The advent of ERP has significantly boosted efficiency and simplified back-office process automation in a wide range of manufacturing industries. This spreads across discrete and process production based industries. The biggest beneficiaries of such automation were without a doubt the large enterprises as they were the early adopters of ERP systems. Their SME counterparts were fence sitters, but soon realized the potential ERP offered and followed suit.
This is because efficiency is a common factor to all irrespective of size and geographical spread. While enterprises grew in size, ERP grew in its value proposition. ERP got more verticalized and several built in tools for data drill downs became key ERP elements. Besides, ERP moved from client server to web architected platforms and it made sense to many enterprises to take advantage of the significant cost benefit that is achieved by dropping their slower LAN/WAN/VPN/Lease line based systems and adopt a web based ERP.