By Dan Jones
Birmingham, UK-based ERP firm JBA International is promising to return to its roots as a mid-market specialist after being badly burnt last year trying to compete globally with the major ERP vendors. New CEO, Ken Bridden, on stage at the JBA Encounter 99 spent most of his keynote reassuring customers about the companyÆs mid-market intentions and eating humble pie for the mistakes of the last year, which culminated in a profit warning and Bridden replacing the former CEO, Alan Vickerey.
In the past, JBA tried to do too much by itself, Bridden admitted. He said that JBA, along with many other vendors, had badly misjudged the state of the ERP market and that the market had to face up to a new economic reality. JBA intends to do this by concentrating on the vertical sectors that it has traditionally been strong in – apparel and footwear, food and drink and automotive suppliers. We donÆt understand tier one, we donÆt understand very small businesses, Bridden said.
The CEO was unapologetic about the amount the company had spent on R&D over the last year claiming that the work was absolutely fundamental. Bridden claimed that he was still not satisfied with the quality of the companyÆs basic product – System 21 ERP software – and promised to spend more and work with partners to improve the quality of the product. JBA says it is confident that the mid-market custom will be buoyant this year, predicting that the value of the sector will grow by 37%. The company defines mid-market as firms valued between $10m and $1bn. Despite these forecasts, Bridden described the companyÆs current economic performance as unsatisfactory and said he wanted 15% return on sales as a minimum.
JBA expects to make a substantial amount of this return by selling additional software components to existing customers, rather than reinventing the technology wheel. This expectation explains the concept behind the launch of its Active Enterprise Series – which comprises e-commerce, supply chain management, business intelligence and process optimization tools which bolt onto the existing System 21 ERP software. Bob Paul, head of product marketing, claimed that these applications and tools gave JBA a lead of 6 to 9 months over its competition, firms such as Chicago-based System Software Associates.
Paul expects that the e-commerce software will become more of driver for the companyÆs business, especially the e.Shopper end-user transaction system that JBA developed with IBM Corp. It is also heavily pushing its new suite of business intelligence tools, called Active Reporter, which were developed with Cognos, Corvu and Information Advantage.
