Then there's the 37% slice of Gartner's pie charts called "Others". One of these "others" is a company of Swedish origin, Jeeves, that was taken private 2012 by American venture capital firm Battery. They had good reasons to pay $32.46 million for Jeeves. PLM TV News met the new CEO, Jeff Tognoni at the company's recent user event, Jeeves Xperience in Stockholm.
"We saw the potential", Tognoni says adding that, "Unlike other ERP software systems, Jeeves ERP is built on an architecture that allows you to easily and cost-effectively implement and upgrade a highly custom system on top of a rich standard feature set. With Jeeves you can truly have your ERP your way, protecting the processes that distinguish you from the competition."
The system architecture is model-based and the idea is simple: describe the desired system rather than hard-code it, and keep this description separate from the core system. The architecture also leverages a site repository where all of the customer-specific implementation details are stored. When the core application is upgraded the product continues to operate as specified in the site repository.
Jeeves' products include Jeeves ERP and Garp ERP. Both were demonstrated in the new 4.0 versions during the event in Stockholm, "These are generally about lots of new functionalities. The perfomance is faster than ever, but the big news is that it's Cloud ready", said Director of Marketing & Product Management, Magnus Grönvik.
Manufacturing, distribution, wholesale and service industries in focus
Since its inception in 1992, Jeeves has focused its people, processes and technology on helping its customers celebrate (and automate) what makes them different. The company provides software and services for small and midsize companies worldwide.
During the last few years as a public company–before they were acquired by Battery–the growth was relatively slow, but that changed under the new ownership.
"In this business we have to grow, not only in terms of great software. It's also about growing the revenues organically by simply selling more, but also by acquiring other companies or solutions that can provide a rapid boost", Jeff asserts.
And this is pretty much what they have done during his leadership. In 2012 they acquired their partner, Infocube, and in April this year Swiss ERP provider SolvAxis (ProConcept is the "flagship). Jeeves has now grown to serve more than 2,000 customers in 40 countries throughout Europe, North America and Asia across a number of niche verticals within the manufacturing, distribution, wholesale, and services industries.
It doesn't stop here – Tognioni wants an even "bigger piece of the pie" and the American market is one where he sees great opportunities for this solution.
In this TV-report you will meet:
- Jeff Tognoni, President and CEO of Jeeves. He began his tenure in August 2012.
- Customer Andrzej Leniewski, IT Devlopment Manager at HL Display. "The Cloud is the future and we're going for it", he claims.
- Daniel Göhlin, Jeeves' General Manager.
- Magnus Grönvik, Director Marketing & Product Management