SSA narrows focus to restore emphasis on core businesses

By Adam Gifford

Software vendors are usually keen to tell you what they can do. Some of them will even swear on a stack of manuals they can do next week what their competitors will do now, if you will only wait.

Systems Software Associates (SSA) is going the other way. It has relaunched its BPCS (Business Planning and Control System - known as bee-pics - software for manufacturers as eBPCS, with less emphasis on doing everything out of the box and more on integration with best-of-breed industry solutions.

Product management vice-president Bob Nussbaum, out from the Chicago head office to Australia for the eBPCS launch, said that rather than expecting companies to change their business processes to meet the demands of an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, SSA had developed technology that adapted to meet the organisation's needs.

Something had to be done. SSA has been unprofitable for several quarters, and its last generation of BPCS consumed greater amounts of processor power than expected.

"We sold a lot of extra boxes for IBM," one insider said wryly.

Mr Nussbaum joined the company a year ago, one of several ex-IBM heavyweights brought in by new chief executive Bill Stuek to address the red ink washing through the $US400 million-a-year company.

"They were burning cash at a rate that would have put them out of business," Mr Nussbaum said.

SSA had lost its focus.

"It attempted to serve too broad a variety of markets, too broad a variety of platforms, so all the energy was going into platform support and trying to establish beachheads, at the expense of focus on the core customer sets that were our bread and butter."

The new SSA will concentrate on the industry segments it is strongest in: automotive supply, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, chemicals, consumer electronics and general manufacturing.

Rather than tailor its software for every platform, it would concentrate on IBM AS/400 and Hewlett Packard Unix HP 9000 servers with an Oracle or Informix database. SSA is working with HP to make eBPCS available on Windows NT later in the year.

Mr Nussbaum said the company is trying to get BPCS back from the bleeding edge to where it used to be.

He described eBPCS as a powerful and stable transaction engine which should be seen as the backbone for applications across the supply chain.

Rather than build all those applications itself, as a "portfolio solutions provider" SSA will make it easier for customers to integrate third-party products.

"For customers, it's never just BPCS, it's always BPCS with something else: a legacy system, another ERP system, SAP. It's a multiple environment," Mr Nussbaum said.

To create the integration capability, SSA has come up with a proprietary messaging system called semantic message gateways (SMG), which abstracts messages from eBPCS and publishes it in a form other applications such as Manugistics or i2 can understand.

In effect, it's turning the integration process into a product, rather than something which must be done afresh each time by highly paid implementers.

"We're trying to move away from custom implementations," Mr Nussbaum said.

"The big five [accounting firms] hate me saying it, but if you are a consultant, the longer and bigger the project is, the better. You don't have to keep reselling.

"Our heritage is six to nine-month projects implemented. Part of what we are doing takes away some of business opportunity for people who like to make services money from complex integrations."

With an installed base of 6500 implementations in 90 countries, SSA is attractive to partners.

SSA and Ironside Technologies are jointly marketing Ironside's Ironworks software as the business-to-business component of SSA's e-commerce solution.

SSA is working with Lotus Development Company to fully integrate eBPCS with the Lotus Domino Web application server for the AS/400, allowing eBPCS users to use either Lotus Notes or a Web browser to remotely access information.

Key partners for data access and reporting tools, known by the oxymoron "business intelligence," include Business Objects, Cognos and Australian company CorVu.

Sales force automation comes from integrating eBPCS with Trilogy's front office suite or tools from Taylor Manufacturing Systems. SSA is offering i2's Rhythm planning and optimisation software as part of its supply chain management.

Mr Nussbaum said the portfolio strategy was one way SSA was coping with the overall slowdown in the ERP market as customers ready themselves for 2000.

"People are unwilling to do anything on ERP systems but they are very willing to move ahead on the business intelligence, e-commerce and supply chain pieces."

* Adam Gifford attended the eBPCS launch in Sydney courtesy of SSA.