We believe that over the next 10 to 15 years, agility will significantly drive business decisions and ultimately guide company valuations. This shift will have a broad, deep, and lasting impact on how businesses view their current application software portfolios and force them to re-think their business software strategies, evaluation approaches, and investment planning. This research report (see below) analyzes the key drivers behind this new focus on business agility.

Today’s business dynamics are very different from those of the 1990s when the majority of ERP systems were designed. During the 1990s and early 2000s, selecting an ERP system was the logical business move when the crazy mix of home-grown and packaged apps supporting a company was no longer a viable business strategy. However, crafting a winning enterprise applications strategy today demands an honest reappraisal of business requirements and priorities and cannot rely on well-worn axioms of the 1990s.

The US stock market in reaching new record highs with company valuations tied closely to topline growth. Investors are paying massive premiums for innovative, rapidly expanding companies. In their quest for growth, companies strive to deliver inventive products and services and are hell-bent on shrinking time-to-market. The good news is that technology is a massive enabler.

The advent of essentially free and infinite compute capacity, storage, and bandwidth—combined with new analytic tools (“big data”) and extremely low-cost networked sensors—is powering a business revolution. Nano-materials, 3-D printing, and massive amounts of compute capacity are transforming manufacturing and other industries. The Economist refers to this as the Third Industrial Revolution. Others refer to this as the Digital Revolution. Nomenclature aside, the panoply of digital tools available today is radically shrinking time-to-market. MGI Research estimates that by 2020, the majority of Fortune 500 companies will shrink their time-to-market by over 40% through the use of cloud computing, big data, 3-D printing, mobile technologies, and process and organizational innovations.

Key Issues addressed by this report:

  • How can enterprises increase their overall business agility?
  • What are the best practices for agile manufacturing applications strategies?
  • Which vendors will make the transition to agile applications? Who are the losers?