Re-branded SSA promises huge footprint in manufacturing mid market

Continuing the theme of the Phoenix rising from the ashes, SSA Global, as the firm now calls itself, appears to be maintaining its promise of growth and IT support for manufacturers. With acquisitions like Baan, Ironside, EXE Technologies and Infinium still fresh, and one of the first implementations of business intelligence software developer Cognos’ corporate performance management (CPM) suite now in its shop window, the firm is looking and sounding bullish. At the firm’s third annual user conference, in the US, Cory Eaves, vice president of product strategy, painted a picture of a software developer with a huge footprint and going further. Key points include a drive into engineering product lifecycle management (PLM) through Baan’s development, increasing aspects of supply chain management and warehouse management from its CA Interbiz acquisitions, as well as coverage of demand management and advanced planning and scheduling (APS). Eaves also talked up SSA’s portals and integration capabilities, again through Baan technology and its SSA Enterprise Integrator, specifically also pointing to the firm’s connections with Microsoft and IBM Websphere technologies, “although moving to Java side of the world”. Indeed, he describes the firm’s wide variety of platforms and operating systems as among key benefita for users. Pausing for breath, it’s clear that this is indeed a very large and growing footprint, and there can be little doubt that merging all its IT assets, R&D people, consultants and so on is going to take considerable effort and more of its time. As for talk of a new over-arching combination ERP-plus system, he says: “Customers expect technology to be kept current and they want the advanced functionality. We’re not going to do a new start-over system: we’re not going to go into a back room for three years like some others and come out with something different.” Eaves seems determined instead to push SSA in this direction, “to keep customers with us for life”. He makes the point that to achieve that ambition means ensuring that users can enhance the value of their systems well into the future. And while incrementally improving and modernising the systems themselves is a requirement, so is building out functionality and competence.