Stamford-Connecticut-based IMRS Inc has changed its name to Hyperion Software Corp because nobody ever remembered the name IMRS. Or as the company’s UK marketing manager Richard Hawksworth said, IMRS did not resonate in the market. Market testing showed that Hyperion, the name of a Titan, had stronger market branding, according to the company which develops financial management software. Along with the change in image comes a change in strategy: Hyperion is going after client-server financial applications and says it is going to be a $1,000m company by the end of the decade. It admits that this is a bold strategy but as analysts believe more companies will start buying applications rather than building them themselves, the market for client-server financial applications will grow to $3,200m by 1999, suggesting that there’s money to be made. During 1994 Hyperion turned over $113m and so it’s got some growing to do to hit this target. During the 1990s IMRS managed to grow at an annual rate of about 30% but it says that as it gets larger that type of growth rate will not come organically and so it is quite prepared to acquire companies that will help it achieve its target, saying that as a conservatively managed company it is cash rich. Last year it bought Pillar Corp, a four-year-old company doing $10m a year in California that specialises in budgeting and budget forcasting applications, for $20m in a paper swap that has been accounted for as a merger. Pillar’s products are complementary to Hyperion’s core products says Hyperion. As for organic growth, Hyperion has just launched Hyperion Financials, an accounting line of applications, in the US, but says it will be another 18 to 24 months before the application appears outside of North America because of the need to internationalise it. This release has a general ledger with payables, administration and tool modules. There is also a program called LedgerLink that enables users to drill down, initially into R/3 and Oracle applications, with access to others to come. This year Hyperion says it will add assets, purchase ordering and receivables modules to the Windows-based Financials application. Hyperion’s existing products have all been renamed to include the new name and the company says that with the addition of Pillar’s products it offers applications for the whole enterprise.
