RRP - A new Era for Platinum UK

Platinum Software, the mid-market enterprise resource planning specialist, launched Platinum Era last week, in a bid to see off challenges from ERP giants such as SAP.

Platinum Era 7.0, available across Europe, includes new manufacturing and customer care modules, following its merger with US manufacturing specialist DataWorks. The suite runs on Microsoft’s SQL Server 7 and is targeted at companies with a turnover of between #5m and #150m.

Platinum, which claims to be the eighth-largest ERP vendor, aims to expand its share in the manufacturing market, on the back of the DataWorks merger. Michael Pennell, vice-president for product marketing, said Platinum remained devoted to the mid-market, currently under attack by the high-end vendors.

‘We’re not competing with SAP in the high-end. A lot of mid-market customers have not decided on a vendor, so there is no market leader in this space,’ he said.

Pennell questioned whether recent attempts by high-end ERP companies to offer three-month implementation deals were in the best interests of smaller finance departments. ‘We use Visual Basic for applications, so accounts can customise the general ledger and link it to spreadsheets,’ he said.

Platinum’s closest competitor appears to be JD Edwards. ‘It is very strong and definitely a threat, but seems to be going more upmarket,’ said Pennell.

JD multi-database policy flew in the face of market demand for Microsoft’s SQL Server.