SSA Global, once an ERP basket case, is now clearly in the black and focusing on growth. However rather than concentrating on technology, the company sees itself more as a business consultant.
Oscar Garcia Velascao, SSA’s regional president based in Singapore, concedes the ERP market has matured, with the differences between systems now minimal. “New versions of ERP are more evolutionary than revolutionary.
“We now see our function more as a consultants role. More as a business advisor,” he told Manufacturers’ Monthly on his recent visit to Australia.
Jeremy Goddard, SSA’s regional vice president based in Sydney, agrees, though he questions whether all business problems are being solved by software at the moment.
To assist users, SSA is in the pilot stages of a new tool called the Framework for Excellence. Developed originally by Baan, Goddard describes it as a series of questions designed to help the company’s business consultants understand where the company wants to go, and what is stopping the company from getting there.
“The majority of customers we talk to complain IT is not meeting their business needs completely. Obviously it does in most areas, but we need to understand what that gap is.
“In five years time every business is going to change. If IT is not meeting their demands now, how is IT going to grow with the business?
“The Framework for Excellence assists in identifying the business issues the company is going through. The company could be going for profitability or for growth.
Goddard admits it is early days on the global rollout, “however we’ve had the business consultants trained, and we are starting the first few pilots”.
While there will be no charge for this new tool, he does expect customers to put in equal amounts of resources into the project. “It’s a joint investment. It’s not about driving more revenue for us; its about getting a better ROI for customers.”
Goddard describes Framework for Excellence as a practical way of reviewing what the customer really wants. “Once you get down to the business issues, you can look at lean manufacturing, six sigma, plus other techniques such as vendor managed inventory, and ask how many suppliers should you have. Then you can work out the correct package to invest in to deliver these issues.”
Interestingly, Goddard describes SSA as a supply chain company, with ERP a core component. “You can broadly define supply chain as any transaction between your customers and your suppliers, with a lot of extensions to ERP,” he said.
While admitting there are a number of gaps in SSA’s present portfolio to achieve this, he says the missing pieces will be filled by development or acquisition.
“Epiphany is an excellent example of an acquisition. We had some CRM solutions from Baan, but we didn’t have anything on the call centre, sales force automation or marketing analytics, an area we see as being huge going forward,” Goddard said.
He also says SSA will continue to expand its portfolio, especially for SMEs. “Pre-packaged ERP applications is one area we are looking at presently. We have a pilot running in the US at the moment, plus some other initiatives for SMEs probably later in the year,” Goddard told Manufacturers’ Monthly. •