Oracle unveils midmarket ERP app

ITP.net, June 17, 2003

The world’s tier one enterprise software vendors are beefing up their midmarket offerings in an attempt to persuade small-to-medium sized business (SMBs) that they need enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to effectively run their businesses.

Locally, Oracle has announced the availability of its E-Business Suite Special Edition. Designed specifically for medium sized companies with up to 25 users, the pre-configured ERP application comes with ten main modules, including general ledger, accounts, cash management, inventory and order management.

The solution will be sold exclusively through a select group of five partners, including Hyperlink and GTS, and costs around US$100,000, inclusive of deployment, license fees, hardware, services and training.

Although the vendor is unwilling to reveal its sales forecasts, Oracle believes the applications suitability for the local market, plus its affordability, will guarantee it a warm reception.

“We will continue to take market share from other companies with Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition because our product is much more mature than anything else on the market and locally we also have the best partners working for us,” says Anthony Peake, director of applications marketing, EMEA, Oracle.

“Midmarket companies are telling us that they need a pricing scheme that will scale down to 15-20 users. They also need to implement software in a much faster way than larger organisations and they would like to see a much faster ROI. Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition addresses these needs,” adds Ayman Abouseif, senior director marketing, Oracle EMEA.

The vendor says it has been able to reduce the cost of the ERP suite by delivering it as a fixed package and using Linux. As such, implementation and customisation costs are unlikely to spiral out of control and users will know what they are getting from the start.

“It [the midmarket application] can be implemented in a fixed time, which is important for midmarket companies. At the same time, it has a fixed cost, so users know exactly what they are getting and for how much,” confirms Abouseif. #