For 2026, Gartner says CFOs must balance intense cost pressures with strategic growth and AI adoption, focusing on five key actions: improving cost discipline while funding growth, using AI to deliver enterprise-wide savings, identifying high-value AI use cases, developing finance talent with new digital skills, and driving transformation despite constrained budgets.
Every CFO wants to back bold AI and automation plans. However, economic volatility brings the question of where to fund AI projects when IT budgets are already stretched. Rimini Street suggests that the AI budget is trapped inside ERP.
The ERP Trap
Rimini Street EVP and Chief Financial Officer Michael Perica explains the trap: if organisations keep following the historical vendor path of “just take the next upgrade when support ends,” they pour more spend into systems “that have had very little innovation over the past couple of decades.”
Vendors want customers to believe all innovation lives inside the ERP, he says, “but that’s an old story – and recent market reactions to SaaS business models are telling us things are changing.”
Perica calls this the vendor’s old story: large ERP providers steer clients toward upgrades and SaaS migrations, promising innovation that often fails to deliver commensurate value.
Spotting the trapped cash
CFOs are waking up to the scale of this trap. Senior executives at one major ERP vendor in the Asia Pacific have told investors they expect maintenance spend to increase by two to three times when clients upgrade to SaaS.
Perica’s challenge to finance leaders is direct: vendors may be planning to triple maintenance revenue, “but what are you getting for that? Are you really getting modernisation and next‑generation technology, or just signing up for a multi‑year project and handing over more money?”
The real question, he adds, is how to unlock that spend and get on an alternate path.
Rimini Street’s “smart path” starts with third‑party support that replaces the vendor at a lower cost, then layers on managed services and agentic AI built outside the core ERP, freeing budgets without forcing disruptive upgrades.
40–50% savings in 12–24 months – and 90% over the long haul
The numbers are compelling. Perica says that within 12 to 24 months, organisations can “save upwards of 40 to 50% annually” on maintenance. But the bigger story is cost avoidance over time.
“When you factor in total cost of ownership and the savings from avoiding forced updates, patches, re‑platforming, and relicensing, we’ve seen entities achieve around 90% savings over the longer term,” he notes.
Since Rimini Street’s inception, he adds, clients have saved roughly 10 billion dollars in maintenance spend, and the company has committed to supporting existing systems for at least 15 more years.
Calculating the real opportunity cost
As a CFO himself, Perica sees the risk–return trade‑off differently than many IT roadmaps. In his view, following the ERP vendor’s AI‑native roadmap is “a lower‑risk but higher‑cost proposition – and that’s only if the project lands on time and on budget, which is rare.”
The bigger issue, he says, is opportunity cost: AI capabilities “captive within the ERP” limit how organisations can innovate.
He urges finance leaders to partner closely with CIOs and IT. Finance touches every part of the enterprise, so Perica “implores” CFOs to build that relationship, understand the strategic direction of technology, and work together to pursue enterprise‑wide outcomes, not technology for technology’s sake.
The goal is to solve business problems and improve unit economics, not just follow the same vendor playbook of the last two decades.
The questions that should replace ‘how much?’
Before approving any upgrade or migration, Perica wants CFOs to change the first question they ask. “Start with the business outcome,” he says. “What is our optimal to‑be state, and how do we operationalise it using technology or strategy?”
His advice is to avoid beginning with “a dollars and cents question, a platform question, or a technology question.” First, define what “optimal” looks like and how to get there; only then should cost enter the discussion. This shifts conversations from vendor‑driven upgrades to genuine business value.
Why traditional ROI models are failing
Perica is blunt about ERP re‑platforming: “I’m not sure I have come across an ROI that has been acceptable,” he admits. In his view, the opportunity cost and ROI “are only going to get worse” if organisations stay on the vendor‑dictated path, especially now that there are more innovative alternatives.
Those alternatives allow companies to move innovation outside the ERP. “You can control your data, your outcomes, and even turn customisations – once viewed as technical debt – into assets,” he argues, pointing to Rimini Street’s Agentic UX to achieve “true innovation quicker and more economically” than a traditional ERP upgrade.
He also cautions that finance teams often over‑invest in refining ROI and TCO models that assume the same old processes, whereas agentic AI “lets you redesign business processes around your needs, not the ERP’s constraints.”
Gartner research reinforces his scepticism: by 2027, more than 70% of recently implemented ERP initiatives will fail to fully meet their original business case goals, with as many as 25% failing catastrophically.
The SaaS-pocalypse: The market has spoken
The market is delivering its own verdict. Perica points to the “SaaS-pocalypse” – the term coined after Anthropic’s Claude Cowork plugins triggered a massive sell-off. Forbes reported that approximately $285 billion was wiped from SaaS, software, and related stocks in a matter of days.
“The market is telling users of these software systems that things are changing,” he says. “There are alternatives – next‑generation AI tools and technologies – and investors no longer believe SaaS vendors will have the same pricing power to dictate the economics of modernisation.”
He notes a surge in inbound calls from organisations looking to “leapfrog SaaS” and place innovation outside ERP and other systems of record.
From a two-year stalemate to 30-day AI wins
Proof points are emerging. At Rimini Street’s December 2025 investor event in New York, a client described a business problem they had been unable to solve for two years. After engaging Rimini Street’s agentic AI platform, “we solved it in 30 days,” Perica recalls.
“So far we’ve identified and refined 20 processes, and we expect that to grow to well over 100 in the coming years,” he says, highlighting how each organisation brings its own pain points.
For Perica, the excitement lies in giving clients “optionality outside of the vendor roadmap,” combining vendor‑replacement support, optimised managed services, and innovation through Rimini Street and its partners so that clients “can dictate outcomes on their own timeline.”
Redefining tech investment models
CFOs now must consider cybersecurity, compliance, and operational resilience in every AI decision, and concerns about “an agent run amok” are common. Perica acknowledges those fears but believes the industry has moved quickly to address them.
He notes that organisations at the forefront of agentic AI “recognise the need for strong guardrails” and that the sector “has been doing a good job” in putting appropriate controls and governance in place. While he agrees that these guardrails must continue to evolve with the technology, he says he’s “not overly concerned” at this stage because the right control mindset is now embedded.
Innovation without the upgrade
Perica confirms what many CFOs hope to hear: “Absolutely”, you can keep your existing ERP and still tap into AI. He says Rimini Street is “already experiencing it,” with early proof points that are “overwhelmingly positive from both an outcome and economic perspective.”
“There is a viable path to innovate differently – outside of the core transacting system,” he stresses, one that lets CFOs control the timeline, dictate business outcomes, and deploy capital in line with their own priorities. Done right, he argues, this path can flip the traditional ratio where 90% of the IT budget goes to “keeping the lights on” and only 10% to innovation.
Don’t listen to me – listen to the market
Perica’s closing message to CFOs is intentionally provocative: “My advice is don’t listen to me. Look at the market.” The recent “SaaS-pocalypse,” he says, shows that “the SaaS business model is changing, in trouble,” and that investors don’t assume customers will unquestioningly follow vendor roadmaps anymore.
“Don’t listen to me, listen to the market. The market is on to something,” he concludes. For CFOs, that “something” is the opportunity to take back control of IT roadmaps, pursue viable, attractive alternative paths, and finally fund AI transformation without breaking the bank.
Click on the PodChats player to listen to the candid dialogue with Perica.
- What does Rimini Street mean by “trapped inside ERP”?
- How are CFOs identifying and measuring the “trapped” ERP cash within IT budgets, and what metrics best reveal opportunities to redirect spend toward AI and automation?
- Based on your experience, what portion of ERP and maintenance costs can realistically be freed within 12–24 months to fund GenAI or digital initiatives?
- How do finance leaders weigh the risk–return trade‑offs between extending legacy ERP systems and investing in new AI‑driven capabilities?
- What critical questions should CFOs be asking their CIOs and ERP vendors before approving major upgrade or migration proposals?
- How can finance teams build a structured ROI framework that links ERP lifecycle decisions directly to shareholder value and capital allocation discipline?
- What are some standout examples of APAC organisations that have successfully redirected ERP savings to accelerate AI and data‑driven transformation?
- As AI investment decisions converge with cybersecurity, compliance, and operational resilience, how must CFOs redefine their technology investment models beyond 2026?
- Any advice on funding AI and digital initiatives without breaking the bank.
