Serenic Navigator is a Non-Profit/Public Sector focused ERP and HR/Payroll software solution that was built in 1999 as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) solution on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV platform. By building the software on top of NAV, Serenic is able to take advantage of all of the features and new functionality provided by Microsoft while developing enhancements specifically for the non-profit and government industries. Serenic sells the software directly and has a network of qualified NAV VARs that resell and implement Serenic so there are many implementation options available to you.
There are more than 350 organizations that are using Serenic Navigator. (One of SoftResources’ notable clients that selected Serenic was the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee 2010.) While their focus is on both government and non-profit entities, the non-profit space is where they excel, and they have limited government implementations.
Serenic is especially strong with grant accounting requirements and they have recently developed a budgeting tool geared specifically for non-profits and grant accounting. Because the NAV product has good multi-national functionality, Serenic is starting to leverage that capability to drive expansion internationally and has set up sales offices overseas.
In December 2010 Serenic announced a Cloud/Hosted offering for the software. It will be interesting to see how non-profits accept the hosting model as the cloud gains more acceptance in the ERP space.
Serenic is a public company and at the end of January 2011 released their quarterly numbers showing they swung to a loss. They cited the fact that many non-profit organizations are pushing off purchases of new ERP software because of the economy. Also, because they are a Canadian company, they have had some currency losses as the majority of their installations are in the US.
Serenic is a major player in the mid-market non-profit area and should be considered by these organizations. We met up with Lisa Ramsey of Serenic at the GFOA 2010 show in June last year. Watch the video to get an overview of Serenic and some of the things they are working on.
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.
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.
Lawson software was originally founded in the 1970′s and remained a private company until December 2001, when they went public. Originally built on the AS400 platform, the software has migrated through the client/server era and now is 100% web enabled which means that you can use a web browser to access the software, as well as thin client options as well. Unlike JD Edwards which similarly came from the AS400 and subsequently got acquired by PeopleSoft and then Oracle, Lawson has remained a stand-alone company. They made a large acquisition in 2005 by acquiring Intentia – a european based manufacturing solution. Last year Lawson was profitable and had $757M in revenues.
The important thing to remember as you evaluate Lawson software is that they have two separate ERP software products – Lawson S3 and M3.
Lawson S3 is the traditional Lawson product. This software is a very strong financial solution that has a very broad implementation base in many different industries. S3 has a particular focus on Financials, Health Care, Non-Profits, Government, and service based organizations. It also has a very strong Human Capital Management (HCM – otherwise known as Human Resources). In fact, many organizations use Lawson’s HR solution as a stand alone HR product even if they do not use Lawson’s S3 ERP product. S3 also touts a very strong reporting tool called Lawson Business Intelligence (LBI).
Lawson M3 came to Lawson through the Intentia acquisition. This ERP is focused on Manufacturing and Distribution companies and is a stronger multi-national solution than S3. (In fact the majority of Lawson international installations and offices are focused on the M3 product). Keep in mind that this product is completely separate from S3. For example, the strong S3 HR solution would require an integration to the M3 product.
With regard to implementation, Lawson has their internal Professional Services Organization, but also has a network of 200+ software integrators in their Lawson Partner Network. Some of these partners focus on S3, while others focus on M3. Make sure that you do an implementation partner selection when considering Lawson to find an implementation partner with experience in your industry and the specific product you are implementing. Many times these partners have more experience in a particular industry at lower billing rates than Lawson’s direct implementation.
We consider both S3 and M3 to be Tier 2 ERP solutions in our 5 Tier Chart(www.softresources.com/software-market-overview). This means that Lawson can compete very favorably with the Oracle suite of products as well as SAP at a lower cost. Over the past 15 years we have been doing software selection consulting, both Lawson S3 and M3 have been selected by various clients. These products are definitely worth consideration as you evaluate your ERP software options.
We are currently working with a client that is considering PeopleSoft – one of the ERP applications that Oracle acquired a few years ago. The PeopleSoft product looks like a possible fit, but it was interesting to note that the salespeople did not talk much about the new Oracle Fusion product and the fact that this new ERP software is less than 1-2 years away from release.
I thought this was very interesting. One would think that a brand new ERP software product from one of the largest ERP software vendors in the world would be promoted heavily. But Oracle is almost completely silent about the development of this product even though they have to be spending many millions of dollars in R&D for this product right now.
Why isn’t Larry Ellison shouting from the tops of the trees that Oracle Fusion applications are coming? Because they are trying to protect the current sales of the e-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards ERP solutions.
Right after the acquisition of PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, Oracle began talking up the idea of their new Super ERP product “Fusion” that would Fuse all of the best functionality from the 3 ERP products Oracle owns. They were also going to put functionality from other acquisitions such as Siebel and Hyperion into the new solution. It would be web based and facilitate Software as a Service (SaaS) as well as on-premise deployments.
Competitors began seeing this as an opportunity to create uncertainty about Oracle’s current ERP solutions. They asked “Why would you buy e-Business suite when it will be replaced within the next couple of years?” This hurt current sales and revenues, while the Fusion application was still years away from being released. So, they dropped the marketing for the new Fusion ERP Applications product.
In fact, if you go to Oracle’s website there is just a 1-page overview that Oracle’s Fusion applications are under development. Interestingly, the first thing you see is how Oracle will support all of the current products with Lifetime Application Support. Again you can see their concern that the announcement of future Fusion applications will hurt sales of their current products.
Now I do not doubt that when Fusion comes out, Oracle will continue to support companies on e-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards for a long time. All of them have significant numbers of installations and they receive billions in annual maintenance revenues from these companies. However, when Fusion is released, the focus for new sales will be the Fusion product. This means that the sales goal within Oracle will be to upgrade all of these companies to the new product eventually. Which will be a huge revenue stream for Oracle.
That is why you will hear almost nothing about Fusion until it is released. Just know that if you currently own an Oracle product, or are looking to purchase one, that you will eventually be encouraged to upgrade to Fusion Applications. Make sure that if you are considering an Oracle product, that an upgrade to Fusion is included in your contract.
SunGard is a unique software vendor with its roots actually in the oil business – in the early 1980’s, SunGard spun-off from the Sun Oil Company. Their growth as a software company has primarily been through acquisition – concentrating on 3 software target verticals: Financials, Higher Education and Public Sector.
Recently, SoftResources participated in scripted demonstrations of SunGard’s new flagship product for the Public Sector – BusinessPLUS. BusinessPLUS is the result of an effort by SunGard to integrate its Public Sector software acquisitions into a single, web-based Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) product. The products included in this integration were: BiTech, Pentamation, HTE, Open Software Solutions, Inc. and Vivista Holdings Limited out of the UK. What about IFAS? IFAS was actually the new name of the BiTech product and used as the basis for the new BusinessPLUS major release approximately 18 months ago. (Software vendor’s like to re-name and re-brand their products so it is important to truly understand the genealogy of the software you are considering!)
BusinessPLUS was considered a “major release” because .NET code was used to bring together several applications with different underlying source code (C++, C#, COBAL, etc.) to create a unified look and feel of the system. .NET technologies allow SunGard to have a web-based product without completely rewriting the source code to these systems. It should be noted that SunGard has some pieces of the “classic” system in their solution that have not been written in the .NET technology. For example, if a payroll clerk is doing head’s down multiple timecard entry, the “classic” timecard screen is best suited for that purpose at this point. However, the parts of the system that have not been enhanced with .NET are likely to be updated over time.
SunGard’s roadmap includes a commitment to develop and enhance BusinessPLUS as their flagship product, In fact, they will no longer sell the older products like Pentamation or HTE and will only support 2 prior versions of the software. This means that customers on the older software solutions will either need to go off maintenance and support their own software internally, or they will eventually move to the BusinessPLUS system. They have formed specific professional services groups for sub-sets of the Public Sector such as municipalities, non-profits and K-12 school districts. SunGard believes this focus will allow current and potential customer’s access to industry experts in their respective fields who understand how the software should work for their vertical market.
SunGard is showing some momentum. They estimate that 30 – 40 customers have either upgraded or purchased BusinessPLUS since its release in November 2008. If you are going through a software evaluation in the public sector, you should definitely consider BusinessPLUS on your list of ERP software solutions.
We are currently doing a software evaluation for a client and one of the software vendors we are considering is Epicor. You may recall that Epicor is the old Platinum Software that started in the 1980′s and was a very big competitor to Great Plains (now part of Microsoft) and State of the Art (now known as SAGE). They have acquired many software vendors over the past 10 years and now claim to have done what Microsoft and Oracle have failed to do – make a Super ERP product by combining the “best” of all of their acquired software products into one ERP solution.
They called the new software Epicor 9 because it is a combination of 9 software products – Vantage, Enterprise (Formerly Platinum SQL), Vista, Avante, Manfact, DataFlo, Manage 2000, iScala, and Platinum for Windows. They currently have about 130 total installations that are live with the product and about 200+ companies that are in some stage of installing the software.
It is important to note that they say they will remain committed to continue to support and upgrade each of the individual software solutions they have acquired. However, their sales efforts have been focused on the Epicor 9 solution which means that upgrades and enhancements will slow for the other products and they will eventually phase them out.
The reality is that this software is a major upgrade to the Epicor Vantage product – written in .NET (They claim to be more Microsoft than Microsoft’s products). They have taken pieces and ideas from the other solutions they offer but this is really a Vantage upgrade. That being said, they have been making some noise in the market and are gaining traction. We will watch this product with interest and they should definitely be considered for an ERP software evaluation project.
Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) is one of the four ERP software products offered by Microsoft. (The others are Dynamics GP – formerly Great Plains, Dynamics SL – formerly Solomon, and Dynamics NAV – formerly Navision). Microsoft acquired Axapta in 2001 and has really focused a lot of development and marketing on this product. Of the 4 ERP products, AX is the best suited for larger organizations and is a very strong product. This makes it a good platform to move the product up market to compete against some of the larger competitors such as Oracle, and SAP. While the product is not currently at the level of the Oracle and SAP products (Microsoft marketing people may dispute this!), they are adding a tremendous amount of functionality to be able to compete in that space with this product.
We spoke with Guy Weismantel at the National Retail Federation tradeshow in January 2010. Guy is Director of Marketing for ERP software and he gave us a good background on the direction of AX product development. With all of Microsoft’s ERP products, the strategy has been to provide a good base ERP software package and let the Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) develop industry specific solutions. This strategy works well in the mid-market, but larger companies demand more integrated solutions. So in order to hit some key target vertical market industries, they have decided to focus on 5 industries, by buying ISV solutions to jump start the process of developing a solution for that industry. These industries are described in the video below and include: Government, Retail, Banking, Financial Services, and Non-Profit. Although Manufacturing was not included in this group, AX has manufacturing roots and is a strong product in that industry already.
Take a look at the video below to get a better understanding of the direction that Microsoft is taking Microsoft Dynamics AX.
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