Last month, Agilera named Rob Unger CEO of the Englewood, Colo.-based ASP. The former COO replaced chairman and CEO Paul Rudolph. Unger discussed the company's new focus with VARBusiness associate editor E.B. Flanagan.
VABusiness: Agilera has never had any glaring management problems, and it's receiving better customer traction than many other ASPs. So, what was the reason for the executive restructuring?
Unger: Basically, we are taking a look at our past performance and feel a need to go back to our core business processes. To be frank with you, some of it has to do with what's happening in the macro-economic world today. It is a dangerous environment, and we want to make sure we stay healthy and well-managed. I think we have done a great job strategically in positioning ourselves and in getting client traction. We have great relationships with our software partners, and we want to make sure we are focused on executing our core operations. We are refocusing on those apps our clients are expecting, and this move is ensuring our focus is in line with our customers' needs.
VB: Which specific areas of your operations need better execution?
Unger: We are very well-positioned on the infrastructure side, and we want to continue developing products on the vertical-industry side. The other side is to refocus on our core competencies. Our infrastructure is capable of supporting 14 different applications through our partnerships, but in light of the macro-economic environment, we have to readjust. Six of those 14 applications are really driv-ing our business, and we need to respect and honor that.
VB: Which applications do you most favor as you move forward?
Unger: CRM, ERP and e-business will remain our vertical-application focus. This does not reflect a change in our business model at this point. We are still an enterprise ASP, which means we need to be able to do back-office e-commerce projects, ERP projects and productivity applications. We still have strategic relationships with JD Edwards, Oracle, SAP, Ariba and Lawson. For the most part, the partners haven't changed. There are a few that we will probably proceed with more opportunistically, as opposed to strategically, as we move forward, but that reflects the core applications our clients are buying. A lot of the extra stuff we were trying to develop is being put on the back burner.
VB: What specific applications were you developing that will be most affected by your back-to-basics restructuring?
Unger: We were working with a few different e-commerce applications. We had varying relationships with some folks in an OEM manner, but now we just want to concentrate on our operations side. Our focus is to make sure our clients continue to be supported the way they are used to being supported.
VB: Which software partners will remain a key part of your future-looking strategy?
Unger: PeopleSoft, Oracle, JD Edwards, Lawson, Ariba, SAP and Seibel. Those partners cover the three application verticals we mentioned earlier.
VB: Agilera relies on Verio to provide the infrastructure aspect of the ASP delivery chain, but it plays in both the management services and application services industry. Why have you chosen to offer both levels of service instead of focusing on one and partnering for the other?
Unger: It's simple,both of those areas are our core competencies. Part of the value of an ASP is in helping clients eliminate the number of partnerships they need to manage on a long-term basis. By providing services in both categories, we are making the ASP value chain simpler for the client to manage. Having to manage multiple relationships is contradictory to the value of an ASP.
