SSA still acquiring

Rampant ERP firm SSA Global is not letting up on the acquisition trail: latest are HR software developer Boniva and CRM (customer relationship management) firm Epiphany. Boniva is about what SSA describes as ‘talent management’, including e-learning, skills management and performance management applications. Meanwhile, Epiphany’s CRM systems cover sales, service, marketing and customer analytics. Both are based on a similar services-orientated architecture (SOA) to SSA’s recent developments, using the same J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and XML technology. They will also run on multiple platforms including Unix, iSeries and Microsoft Windows. Cory Eaves, SSA’s chief technology officer, says: “This is a continuation of the SSA strategy that Mike Greenough [chairman, president and CEO] brought – the strategy of acquiring market share and growing customer share.” SSA expects the applications to integrate well with its enterprise applications for process and discrete manufacturing sectors. SSA has seen an astonishing rebirth since 2001, and now claims the Number One slot in ERP for manufacturing, likewise the mid-market and number three in the world behind SAP and Oracle with PeopleSoft. While the detailed rankings themselves are debatable, there’s no doubting SSA’s scope and coverage, particularly since its purchase of Baan from Invensys. The firm now has a convincing story in everything from the great mass of the process sector, including food and beverage, to complex engineer-to-order discrete manufacturing, and most in between across industries. The latest additions will only serve to augment that, and the company has already proven its ability to integrate applications and people. Bonivia will be integrated into the SSA Human Capital Management (HCM) system. Epiphany’s systems will augment SSA’s existing fierld service functionality by adding marketing and sales management.