This Lion’s About to Pounce!

The hype surrounding the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market died down

nearly two years ago giving way to more fashionable e-business applications.

Yet, according to IDC India, the ERP market in India experienced a quiet unsung

growth rate of 14% to touch Rs 321 crore in 2001. Joining the party slightly

late, J D Edwards & Company, the $1 billion enterprise applications vendor

has set up a direct presence in the country with an initial investment of $10

million. Says Neil Dibb, director, business development, Indian Subcontinent,

"We expect to stake claim to a clear #2 position and 25% marketshare in the

ERP market in India". According to IDC, SAP had a 55 % marketshare in 2001.

JD Edwards (JDE) already has got 43 installations including Philips India,

Foseco India, HPCL and RBI. Systime Computer Systems, a long-term JDE partner in

the country, largely developed these accounts. The other partner is Accel ICIM.

The company is currently signing on new partners to extend its reach within the

country. According to sources, L&T Information Technology has been appointed

as the new partner. A development center and a full-fledged support center are

also planned for the next fiscal year. The growing interest in the Indian market

is due to the strategic realignment of the company and the quest for better

markets.

NEIL DIBB: Aiming for 25% of the marketshare in the Indian space

Since 1996, JDE has been facing several technological and operational issues.

JDE has been tightly bound with IBM and it opted for the ‘open’ route only

in 1997. Neither was this articulated sufficiently nor were global partnerships

leveraged. This led to a near flat revenues. It is now putting its act together

recasting its international business, developing several go-to-market

strategies, and clarifying its market positioning. Globally, JDE is positioning

itself as a mid-market collaborative commerce or ERP II player. This means the

company will focus on businesses of size between $250 million and $3 billion and

provide them with new generation enterprise applications that aid working with

partners.

The products include ERP application suites, CRM software, e-procurement,

marketplace management, and SCM solutions under the OneWorld umbrella and its

early generation WorldSoftware. A bit about the ERP II bit…traditional

application vendors selling ERP suites have enriched their portfolio by having

refinements in the form of SCM, CRM, e-business, and business intelligence and

coined the term ERP II to reflect the ability to transact e-commerce and run

collaborative applications over the Web. Such ERP software then requires

external point applications called ‘best-of-breed’ solutions like i2 for SCM,

Siebel for CRM, and so on.

JD Edwards gave up a costly alliance with Siebel and acquired YOUCentric Inc

for $86 million in August 2001 to strengthen its CRM functionality. This will

help the company access its sweet-spot markets at greater pace with powerful

product delivery. JD Edwards’ 25 year old relationship with IBM is unique.

Since inception, JDE products used to run only on AS400s for the first 21 years.

Currently, there are over 6000 mutual clients with over 8500 installations in

100 countries. Interestingly, a strategic alliance was formalized in 2001

between the two companies. Under this, a host of offerings in the form of

performance testing, IBM Global financing, WebSphere Commerce Suite, IBM eServer

family, implementation by IBM Global Services among other are made available to

mutual customers. As part of a go-to-market strategy, an IBM eServer co-branded

with JDE was announced at the JD Edwards APAC User Forum in November 2001.

The relationship with IBM, according to Dibb is very much active, though it

has not been very visible. JDE has a large footprint of full-blown ERP. And it

is difficult to push a large envelope of customers with this. In response to

this need, JDE has broken up the product into components, which can be procured

by mid-market Indian companies. With special Indian market specific pricing, the

estimated savings can even go up to 60% in some cases. Surely, the move will

accelerate JDE’s sales in the country. For the larger part of its vision, Dibb

is confident of achieving thought leadership in the area of collaborative

commerce. By end-October, Dibb has to build out the Indian operations in terms

of infrastructure, skill-sets, people, and processes. Though it had a delayed

start, with the dust settling in the ERP market, the company can expect to be

bullish about its Indian operations with country-specific strategies being

brought into play.

Easwardas Satyan,in Bangkok and Mumbai