Platinum Software Busy Riding Wave of Opportunity in Integrated Systems
These are promising times for Platinum Software Corp.
The Irvine company is riding high on its corporate growth, reporting that it surged 66% and 54% in its last two quarters. Earnings for the three-month periods, minus one-time charges tied to a recent acquisition, also were up.
But more important, say company executives, is that Platinum’s product lineup has the future looking so rosy. Long known for its accounting software, Platinum spent the last couple of years expanding and refining its offerings, focusing now on products that work from Microsoft technologies.
Today, analysts say, Platinum has become a leading maker of enterprise resource planning, or ERP, tools. ERP software manages a company’s business processes, ranging from marketing and sales contacts to accounting and payroll systems.
The idea is to allow companies to store and access information about their customers in an integrated database. Take a computer manufacturer who sells machines to accountants. Price quotes given to one firm could be stored in an Excel file, while the production order and the billing information are saved in different software programs stored in separate computer systems.
Platinum builds software that brings all this data together, so employees can keep track of changes and find everything they need on a client. The result, say analysts, can mean fewer mistakes as well as bigger financial savings.
“Right now, the market is growing and so are we,” said George Klaus, chairman and chief executive of Platinum Software.
Indeed, businesses are eager to maximize such computer tools and streamline their digital systems. But the big players in this space--SAP AG, PeopleSoft Inc., Oracle Corp.--are often too expensive and have products that are too complicated for small- to mid-size companies with annual sales between $5 million and $500 million.
Enter Platinum. When it announced in October that it was acquiring San Diego-based rival DataWorks Corp. in an $84-million stock-swap deal, the result was a combined ERP powerhouse poised to become a major player. The overall ERP market is expected to reach $52 billion by 2002, according to analysts at the Boston-based firm AMR Research.
The merger, which closed Dec. 31, also broadened the two companies’ expertise, adding DataWorks’ background in manufacturing software to Platinum’s strength in financial tools.
And with last week’s announcement that Platinum will rename itself by the end of the year, the software firm is taking the next logical step toward creating a new corporate image.
“We’ve worked very hard to reach this point,” Klaus said. “It’s an exciting time for us all.”
P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com.
