Author Archives: Henry Nelson

Increasing Compliance Audits Irritate Customers

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Henry Nelson

Software companies have increased the rate of license compliance audits to demonstrate their dedication to your organization’s well being. They also help you reduce costs by identifying unused seats and shelfware and adjusting maintenance bills downward. Please excuse my sarcasm, … Continue reading →

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Collaboration vs Leadership in Decision Making

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Henry Nelson

In last month’s post about vendor margins and cannibalization of older high margin products by newer low margin products, Cisco was highlighted as a firm with a high level of innovation whose profit margins disappointed investors. Carl at Chicago Boyz … Continue reading →

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Its Good to be Public

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Henry Nelson

The ERP vendor acquisition season heated up today with Apax Partners acquisition of ERP vendors Epicor and Activant, to merged into a new privately held Epicore. For the Epicore shareholder the offer yeilds an 18.9% premium over the past 30 … Continue reading →

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ERP Software Vendor Metrics – What Matters?

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Henry Nelson

With acquisitions in the air again, how do you tell if an ERP vendor is performing well? For example Lawson is performing well by many accounts, but received an unsolicited takeover bid anyway. Some suggest the cost of shifting to … Continue reading →

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Infor Gets Aggressive

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Henry Nelson

In a move that doesn’t surprise anyone, Infor launched a takeover bid for Lawson Software. Infor CEO Charles Phillips found his first target, and with the offer at a 19% premium to the trailing 90 day Lawson stock price (and … Continue reading →

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Vendor Margins and the Cloud

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Henry Nelson

It’s all cloud all day in the buzz about the software business, and that definitely includes ERP software. With conventional wisdom pointing to a need for purpose written cloud software (multi-tenant architectures etc.), it is no surprise that on the … Continue reading →

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Make ERP Interesting

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Henry Nelson

Blimps, like ERP, used to be interesting. Back when only a few were flown a blimp sighting was unusual enough to attract attention, less so today with several different branded blimps and at least one of them flying over just … Continue reading →

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Cloud not Cheaper than On Premesis

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Henry Nelson

As the cloud reality replaces the hype machine, sober analysis of costs and benefits is becoming available. Chris Chiappinelli sums it up nicely: A few years ago, there was a rampant assumption that software delivered via cloud computing was automatically … Continue reading →

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Optimizing Dynamics for the Stack

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Henry Nelson

Microsoft’s latest investment in Dynamics is aimed at developers, not business users. The focus is independent software vendors (ISVs) which build vertical ERPs using Dynamics as a base. The new version, now code-named Microsoft Dynamics AX 6, should reduce the … Continue reading →

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Leader of the Stack

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Henry Nelson

A very interesting post from Josh Greenbaum of ematters frames the ongoing ERP market in terms of the “stack”, the hardware, operating systems, databases, development kits an so on that are behind the curtain of any ERP software product. So, … Continue reading →

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