The Ultra team met today with IFS sales management. The focus of the discussion was the state of the ERP market and the focus of IFS marketing efforts.

IFS is a very strong competitor for manufacturing companies that range in  size from $70 Million up to $1 Billion in annual revenues. Their focus is on complex manufacturing. They describe a complex manufacturing company as one that has a complex organization (multiple plants, multiple countries), and has a complex product to build. IFS is recognized as a leader in Enterprise Asset Management software which means they are a good fit for companies that build large complex, capital intensive products. They have the make to order, and engineer to order applications (such as project management) that are needed in this industry.

IFS sells their product through a direct channel of sales representatives in North America. Also, they support their consultants with IFS consultants.

Even though IFS recognizes the slow down in the economy they are still very careful to engage with a company in a sales cycle unless they see a good fit to their product and they can differentiate their software against the competition.

At Ultra we think IFS is a good choice for MTO and ETO companies that build capital intensive products. We also see them as a strong competitor in the Aerospace and Defense industry for companies that do project based work for the defense industry.

Take the time to analyze current systems, educate process owners on best practices, and build a long-term "business process improvement" plan that includes a vision of future processes that can be directly tied to business performance improvements.
 
Now is the time to build a BPI Plan that identifies and defines short term, mid and long term improvements that will lead to business performance improvement  

Today I had the opportunity to talk to client that chose and implemented QAD back in 2004. I wanted to get new input on the QAD experience. The company is very satisfied with QAD. They picked QAD because of its low cost of ownership, and because QAD is strong in the medical industry. The company is supporting the system with 2 system analysts, and 2 network administrators.

The company recently upgraded to the latest release with no problems. They have not implemented advanced features (CRM, BI, APS), but they are now looking at QAD's lean manufacturing and quality function.

They attended the latest user conference, and commented that the conference is driven by the large user base of automotive parts manufactures.

Recently, Ultra completed a briefing with the representatives from Ramco Systems. Please see the updated Ramco page under the Vendor section for information on the company.

From the briefing I learned two things about Ramco's new efforts in the US market.

First - the company is focusing its sales efforts on a primary vertical industry - Food & Beverage. The product is well suited for a multi-facility consumer product company.

Second - the company is using its huge offshore development staff to its advantage. The company is able to add missing ERP features, or (more important) unique company requirements at a very low cost.

Ramco seems committed to become a leading player in that vertical market.

Infor began demonstrating this capability in 2007. The result is that their core ERP solutions: Baan and Syteline look much more competitive. The problem is that Infor is not quite there in delivering the integration. Buyers must understand they are “early adopters” of the strategy if the integration to the “point solution” is important.

Microsoft entered the ERP market in earnest with its acquisition of Navision in 2002. Once Microsoft entered the market, everyone wanted to include the Microsoft in their long list for evaluation. Microsoft got invited to a lot of selections, but rarely got to the short list. Why? The reason is Axapta had holes in both manufacturing and engineering.

All of that has now changed in 2007. Over the past few years Microsoft has rolled out several new versions that have added important features to their ERP product. More importantly, Microsoft has learned how to leverage the resources in their re-seller channel. Microsoft introduced their Industry Builder Solutions program that gave independent re-sellers an incentive to develop vertical industry solutions. To the buyer, we now see a very competitive ERP solution that has been tailored to the buyer’s vertical industry and is being presented by vertical industry experts.

Microsoft has moved up the chain significantly. Not only are they making it to the short list, they are winning a lot of deals.

It will be interesting to see who sells more new customers this year.

The question is: “is it working”? Both SAP and Oracle are now referencing new success stories for implementation in companies in the SMB space with some companies below $1 M in revenue.

To hit this market hard in 2007, Oracle has put in place a significant increase of new sales managers to mange the sales activities in the SMB space through their re-seller network.