This continues a series of guest columns from practitioners and bloggers I respect. The category – The Real Deal – describes them well.
This time it is Ton Dobbe, VP of Product Marketing for Agresso which goes to market with two enterprise software brands: Agresso Business World and Coda Financials. A long-time software industry veteran, here Ton writes about the general perception that all ERP software is like pouring concrete around your feet. Once it sets, it becomes a significant constraint on your business.
“Readers of Vinnie’s blog know he celebrates disruptive vendors and trends in technology. But technology is not the only industry sector which sees rapid change. Over most of Agresso’s 25 year history, we have noticed a certain type of customer was repeatedly attracted to us: one that lived in a constant state of turmoil. The reasons were varied – restructuring/reorganizations, new government compliance requirements, ongoing M&A activities, etc. – but these types of “hyper-activity” companies kept selecting….and returning to us for repeat business. It was such a constant in our customer base that we trademarked that characteristic - Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC for short)
But that constant change costs companies dearly via their rigid ERP systems and business processes they enable. According to a recent study by CFO Magazine, the average mid-market company is struggling under a recurring annual spend for ERP system change at $1.2 million dollars a year.
We did not know exactly what – but we were doing “something” right by not burdening our customers with that big an expense. It actually wasn’t till 2006 when we first starting asking input from the industry analyst community that our differentiator was brought to our attention. They told us the “common customer thread” was linked to something embedded in our solution: our underlying VITA ™ architecture. As they say, sometimes things which are blindingly obvious to others are not so obvious to you.
VITA’s foundation is an intertwined grouping of business data, business processes and reporting/analytics that move in lockstep. Role-based changes can be made easily at the graphical user interface (GUI) level via easy “drag and drop” actions to tree structures (like those you see in Microsoft Outlook. The net result is that departmental managers can completely bypass the need for IT intervention to create new divisions; collapse, expand or append activities or workgroups; analyze and experiment with outcomes; then immediately expedite and implement change. There are almost limitless variations of changes that can be accomplished by non-IT people. It saves companies that useless investment the CFO Magazine article discusses.
I hear my competitors talk in technical jargon like Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA is great for plugging together disparate technology/application pieces (and Agresso customers use our SOA for that role), but don’t solve the real problem: fast, inexpensive business change that can be performed ideally at the user level.
I am glad our analyst friends have identified that it’s our architecture that makes us different. It has helped us to be of better service to those who need us the most – BLINC organizations. It has also clearly demonstrated to software buyers that technology is not a commodity…there are indeed very compelling reasons for buyers to gain a clear understanding of the differences before buying.”
Ton can be reached at ton DOT dobbe AT unit4agresso DOT com
