The Enterprise System Spectator

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Layoff at Consona (parent of Made2Manage)

A Spectator reader, whom I know and trust, alerted me to a layoff at Consona yesterday.

For those that haven't been following vendor name changes, Consona is the new name for M2M Holdings, the parent company for Made2Manage. Consona has also acquired several other ERP and CRM systems for the SMB market, notably Intuitive, Onyx, Encompix, DTR, Cimnet, and Axis. Intuitive itself had previously acquired Supplyworks and Relevant.

No word on the size of the layoff, or confirmation of the layoff, for that matter.

For some reason, Consona's website is down as of this writing.

Update, 1:25 p.m. Further correspondence with my source indicates that troubles have been brewing for some time at Consona. Specifically, he points to Consona's moving away from their area of expertise in the "small/midmarket US based ERP package business" into the "large and upper midmarket international CRM tools space" with the purchase of Onyx and KNOVA. Although these were completely different businesses and markets, Consona tried to run things like they had with Made2Manage.

He also indicates that things were made worse by management's promise to deliver a quarterly 30%-plus EBIDTA to satisfy their lenders (including venture firms) at they same time that they were trying to maintain support and deevelopment for at least nine product lines. He writes, "You can only cut R&D and marketing so much to deliver those results before paying the consequences."

On a side note, as of this update, it's been at least five hours that Consona's website has been down. Is this any way to run a technology company?

Related posts
Made2Manage marks sixth acquisition with bid for Intuitive
Making money in software with a niche-industry strategy
Onyx CRM to be acquired by Made2Manage
New action in the engineer-to-order ERP space
Made2Manage acquiring ETO vendor Encompix
Made2Manage sees bright future in plastics
Made2Manage going private

by Frank Scavo, 1/26/2008 08:23:00 AM | permalink | e-mail this!

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