5 Things That Have Changed About ERP in the Last Decade

A lot of municipalities are still making decisions about ERP based on what the market looked like ten years ago.

That's not a criticism. If your last significant interaction with ERP was a procurement or implementation in the mid-2010s, your frame of reference makes perfect sense. But the landscape has shifted in ways that matter, and some of the assumptions that used to be reasonable are now holding organizations back.

Here are five things that look very different today.

1. Cloud is the default, not the exception.

A decade ago, on-premise was still the norm for municipal ERP. Cloud was something larger organizations were experimenting with, and there were real concerns about data residency, security, and control.

That conversation has largely moved on. Across the broader ERP market, nearly 79% of new implementations in 2024 were cloud-based. The public sector has been slower to follow, but the direction is clear. Cloud-native platforms now offer stronger security postures, automatic updates, and significantly lower infrastructure overhead. For municipalities that have been carrying the cost of maintaining aging on-premise environments, the shift is not just technical. It's financial.

2. ERP is no longer just finance and payroll.

When most people think about ERP, they think about the general ledger. Maybe accounts payable. Maybe payroll.

Modern ERP covers far more ground. Human resources, procurement, asset management, budgeting, reporting, and in some cases even permitting and licensing. The scope of what a single platform can handle has expanded considerably, which means the way municipalities define their requirements needs to expand too. Scoping an ERP project the same way it would have been scoped in 2014 often leaves significant opportunities on the table.

3. The market for smaller municipalities has grown.

For a long time, ERP was seen as something only larger organizations could realistically take on. The solutions were expensive, the implementations were complex, and the vendor landscape was geared toward bigger buyers.

That's changed. The small and mid-sized business segment of the ERP market is now one of the fastest growing globally, expanding at over 21% per year. More vendors are building products and pricing models that are realistic for organizations with smaller teams and tighter budgets. The options available to a municipality of 15,000 today look nothing like what was on the table a decade ago.

4. Implementation timelines have shortened.

Ten years ago, a full ERP implementation could easily run three to five years. That was partly due to the technology, partly due to the level of customization required, and partly due to how projects were scoped and governed.

Today, small and mid-sized organizations are commonly completing implementations in three to nine months, depending on scope. Cloud-based platforms, pre-configured templates, and more modular approaches have compressed timelines significantly. That doesn't mean ERP projects are easy. But the idea that you're signing up for a half-decade commitment is outdated for many municipalities.

5. The cost conversation has changed.

Upfront licensing used to be the dominant cost in an ERP project. You paid a large sum for the software, then paid separately for implementation, training, and ongoing maintenance.

Subscription-based pricing has shifted that. Many cloud platforms operate on a per-user, per-month model that distributes cost over time and includes updates, hosting, and support. Licensing now typically accounts for only 20 to 30% of total project cost. The bigger share goes to implementation services, change management, and internal resourcing. Understanding where the money actually goes is one of the most important shifts municipalities need to make when planning an ERP project today.

What this means.

None of this makes ERP simple. But it does mean the barriers that kept some municipalities on the sidelines a decade ago may no longer apply. The market is more accessible, the timelines are more realistic, and the technology is significantly more mature.

The risk isn't in moving forward. It's in making decisions based on a version of the market that no longer exists.