ERP Comparison: SAP

SAP has a plethora of ERP software options.’ ERP is such a broad term, and part of what makes SAP vital to any ERP comparison is the breadth of packages they have to help literally any size company.’ SAP is the world’s largest business software company, and one of the biggest software suppliers overall.’ SAP ERP solutions range from just financials or supply chain, to the management of the whole company from a software perspective.’ Unlike some of its major competitors, SAP is quite flexible and actually has an open IT architecture, allowing for improvements for you and for other customers, from other customers.’ Finally, the pricing is much more affordable, even for the smallest of companies, with the strength to handle the needs of the largest.

ERP Comparison: Oracle

Oracle does boast an open architecture and it does allow you to be flexible as well.’ Again, this is one reason that companies choose a certain ERP vendor–flexibility.’ The rigidity found in other companies is hard to imagine, given the ease with which two of the biggest keep their software flexible.’ Like SAP, Oracle is one of the biggest software companies anywhere.’ It has won numerous awards based on its impressive line-up of software, and many of them on some version of the ERP software available from Oracle.’ The solutions from Oracle are not industry-specific, so two completely different companies from completely different industries can both realize significant benefit from one or more of the different products that Oracle has to offer.

ERP Comparison: Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft is one of the few companies that almost everyone has actually heard of and knows what they do.’ It is one of the largest software companies around.’ Like all Microsoft offerings, the ERP solutions interact well with the other Microsoft programs you are familiar with, including Microsoft Office.’ An ERP comparison that includes Microsoft is one that covers a lot of ground.’ Like many of its competitors, Microsoft Dynamics ERP has so many options that it can be hard to keep them all straight.’ However, suffice it to say that the software can help you manage just a piece or two of your business or it can manage literally every part of your company’s software needs.’ Most of the products are designed to meet the needs of many different industries.’ One thing that is different from Microsoft Dynamics as compared to SAP and Oracle is that they lack the ability to easily make modifications to the software.’ It is not an open-sourced product, but what it does do is use a worldwide group of partners to sell the products.’ These companies can often make modifications for you to help ensure your specific needs are handled properly.