J'can firm wins top business award

Adjoined Business Solutions takes SAP's regional prize for business analytics

By Al Edwards

Friday, January 27, 2012

A Jamaican business intelligence solutions company, headed by Ian Moore, last week won a major business award from SAP AG, one of the world's leading business applications providers.

Adjoined Business Solutions Limited (ABSL) received the Business Objects Partner of the Year Award for Business Analytics and Technology for the Latin American and Caribbean region at SAP's Partner Impact Awards.

Winning this award is all the more remarkable because a Jamaican company triumphed over firms from larger and more advanced countries.

The leading executives of ABSL first came together as a group in 1999, and in 2006 the company they helped to operate was acquired by Capgemini. In 2007, they branched out, opting to do their own thing and so formed ABSL, representing Oracle and SAP in the region, two of the largest software companies in the world. In 2008, ABSL copped an award for being the top sales team for Oracle in the Caribbean region.

ABSL's birth had to weather the global financial meltdown where companies were not so much looking to grow and continue with a transaction-centric model but rather pursue a more performance-based model. It was a niche ABSL would explore, seeking to help companies looking to optimise their investments in their organisation. One of the best ways to do this is by employing business intelligence.

Director of Software Solutions Donovan Murray added: "From a business intelligence standpoint, what we do is help companies turn data that they have into more actionable information that helps them take critical decisions. Therefore, there is no longer the need for reliance on notions such as 'gut feelings' and such.

"You take a telecoms company that places great importance on customer churn, we can take data and determine why customers are migrating onto another network. We also implement company human resources and financial solutions. We can also help companies streamline their business processes and adopt best practices. One of the major failures we discovered with Jamaican companies is an unwillingness to adopt best practices and they lose out in a big way as a result of this."

The new Jamaican Government has declared that it will be placing a great emphasis on ICT and it is here that ABSL can continue to make its mark servicing the growing number of businesses expected to come from this sector.

The company's chairman, Ian Moore, declared that the stated aim now is to build products that are more relevant to the region's market. The tools will be customised for specific clients.

"We can create analytics for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and that is what we aim to be doing by Q3 this year," he said. "The products will be built and designed for the prevalent accounting packages in Jamaica. What is currently happening is that companies are looking at their transactional performance at month-end, but by then they have missed all their targets. We can address that by providing them with real-time solutions that change on a daily basis. Therefore, they can now plan for meeting the targets as opposed to simply looking at whether they have met the targets."

SAP hosts an annual jamboree where it awards and celebrates its top sales performers. It also acknowledges the level of demonstrated commitment from its partners. It is here that ABSL won the top performer award for Latin America and the Caribbean. The company was invited to make a presentation in Buenos Aires to explain its methodology.

Commenting on the award, Moore said: "What struck me is that a small country like Jamaica could in any way perform above countries that have markets that are way bigger than ours, and to add to that we were asked to coach companies from these countries on how we operate. This should encourage more Jamaican companies to employ analytics to enhance their performance.

"We have focused traditionally on large businesses and we will continue to do so, but we believe we can help small and medium businesses fight the global recession by giving access to KPI and real time information. It is vital for a small business to access critical information as this can determine the state of its bottom line."

Earlier this week, the German enterprise software giant SAP AG said it expects continued growth this year because of strong momentum in its business despite the backdrop of macroeconomic woes in Europe. Software and software-related service revenue, which includes new licences and maintenance, are forecast to rise between 10 and 12 per cent in 2012, said the company whose software manages business tasks such as sales, inventory and accounting.

SAP's operating profit is expected to be between euro 5.05 billion and euro 5.25 billion, up from euro 4.71 billion last year. The company has already reported a rise in fourth-quarter revenue and operating profit on January 13 as licence sales — the key number for software makers as they generate a stable flow of support revenue — rose a better than expected 16 per cent on the year to euro 1.74 billion in the final quarter.

Fourth-quarter profit after tax more than doubled to euro 1.2 billion, according to IFRS reporting standards, compared with euro 434 million a year earlier when the figures were burdened by a huge rise in provisions for the copyright litigation with arch rival Oracle.

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J'can firm wins top business award