"Nucleus compares return on equity (ROE) by company, as provided by Bloomberg.com, with ROE industry averages from Hoovers and these are unrelated sources of data. Without access to the sources, proper screening and definition are not likely to occur and the Nucleus sample size represents 0.0026 of SAP's total customer base.

"Nucleus has a history of selecting topics and vendor targets to promote itself and its sensational findings in the market. As the market leader, SAP is a target of Nucleus' quick, cheap research for the eighth time."

Neal Rodgerson, national distribution manager for Orica, said an ERP platform is just a system and does not drive business strategy or profitability. Orica uses SAP extensively throughout the organization and Rodgerson said it was deployed because of flexibility.

"I would not blame the system if we were not making money and I would not claim it enables us to make money, because at the end of the day it is just a tool and if I wanted too I could do it all on a spreadsheet," Rodgerson said.

"An ERP platform is just a system and does not drive business strategy. It is an interesting proposition to say because you run SAP you are 20 percent more or less profitable.