WBSP239: Grow Your Business by Understanding ECi’s Capabilities, an Objective Panel Discussion and Weekly Digital Transformation News Stories

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There are two ways to grow an ERP company. Either you build products from scratch like SAP, Acumatica, SYSPRO, and NetSuite, etc. Or you acquire several products until you have a solid market share to create a product strategy like Infor, Epicor Software, Sage, and Appian Corporation. While Infor and Epicor were very aggressive with their acquisition strategy in their early days, they have realized how bad having too many product bases could fire back. One of the challenges that ERP companies face is to phase out the products acquired through acquisition and move their customers to a few strategic products. ERP business also requires a long-term commitment by their investors as having a solid technology strategy is expensive and requires aligned product priorities with the target market. ECI Software Solutions is one such company that has taken a unique approach of a franchise model where each company is a separate company with several products with overlapping functionality and codebase. They have had their last investor exit with 4x within four years. And even the new investor seems to be operating with the same mindset. But is this strategy sustainable? Would they have enough investment to modernize 30+ codebases with significantly duplicate functionality?

In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to discuss major stories in the ERP and digital transformation space and an objective and independent review of ECi's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including their acquisition strategy, investors' experience in building a software company, the specific position of each of their products, and the financial risks for customers. Finally, we discussed why Exact decided to spin off some of their products and what changes customers can expect post-acquisition.

For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.