Newly merged Lawson takes on ERP giants

SINGAPORE--Fresh from its merger with Intentia, midmarket enterprise resource planning application provider Lawson Software is now pitting itself against market giants SAP and Oracle.

The merger, valued at $607 million, was finalized last Wednesday.

Hailing the merger as "complementary" and "synergistic," David Hope, vice president of Lawson's sales operations in the Asia-Pacific region, told journalists here Wednesday that "we're now the viable alternative to SAP and Oracle globally."

"We want to take advantage of the confusion created by Oracle and PeopleSoft. We're looking to step into the opportunity (that has been created)," he said, pointing out that with players such as J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, Baan, Infinium and Mapics gone, the postmerger Lawson is now one of the few players left to tussle with the big boys.

Other midmarket ERP application vendors that remain today include SSA Global, QAD and Infor.

Before the merger, more than 90 percent of United States-based Lawson's business came from the North American market, while Intentia, based in Sweden, derived its revenues mainly from its European and Asia-Pacific businesses.

Lawson also had a bigger focus on the services vertical, across industries such as health care, education and government, and asset-intensive markets; and Intentia catered mainly to the manufacturing and trade verticals, across industries such as fashion, food and beverage, distribution and retail.

A neat fit
According to Hope, the newly formed entity will now serve the manufacturing, distribution and service industries across the globe. Its revenues will now closely mirror the global ERP marketplace, with 45 percent coming from North America, 45 percent from Europe and the rest from the Asia-Pacific region, he said.

The combined revenues of the companies are approximately $750 million.

"We would like to position ourselves as the choice for resource-starved companies, particularly when they are making major overhauls (of their ERP systems) and need fast implementations," said Hope.

The company has also set for itself several lofty goals: increase overall license revenue by $6 million to $10 million over the next 12 months, and over the next three years, add a cumulative total of $100 million to its revenue coffers.

Hope said the company plans to achieve this through cross-selling existing Lawson and Intentia products to customers, selling Intentia products to the U.S. market and expanding Lawson's human capital management product in the Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific markets.

These targets, he added, are based on projections that Lawson's base revenues will grow according to industry forecasts of a compound annual growth rate of 3 percent to 5 percent.

The new Lawson will have two lines of products, called S3 and M3. S3 will support the services sector, while M3 will serve the manufacturing and trade industries. M3 was previously known as Movex under the old Intentia.

Harry Debes retains his title as president and CEO of Lawson, while Bertrand Sciard, the CEO of Intentia, will take on a new role as the company's chief operating officer.

Jeanne Lim of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.