Published on the 21/07/2016 | Written by Donovan Jackson
Purchases competitor BPR Solutions…
The winds of consolidation have blown pretty hard through the Microsoft Dynamics market and now they are picking up in the NetSuite space as Fusion5 acquires BPR Solutions and lays claim to the title of the largest NetSuite practice in Australasia.
The company said its NetSuite team is now ‘close to 30 people’ (we assume that means ‘29’) and it gets a further 30 clients. CEO Rebecca Tohill said the acquisition was complete as at July 1; she wouldn’t be drawn on the terms of the transaction.
Fusion5 itself played a part in the assimilation of bit-Dynamics players into larger organisations, adding Koorb’s CRM and SharePoint practices to its stable back in February.
She explained why the company is building its capability around the cloud ERP vendor: “When you have scale, you can invest more [and that means] more people to look after customers, more people to deliver, more people to sell. We need to do everything right for [every] customer; however, it becomes more economic when you can apply similar levels of resource for a larger group of customers.”
With resellers of cloud solutions often enduring slimmer margins than the chunky revenue associated with the on-premise deployments of yore (a point raised recently by UXC’s Simon Kingston), the question must be asked as to just how profitable it is to be a NetSuite solution provider. However, Tohill said that being profitable is not tied to a product set, “but yes, we believe scale helps in the longer term. Scale also means you can invest more in building knowledge and capability into parts of the software that really do deliver more value for customers.”
That’s something which has come with BPR, a company which was established by Simon Ede (who, along with his entire team, joins Fusion5) in 2002 and which was one of the first NetSuite partners in the region. It has developed unique IP, which now falls under the Fusion5 banner. “Some are utilities, like a Foodstuffs EDI or a Go-to-Meeting add-on, some are modules like Fixed Assets, and some are industry focused like Service Management. We will keep building on the 13 solutions BPR brought to us, and find new areas to invest into. There’s always a new idea,” said Tohill.
We took the opportunity to ask if the change of leadership at NetSuite Australia presents any issues, as both long-standing MD Mark Troselj and VP Professional Services Dean Stockwell have left the building. “[We] haven’t seen or heard any impact; people leave and new people arrive. We have a great relationship with NetSuite, they are really supportive, partner friendly and they have a lot of talent.”
More than that, Tohill is bullish about the prospects for a solution which already enjoys substantial market penetration. “The market opportunity is huge. NetSuite has 30,000 customers worldwide and over 2,000 locally, but there is so much more opportunity for growth. We believe we are still scratching the surface of our potential.”
Finally, with a recent (probably scurrilous) rumour swirling through the industry that NetSuite is a potential target for acquisition by Oracle, she said any such move would present little in the way of issues for Fusion5; after all, along with its Microsoft Dynamics competency, the company is also aligned with Oracle and has enjoyed a long relationship with that vendor. Or, as Tohill puts it, “Life would be fine either way.”
With BPR on board, Fusion5 is increasingly heavyweight: it said it now has over 700 customers (does that mean 701?) and 270 staff across nine offices.
