Things are looking up for Lawson lately. A week or so ago it announced quarterly results that were better than expected, with revenue rising over six percent from a year earlier.
Then today, Lawson announced that it closed a big deal with Mervyns, a major U.S. department store chain. Mervyns will implement Lawson Financials, Procurement, Budgeting and Planning, and Reporting suites to replace business applications that it was using prior to being spin off as an independent firm. Mervyns plans to complete its implementation of Lawson by August 2006--a pretty aggressive timeframe, for a company with 250 locations in 13 U.S. states.
Lawson has been targeting the retail industry for many years. According to its press release, its customers include "five of the top 10 U.S.-based retailers, eight of the top 20 apparel retailers, seven of the top 25 grocery chains, 23 of the top 100 restaurant chains, and 20 of the top 100 specialty chains."
Lawson's win at Mervyns shows that a strategy of intense industry focus can be successful in competing against larger vendors, namely SAP and Oracle, that are increasingly dominating the ERP market.
What other vendors are executing such a strategy? Mincom is an example in the mining industry, as seen in its win over SAP at Newmont Mines, which I mentioned in the previous post. QAD's success among automotive suppliers is another example. IFS has success in aerospace, transportation, and others. And Intentia, which Lawson is acquiring, has a similar track record in the apparel industry as well as food and beverage.
Related posts
SAP loses big deal to...Mincom?
Lawson acquiring Intentia
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