Management consultant Druid Group Plc seems to have survived the slowdown in the ERP market in the run up to Y2K with its strategy of developing new technology offerings and extending its geographic reach. Despite a 7% fall in the proportion of enterprise resource planning business, Reading, UK-based Druid today announced preliminary annual results for the year through June 30 showing revenue up 47% to 59.8m pounds ($95.6m). Profit before tax and goodwill amortization is also up a healthy 41% to 11.3m pounds ($18.1m). Gross margin was unchanged on the previous year at 43.7%.
ERP implementations and services accounted for 59% of revenue in fiscal 1999 down from 66% in 1998. customer relationship management business is reported at around 4% for the year but John Pocock, Druid’s CEO, says that CRM business is running at around 10% of current business and expects this to rise to 15% over the coming year. Druid expects to see ERP revenue squeezed further over the next six months but intends to continue with its investment program. Pocock told us that Druid has a dedicated team of 20 consultants building new infrastructure including the rollout of both a new SAP and Siebel system throughout the group.
A large part of Druid’s revenue increase was derived from its overseas operations. Continental Europe revenue is reported at 14m pounds ($22.4m) up 341% on the previous year. US revenue was 3.5m pounds ($5.6m) largely through the purchase of a near 20% stake in Synergy International Consulting. Druid also increased its Asia Pacific revenue, reported at 2.4m pounds ($3.8m), an increase of 300%.
