Industri-Matematik International Corp (IMI), the struggling Marlton, New Jersey-based supply chain management company, has decided to reinvent itself as a supplier of e-commerce software in a bid to halt a decline into losses that forced it to lay off 20% of its staff in April (CI No 3,642). It is launching a suite of fulfillment and customer service applications for e-commerce and has announced alliances with IBM Corp, Cap Gemini and Andersen Consulting that IMI hopes will bring it a new range of customers.
IMI grew fat grew fat with 50% compound growth rates in the US by offering supply chain management software on top of Oracle ERP applications. However, the switch by big corporations to solving Y2K problems brought a sudden end to that business. After a major re-think, IMI has decided a complete makeover is the only answer to problems which have left its share price at a rock bottom $1.7 compared with a year’s high of $16.25.
As an Oracle partner, IMI was competing head-to-head with ERP market leader SAP AG. Such is the change of emphasis that IMI now looks at SAP installations with the ambitions to turbo-charge them with its supply change packages. We do not want to compete with SAP. We want to complement and turbo charge them, said senior vice president John Geraci.
IMI’s argument is that traditional ERP applications were the product of traditional factory-based organizations that had a make, hold and sell business model. In an era of e-commerce, companies will be forced to have a sell, source and ship approach, a customer centered policy that IMI feels favors the ‘pull’ technology behind it.
At the center of the new software is a complex logistics engine as IMI argues that e-commerce supply chains are not linear chain but a more complicated network with multiple channels to market.
IMI is so confident of the advantages its new software suite can offer that it is brooding over the possibility of dropping the traditional licensing charges in favor of a system where it will share savings with its customers.
