Jupiter looks beyond

Jupiter Systems Inc., an established Philippine software development company, is expanding into the United States, where it hopes to replicate its success in the Asian markets with its flagship ERIC enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Jupiter Software Systems America Inc. was established in April this year as a joint venture with a US-based company called Warp 9. Located in San Francisco, California, the US office currently has a senior executive from the local Jupiter office whose immediate task is to form the organization, do market assessment and business requirement analysis.

Fermin Taruc, president of Jupiter Systems, says they are devoting six months – April to October – to understand the US market so they can make more informed decisions once the company starts to market aggressively toward the last quarter of the year.

"Our success is largely in the Asian (region) and we understand that the US is a different market altogether. We already established that there is a market for ERIC in the US. While there’s a temptation to brag and say we are in the US, we first prepared the company to make that investment based on (market) information. We have to know who the market is, what they want and how the software must be adapted to the US market," says Taruc.

Jupiter Systems is part of the iVantage group of IT companies, a publicly traded company with investments in hardware and software distribution, IT-enabled services and e-commerce.

Asian reach

The company is also extending its reach to more Asian countries this year by coming up with standard country versions for the now 16-year-old ERIC software. Jupiter is releasing language-specific versions of ERIC to China, Thailand and Indonesia, the three Asian markets that figure strongly in Jupiter’s expansion plans this year.

The ERIC versions to be released in these countries will be fully translated and will also be localized in terms of their specific business requirements in areas such as taxation, reporting, accounting, human resources and payroll, says Remin Victor Villanueva, marketing manager of Jupiter Systems.

He reports that there are about 300 active companies using ERIC today. Most of them are in the Philippines, about four are in Indonesia, 35 are in Hong Kong, and a Thailand company is just about to install the system.

ERIC update

Starting with a DOS version in 1985, ERIC has been updated regularly over the years, with a Web-enabled version released in the last quarter.

"ERIC covers the whole range of processes involving financial, manufacturing, operations, distribution and others. We now also have an ERIC application that connects ERIC modules like inventory management, sales and receivables to a Web portal to support a client’s chain of distributors and suppliers," says Villanueva.

Popular among manufacturing companies, ERIC is lately also getting more distribution and trading companies interested, says Villanueva, adding that this has prompted the development of more features that will be standard to the product. And though ERIC may not be nearly as complex as its foreign-made counterparts, Villanueva says everything required for ERP and MRP automation is present in their brand.

Today, there is an ERIC module not just for the Web but also for PDAs (personal digital assistants), which is designed to link to the core ERP product.

Going global

Three factors inspire Jupiter Systems to go global.

First, with the equity infusion from iVantage, the company is able to acquire new technologies to jumpstart the product, fast-track development, and more aggressively position the brand.

Second, the company believes it has already built in ERIC a product that is globally competitive in terms of standards, functions and features, which makes it ripe to be sold competitively overseas.

Third, the company wants to bring pride to the country by selling ERIC abroad.

With all these, however, come more aggressive growth targets, which highlight the need to look at markets outside the Philippines, says Taruc.

"Our global positioning strategy is to have a product that contains all the learning and experiences from best practices used throughout the world that can benefit any small enterprise wanting to be competitive globally. In addition, we marry the best from the global practices with features for specific local requirements," Taruc notes.

Jupiter’s sales efforts abroad have so far gone through informal channels such as customer referrals. Without a formal strategy then, actual sales and support were still done in the Philippines. Today, the company is taking a more systematic approach by appointing alliances with IT vendors in the region with knowledge of their markets and the capability to support ERIC.

"We’ve been asked why do we think we will be competitively selling abroad where we don’t have first-mover advantage? But our advantage mainly will be our more extensive translations and knowledge of the small and medium-sized market, which is our main market here in the Philippines," says Taruc.

Despite cut-throat competition in the still sluggish global IT market, Taruc is confident that their fundamentals as a company combined with prudent management and good products and services will help them weather the storm and expand outward.