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Decisions - Mid-market vendors - The grass is greener.
(From Financial Director)
Byline: Malcolm Wheatley.
For software companies at the smaller end of the spectrum, the appeal of the mid-market is obvious. Times are tough, so corporate customers keen to cut costs may be prepared to take a chance on software vendors they wouldn't have looked twice at before. And in the process, they are offering smaller vendors the prospect of an impressive new reference site and a larger-than-usual licence fee.
For the giants of the enterprise software world, the appeal is equally clear. In a rapidly maturing market that is approaching saturation, the mid-market is a whole new world of deals in the making. Consequently, software companies such as Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP have all tried to exploit what may be the best growth prospect in years. But for both small and large enterprise vendors, disappointment is likely.
Take the problems faced by larger vendors. "All the big vendors have announced a mid-market strategy, but the results suggest these aren't working," observes Beth Barling, an analyst at London-based analysts AMR Research. Why? According to Paul Massey, consulting services director at High Wycombe-based mid-market vendor IFS, "While mid-market companies deal directly with the software company they are buying from, larger vendors would rather sell through resellers and implement through implementation partners. The reaction of the mid-market is to say, 'If we're so important, why don't you talk to us directly?'"
Certainly, that's the reaction of Nick Williams, financial director of Aylesford-based G Costa & Co, a GBP60m, 350-employee manufacturer of ethnic cooking sauces. A user of mid-market vendor GEAC's System 21 enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Williams is sceptical about the depth of larger vendors' commitment to the mid-market. "For companies like us, they are less customer-focused," he says. "It's as though they are saying, 'If you're not a half-million pound project, we're not interested.'"
Breaking into the mid-market is difficult.
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