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I don’t know if you have noticed this last six months, the shear volume of software solution buy up and acquisition activity in the public and socialhousing sector? Its reducing actual choice and I have heard it said it actually stifles innovation.
Its sure as hell easier for some outfits to buy up solutions, also bagging customers needing yet more numbers in their sales ledgers, than getting out being hungry and winning new business. What with MRI concluding its purchase of Capita’s public sector offerings after challenge, Aareon doing it with Designer Software’s Homemaster and MIS-AMS ActiveH, its as one colleague confided to me, “well its just down to a few players now for modern procurement”.
The trouble of course with buying up just anything, is suppliers can end up like having an overfilled golf bag. When that difficult opportunity comes it, its 3 times as hard to work out what club would be best to hit that ball with. In the last few months I have heard multiple pitches telling different stories about the same products in the inventory, with often the sales team confused. We are in a sector where good staff are leaving because they are approaching retirement, family life is changing for them, or just don’t want to be TUPE’d over (again) to a corporate monolith. A good merger also is a time to cut down that dead wood that you haven’t tackled in many years and fortunately your new owners will do the unpleasant pruning.
Unfortunately if acquisitions are not done well and managed well, your product offering becomes more like a soup, a thick and not too present one too. No wonder some of the new kids on the block are doing so well, such as the dinosaur slayer (you know who I mean), who is proud to just sell 3 things really well and tell you what the cost per property is. Simples !
Also, for balance, other alternatives on CRM based solutions are available with D365 & Salesforce. Other dinosaur slayers of a kind !
So, to be blogging about yet another acquisition, is unfortunate, although to be honest, a little less so.
This month another of those big public sector software suppliers picked up a GIS solution. NEC (nee NPS Northgate Public Services) ‘strategically’ acquired CadCorp. Full chapter and verse can be read here.
I am familiar with Cadcorp, as back in 2011 at my old shop (MIS-AMS) we were resellers of its UK based product and even back then it had clever and flexible integrations and rich features. It’s a good product and I still hear good things about it.
In contrast to a few others this feels less like a desperate hoovering up of solutions and more like adding an essential part of a jigsaw into their offerings around Blue Light, safety, energy, infrastructure and others in addition to social housing, via API’s.
It would be hoped that the comments on the marriage ring true and this brings something bigger than the sum of its two parts, rather than what is often experienced elsewhere, merged help-desks and a tin-ear in reference to general customer service.
Aside from taking over Anite OHMS back in Nov 2008 (after the OFT decided not to refer it to the Competition Commission), NEC now have pretty much one of everything to pitch. Less of the multiples, “which contractor, which mobile, or which housing solution this time”, type nonsense.
Paradoxically, having more traditional product to choose from with the same logo on the front, can often cause more problems than it solves. If mixing products, always check if they have been integrated in that manner before, successfully tried or not. I hear far too many occurrences of this, with often bigger landlords often being caught out worse. I am sure some contacts of mine may be reading this and thinking “yes”, its easier to be caught out than you think! So, readers, let the buyer beware.
Related Post: Software contracts - such a minefield. What to be aware of and what to try to avoid..
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(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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