Searches for enterprise software have doubled over the past five years.

More businesses are actively searching for and implementing enterprise software each year. 

We’ve gathered and analyzed data from over five thousand projects that were active in the past year in our 2020 enterprise software project report. Our research breaks down what companies are currently looking for when searching for a new software.

This includes hard to gather information such as cost per user, budget data, project timeframes, and industry usage breakdowns from actual companies.

Our enterprise software research provides a comprehensive overview of what selecting software looks like in 2020.

Jump to:

• How much do people spend on enterprise software?
• How long do people take to select enterprise software?
• How many people use their company's enterprise software?
• What are the top reasons companies implement enterprise software?

Here is a summary of some of our key findings:

The most common question asked about enterprise must be: how much does enterprise software cost?

Our research shows that you can expect to pay, on average, $7,166 over a five year period per each user of your system. This works out at around $120 per month per user.

Although, this number varies depending on your business size. We can see that smaller businesses typically spend less per user on their system compared to larger companies. Although, the difference in user cost between mid-size and larger companies is relatively small.

Most companies take, on average, 15 weeks to select their enterprise software.

This shows that most companies are putting a lot of consideration into which software will suit their needs. Our data found that smaller companies spend less time selecting their software when compared to larger companies.

Companies with over 250 employees spent almost double the amount of time selecting their enterprise software than smaller companies. 

We found that the percentage of employees using the new system was, on average, 31.35%.

This percentage varied depending on the company size, as well as the industry in which the business operated.

The distribution industry has the highest percentage of employees using their enterprise software leading at 45.99%. Similarly, manufacturing businesses had a higher than average percentage of employees listed as users.

In contrast, we found that retail businesses were significantly lower with only 21.64% of employees planned to become system users.

The leading reason that companies decided to implement a new enterprise software was to improve efficiency. 

Most companies aim for their system to realize benefits to improve existing processes and gain greater functionality. This has been a recurring theme throughout all our project reports, and it is unsurprising.

It is positive that the third most popular reason for implementing was to support growth. This suggests that companies see enterprise software as a vital component of their business expansion plans.

Read more interesting statistics and gain a full overview of the enterprise software market by downloading the full Software Path 2020 Enterprise Software Project Report.