Lawson Inc, a privately-held Minneapolis-based software house is opening its first offices outside the US in an attempt to crack the European mid-range AS/400 and Unix financial, distribution and personnel software markets. The new international office, which opens in the UK this week, will be headed by managing director Barry Fuller, who was formerly with McCormack and Dodge, has six staff so far and is based in Chertsey, Surrey. Lawson’s business applications are presently available in the US for IBM System/38 and AS/400 systems – these are due to be launched in Europe for the RS/6000 next year as well as a set of lower level computer-aided software engineering tools which the company has been developing for seven years. This is being written for 80386-based micros running Unix and will generate Cobol or RPG III source code. Lawson is a 15-year-old company with $30m turnover in the US, with offices in New Jersey, California, Texas and Florida, 325 staff and a customer base of 1,600. The UK subsidiary is expected to attain UKP1m sales in its first fiscal year and, in early 1992, an office is to be established on the continent. Lawson considers its main strengths to be ease of product use and customer support product implementation, training and maintenance for the first year come included with the software, after which maintenance is charged on a percentage basis – and it sees itself in competition with the likes of Hoskyns Insight, JBA Computer Systems Ltd and Coda Ltd. The business software is being targeted at the European subsidiaries of Lawson’s existing US customers, and businesses downsizing during the economic downturn.
