The End of ERP According to McKinsey: The Race to AI and the Missing Foundations

In May 2026, McKinsey published an article with a clear-cut title: "The End of ERP as We Know It." The thesis is that artificial intelligence will transform management systems in a radical way — the question is not whether, but how quickly.

Several numbers stand out.

Companies that have already integrated AI into their management systems report +5% profitability or more.

ERP implementation timelines are cut by around 50%, with design phases shrinking from 6–9 months to 2–3, testing work reduced by around 80%, and training by up to 90%. Customizations can also be developed much faster.

But in the same article there is another number that may be more important for anyone running an SME: 3 out of 4 projects fall short of their promises.

McKinsey observes that only 25–35% of technology programs achieve the expected results. The remaining 65–80% overshoot budget or timelines. Three out of four projects, in other words, do not materialize as planned.

Why? Because technology is added on top of foundations that cannot hold. AI, in order to generate value, needs a clean and coherent data base beneath it. Without that foundation, even the best-intentioned investment dissipates.

And this is not an insight exclusive to McKinsey: it is common sense and logic. In fact, the same picture was already visible, months earlier, in the data on Italian companies.

The picture was already in the ISTAT data from December

In December 2025, ISTAT published the report "Companies and ICT – Year 2025," which we had already covered and commented on in our blog. It captured exactly the tension McKinsey is talking about today, with a focus on Italian SMEs.

On one hand, the race to AI: the use of artificial intelligence technologies in Italian companies doubled in a year, from 8.2% in 2024 to 16.4% in 2025 (it was 5% in 2023). Companies are investing, experimenting, buying.

On the other hand, foundations that are not keeping pace. The same report showed that only 48.8% of SMEs use an ERP; on CRM the gap is even wider, stuck at 21.1%. And almost 60% of companies that had evaluated an AI investment gave up due to a lack of adequate skills.

The takeaway we drew at the time was this: growth is quantitative, not qualitative. Tools are being purchased, but very few companies have the structure — a management system that truly integrates processes — capable of making them deliver. McKinsey, five months later, describes the same phenomenon on a global scale: a great deal of technology at the top, far too little foundation at the bottom.

What this means for a fashion company

In fashion the problem is even more evident. The product lifecycle is extremely short and puts the entire operation under stress: the volume of data to be generated — collections, variants, sizes, colors, costs — and the ability to manage it effectively, season after season, at a relentless pace.

The point is simple: you can put all the artificial intelligence in the world on top of your business, but if your data does not talk to each other, you are only automating the chaos.

This conviction is where BRANDTOSTORE was born

BRANDTOSTORE was born precisely from this. Showroom, warehouse, stores, invoicing, product and administration are not islands to be connected by fragile bridges: they live in the same platform, on the same catalog, on the same customer records.

One single place to look. One single source of truth on the numbers.

And precisely because we believe this, today we are investing in new technology to make that foundation faster, richer in features and easier to use. Not to chase the AI trend, but to build the foundations on which AI, tomorrow, will truly deliver the greater profitability McKinsey talks about.

Another principle from the article also holds: it makes little sense to build custom solutions for every process, when most day-to-day work simply needs to run well and in a standard way. Where the process generates real value — the product, the way of selling — customization is fundamental. Where it is just a formal step, it is better to simplify and speed things up.

What changes for decision-makers

The advantage, for a business owner, is not technical: it is concrete. When a salesperson collects an order, that order is already ready to become a delivery and an invoice. When the store makes a sale, the accounting is already updated. When the design team sketches a new garment, production sees it immediately. When bank statements arrive, they are already aligned with your accounts.

It means synergy: information shared and coordinated, from stores to foreign markets, from the first sketch to the bank. Decisions made on solid data, in real time, across the entire operation.

The real lesson

ERP will change — on this McKinsey is right. But the first step is not artificial intelligence: it is having everything in one place, with numbers that speak the same language. The ISTAT data said it in December, McKinsey confirms it in May. It is the difference between being in the 25% of projects that keep their promises and the 75% that betray them.