Best of Breed Companies Continue to Thrive - By Tim Wallace, CEO

The recent market consolidation is creating growth opportunities for many best of breed software companies like FullTilt. We are fortunate to address a complex market problem that takes years of engineering resources to solve. We’re also fortunate that the complex PIM and product-centric MDM market is rapidly gaining favor with global enterprises and industry analysts alike. The reality is that best of breed software will always have a very large part in companies buying habits because the world we exist in is not homogenous.

When you break down software into the various systems of records you have very different maturation cycles in each market segment – and the market lifecycle model espoused by Geoffrey Moore and others applies.

Enterprise product information management software came onto the market around 2000. In the last five years only a handful of companies really exist that provided a true master data management for products that acts as a single version of the truth --- behind the firewall. This central repository of the product truth, has become a requirement of product centric companies as they focus on increasing their supply chain efficiencies.

Some people share an opinion that these “platform vendors” will control the vast majority of the industry. That they will be the end of enterprise software signaling for everyone else a period of no growth, a period where few start-ups will occur, and small amount of innovation will occur.

My take? We’re about to enter into a period of hyper-innovation to leverage these commodity platforms. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of market growth. I don’t think we’ve seen the end start-up’s in creative, useful solutions and I think we are at the early stages of innovation. I see market consolidation as a sign that basic capabilities have become commodities. That’s why some of the larger players have focused so much of their resources on building mass. Building mass is not about innovation, it is about market share and protecting the installed base and maintenance revenue streams.

It is vital that a company like FullTilt seamlessly integrate and leverage these consolidated “platforms” in order for companies to gain an immediate return on their investments. It’s also incumbent upon us to provide world-class functionality that is far superior to potential product choices made available from these platform suppliers. It’s also vital that we are able to provide world-class solutions that can be easily enhanced and updated with new product releases without complexity.

Here are some reasons why you should do business with a best of breed company like Fulltilt:

• Our company has been in business since 1987. We have weathered a lot and are good business people and plan on being here a long time.
• We are 100% focused on you, our customer. Every customer is very important to our company and doesn’t get lost or forgotten.
• Our product has no real competitor in the market place. If you are willing to do a deep dive, we are the only master data centric PIM on the market with all customers using the same standard product code.
• We can scale to meet your growing needs. One recent client put 2 million product SKU’s in production within 100 days. Many of our clients are planning to use our systems to manage over 10 million product SKU’s.
• Our product is built upon a loosely coupled SOA framework allowing for easy integration through our open and published API’s.
• We guarantee forward product release compatibility.
• We have very low cost of ownership. Our product was built to be used by business users and requires little IT involvement. We do not require significant consulting services to have our clients become productive.

There are many reasons that companies will continue to look for best of breed companies to meet their non-commodity type business needs. Best of breed solutions drive the productivity gains and give you the competitive advantages you need to compete successfully today.