Forrester analysts argue that business software vendors adding autonomous AI agents to enterprise resource planning systems will be limited less by the technology than by whether companies can verify what agents do, control usage-based costs, and move their own data definitions elsewhere. Survey figures show most firms run several ERP instances with data quality and security already rated difficult. The advice is to expand advisory agents now and delay autonomous execution until audit evidence and rollback are proven.
What changed
ERP automation stayed human-supervised, so weak data governance and fixed-price renewals were tolerable.
What it unlocks
Negotiating renewals with buyer-side usage monitoring, hard spending caps, and export rights for KPI and data definitions.
- 7% run a single ERP instance
- 65% call data accuracy complex
- 64% say the same of security
- 30% flag unpredictable usage pricing
What you need to act on it
- Forrester client access for the underlying reports
- forrester.com2026-08-05