ERP Firm Aims At SMB Market
Alex Villafania
Philippine Daily Inquirer, B5-Infotech - March 31, 2005
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software firm QAD is expanding its business by partnering with local distributor Information Managers Inc.
Infoman will be QAD's second distributor in the Philippines after Ayala Systems Technology Inc. (ASTI), which has been distributing QAD applications for 10 years.
While ASTI aims at large manufacturing enterprises, Infoman will go for mid-size and small - to medium - scale businesses in the Philippines.
QAD South Asia Country Manager Yong Foo Chuen said ASTI would continue maintaining its existing customers which are mostly large corporations. Infoman is expected to bring in new clients to QAD from the mid-size corporations and SMBs.
Chuen said they expect to grow their business from 15 to about 20 percent annually with new markets in mid - size and SMBs that make up a larger portion of local industry than the larger, mostly multinational enterprises.
Chuen noted that many existing ERP implementations in the Philippines are underutilized or have not been upgraded, particularly due to high cost of maintenance and upgrading. He said this poses a challenge to smaller industries that are not encouraged by unsatisfactory results stemming from hasty ERP implementation.
"Two factors surround ERP implementation and these are cost benefit and ease of implementation. Either way, companies want to make sure that their ERP implementation will be used for a long time," Chuen said.
Infoman CEO Bernard Yu said that under the partnership with QAD, the mid - size and SMB enterprises they would be focusing on are in three vertical industries: consumer products, manufacturing, and food and beverage.
"These are industries that want to implement ERP systems but are not really familiar with [ERP] and don't know how to properly implement it. What I'm hoping [for] is to make he market aware [of] the ins and outs of ERP and offer them best practices, not just solutions," Yu said.
A veteran of ERP marketing, Yu was country manager for Oracle for nearly 11 years. He noted that Infoman would also be aiming for markets not usually served by Oracle.
"We'll be introducing more services and solutions to the mid - size and SMB market in the next few months," Yu promised.
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