Made2Manage is adding to its portfolio of discrete ERP systems with its acquisition of Intuitive Manufacturing Systems, announced today. The deal is the sixth for M2M since it went private in August 2003.
Although Intuitive is an old name in small and mid-size ERP, it has been rewritten recently and claims to be now 95% based on Microsoft's .NET framework. It has been on a small acquisition binge of its own, having acquired SupplyWorks, a supply chain management vendor, in March, and Relevant, a specialist in aerospace, engineer-to-order, and MRO businesses, which Intuitive picked up in April.
I'm generally skeptical about the value of a vendor rollup to customers of the target vendor. Too often the new parent either scales back enhancements to improve profitability of the maintenance stream or puts customers on a migration path to some successor system. Made2Manage gets a pass, though, in my opinion. They appear to be running each of these acquisitions as a separate organization, for the most part, but introducing some economies of scale and best practices in sales and support processes.
One source of mine, inside Intuitive, is quite positive about the deal, and I don't think he's spinning me on it.
There's more in the press release on M2M's website.
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