Philipp Fux, Silvan Wyden: The ERP market is currently shifting strongly from monolithic legacy systems to modular, flexible composable ERP architectures. Agile business software like Odoo natively integrates business areas such as sales, accounting, production, HR, or marketing on a single platform. SMEs thus reduce integration costs and interfaces and benefit from greater scalability, automation and digitise their processes faster. The trend is further reinforced by hyper-localization – the mapping of Swiss standards and regulatory issues directly in the ERP system.

We see real added value where AI automates operational and complex processes. The focus is on saving time on repetitive tasks. We recommend our clients to use artificial intelligence as a co-pilot, for example for invoice checks, real-time forecasts, inventory optimizations, lead scoring, or for document processing. Modern ERP stacks like Odoo integrate AI directly into the workflow, rather than as an isolated tool. The theory remains for now the fully autonomous corporate management without human validation. Here, AI often fails due to a lack of data quality.

How can cloud-based ERP providers credibly differentiate themselves in an increasingly international market?

Credibility and differentiation arise from digital sovereignty. Many Swiss companies are currently moving away from proprietary platforms of global US providers. They want to protect their data, regain control, and secure their business resilience. To achieve this, they rely on reliable data storage and IT architecture as well as open ecosystems. At braintec, we provide the foundation with a highly secure private cloud infrastructure and local expertise for the highest compliance. Odoo Business Software guarantees data sovereignty according to EU standards as a European open-source platform.

Looking ahead: What developments will shape ERP solutions by 2031 – and what should companies prepare for today?

ERP software is evolving from traditional data systems to operational self-driving ERP with autonomous processes and real-time data models. Conversational interfaces are replacing dashboards, processes are controlled by voice or natural text, and AI agents are taking over routine tasks. Therefore, companies should urgently professionalize and standardize their data today. To ensure competitiveness in the future AI economy, we rely on a scalable private cloud infrastructure and the low-code capabilities of Odoo to combine agility and data sovereignty.