Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Enterprise applications suites, commonly known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, represent the transactional backbone for most enterprises and comprise a variety of applications for finance and administration, as well as industry-specific applications for business operations. Comprehensive ERP suites from leading vendors now typically span customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain, analytics, and other applications traditionally sold as best-of-breed products. As vendors and enterprises enter the next generation of applications built with SOA and Web services, Forrester's ERP research provides a knowledge base to the basics, best practices, trends, strategic advice, and vendor and product comparisons that firms need to navigate the complexities in selecting, implementing, upgrading, extending, or migrating to new solutions.