Springbrook software is focused on the municipal government market and has been in business for 25 years with 400 customers in 33 states. They offer a fairly complete ERP functional footprint for municipalities including financials, utility billing, HR/Payroll, Permits, Land Management, etc. They are focused on the mid-market space with clients ranging in size from 10,000 in population on up to 200,000 in population, but the majority of their implementations are in the 10,000 – 100,000 population range. (In fact, they recently announced they signed up Texarkana, Texas – a city with a population of 38,000)
Springbrook has about 100 people in their company which is a good number for a niche focused software solution. They have more of a family feel than some of the larger vendors which works well in the mid-market municipal space. Also, while there has been a lot of consolidation in the municipal ERP market with Tyler, Sungard, Infor, and others buying up a number of municipal focused ERP software solutions, Springbrook has remained independent and organically grown which allows them to focus on serving their customers. For cities of that general size that are looking for ERP solutions, Springbrook should definitely be on the long list of software solutions to consider.
Check out the interview below that we had with Scott Stickel at the GFOA 2010 conference in Atlanta last June. We discuss an overview of the software solution and some of the key things to consider as you evaluate Springbrook for your city.
Microsoft just announced the worldwide release of Dynamics CRM Online. It will be available in 40 countries and 41 languages. With Steve Ballmer announcing the release, Microsoft clearly views this as one of the bigger steps to Microsoft entering the cloud market. To introduce Dynamics CRM Online, they are targeting a low introductory rate of less than $35/user/month for the first 12 months which compares to $125/user/month average cost for Salesforce.com.
While there are many online CRM software solutions available in the market, this product’s target is obviously Salesforce.com which has the largest market share for cloud CRM solutions. Salesforce was one of the first to the cloud with CRM about 10 years ago. They were lucky enough to find that cloud solutions were very accepted in the CRM space and have grown tremendously over the past decade. ERP has not found the wide acceptance for cloud solutions yet, but that is slowly changing and the subject of another post.
I haven’t seen much of the new software, but I did catch a little web demo they have on their site and saw their trusty bicycle demo example. (Microsoft’s standard demo data is a bicycle manufacturing shop.) As with all of their other Dynamics ERP solutions, they have the Office 2010 “Ribbon” concept. I would imagine that much of the functionality would match the Dynamics CRM on-premise solution – which is actually a fairly robust CRM solution.
Will Microsoft be successful? I believe in the long run they will. Will they topple Salesforce.com? Probably not, but they will give them some very interesting competition. Salesforce.com has many years and a ton of clients that are using the software. They have also been very adept at innovation and developed their Force.com development environment, which enables companies to develop add-0n software to the salesforce product. This has created a very nice ec0-system for Salesforce to move forward. They have also recently entered the ERP space with the Financial Force product, but they have a limited number of installations with that product.
Microsoft has a lot of ERP and on-premise CRM implementations in their install base. They have thousands of Value Added Resellers (VAR) and Independent Software Vendors (ISV) that work the Dynamics line. They have the money to be patient as they build up the install base. They have the tools and the infrastructure for success with Dynamics CRM Online.
Tyler Technologies is a public sector focused software vendor that owns three main ERP products – Munis, Eden, and Incode. Because all 3 of these products offer full government financial modules, it can be confusing as to which Tyler product you should focus on for your evaluation. To shed some light on this, we spent a few minutes with Roger Routh of Tyler Technologies at the June 2010 GFOA tradeshow in Atlanta to discuss the differences between the products and where a public sector organization should focus their software selection efforts.
As you will see in the accompanying video, they have positioned the products in the following way:
Munis – This product focuses on larger government organizations counties, cities, non-profits, and is also strong in the K-12 school district market. This is a mature product that offers a wide functional footprint. We have found that Tyler typically leads with this product for mid-large organizations unless there is a compelling reason to look at one of the others.
Eden – Functionally overlaps the Munis product in many ways, but seems to have a stronghold in certain geographic regions of the US – namely the Northwest and Southeast. Recently, we have found that Tyler only leads with Eden when there is a specific client preference to consider this product and does not seem to have the same sales focus that Munis does. This is not to say that Tyler will not sell this product, just that they seem to focus much more on the Munis product, which should be a consideration in your evaluation.
Incode – This is a lower end product that works well for smaller cities. It is less costly and less complicated, but also much less robust than Munis and Eden. If you have an annual budget of $30M or below, you should consider this product unless you have a lot of complexity in your organization.
Tyler is also working in partnership with Microsoft to develop a government focused solution based on the Dynamics AX ERP software, but we will cover that topic in a different post.
We have been watching with interest the new executive management changes at Infor. As you may know, Charles Phillips (former Oracle President) has moved into the CEO position at Infor. Last month, he named three former Oracle employees to join him at Infor. So, is Infor going to be the next Oracle?
Like Oracle, Infor has acquired a LOT of software applications over the years. However, their strategy has been quite different. Oracle has tried to integrate their systems buying “best of breed” systems like Hyperion (Reporting/Budgeting), Siebel (CRM), GLog (Supply Chain), etc., and integrating them to their ERP solutions. Their acquisition of competitive ERP products(Enterprise Business Suite (EBS), PeopleSoft (PS), and JD Edwards (JDE)) was more opportunistic to gain marketshare by buying up competitor’s customers. Even so, they have spent a lot of money doing a form of integration with their ERP systems by developing the next generation Fusion ERP product that will most likely eventually replace EBS, PS, and JDE. (Please note that Fusion was built from the ground up and is not an upgrade of the other products).
On the other hand, Infor has taken the Sage model of acquiring lots of different products and selling them individually. Will they continue to maintain separate software lines, or will they try to consolidate their development on a few software solutions? My guess is that they will start to focus on their most successful solutions like Syteline and others that they can build on.
Other challenges the new executive team will face include:
1. Mid-Market Application Sales – The new executive team will need to understand the mid-market better than Oracle. Oracle is more focused on tier 1 companies, while Infor’s install base is overwhelmingly mid-market. There is a completely different sales cycle and methodology for selling software to these companies.
2. Software Development – Whereas Microsoft (Windows and Office) and Oracle (Database) have cash cows that allow them to put a lot of money into the development of their ERP products, Infor is focused on applications and does not have the luxury of a separate cash cow.
3. Software Product Strategy - They need to decide if they will focus their strategy on a few of their products and try to move customers over to those systems, or continue to develop all of their software as separate products. Which ones will get the most development dollars?
Infor has some great software products that SoftResources recommends to customers where they fit. We will be interested to watch how Infor develops their product strategy with the new executive team.
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