Managing Automation

Logility Taps Familiar Face as New Demand Management President

Posted on Monday, October 9, 2006 6:53:00 PM EDT

Two years after acquiring supply chain planning software vendor Demand Management Inc. (DMI), Logility Inc. late last week announced that it has installed a new president, whose plan, he told Managing Automation, is to quickly move the company's products to a Microsoft .NET foundation.

New president Bill Harrison, a former Logility employee, joined Demand Management in mid-August and has spent the last few weeks working through a transition plan, as well as meeting with customers, prospects and employees. He replaced Mike Campbell, who had signed a two-year employment contract to remain at the helm of Demand Management when the company was acquired by Logility in September of 2004. Harrison, 47, has spent the last two-plus years consulting to the technology and venture capital communities.

Previously he worked for ClearCross Inc., a Reston, VA-based e-commerce and logistics management software vendor, where he was executive vice president and chief operating officer. At ClearCross, Harrison was responsible for day-to-day operations, overseeing sales, marketing, product strategy, business development consulting, software development, customer support, and information technology.

In his new post, Harrison reports to Mike Edenfield, Logility's CEO. Logility is a majority-owned subsidiary of American Software. Harrison said he was recruited to Demand Management by Edenfield, whom he has known for some time through his previous association with Logility (and American Software) as an employee.

In a prepared statement, Edenfield said, "We are pleased to announce the addition of Bill Harrison to the company. His credentials in the industry will be a tremendous resource for DMI as it continues to focus on acquiring market share. Bill's breadth of industry knowledge will help the company to continue increasing revenue." Harrison said his first order of business, now that the company has completely moved its Demand Management's product line to a Microsoft SQL Server database, is to migrate the entire suite to a browser-based environment running on Microsoft .NET. This will enable the company to focus development on its core supply chain planning and forecasting strengths -- and leave the pursuit of Web services standards to Microsoft and its foundation technologies. He said it would be premature to provide a release date for the .NET-based product line.

Logility has been on a roll over the last year, fueled in part by the contributions of Demand Management's forecasting and demand management software suite. Demand Management has provided Logility with incremental top-line growth by extending the company's reach into the SMB market via a network of resellers and systems integrators. Propelled by a surge in license revenue, Logility recently posted total fiscal first-quarter revenues of $9.6 million, an increase of 21% from the corresponding period last year. The company's operating earnings in the quarter reached $1.2 million, a whopping 63% increase over the figure recorded in last fiscal year's first quarter.

Harrison wouldn't quantify Demand Management's contribution to Logility's top and bottom lines. "Suffice it to say, Demand Management is a very profitable company," he said.

The move-forward plan, he noted, is to keep Demand Management a separate entity based in St. Louis and operating autonomously within Logility. "We go after the SMB market space -- which is our niche; Logility goes after larger companies, Fortune 500 companies," he said. "Every now and then we meet in the middle where we compete with them; sometimes we beat them, sometimes they beat us ... We do not share a sales channel, and do not cross-sell products, although sometimes we throw leads their way -- where it's not a good fit [for Demand Management] -- and vice versa."

Harrison said his previous experience as a technology consultant and COO has prepared him for his new job and the challenges of running a supply chain software company amid a slow but steady uptick in market demand. AMR Research recently reported that the supply chain applications market reached $5.6 billion in 2005, an increase of about 3% from the previous year. Globalization, leaner supply networks, increased customer expectations, more mass customization, and increased demand variability were responsible for market growth, the analyst firm said.

Harrison called himself a detail-oriented executive, a "task master" who fervently believes in operational accountability and tight collaboration across internal departmental silos and with business partners. "I'll knock down any walls that exist to get people working together," he noted, even the barriers that separate Demand Management's sales management team from its resellers. "Even through they don't work for us, we will treat them as team members," he said. "There will not be an 'us versus them' mentality."

By Alan Alper