ERP Implementation Statistics: What 1948 Published Case Studies Actually Show
ERP Research collected and verified 1948 ERP implementation case studies published by 10 ERP vendors and 633 implementation partners across 133 countries. This page reports what that corpus shows — what companies replaced, how long projects took, and what results get claimed. All figures are original, and free to cite with attribution.
Updated September 2026
Key findings
- 21% were not replacing an ERP at all. The single largest group of ERP buyers in the published record moved off spreadsheets and manual processes (288 of 1372 case studies naming a prior system).
- Median published implementation: 6 months. Half of disclosed projects finished between 3 and 9 months, and 46% claim under six — far faster than independent surveys of ERP projects, because vendors publish their best outcomes, not their average ones.
- The median claimed improvement is 50%. 453 case studies quote a percentage gain; across 782 such claims the middle half sit between 25% and 81%.
- Manufacturing dominates at 28%. With Wholesale & Distribution at 14%, the two account for 42% of every published ERP story.
For what these numbers add up to across the market, see the ERP trends the data actually shows.
What companies replace when they buy ERP
Based on 1372 case studies that name the outgoing system.
The most common ERP migration paths
From-system → to-vendor pairs appearing at least five times among the 1372 case studies that name the outgoing system.
How long ERP implementations take
Based on 306 case studies that disclose a duration (16% of the corpus).
6 mo
Median
3 mo
25th percentile
9 mo
75th percentile
11%
Over 12 months
Median disclosed duration by vendor
Median disclosed duration by company size
Read this with the bias in mind. These durations come from stories a vendor or partner chose to publish. Projects that overran, got descoped or were abandoned do not appear — so the real distribution is longer and wider than the one above. The gap between this published median and the multi-year programmes described in documented ERP failures is the most useful thing in this dataset.
Who publishes ERP case studies
By industry, normalized across 1948 stories.
By company size
Where a size is stated.
What outcomes get claimed
Stories quoting each outcome type.
Where published implementations happen
Based on 1724 case studies that state the customer's country.
Who does the implementing
87% of the corpus (1701 of 1948 case studies) credits a named implementation partner rather than the vendor alone — work done by 633 distinct firms. The rest are vendor-published stories that don't name who ran the project, which is one of the industry's quieter disclosure gaps.
Most-published implementation partners
Choosing between firms like these? Browse our partner directories by vendor, country and industry.
Browse the underlying case studies
Every figure on this page is computed from case studies you can read in full, filtered by industry, on each vendor's page.
Methodology
The corpus is 1948 ERP implementation case studies published by ERP vendors and by implementation partners listed in our partner directories. Each story was extracted from its published source, summarised in a neutral editorial voice, and then re-checked against that source page: the customer name, every published figure, and the vendor product must all appear on the page for the story to be included.
Duplicates are resolved per company per vendor. Industry values are normalized to a fixed 20-industry taxonomy; previous systems are grouped into families. Where a field is only partly reported — durations appear in 16% of stories — the sample size is stated next to the figure rather than projected across the whole corpus.
Known limitation: this is a corpus of published success stories. It describes what the ERP industry chooses to show, which is a legitimate object of study, but it is not a random sample of ERP projects and should never be read as one.
Citing this data
These statistics are free to cite and republish with attribution and a link.
ERP Research, “ERP Implementation Statistics: What 1948 Published Case Studies Actually Show” (September 2026). https://www.erpresearch.com/erp-implementation-statistics
Frequently asked questions
How long does an ERP implementation take?
Across 306 case studies that disclose a duration, the median ERP implementation takes 6 months, with the middle half falling between 3 and 9 months. 46% completed in under six months and 11% ran beyond a year. These are vendor- and partner-published projects, so they represent implementations both parties were willing to publicise — treat them as a best case rather than an average.
What do companies use before they implement an ERP system?
Of 1372 case studies that name the previous system, 21% replaced spreadsheets and manual processes rather than another ERP. The most commonly displaced named systems are SAP (12%), Microsoft Dynamics (legacy) (7%), QuickBooks (6%).
Which industries publish the most ERP case studies?
Manufacturing (28%), Wholesale & Distribution (14%), Retail (8%) dominate the published record. Manufacturing and distribution together account for 42% of all case studies in the corpus.
How long does ERP implementation take for small vs large companies?
Disclosed durations rise with company size: smb companies report a median of 3.2 months (n=61), mid-market companies report a median of 6 months (n=94), enterprise companies report a median of 6 months (n=101). All of these are published best cases — independent surveys put typical mid-market projects well beyond these figures.
What ERP systems do companies migrate to?
Excluding same-vendor upgrades, the most frequent published migration paths are Spreadsheets & manual processes to Odoo (91 case studies), Spreadsheets & manual processes to Oracle NetSuite (54 case studies), Spreadsheets & manual processes to SAP (48 case studies), Spreadsheets & manual processes to Dynamics 365 (39 case studies), QuickBooks to Acumatica (27 case studies). Moves off spreadsheets and entry-level accounting packages outnumber ERP-to-ERP replacements in the published record.
What share of ERP implementations are partner-led?
87% of the 1948 case studies in the corpus credit a named implementation partner (1701 stories across 633 distinct firms). The true partner-led share is likely higher: vendor-published stories often omit the partner that delivered the project.
Are these ERP statistics reliable?
Every figure comes from 1948 case studies published by ERP vendors and their implementation partners, each re-checked against its source page before inclusion. The corpus is not a random sample: companies and partners publish successes, not failures, so results skew positive and durations skew short. We publish the sample size behind every number so you can judge it.
Planning your own implementation?
Compare what each ERP costs before you shortlist, and read the case studies behind these numbers.