Made2Manage Affirms Its Technological Astuteness
Part 3: Challenges and User Recommendations
P.J. Jakovljevic - January 22, 2003

Challenges

Although initiatives covered in Parts Two of this note should, to our mind, contribute to creating increased demand and acceptance of the offering in the intended SME market, nevertheless, Made2Manage will have to address certain challenges in order to continue to thrive in this cutthroat competitive environment. The competition is flying from all directions: its peers (e.g., Epicor, Lilly Software, Syspro, MAPICS/Frontstep, etc.), the likes of SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft storming down the market, and from former accounting-only juggernauts going up the market (e.g., Intuit, ACCPAC, Best Software, and Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS)). Most of these competitors have much greater install bases and quite a leeway to ride through these difficult times on their recurring service & support revenue. To keep up with the competition, Made2Manage might therefore have a bigger need to enlarge its 1,600 corporate customers or 25,000 licensed users. This has not been happening lately to a degree the vendor would wish. Further, some of these competitors are either on par, or even ahead of Made2Manage in terms of porting their applications onto .NET, while many are not that far behind in the wireless devices deployment...