New players in ERP systems on their way into the Scandinavian market

The Scandinavian ERP market is considered by many vendors and partners as a tough market with many local and established systems. And Sweden has, compared to many other countries in Europe, an unusually large number of local vendors in terms of both the population of Sweden and the number of companies. It is possible to calculate and categorize the vendors in several different ways, but today there are +50 different systems that qualify for the concept of being an ERP system, which includes finance and a few other process areas. And if we count all the smaller systems that target small companies, we can add another +20 systems.

Some of these systems are niched towards a specific industry or target group, but most target a rather broad segment of customers. To this must be added a number of new players who are primarily a provider of digital services, but where the service includes an ERP system provided by the provider.

During the last 4-5 years, with the transition to cloud-based ERP systems, we have seen an increased influx of foreign systems that are now gradually taking market shares from our local and Scandinavian suppliers. Examples of systems that are now growing in Scandinavia are: SAP Business ByDesign, Sage X3, Netsuite, Workday, Rambase and Rootstock.

Another break-in is now underway from two new suppliers – Financialforce and Odoo. Both systems, which are of course public cloud systems, have achieved great success abroad. Odoo was founded in 2010 and today has +10,000 customers and has been translated into +50 languages. Financialforce, which was a joint venture of Unit4 and Salesforce, was founded in 2009 and today has several thousand customers spread across several countries.

Common to the new players who have entered Scandinavia in recent years is that they are public cloud systems that have already acquired a large customer base of several thousand customers in Europe and the USA. And where the investors behind the systems have a strong focus on developing and improving their databases / platforms to meet the challenges and opportunities that follow in a world of micro-services.

It can be stated that the Scandinavian market continues to be a wasp nest with many vendors and systems. The customers can choose between many systems and there are very many partners who have to fight for the relatively few deals that are performed in the Scandinavian market. The difference today compared to a few years ago is that customers now also have a large selection of modern and cloud-based systems to choose from instead a market that mainly previously consisted of traditional accounting systems based on local installations.