At Aptean Edge, CEO Paul Ilse Pledges to Keep Solutions Separate
LAS VEGAS—Supported by a new tagline, "Where Software Works," Aptean CEO Paul Ilse today unveiled the company's new vision and brand identity during his opening keynote address at Aptean Edge, the company's annual user conference here Tuesday.
"For all 5,000 Aptean customers, our software is always found in one common location—where the work gets done," Ilse told the 1,050 conference attendees. "Whether it's the factory floor where products are assembled, the foundry where metal is forged, or the call center where a customer needs assistance, it's Aptean software that helps streamline operations and support the process behind great customer experiences.
"We've worked to build a company that aligns our great product history with the specific needs of our diverse enterprise customer base," Ilse continued. "Today marks an exciting step in that journey as we launch a new vision and strategy for helping our customers meet their goals for growth, efficiency, and profitability."
Aptean, which was formed in 2012 with the merger of CDC Software and Consona, offers CRM products under the Pivotal, Onyx, Knova, Saratoga, and Respond brand lines, as well as a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.
Ilse pledged continued support and investment in those products through tighter integrations with other business systems, greater support for mobile devices, expanded partnerships, greater deployment options, and more industry-specific solutions. "We are strengthening our commitment to you," he said. "Seventy-five percent of the features we're introducing this year will be industry-specific."
Matt Keenan, vice president of CRM product management at Aptean, reiterated those commitments in a later session, calling this a "fundamental transformative time" for CRM right now.
The new changes in CRM, he said, are all geared around "turning data into actionable insight."
For Aptean, that also means continuing to support a wide portfolio of CRM products that several conference attendees suggested could be consolidated into one solution.
"Pivotal, Onyx, Saratoga—each is targeted for organizations of different sizes and in very different verticals," Keenan said. "Each represents a solid set of different CRM capabilities."
According to Keenan, "it makes financial sense" for Aptean to maintain separate products because doing so allows it "to cast a wider net."
Aptean, he added, "is not tied to one solution that fits all businesses."
The company markets solutions to firms in the financial services, manufacturing, warehousing, healthcare, technology, and professional services sectors.
Key to Aptean's CRM product road map, Keenan said, is greater investments in simplifying the user experience, increased user adoption, contextual collaboration that allows users to tap into the collective knowledge within an organization, and providing actionable insights to users.
Also key moving forward will be greater deployment options, particularly as Aptean builds out its Aptean Cloud, which is founded on the Amazon Web Services platform.
Mario Baldasserini, vice president of global cloud operations at Aptean, said in an afternoon session that users of Pivotal, Onyx, Knova, and Respond CRM systems can now deploy the solutions entirely on premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments.
In the cloud option, Aptean does all the provisioning, monitoring, management, protection, and reporting, while delivering "[guaranteed] service uptimes, world-class recovery processes, and on-demand capacity."
Aptean has been with Amazon Web Services for the past four years, and in that time, has been able to deliver 99.983 percent service reliability, according to Baldasserini. Additionally, "the Aptean Cloud is cost-effective, scalable, and secure," he said.
"And, with Aptean, what you deploy in the cloud is the exact same thing available for on-premises deployments," Keenan added.