Spotlight: Brazil's leading corporate software providers

Germany’s SAP is tied for leadership with local rival Totvs in Brazil’s ERP market, each having a 33% share, while Oracle has 11%, according to an annual study on the use of ICT by companies carried out by FGV, one of the country's largest think tanks and business schools.

The study, which surveyed 2,650 companies from different verticals earlier this year, confirms Totvs as the leading ERP provider among smaller companies (those with up to 180 keyboards), with a 47% market share, followed by SAP with 13% and Oracle with 6%.

Among large corporations, SAP leads comfortably with a 50% share versus Totvs’ 19% and Oracle’s 17%. Infor comes fourth with 5%.

In mid-sized firms (those with 181-800 keyboards), Totvs led with a 35% share, down from 37% in the previous survey, while SAP had 32% and Oracle 11%.

In intelligence analytics, comprising business intelligence (BI), business analytics (BA) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, SAP is the leading software provider. 

According to FGV, the German developer had 24% of the market in that segment, followed by Oracle (16%). Totvs, Microsoft and Qlik each had 15%.

At a recent press conference in Buenos Aires attended by BNamericas, Totvs executives said the company has invested more than US$300mn in the last four years in research and development to enhance and expand its portfolio. 

In Brazil, its main LatAm market, Totvs has 12,000 employees.

Another finding of the FGV study was the growth of Microsoft in the collaboration and video conferencing field.

The company's Teams platform was used by 37% of Brazilian corporates, up from 32% in the survey's 2020 edition, and is now tied with Zoom, which dropped from a 40% share. Google Meet, in turn, had 18%.

INVESTMENTS

According to FGV, spending of Brazilian corporates on IT (hardware, software and services) accounted for 8.7% of their revenues in 2021, up from 8.2% in 2020 and 8% in 2019.

While companies in the service sector invested 12.4% of revenues in IT, those in the industrial sector invested 5% and those in commerce 4.1%.

Brazilian banks channeled nearly 18% of net sales to IT, according to FGV.

A separate study by Deloitte, commissioned by Brazilian banking association Febraban, had already shed light on that.

According to Deloitte/Febraban, the total budget of Brazilian banks dedicated to technology, encompassing both expenses (management of existing infra, services and solutions) and investments, increased 13% in 2021 to over 30bn reais (US$6.31bn). 

Investments grew 27% to 11.3bn reais, while expenses increased 6% to 18.8bn reais, according to the study.

The bulk of both amounts went to software, which accounted for 58% of the 30.1bn reais in total, up 29%, and driven mostly by CRM, open finance, analytics and big data.

For this year, Febraban projects banks' disbursements on technology will grow 18% to 35.5bn reais. 

That would be practically the same as the 35.6bn reais telecom operators invested, spectrum licenses excluded, in Brazil last year.