As 2010 draws to a close we’re taking a look at a few enterprise startups that show promise and that we haven’t covered on ReadWriteEnterprise.
Erply is a Web-based ERP application with support for accounting, inventory, invoicing, CRM, e-commerce, POS and more. Erply is trying to compete with established ERP vendors by offering a dead-simple and affordable ERP solution targeted at retailers.
Erply was a winner of Seedcamp 2009 where it received 50,000 in funding. The Estonian company has since raised $2 million, according to TechCrunch. It was also recently selected by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top ten European startups of the year.
During a panel at Dreamforce earlier this month, IT managers from companies like Dell and Belkin discussed their migrations to the cloud. Everyone agreed that ERP would be the last set of applications they migrated to the cloud.
Erply, along with other new ERP vendors like MyERP and ERPNext, are hoping to convince companies to make that move sooner than later.
In an article on high-profile ERP project failures CIO cites Michael Krigsman on the potential of the cloud to improve the ERP experience:
Krigsman sees “bright lights on the horizon,” such as the gradual emergence of cloud-based ERP, which can take the complexity out of upgrades for customers, as well as packaged services offerings, where the job gets a fixed price tag instead of being billed by the hour. In addition, such services are often based on well-established processes that have worked for many other customers, Krigsman said.
This is exactly the approach Erply is taking by focusing on keeping its software simple and emphasizing only the features that its customers need.
Like many of the current crop of enterprise startups marketing through app markets like Google Apps Marketplace, Erply has a freemium business model. Its paid accounts start at 55.
