So, Tell Me a Little Bit About Yourself

When visiting the Digg website, for example. The first line on Digg’s About page is this: “Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.”

Neat, huh? One click and sixteen words after visiting the site, you know, in a nutshell, what they do. Read another fifty or so words and you’ll find out that content is displayed and ranked based on votes from users. Go further and you’ll find out how that works. The information is there, and it’s not hard to find.

Enterprise software vendors, by contrast, don’t always provide such clear information so concisely. To show you what I mean, I looked at the About Us pages of the ten vendors listed in The New and the Noteworthy: 2008 Vendor Wrap-up, published late last year on this blog.

I wasn’t looking for anything spectacular. I only wanted to know, as quickly as possible, what each company does, whom they do it for, and what, if anything, sets them apart. Here’s what I found:
The Top 3: Flexi, Oco, and Saba

Of the ten pages I looked at, Flexi, Oco, and Saba provided the best examples of what an About Us page should be.

Flexi’s About Us page was almost exactly what I wanted to see. In a mere 136 words, I learned that Flexi develops two accounting products for the banking, insurance, and financial services industries. Further I learned that Flexi focuses exclusively on accounting, which supports their claim of deep industry expertise. Additional information was available from a clear set of links at the top of the page, so if I had approached the site as a reporter, investor, or job-seeker, I’d have known where to go.

Bonus points for linking from the About Us page to the overview pages for each of their products.

Oco also provides a concise description of their company. 211 words in, I learned that Oco provides on-demand reporting and analytics for any kind of business data; that the industries they serve include retail, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, and private equity firms; and that Oco’s solutions are fixed-time and fixed-cost.

While Oco gets bonus points for differentiating their solution in clear language, I did find it odd that the term “business intelligence” only appears at the end of the description. Still, it’s a solid overview, and I wanted to learn more.

Saba was originally destined for the middle of the pack, but a second look convinced me otherwise. It turns out that their About Us page tells me what they do—provide human capital management (HCM)—software, lists key customers, and lets me know that their software is available “both on-premise and on demand,” which is a pretty good start. Again, the description is short enough to be readable, and informative enough that I can decide whether I want to follow the links to more information. The only downside is that the main description begins only after a huge plug for their corporate brochure, which I wasn’t interested enough to download. Oh well.
The Middle of the Road: Global, IFS, PTC, Targit

The companies I thought provided fair to middling About Us pages all tended to have the same problem. While most of the information was there, it usually wasn’t presented as well as it could have been.

For example, Global Shop Solutions starts off well, making it clear that they are the “largest privately held ERP software company in the United States.” Unfortunately, you have to read quite a bit more before you find out about the size and industry of the typical Global customer. Generally speaking, I found the information I was looking for, but I had to hunt around for it since nothing on the page indicated what was important.

IFS is another example of good information with lackluster presentation. Oddly, the IFS About Us page has two short descriptions of the company, but only one (the less visible one) actually tells you what kind of software they make (ERP and MRO). To their credit, they do immediately differentiate themselves, citing a commitment to using open standards. Good to know. The frustrating thing here was that The About Us page links to a page titled “IFS in Brief,” which actually has more and better information, and would have made a better About Us page to begin with.

PTC’s About Us page isn’t exactly packed with information, and most of the links to additional information are only available from the site’s main menu. However PTC gets big points for doing two things. First, the description is very concise, letting you know that the company makes product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise content management (ECM) software. Second, and most important, each of those terms is linked to a page that describes exactly what PLM and ECM are. In an industry drowning in three-letter acronyms (TLAs), it’s refreshing to see a company stop and offer some helpful information for newbies like me. Thanks, PTC.

Lastly, there’s Target Business Intelligence. On the plus side, it’s immediately clear that the company makes BI software. Unfortunately, their About Us page doesn’t do much to expand on that. Instead, it talks about the company’s size, number of customers, partnership agreements, philosophy, and corporate culture. This is all good information, but it’s not as useful as it could be if I had a clear picture of the company’s products and target markets to begin with. On the other hand, one very nice thing about Targit’s About Us page is that it links directly to an online product demo and some videos, which are always useful.
The Bottom 3: Callidus, Ramco, and Visibility

Let’s start with Callidus. Their About Us pages actually do provide the type of information I was looking for. They made the bottom three because their presentation makes that information so difficult to find, that the overall experience is frustrating. To get a comprehensive one-pager about the company, you have to go the main About Us page, then follow the “Why Callidus Software?” link. Then you have to find and click the “Corporate Backgrounder” link, which takes you, finally, to a useful page (which, IMO should be the main about us page).

The real bummer is that Callidus does some nice things on this page. For example, like PTC, Callidus links to definitions of the types of software they make—sales performance management (SPM) and enterprise incentive management (EIM). They also provide concise descriptions of all of their products, provide some details about the underlying technology, and list some of the business problems that their software helps solve. Shame that it takes them so long to get there.

Then there’s Ramco and Visibility. Both of these companies have apparently decided to let visitors guess what they do. Neither About Us page provides a clear or concise description of the company or its products, opting instead for vague marketing-speak.

For example, the Visibility About Us page begins “Visibility Corporation provides business and technical solutions that help organizations achieve optimal results from their business information systems.” OK, but what is a “business and technical solution?” Do any companies make similar solutions that help organizations achieve sub-optimal results?

Visibility also assures us that “Optimizing productivity and recognizing an immediate return on investment are common business drivers for the organizations we serve.” Again, do any of their competitors serve companies who want to reduce productivity, or see ROI later, rather than sooner?

About the only useful piece of information on this page is that “Visibility provides solutions that range from easy-to-deploy, high impact reporting and analytic solutions to comprehensive integrated enterprise applications, to applications built to address your specific business needs,” which I guess means that they offer solutions ranging from small and off-the-shelf to large and custom.

To be fair, the Visibility home page makes it immediately clear that the company makes enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) solutions. Why they don’t reiterate it in their company profile is a bit of a mystery.

Ramco is in pretty much the same boat, claiming to provide, “flexible enterprise applications that can be delivered quickly and cost-effectively into complex environments.” But what vendor would claim the opposite?

The description goes on to say that Ramco “…also gives companies the agility they need to stay competitive by enabling fast, flexible deployment and change on demand of business applications. Ramco VirtualWorks ensures maximum flexibility to execute a business process strategy - so when business needs change systems change automatically.”

Sounds challenging. Um… what is VirtualWorks again?

You won’t find out on this page. Nor will you find out on their home page, which at least lists their target markets. So if you want any real information, it’s off to their network of drop-down menus in the hopes that you can identify what you want to know.
So Why is This Important, Anyway?

The reason I’m going on about this is that a company’s About Us page is important. And while it needs to address myriad audiences—journalists, investors, students, job-seekers—its most important purpose is to provide clear information (like what the company actually does) to potential customers.

Put another way, if I’m tasked with purchasing a new software system, I need to evaluate many competing software solutions. Chances are, I don’t have as much time as I need, so when I visit a company’s website, I’m going to make some immediate decisions based on

* Whether the company provides the kind of software I’m looking for
* Whether the company serves other customers in my industry
* Whether the company serves businesses of the same size as mine
* Whether the company does one or more of these things in a way that’s demonstrably better than its competitors

That’s the information I need right away, and if I don’t get it, or don’t understand it, I’ll probably look elsewhere.

I’m not saying that all companies can be as concise as Digg (who does one thing, does it well, and does it for free), but there’s no reason that every company can’t tell me, in 50 words or less, enough about what they do to keep me interested.

Clear information, well presented, makes me feel like the company behind it values my time and respects my intelligence, and that engenders the kind of goodwill that’s very much to the company’s benefit when I get serious about making my selection.

Agresso Bucks the Slump (and Fights the “ERP Madness”)

Without even talking about our retirement funds and investments being slashed by about 40 percent (as part of a potentially more far-reaching financial crisis) or about 2.6 million jobs lost in the US only, just look at mushrooming late 2008 layoffs news at even the biggest and typically impervious enterprise applications vendors. For example, both Bruce Richardson of AMR Research and Frank Scavo of Enterprise Systems Spectator have reported in their respective December 2008 blog posts about Infor’s deliberate preparations for a downturn.

Along similar lines (although about some vendors there have been rumors rather than a public acknowledgement by the vendor) were the recent cost-cutting and restructuring moves by Sage, Consona, Lawson Software, Oracle, and Epicor Software. The market leader SAP has not yet been plagued by major layoffs per se, although there have been rumors/reports about the recently enacted stringent internal corporate-wide cost-cutting policies, such as restricted traveling, training, events, and so on.

I am indeed aware of the fact that there was no traditional SAP Influencer/Analyst Summit this past fall/winter, after several years of being a major winter event solely for industry analysts and media. Thus, trying to think positively, I am happy to report about coming across at least one vendor with upbeat news and upright posture in these dreary days.

In fact, how often have we heard about a mid-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider’s quarterly global results in late 2008 revealing a 37 percent increase in revenue and sales (with 30 percent growth in North America), with the company claiming many significant new orders worth over US$ 1 million?

These results would be even more impressive against the backdrop of its major rivals’ results; for instance, SAP reported a 9 percent year-over-year decline in new license revenues over the same period.

So, Who’s Above the Fray?

The vendor in case is Unit 4 Agresso, an international provider of business software headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands. The company has over 3,500 employees in offices in 12 European countries and 9 countries outside Europe, with sales activities in several other countries. Depending on the ever-fluctuating exchange rates, Unit 4 Agresso’s revenues for 2008 are expected to be between US$500 million and US$600 million.

Unit 4 Agresso’s major subsidiary is Agresso, a mid-market ERP company and one of the top five providers of solutions for professional services and public sector organizations. With over 10,000 deployments and 1.5 million users in 100 countries, Agresso is also lauded as the sixth largest mid-market ERP provider worldwide in a recent market share report by IDC. Besides, the vendor is the undisputed top provider for public sectors in the United Kingdom (UK), Norway, and Sweden.

Many previous TEC articles and blog posts have talked about Agresso’s go-to-market strategy that starts with targeting Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC) with the business advantage of post-implementation agility. Namely, service organizations with 500 to 5,000 employees in market segments like government, higher education, not-for-profits, utilities, architecture, engineering & construction (A/E/C), information technology (IT) services, real estate, business services, marketing/communications, etc. continually experience a number of change drivers.

These drivers range from frequent reorganizations/restructuring, change of business models, mergers & acquisitions (M&A’s), government reforms and/or regulations, organic growth, change of customer base, competitive pressures, and so on. Such BLINC firms appreciate the underlying ERP system’s vast amount of ongoing, post-implementation changes without the typical external IT costs and intervention.

Yet, those ongoing (and possibly gratuitous) professional services still net billions of dollars in revenue for the market leaders and tier-one ERP providers. As the market differentiating post-implementation agility enabler Agresso states its VITA Architecture with natively integrated data, process, and presentation (reporting and analytics) delivery. This architectural framework underlies the flagship Agresso Business World (ABW) 5.5 suite [evaluate this product].

Going On-demand in Force

Agresso’s results are even more impressive since the revenues from recently acquired CODA have not had a serious impact yet in terms of total revenues (other than to perhaps slightly improve profitability).. The acquisition deal was only consummated in mid-summer 2008 so there is barely a quarter of CODA’s revenue on Unit 4 Agresso’s books.

For now, CODA remains fairly autonomous, with a “business as usual” mantra. To that end, the brand new and first on-demand enterprise accounting system build entirely on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, CODA2go, seems to be progressing well. This strategic endeavor promises a win/win situation for both Salesforce.com and Agresso.

Namely, Salesforce.com needs major applications on the Force.com platform to validate and endorse its lofty platform as a service (PaaS) strategy. Having a renowned financials/accounting provider like CODA in its ecosystem helps Salesforce.com compete with traditional on-premise tier-one providers like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, or Lawson. In the on-demand/software as a service (SaaS) world, the alliance helps Salesforce.com to compete with NetSuite’s counterpart SuiteFlex platform.

For its part, Agresso/CODA could enjoy major benefits from being an early adopter (with no obvious fierce competitors likely to develop on the on-demand platform any time soon) and from a truly close relationship with Salesforce.com (spanning from development teams via marketing/sales to the chief executive officer [CEO] level). In fact, the joint development work has heavily influenced the direction of the product; for example, CODA has redesigned its multi-currency handling capability. CODA2go’s progress and CODA’s positioning within Agresso deserve a blog post on its own, so look for something like that down the track.

Functional Footprint Expansion

Coming back to Agresso, for a long time, the flagship ABW suite has natively supported the following functional capabilities: Financial Management; Procurement Management; Human Resources (HR) & Payroll; Business Process Automation (BPA); Reporting & Analytics; and Project Costing & Billing. More recently, Field Service Management was added as an in-house developed product.

Moreover, via selected acquisitions Agresso has lately added the modules for customer relationship management (CRM), human capital management (HCM), and governance, risk management & compliance (GRC). These products, many of which can be deployed on-demand, were not written in the VITA architecture and have to be integrated into native ABW modules via a service oriented architecture (SOA) manner. They are thus referred to as BLINC Plug-ins.

Most recently, the vendor announced Agresso Talent Management as a BLINC Plug-in Web-based software suite for appraisals, course administration and competence management. This new add-on product to ABW’s HR module (and non-Agresso applications as required) is the result of the mid-2007 acquisition of Nextlearn. The formerly independent company was introduced to the market in 2001, and currently has over 40 global customers and 250.000 users.

The product targets HR directors, line of business (LoB) managers, and service managers within medium to large organizations (with over 1,000 full-time employees [FTEs] to even over 50,000 FTEs) of two kinds. One group are enterprises with a distributed (global) organization such as TeliaSonera, Saab, ITT, Vattenfall, and Odfjell Drilling. The others are retail organizations with a global partner network such as Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Atlas Copco, and Coop Stuff.

Like its typical peer talent management solutions, Agresso’s software helps the aforementioned managers to

* optimize workforce coverage for public/private services sector;
* manage the skills, careers, and required training;
* predict/plan for competence gaps;
* meet professional and statutory requirements/qualifications; and
* provide change-oriented platform for skills demands.

Are Price and Timing Right for the Change of Guard?

Given its sharp focus on service industries and well-attuned product and service offerings, Agresso legitimately has the “Big Few ERP” players on the run, and has been winning a disproportionate set of the new deals it competes on with these competitors in those markets. As for Agresso’s revenue growth, all of the sales reports and financial analyst coverage point to larger deal sizes, larger companies/organization sizes, and new deals (versus just re-, cross- and/or up-selling into existing install bases like its competitors have to resort to).

The desire for lower “Total Cost of Change (TCC)” is the top cited reason in customer debriefs why Agresso gets selected in new sales situations at this point. Sure, Agresso’s play in the public sector is a positive one with regards to the vendor’s results. Public sector (which hardly ever runs out of tax money and/or printed money by governments) was up big time in 2008, thereby making up for a decline in the private sector.

But regardless of market ups/downs, it is of course the differentiation of lower TCC within Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that is crucial these days. Moreover, Ray Wang of Forrester Research rates Agresso’s licensing and pricing highly in his recent report, which is worth noting, given Ray’s close attention to customers’ bill of rights and reputation when it comes to the issues of TCO.

Agresso believes that the ERP market has (at long last) seen its first significant change in buying habits for 15 years, as companies look for a quicker return on investment (ROI) during the current economic crisis. Hence, the vendor thinks the time is right to turn up the heat and address the biggest problem it has long had: getting people to replace something that works (more or less) but does not necessarily excel.

This is analogous to people lately trading in their petrol/gas guzzling sport utility vehicles (SUV’s) such as Hummers to buy more economic and environment-friendly Honda Fit or Toyota Prius hybrid cars. Namely, the SUVs still run (and run quite well) and feel comfortable. But, the cost of gasoline (if not at the moment, it will come back over and over again) and “non-green” sentiments are killing them.