Southco Selected mySAP Business Suite
It seems that a new SAP project starts in Soutco which located in Pennsylvania USA.
Questions came to my mind : Who is going to implement this project? Will SAP provide consulting directly to Southco or another consulting company?
Let me summarize Jeff Moad’s, MA Editorial Staff, article “SAP Bests Oracle at High Profile Mid-Market Account“.
Southco, which makes latches for automotive, high-tech, and other applications, selected the mySAP Business Suite over Oracle’s E-Business Suite following a six-month evaluation process. Southco has launched a two-year project to implement the SAP ERP software across its 15 worldwide plants, beginning with a facility in Sweden. Southco also plans to implement SAP’s CRM and data warehouse products following the ERP rollout.
Southco is an unusually attractive mid-market customer. Through organic growth and acquisition, the company has doubled in size over the past four years and is currently growing at a double-digit rate. On top of that, the 2,900-person, 107-year-old, privately held company supports global operations and customers. Southco has four plants in China and three in Europe, operates in 65 countries, and manages 100,000 SKUs.
Southco was looking for a new enterprise software product to replace a suite it had deployed in 1992. That product — Symix, now owned by Infor Global Solutions — while adequate for a small, mostly domestic manufacturer like Southco in the early 1990s, could not keep up with the company’s growing needs. Southco’s old ERP system, for example, didn’t support EDI communications with automotive customers, nor did it include integrated analytics.
Lutz Richter, vice president and CFO at Soutco, said:
“The attention we got was equally strong from Oracle and SAP. We were amazed, they both made it clear that they were very serious about this account.”
“We needed someone capable of providing services globally and with a product that catered to local requirements. That separated the men from the boys. It eliminated everyone but SAP and Oracle.”
“We were concerned that there might be a blame game if something went wrong.”
“A year ago we said that if we intend to double our size again, we need a state-of-the-art platform to help us grow.”
“We were a bit concerned about Fusion. We found it a bit nebulous, and we were concerned that we might have to go through another platform transition in three years because of Fusion.”
“Either package would have worked fine for us. It was really a game of inches.”
Bob Anderson, vice president for small and mid-market applications at Gartner Inc., said:
“Oracle’s doing a better job of explaining [its] strategy. The [company] recently erased the issues around ongoing support of existing applications by extending support. But they still need to rationalize Fusion.”
“There’s no question SAP is gaining market share in the mid-market, both from a revenue standpoint and a product/solution standpoint.”
Lenley Hensarling, vice president and general manager for EnterpriseOne at Oracle, said:
“We’re not seeing much confusion on that positioning from customers. The only confusion may be among analysts.”