ERP that stands alone is a liability, says Scala

Houle says Scala’s blue chip customers are increasing their investments in the firm’s latest Internet technology, and he concludes that ‘bricks-and-mortar’ companies are ready to put their e-business infrastructures in place. In recent months, Scala has announced new orders from companies including SKF, Atlas-Copco, KONE Elevators, ABS Pumps and Agfa-Gevaert. At Scala’s annual general meeting in Amsterdam late last month, Houle said: “What is clear in the so-called ‘New Economy’ is that the same fundamental business rules apply. The belief that an e-business strategy should be any different disappeared when the dot.com bubble burst. There is no New Economy! “What we are seeing is that the major multi-national companies in the ‘Real Economy’ are now making their moves to put in place the right software infrastructure to support their e-business strategies. And what is really exciting for us is that many of our blue-chip customers are beginning to invest in our newly-launched Internet products.” Houle sees integration becoming a key issue. “An ERP vendor may circumvent integration issues by forming partnerships with add-on packages, such as CRM, but where does this leave their users if they want a different CRM package? We want our system to be used in conjunction with any application. Not only is this a much fairer deal for our customers, but it also ensures their core IT investments will last in the long term.” Houle says early adopters of Scala’s software are corporates that realise the cost savings to be made by standardising their systems at the local level and intelligently automating simple transactions, such as purchasing and invoicing, to enable e-supply processes. Last month, Scala announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2001, posting its second consecutive quarterly operating profit and its first net profit. This follows restructuring programs that have been going on since late 1999 which resulted in the company’s return to profitability at the end of last year.