Mercator hopes to get back in the running
- Article 16 of 77
- Information Age, September 2001
After a turbulent year, Mercator must quickly establish a convincing lead over competitors in its chosen vertical markets.
We've been in the business longer than most and we have the battle scars to prove it,“ says Charles Saunders, vice president of strategic planning for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at 16-year-old integration tools vendor Mercator. After several years of rapid growth, however, Mercator has faltered during the past year, and its long-time CEO Connie Galley stood down in January 2001. Furthermore, Mercator announced a 21% reduction in its workforce at the end of April, and saw revenues for its most recent quarter plunge 18% year-on-year.
Mercator continues to derive the bulk of its sales from application-to-application integration projects, says Saunders. ”If you start looking at the projects we've been involved with, the vast majority have come from customers' internal businesses,“ says Saunders. ”The B2B element has always been one or two projects only, and most vendors will say the same thing if they're being honest.“
Nevertheless, Saunders claims that the Mercator Integration Broker suite - which maps system of mapping network and applications assets - ”shines“ in the proof-of-concept stage (the company has never lost a proof of concept except for ”political reasons“, he says). It is sold as two key suites: Mercator Commerce Broker, a business-to-business integration server, and Mercator Enterprise Broker, aimed at application-to-application integration products within organisations.
Mercator's differentiators continue to be its expertise in data transformation and its in-depth knowledge of connectivity for the SAP R/3 business application system. In order to bolster areas of weakness, the company is building a network of partners - for example, it recently announced an alliance with business process management specialist Versata.
Under new CEO Roy King's plan for profitability, Mercator will specifically target the financial services, healthcare, utilities and manufacturing markets. By offering specific domain expertise in these areas, Mercator hopes it will become a far more obvious choice in that crucial proof-of-concept stage.