Q: Who Need Be Afraid of the Merge?
A: The Software Vendor of the Smaller Company?
Do you know who famously asked the question: Who need be afraid of the merge?
While the question now fits concerns about software IT solution providers, it was originally asked in reference to a bigger cosmological ”merge.” The year was 1860 and the poet was Walt Whitman.
Nowadays, there is good reason for fear of certain mergers or acquisitions. Specifically, M&As between utilities often lead to changes in the enterprise software solutions used by at least one of the utility companies involved.
An example of recent note is documented in the planning associated with the proposals for NextEra Energy’s acquisition of Hawaiian Electric. In Hawaiian Electric’s filing in its Smart Grid 2016 Project Book, multiple references are made to prospective plans to switch to SAP for new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solutions.
Congratulations go to SAP if, or as, the project proceeds. These are the related solution modules mentioned for replacement in the Hawaiian Electric proposal (page 251):
- Asset data
- Work management
- Purchasing
- Finance/accounting
- Procurement
- Payroll
- Leave management
- Time and attendance
- Supply chain
Of interest, while on the subject of mergers, is the fact that the EAM solution being replaced at Hawaiian Electric was itself involved in an M&A situation. It was the Ellipse solution for EAM, originally the solution of Mincom Ltd., prior to the 2012 Mincom acquisition by Ventyx (now ABB).
