On April 24, 2002, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Joey Benadretti, Vice President of Marketing for SYSPRO USA. Before we got started Joey warned me that he had just returned from London and Israel the night before, and that he was very foggy. He also stated that he was headed out the door next week for South America and Asia to pursue some very big opportunities. Based on the confidential opportunities Joey described, there is no doubt that things are going well for SYSPRO USA.

Positioning SYSPRO

I started by asking Joey to describe the most crucial factor that we should convey in our interview. Here was Joey’s reply:

The most crucial factor I would like for you to get across in your interview is product positioning. SYSPRO is targeted towards manufacturing and distribution – we always have been. SYSPRO has more than 6,000 manufacturing customers alone – which is almost untouchable in this industry. For example, other popular manufacturing products such as Symix Front Step and Fourth Shift have fewer than 1,000 customers each. Even Exact North America with 25,000 customers has only a few thousand customers who use their manufacturing modules.

Joey explained that many SYSPRO resellers are also resellers of these other product lines, which is the source for this data. 

SYSPRO's Strategies

Next, I asked Joey what the company was up to. Joey explained that his company will undergo a world-wide re-branding effort this year, but that he did not want to disclose the details at this time. He hinted that the product name will not change.

SYSPRO is an incredible product. They have a  great track record, great features, nice look and feel, etc. However, I have always been curious as to why the product is not more widely known, why there is only one reseller within 500 miles of Atlanta, and why many of SYSPRO's competitors seem to have done a better job marketing their products. For example, Made2Manage is a very popular manufacturing solution, but according to the feature reports produced by software evaluation tools such as the Accounting Library, SYSPRO's functionality is far superior to  Made2Manage; yet I think that Made2Manage is better known in the industry. Joey actually stated that he and his company had not done a very good job at capitalizing on the strengths of SYSPRO and getting the word out about this product. I suspect that the international branding effort Joey referred to is related to a new marketing campaign designed by an outside organization. We will have to wait and see.

The Competition

I asked Joey to compare and contrast SYSPRO to some of it’s competitors such as Made2Manage and Lilly’s Visual Manufacturing. I expected Joey to preach about the more extensive features found in SYSPRO, but to my surprise he did not. Instead, here’s what Joey told me:

A high percentage of Made2Manage and Lilly’s Visual Manufacturing have been pieced together from separate add-on products which those companies have purchased through the years and stitched together. When you sit through a typical Made2Manage product demonstration, the company will typically avoid showing you 95% of the product because it does not have a common look and feel throughout the system. By comparison, almost all of SYSPRO has been developed in-house using the same development tools and design standards. This is just one factor that helps make SYSPRO the superior product.

Joey raises a good point. Many accounting software packages have been pieced together. For example, MAS 500 now includes a good manufacturing solution which they purchased in 1999 from a company called Hi-Tech out of Ohio. I am not sure that this is a bad thing – sometimes it can be a great move to purchase a superior add-on industry module and incorporate it into a powerful and proven financial solution. However Joey is correct that this will often result in differing screen designs and differing underlying technologies, factors which are probably more negative than positive.

Strong Product Configurator

Without prompting, Joey mentioned that SYSPRO has an excellent product configurator. I have no idea what this related to in our conversation – I probably was not paying close enough attention. It is true that the product configurator is very good. However, based on years of conversations with these folks, I think that all SYSPRO employees are conditioned to tell everyone about their strong product configurator at every available opportunity – they probably talk about it in their sleep.

Trend Watch

I asked Joey to describe any trends in manufacturing software. His reply:

The market for manufacturing software is very different than it was three years ago. It used to be that when a large company using Baan or JD Edwards purchased a SYSPRO customer, the customer would soon thereafter migrate to Baan or JD Edwards. However, today the roles have reversed. Now when a large company using Baan or JD Edwards purchases a SYSPRO customer, often the parent company customer migrates to SYSPRO. According to Joey there is a clear indication that companies are moving towards solutions that represent a lower cost of ownership.

I concur. In 2001, I helped a $17 Billion company move two divisions off of Oracle and onto Solomon IV. I’ve seen many examples where large companies are abandoning the traditional ERP solutions in favor of the leaner, meaner and less expensive high solutions such as Axapta, eEnterprise and SYSPRO.

Product Update

I asked Joey what was new with the SYSPRO product line. He enlightened me as follows:

Our Material Yield System is “totally awesome” and is taking the industry by storm. Basically this system keeps track of scrap material, automatically generating a new inventory id for each piece of scrap as materials are cut. Joey explained that in some companies, as much as 40% of the raw material was scrap pieces that were not tracked by the user’s accounting system. Because these scrap pieces usually have no costs associated with them, using them represents a 100% profit to the company. This module, coupled with the other features within SYSPRO make the product ideally suited for any company that cuts metal, foam, wood, or plastics.

Best Fit

I asked Joey which industries were best suited for SYSPRO. He explained:

SYSPRO is particularly well-suited for the food industries and the plastics industries. Admittedly, SYSPRO is a little weaker as a process manufacturing solution, but it is outstanding as a batch solution. SYSPRO largest customer has 1,100 simultaneous users. Joey mentioned that SYSPRO had just been implemented in a Coca Cola bottling plant in his hometown of Zimbabwe, Africa. Joey also reminded me that SYSPRO is an outstanding distribution solution with excellent support for multiple warehouses.

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