San Diego based enterprise resource planning software house Dataworks Corp has completed its acquisition of one-time rival and near neighbor Interactive Group in a stock for stock exchange. Under terms of the deal, initial details of which were announced in July this year, Interactive Group shareholders received 0.805 of share of Dataworks for each share of Interactive Group. Based on the company’s closing price of $14.375 per share on July 31 1997, the transaction values each share of Interactive at $11.58, valuing the total deal at around $57m. Dataworks specializes in providing ERP software for business management in discreet manufacturing; offering applications for tasks like product and accounting control. The companies have recently married their middle tier offerings, Dataflo and Dataworks, into Avante, an object-orientated application for specialist manufacturing projects. Other offerings include its top tier Impressa application, a global information system; enabling users in the maintenance repair and overhaul business to keep track of products, schedule repair jobs and invoice customers. At the low end there is Vista; a desktop manufacturing software package, aimed at firms with up to twenty users. The combined company will have annual revenues of around $117m. Dataworks now has around 1,000 employees in 26 offices worldwide. 60 jobs, mostly in administrative positions, were shed earlier this month. The company faces competition from Baan NV, which is moving into its core marketplace, but claims the Baan product is too big and unwieldy, and far more expensive to implement. Dataworks products typically amount to around 40% of total system costs, compared to a typical figure of 600% for Baan’s offerings, claims the company. Dataworks sees its biggest challenge over the next year will be to integrate its offerings more fully and further develop its range of foreign language offerings.
