Made2Manage Evolves In Midmarket

These days, to more deeply penetrate midmarket companies with manufacturing solutions, Chief Executive Dave Wortman is watching Microsoft's .Net closely.

"We are focused on Microsoft," he said. "Multiple platforms are a tremendously expensive proposition, and in our market space, Microsoft has always been viewed as a safe, secure and reliable choice."

Made2Manage, based here, has made sure its product plans and channel strategy have evolved with the times. Since its inception in the 1980s, the company has offered an Enterprise Resource Planning suite for streamlining production and sales processes. But in the ensuing years, Made2Manage has added back-office applications with scheduling and demand-forecasting capabilities. The most recent addition was a suite of supply-chain applications.

On the channel front, the company is in the process of recruiting more solution provider partners that are active in developing systems for manufacturing clients, Wortman said.

"The channel marries quite well with the quality and functionality of our application suite," he said. "We have 25 partners spread across the U.S. and Canada. It's a fairly natural process geographically. The partners' good management limited their focus [to certain regions of North America. We try very hard not to create undue competition among partners."

One such partner is RSM McGladrey, Des Moines, Iowa, a wholly owned division of H&R Block that offers consulting, accounting and tax services to the midmarket.

Dave Walter, manager of RSM's manufacturing consulting group, said his clients are typically not looking to staff their own IT unit.

"We started reselling the [Made2Manage product two years ago," Walter said. "RSM has been a Great Plains accounting reseller for a long time, and we look at this as a complementary product" to the Great Plains offering, now owned by Microsoft.

The Great Plains product is a good accounting solution, but it lacks some of the manufacturing software features RSM's clients generally need, Walter said.

Customers that have benefited from Made2Manage's comprehensiveness include Monarch Manufacturing, which makes windows, and Bruin Manufacturing, which specializes in injection moldings, said Joellen Sperfslage, RSM's manager of business development. Typical implementations for companies like these proceed according to a "crawl, walk, run" mentality, Sperfslage said.

It can take four to six months just for the initial phase,which can include financial, order-entry, purchasing and materials management applications,to be completed, she said, noting that many clients later add more complex features.

Customers like Bruin, for example, selected Made2Manage when they outgrew their homegrown manufacturing solutions, Sperfslage said.

Regardless of the services its business partners offer, Made2Manage is looking to field more of them than ever before.

"We are always looking for good partners in all geographic regions," Wortman said. "The [small- and midsize-enterprise space is huge. The real challenge for us is to get broad and complete coverage."