ERPs Find New Home on Main Street as SMBs Tackle Uncertainty

For much of business history, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems were the exclusive domain of Fortune 500 giants with deep pockets. The reason? These crucial pieces of enterprise architecture traditionally required long timelines, and teams of consultants ready to wrestle monolithic software into submission in order to unlock their biggest back office benefits.

But it’s 2025, and firms are in the midst of a new decade. Businesses are increasingly looking to turn the first page of the next quarter century from a technology standpoint. And as tariff wars continue to ripple through global trade and domestic balance sheets alike, real-time visibility into costs, inventory and supplier performance is becoming essential for both Main Street small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and mid-size firms looking to grow.

For SMBs feeling the squeeze from rising labor costs, global supply chain uncertainty and the knock-on effects of tariff wars, modern back-office systems can offer not just cost control, but a platform for growth.

And thanks to a confluence of technological shifts such as the rise of cloud-native platforms, embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and modular deployment models, today’s ERP solutions are evolving from rigid behemoths into agile services. Innovations have driven down both integration costs and technical lift complexity, opening a door that was long closed to smaller firms.

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Cloud-Native Architectures Make ERP Less IT, More ROI

Gone are the days when implementing ERP was an all-or-nothing proposition. Modern systems are increasingly modular, letting businesses start with core functions and add capabilities as needed.

The shift to cloud-native ERP has arguably had the most profound impact on adoption. Legacy systems required massive infrastructure investments — on-premises servers, customized implementations and ongoing maintenance contracts. Lead times frequently stretched into the months and even years to roll out new features, even minor ones.

Today, companies can access the same functionality (and often more) via SaaS platforms with consumption-based pricing. For mid-sized firms looking to scale, the ability to trial, adopt, or sunset modules without a ground-up reimplementation may represent a huge strategic advantage. It also means that IT teams, once tasked with firefighting server crashes or maintaining brittle codebases, can shift focus toward optimization, analytics and business value.

This is particularly important for SMBs, where budget constraints and change management considerations make big-bang rollouts impractical. Instead, a small retail chain can begin with finance and inventory, then add CRM, HR or supply chain modules when ready.

After all, PYMNTS Intelligence’s new “2025 Global Digital Shopping Index: SMB Edition” reveals that more than 1 in 3 SMBs still enter payment data manually. That sunk labor cost represents trapped workforce value that ERP modernization can help unlock.

Separate PYMNTS Intelligence data confirms the scale of the problem, finding that only 17% of businesses have fully automated their payment processes.

The modularity of today’s platforms also allows ERP platforms to grow in sync with the business. Companies no longer have to overbuy functionality “just in case.”

Meg Garand, head of CashPro Payments and CashPro API at Bank of America, told PYMNTS last year that an increasing number of partnerships between banks and FinTechs are letting ERP and treasury management system providers optimize their own software solutions.

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Leveraging ERP as a Competitive Advantage on Main Street

For years, SMBs were frequently forced to rely on patchworks of spreadsheets, niche software and tribal knowledge. This worked — until it didn’t. The pandemic, supply chain shocks and ongoing shifts in consumer expectations have since exposed the fragility of disconnected systems.

Visibility and control are, and will be, expected by Gen Z and Gen Alpha customers as they move fully into their own careers, especially as they act as consultants, sole proprietors or gig economy workers. Being able to move money 24/7, Elena Casal, chief client officer of The Clearing House (TCH) told PYMNTS, “brings an end-to-end experience that these generations will use … to ‘level up’ financial accounting and planning.”

Alongside technological advances, another crucially important shift has been the flattening of the ERP cost curve. This reduction in cost doesn’t just make ERP feasible. It changes the calculus from “nice to have” to “need to have,” particularly as concurrent advances like AI reshape the operational playing field.

Today’s ERP systems are no longer just digital ledgers. With embedded AI and machine learning, they can now surface insights, predict outcomes, and recommend actions. With the right ERP system, even a 30-person wholesaler can compete with national players. Not by replicating their scale, but by leveraging speed, data and adaptability.

Recognizing the opportunity, the marketplace is responding in turn. Mastercard, for example, on Thursday (May 29) launched a suite of digital tools, data and educational resources designed for SMBs in the U.S., while news broke, also on Thursday, that the ERP firm Acumatica is set to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners.