Rather than these very broad application suites that do over 100% of what we want them to but require considerable customisation, will enterprises increasingly turn to offerings tailored either to their specific vertical industry or even tailored by role?
My colleague Angela Eager talked about some of these issues in her recent article for us about Lawson Software. I was reminded of it by a release that just landed on my desk from Serveon announcing a new ‘golf management system’. I know, that’s what I thought: a golf management system? How niche is that?
Apparently the system offers, “100 percent customizable wireless, GPS-enabled hand-held system designed to offer golf course owners, managers and superintendents greater flexibility in the capturing, sharing and reporting of fairway field data.” More at www.serveon.net.
On the other hand, since Golf Digest calculated that in 2005 there were almost 32,000 golf courses in the world, perhaps it’s not so nichey after all.
Better still, of the countries with most golf courses in relation to population, apart from Sweden all have English as the official language, which will save a golf management system company from too much language localisation. It won’t save them from it completely though, as the number of courses in ‘new territories’ is increasing rapidly, for example China went from its first in the mid-80s to 200 courses by 2005.
By the way, have you heard of ‘church management software’ yet?
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