Industry-specific ERP is enterprise resource planning software built for one trade, such as food makers, builders, project consultancies or equipment dealers. It is also called vertical ERP. In the software industry, a "vertical" means one trade or industry.
A general ERP suite covers what every company does: orders, stock, purchasing and accounts. But each trade has needs of its own. A food maker must record every batch it makes, and the expiry date of each batch. A builder must track costs against each site and each stage of construction. A consultancy bills its clients for the hours each employee spends on each project. A general suite can be changed to do these things, but the changes are costly. An industry-specific ERP has them built in.
Consider a snack maker in Bikaner that makes bhujia. On Monday, it makes batch B-0412: 2,000 kg of bhujia, from 1,400 kg of besan, with oil and spices. The ERP records which lot of besan went into the batch, and which supplier sent that lot. It prints the batch number and a best-before date, 120 days ahead, on every packet. Three weeks later, a lab test finds a problem in one lot of besan. The ERP lists at once every batch made with that lot, and every distributor who received those packets. So the snack maker recalls 600 kg from four distributors, instead of everything it made that month. India's food regulator, the FSSAI, requires food makers to keep a recall plan, and a record of which batch went to which buyer.
Such software is almost never replaced. Once a business runs its batches, sites or projects on it, its staff, its reports and its records all depend on it. Because of this, some holding companies buy vertical ERP products by the dozen and keep them for decades. These holding companies are called roll-ups. Several of them keep large engineering centres in India, where one team maintains many such products at once.
Like a general suite, a vertical ERP connects to other software. Orders from a website may arrive through an integration platform. At the end of the month, the balances are checked in financial close software. A printing company may run a print MIS beside it. More and more, makers of vertical ERP are adding AI agents that read these records and act on them. Either way, the vertical ERP remains the system of record of its trade.