ERP users in Europe want Oracle to back off Peoplesoft merger

95% against merger

By News IS, 6th October 2003

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Users of both Peoplesoft and JD Edwards ERP packages dread a takeover by Oracle in Europe. An ERP survey, completed last month shows that as many as 95% of customers do not want Oracle's bid for Peoplesoft to succeed.

The shocking hostility to the merger proposal was uncovered in a general ERP survey conducted by market research firm Rethink Research Associates, which brought together the results this week, interviewing 100 CIOs, evenly spread over Germany, France, the UK and Northern Europe. Over 40% of the sample were customers of either Peoplesoft and JD Edwards and they were vehemently against the Oracle deal going through.

However the JD Edwards users were equally scathing about their own supplier, with over half of them unhappy at their choice of supplier and hoping that life under Peoplesoft is going to be an improvement. Peoplesoft customers had one of the highest satisfaction scores of all the ERP suppliers across Europe, with over 60% saying that they would go out and buy Peoplesoft software all over again, no questions asked. Ironically Oracle had the least satisfied ERP customers.

SAP and Oracle customers are equivocal on the topic, with roughly half of each in favour of the Oracle deal and half of them against it. But only 1 from 100 ERP customers in Europe thinks that no merger at all should have happened, so clearly the leading CIOs in Europe know that consolidation is inevitable in order to improve their product range and quality of service.

Other conclusions from the report are that customers in general failed to find the benefits they were looking for when they signed up for ERP, with top of the wish list being improved control over their business and gaining a clearer picture of which business activities are profitable. Almost none of the respondents felt that they had achieved full profit visibility through ERP.

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