Panorama Consulting’s new 2011 ERP report (registration required), covering the year 2010, offers worthwhile reading to anyone interested in understanding small business ERP projects.

The survey covers a variety of ERP-related issues; however, we will focus on several points with a direct bearing on the successful outcome of projects. In summary, the survey shows a substantial increase in over-budget and late projects, relative to the previous year.

Project size. The average project size reported by the survey is about $5.5 million. (See notes below for discussion of project size.)

Success and failure metrics. In general, the simplest definition of failure consists of projects that are late, over-budget, or do not deliver planned benefits.

The following diagram tells this part of the story for 2009 and 2010:

We see a dramatic increase in late and over-budget projects in 2010, as compared with 2009. Significantly, survey respondents reported improved achieving a higher level of expected benefit than in the prior year.

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