Sciard, who took over as CEO in May, plans a worldwide drive to boost channel sales in order to reverse a dangerous slide in revenue at one of Europe’s few remaining ERP vendors.

While the company has a good technical reputation, and built its core Movex technology on pure Java ahead of larger competitors, the new management team has identified its ability to execute on the sales side as the reason behind its recent history of decline.

Revenue reached a peak of SEK 4.01bn ($531.8m) in 2001 but has been plunging ever since and in 2003 it recorded a loss of SEK 411m ($55m), up from a loss of SEK 144m ($19.1m) on revenue 19.8% down at SEK 2.93bn ($388m).

Nor would Sciard, who was recruited from rivals Geac Computer Corp, have been encouraged by figures for the first quarter to March 31 when Intentia recorded a loss of SEK 128m ($16.9m) up from a loss of SEK 116m ($15.4m) on revenue 14% down at SEK 653m (86.5m)

Even before Sciard’s arrival, the company had taken action to cut its 2,999 payroll by 300 employees in a move that will save SEK 300m ($40.2m) a year, and further reductions are under consideration to staunch the drain of cash. The plan presented earlier this year already described what we need to do to align our costs to the revenues we expect to generate. It’s now down to execution, Sciard said.

As part of his turnaround plan, Sciard has targeted the US, China and Japan where the company plans to increase its marketing efforts.

The main change in strategy is a move to the channel. Though Intentia has worked with channel partners, it has never formed part of its global strategy and the company claims enormous pent-up demand to resell its applications. It also aims to license components of its Movex software to OEM suppliers so that it can reach a larger customer base.

Sciard has also simplified the company’s global organization and aims to strengthen its management team with a flurry of arrivals and departures. It aims to bring in a new CFO to replace Hakan Gyrulf, who will step down by the end of the year.

Intentia targets the mid-market, which it identifies as companies with revenue between 100m euros ($122.9m) and 3bn euros ($3.7bn) a year.

While its sales force may have failed to win the orders, Intentia said a large number of the companies in its target group are in great need of modifying their business processes and making them more efficient. Relatively few of these companies currently have enterprise applications, it said in its last annual report.