The UK IT contract market shrank. The ERP corner of it didn't.
Talk to any UK contractor and you'll hear the same story: fewer roles, more competition, rates squeezed. The data backs the mood — the general IT contract market has been contracting since the IR35 reforms pushed a layer of blanket "inside" determinations through big corporates, and economic caution did the rest.
But averages hide the interesting part. On our desk, ERP contracting looks nothing like generic IT contracting, and the difference matters whether you're hiring or billing.
Why ERP contract demand holds up
An implementation is a project with a start and an end. That shape is exactly what contract labour is for, and no amount of budget scrutiny changes it. When a distributor commits to an ERP go-live, they need an experienced consultant for nine months — not a permanent hire they'll be under-using by year two.
Migration deadlines make it starker. The S/4HANA wave alone guarantees years of fixed-term demand, and SQL-to-HANA work does the same at the SAP Business One end of the market. Specialists with two or three go-lives behind them still name their rate: current UK bands run £495–£715 a day for B1 work and up to £990 on S/4HANA programmes, with the detail in our salary guides.
What has genuinely changed is how contracts are structured. Inside-IR35 through partner payrolls is now the default on big programmes. Outside-IR35 still exists, mostly on genuinely project-shaped engagements with clear deliverables — which, not coincidentally, is what ERP work looks like when it's scoped honestly.
What we'd actually advise
Contractors: specialise harder. The generic PM or analyst day-rate market is the part that shrank. Platform depth — a named ERP, named modules, migration scars — is what still commands a premium. If your pipeline has gone quiet, that's the gap to close, and two delivered projects on a growing platform reset your market position.
Employers: the permanent-first instinct is right for platform ownership and wrong for delivery peaks. We increasingly set up a hybrid: contractors carry the implementation, and the permanent hire who'll own the system starts before go-live, not after. Cheaper than extending contractors indefinitely, and the knowledge stays.
We run both contract and permanent ERP desks across the UK and US, so we have no dog in the fight — we'll tell you which one your situation actually needs. Get in touch if that conversation would help.