2025 was a year of innovation and advancements for the world of enterprise software. Despite turbulence and uncertainty to start the year, software vendors and businesses adapted and grew. Each year, the experts at ERP Advisors Group evaluate the major trends that occurred, and the ramifications of those developments as we head into the future.
2025 was a year of innovation and advancements for the world of enterprise software. Despite turbulence and uncertainty to start the year, software vendors and businesses adapted and grew. Each year, the experts at ERP Advisors Group evaluate the major trends that occurred, and the ramifications of those developments as we head into the future.
A key theme in 2025 came through financial and resource investments by the major players in the market. Due to economic and sociopolitical factors early in the year, many prospective clients were hesitant to make a major ERP investment. While businesses were refraining from large software investments, vendors approached the downturn quite differently, utilizing the capital from existing subscription and licensing models.
“Vendors have gotten their ROI from their cloud-based models…things have all sort of settled down”
Most investments surrounded artificial intelligence, but vendors were also invested in supporting the core capabilities of their platform further with better advanced functionality, especially by investing in industry-specific solutions. Vendors have started to take further accountability for their client’s requirements and progressed their investments in more point solutions. One example came with vendors developing their solutions’ security and compliance capabilities, specifically for their government and public service clients. As new tools emerge, the local governance of solutions will become more deeply varied, forcing vendors to adapt their solutions to international governing policies.
Vendor investments also manifested through partnerships with other software vendors. We saw many acquisitions throughout the year, the biggest being Acumatica’s acquisition by Vista Equity Partners. Private equity’s involvement, on top of vendors like Aptean continuing to acquire more solutions for niche micro-verticals (more on this in “Solution Flexibility and Adaptability”), further accelerated the consolidation of the ERP market we have seen for years. Beyond acquisitions, big players in the market like Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle began partnering with each other. Clearly, the future of enterprise software lies in collaboration.
As a result of both acquisitions and partnerships, vendors were able to service clients across new micro-verticals and increase their existing offerings with less lead time from development to general availability. The market is still condensing as it was in 2024, making it more important than ever to understand what your software vendor is doing in terms of partnerships.
“The real winners are the ones who can adapt and are sharing that technology…especially as new players are coming into the game.”
Artificial Intelligence remained a massive buzzword throughout the year. But in 2025, actual use cases of AI tools were realized within the mid-market, not just among large enterprises. The true “AI tsunami” arrived and challenged businesses to develop their future technology strategy.
Vendors were also forced to develop messaging and policy surrounding artificial intelligence to ease customer concerns and prepare for the modern era of technology usage. Many businesses faced uncertainty surrounding the impact of AI within their organizations and to employees. There has been fear surrounding AI replacing people’s jobs and its security in handling organizational data. Software vendors had to navigate these fears and provide security to their users by carefully introducing more AI functionality into their solutions.
“This is all funneled and powered by substantial capital that has been sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested, and now it’s going into AI.”
The ERP market has remained relatively stagnant for years, with few new players being able to break into the industry. Due to recent advancements in AI, however, new vendors and solutions have begun to appear and make waves for the first time in decades, creating a more vast field for innovation and investment. These solutions and applications are being developed with AI-based coding and tools natively embedded into their offerings. The emerging solutions are being built directly on AI infrastructure, instead of on more generic, cloud offerings.
When these vendors first arrived on the scene, they did not have the customer base or offerings to capture and serve businesses looking to migrate ERPs. Now, these vendors have established themselves in the market as major players amongst existing, larger vendors. They have the benefit of riding the “AI tsunami” from the start and will continue to build their customer bases with companies looking to leverage the latest technology.
“The emergence of AI has led to focus on people.”
Part of the fear surrounding artificial intelligence has been regarding businesses’ people, and how the new tools will impact them. Employees fear losing their jobs to AI tools, and in turn are hesitant to adopt said solutions. In 2025, vendors framed their messaging around the benefits of AI tools to employees and making their jobs easier, disavowing the idea that AI will replace their jobs entirely. They focused on increased automation allowing people to focus on more innovative, value-added tasks, while the manual, tedious tasks were further automated.
As mentioned previously, 2025 brought even further solution flexibility and adaptability to businesses. This came through rapid updates and new functionality developments to meet requirements that arose due to socioeconomic events throughout the year. New players in the market also forced existing vendors to further focus on client needs and satisfaction. Vendors were able to adapt this year and provided flexible solutions to their clients. Through the aforementioned collaborations and API native configurations being put in place, major software vendors took on this year’s challenges and supported their clients better than ever.
More than ever, 2025 saw vendors relying on their partner ecosystems to create new niche, industry-specific solutions utilizing their platforms. And further than industry-specific solutions, partners in 2025 helped to build even more specific, deeply valuable solutions to micro-vertical clients. Businesses in these micro-verticals had previously been forced to rely on heavy customizations due to a lack of “out-of-the-box” functionality.
“What you really should understand about 2025 is…I think ERP came back to life.”
2025 changed what ERP means and what ERP is truly capable of. From new players in the market, to emerging tools and functionality, the world of ERP is stronger than ever, and will continue this trajectory in 2026. If you have any questions or concerns surrounding the outlook of ERP in 2026, and what you saw in 2025, we are here to help! Schedule your free consultation with our team today, and stay on the lookout for our free, comprehensive guide to our 2026 ERP Trends & Predictions!