Cadcentre Group Plc, the UK developer of process and power plant design software, plans to broaden its product range as it continues its battle with rival Intergraph Corp. While Cadcentre boasts that it is now the high-end market leader with a 23% share in systems for process plant design against Intergraph’s 22%, it cannot compete in the range of products offered by the Huntsville, Alabama-based company and is looking to acquire software for maintenance and decommissioning and data warehousing.
Selling more products and services into its customer base is important for Cadcentre as it is at the mercy of a manufacturing sector that is apt to kill new IT spending at the first sign of a downturn. The depression in the oil and gas industry hit the company last year although it increased net profit 10.7% to 1.8m pounds ($2.8m) on revenue up just 0.7% at 17.8m pounds ($28.6m).
The modest rise in revenue was depressed by a one million pound ($1.6m) cut in hardware sales as Cadcentre moves away from hardware and towards products and services. The Cambridge company sees a big advantage in having ported its products over to Microsoft NT, so that it is now selling to an industry where purchasing decisions are no longer the province of the engineering departments. Instead, it says, NT buying decisions are taken by IT staff anxious to ensure that applications fit into the wider, and usually Windows-dominated environment.
Acquisition of the right kind of data management product is particularly important for Cadcentre and it says it wants software with the kind of sophistication to recognize that maintenance staff will only need about 20% of the vast amount of data that comprises a plant design.
With a worldwide sales network now virtually complete, Cadcentre says its main focus in the coming year will be to woo users of low-end 2D products, who still comprise around half the market, to more sophisticated software while extending its range of applications to offer a more complete package with which to compete with Intergraph.
