The Future Development of ERP: Towards Process ERP Systems?

Organizations operating in Industry 4.0 and 5.0 use both ERP and BPMSsystems. As recently as 10-15 years ago, the reasons behind using these two classes of systems were different. ERPs were used to manage the organization's resources, and BPMS - to support the implementation of business processes, often understood as work or document flows. However, as a result of digital transformation, both business needs as well as ERP and BPMS vendors responding thereto made these two classes of systems overlap to an increasing degree. Thus, the aim of this article is to answer the question: Are we heading towards process-based ERP systems or is the future in the flexible, open integration of postmodernERP and iBPMS? The authors conducted a narrative literature review and content analysis of 88 ERP systems offered on the Polish market. As a result, 11 ERP systems containing functionalities specific to BPMS were identified. Further, to define the essence of the transformation of ERP into process-based ERP systems, 5 expert interviews were conducted, which allowed for the formulation of two approaches to this transformation: the integration of ERP systems with iBPMS as an external subsystem taking over the implementation of selected business processes based on metadata and data of the ERP system; or process management within the ERP system by enabling the configuration of selected processes in ERP subsystems or modules based on a repository of process models, e.g. in BPMN.