Third party support catching on at ex-JDE and PeopleSoft users

Andrew Nelson, TomorrowNow’s president and CEO, currently resident in Amsterdam, reckons around 80% of the company’s business is now in manufacturing. He says users are warming to the theme of ERP maintenance and support contracts at about half the price of Oracle direct. He also says that SAP’s Safe Passage programme, enabling remaining disaffected JD Edwards and PeopleSoft to move over to SAP when it suits them, is a growing side of his business. Hyundai Motors, for example, is now using TomorrowNow’s services across Europe, and other recent wins include Bakeup Shoes and Durr. And with offices now set up in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK, Nelson is expecting more to follow their lead. Incidentally, the company is now offering ‘follow the sun’ support, with 24 hour support working from its offices around the globe – Europe, the US, Asia and Australia. It’s also gearing up for more customised system support, specifically to assist with Siebel implementations. Nelson: “The difference with Siebel systems is that they can be very heavily customised, so we’re offering customisation support as well as the maintenance, help desk, regulatory fixes and so on. It’s not a vanilla situation out there, and people are saying, ‘We have this particular add-on so what would it take for you to support this?’.”