Netherlands-based Exact Software is planning in September to roll out its flagship Exact Globe Enterprise multinational Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software suite in North American, offering manufacturers the multi-lingual, multi-currency capability its current domestic offerings lack, company officials told Managing Automation today.
The initiative signals the start of a long-term migration to a single ERP platform, but company officials said there would be no forced conversion to its "Globe" software anytime soon. And while the move has slowed Exact's North American acquisition-driven growth plans, having a multinational product for the North American market will ultimately attract new business, helping to propel the company toward its goal of doubling its business on this side of the Atlantic.
Exact, which has a presence in 60 countries, built Globe" 20 years ago for companies in the Netherlands that needed an accounting package that could handle multiple currencies. In 2003 that back-end application was coupled with the company's e-Synergy software, which encompasses customer management, human resources management, document management and an online portal publishing capability. Described within the company as an "ERP product for rest of the business", e-Synergy operates off of the same data repository as Globe, making for a tightly integrated ERP/E-business package, officials said.
Exact built its North American business through acquisitions. The company offers four ERP software packages to roughly 11,000 customers in North America: Macola ES, JobBOSS, Max, and Alliance/MFG. While all of these packages have the ability to interface with e-Synergy, they don't have multi-lingual, multi-currency capabilities. Globe, on the other hand, was built from the ground up with this functionality, which is critical in addressing the needs of North American-based multi-national manufacturers.
"The growth potential with international outsourcing is huge," said Joseph Burke, Exact N.A.'s vice president of marketing. "For example, we sold Macola to a customer in California two years ago, and they came back and said we are moving manufacturing to partners we signed with in China ... and still we want to see the process."
As part of the multinational push, Exact created what it calls internally the "International Parenting Group", a sales team dedicated to the needs of companies operating in multiple countries. "They need to be sold to, serviced and supported in a different way," Burke said in an interview with Managing Automation. "They have different payroll, different tax laws and different distribution problems ... yet they want to run their North American office on the same database." Currently, Exact has roughly 30 salespeople in the International Parenting group servicing about 1,000 multinational clients.
Although the company will be directing multinational North American customers to Globe, it won't force the issue. "The plan for our 11,000 (North American) customers of Macola, JobBOSS, Max, and Alliance/MFG is to keep them on those products and evolve. But we do have a promised land, as we have the concept of delivering a single product that does encompass all functionality. But that is several years away," Burke said.
Meanwhile, the bold growth projections made by Exact's North American unit CEO Jim Kent to Managing Automation last year -- to double its $59 million North American revenue to $120 million by the end of 2006 -- has been pushed back. "Jim Kent targeted that number based on the assumption of acquisitions the company would make in 2005, 2006 and beyond," Burke explained. "Some of those have been slowed down intentionally to prepare the organization for the roll out of products like Globe. We're behind the curve on the acquisition schedule, but it's still in the plan."