Month: February 2020

Philly EnterpriseTech Highlights 2/19 to 2/21: Another SAP reorg; Comcast said to seek Vudu

Philly-based GoMoto, provider of information kiosks for auto dealers, acquired by Ohio firm

Tom Paine

GoMoto, a Philadelphia startup which provides a kiosk system that auto dealers use in the sales process, has been acquired by Reynolds & Reynolds, an Ohio-based supplier of information systems for auto dealers, it was announced today. The price was not disclosed.

According to an SEC filing, GoMoto, which has been around for at least six years, raised $2.2 million in some combination of equity and debt a year ago. It raised $700,000 in seed financing in 2014.

GoMoto CEO Todd Marcelle applied what he had learned in auto sales to build an interactive system that pre-qualifies customers prior to talking with a rep. GoMoto has penetration into “several hundred dealerships.”

SAP Continues to Drive Transformation of the Company

SAP Continues to Drive Transformation of the Company

PR NewswireFebruary 20, 2020

WALLDORF, Germany, Feb. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that the company is taking the next step toward more customer-centric operations and processes to successfully support customers in their digital transformation.

SAP Logo
SAP Logo

Outstanding products, exemplary support and service processes, as well as industry know-how are crucial for customers. Equally important are clear and simple communication channels, a uniform appearance and transparency in terms of product strategy and integration scenarios. To achieve these goals, SAP is making the following organizational changes:

  • Sales, service and related customer success organizations will be bundled in the Customer Success board area managed by Adaire Fox-Martin.
  • Product management, development and product support will also come together under one board area led by Thomas Saueressig.
  • Juergen Mueller will be responsible for delivering one seamlessly integrated data management solution in addition to managing SAP’s overall platform and technology development as well as intelligent technologies. Saueressig and Mueller’s board areas will continue to work closely together.

As part of these changes, most former SAP Digital Business Services organization teams will be fully integrated in Fox-Martin and Saueressig’s board areas. With the exception of Qualtrics, CX Engineering, CX Product Strategy, and major parts of Concur, all Cloud Business Group board teams will also be integrated into the new organizational model.

To deliver both best of breed and best of suite, SAP is establishing six primary solution areas: SAP Customer Experience, SAP S/4HANA, People (SAP SuccessFactors), Intelligent Spend (inclusive of SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Concur), SAP HANA & Analytics, and Qualtrics. SAP Cloud Platform will serve as the underlying technology platform for all these areas.

“Our customers rightly expect our portfolio of services to be seamlessly integrated and for all solutions to work together smoothly. SAP’s success is dependent on customers’ trust in our competence and ability to solve their challenges of the future,” said Christian Klein, Co-CEO of SAP SE.

“In order to be able to present ourselves credibly as ONE SAP, we have further strengthened the potential of our organization and merged functions across divisions. We are convinced that this will ensure the long-term success of both our customers and SAP. This is what we are fully focused on,” said Jennifer Morgan, Co-CEO of SAP SE.

Executive Board Members Stefan Ries and Michael Kleinemeier to Leave SAP

SAP Executive Board Members Stefan Ries and Michael Kleinemeier have agreed with the Supervisory Board of SAP SE to leave the company. Ries will depart at the end of May 2020, while Kleinemeier’s last day will be April 30, 2020.

Ries (53) joined SAP in 2002. By 2010 he was responsible for various human resources (HR) functions, heading up the HR Business Partner organization and overseeing all HR functions on an operational level. Between 2010 and 2014 he was a consultant with Egon Zehnder International. He then returned to SAP and was appointed to the Executive Board in April 2016.

Kleinemeier (62) joined SAP in 1989 and has held various leadership roles, including head of Industry Solutions, managing director of Germany and president of the Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE) region. He was appointed to the Executive Board in 2015, heading SAP Digital Business Services.

“Without Stefan and Michael, SAP would not be where it is today,” said Professor Hasso Plattner, chairman of the Supervisory Board of SAP SE. “I would like to thank them both for their many years of close collaboration. Stefan played a major role in making SAP one of the most attractive employers in Germany and internationally, creating a workplace at SAP that drives innovation, performance and engagement. Michael has had a lasting influence on our success and that of our customers for over 30 years. Under his leadership, the Services and Support divisions have played a key role in helping customers on their way to becoming intelligent companies.”

Cision

Philly EnterpriseTech Weekend Highlights 2/14-2/16: Bentley Systems files for Public Listing; Judge grants Amazon motion for pause in Microsoft’s JEDI contract

A change in New Jersey’s cable map

Tom Paine

Cable television provider Altice said Wednesday it will purchase Service Electric’s operations in New Jersey. Service Electric’s franchise areas in New Jersey are in Hunterdon, Warren and Sussex Counties. The price will be $250 million.

Service Electric, based in Bethlehem, has a rather unique history. John Walson had a TV store in Mahanoy, PA, but over-the-air reception was poor in the mountainous region. In 1948, Walson ran a cable from his store to an antenna he placed on top of a nearby mountain. The idea was to be able to demo broadcast content in his store. But as the story goes, he found he could hook residences near the cable route onto his system. Many in the industry believe this was first commercial cable TV system.

Service Electric still has its Pennsylvania systems, in the Lehigh Vallley, the Wilkes-Barre area, and pieces of Chester, Berks and Lancaster Counties. It’s still controlled by the Walson family.

The New Jersey systems that New York-based Altice (formerly Cablesystem) is acquiring are contiguous to its preexisting territories. But they are also contiguous to Comcast territories.

The cable industry was once all about buying and selling systems, But now there are only a few major systems left, and not many sizable independents to buy. Since withdrawing from the Time Warner Cable sales process, Comcast has not been a buyer in the US, with the exception of some tiny fill-in spots mostly in New England (Comcast “not welcome” here: Customers protest sale of tiny cable company)

. Its not known whether it showed interest in the New Jersey Service Electric systems.

Today in Philly Tech History 2/14/2012: Capital One’s $9 billion acquisition of Wilmington-based ING Direct USA gets Fed approval

Eight years ago, on February 14, 2012, Capital One’s $9 billion acquisition of Wilmington-based Internet bank ING Direct USA won approval from the Federal Reserve, clearing the way for the deal to close within a few days.

The deal, announced in June 2011, featured a Wilmington-bred success story although its parent, Netherlands-based ING Groep NV, had to auction it off to satisfy European banking regulators. ING Direct USA added $80 billion in deposits and 7 million customers to Capital One.

ING Diect’s loyal customer base was concerned about how Capital One would change its newly acquired bank. Indeed, some of those changes were just implemented, as ING Direct has been renamed Capital One 360, and ING Direct’s famous orange logo was taken down early this month and driven away and replaced with a spiffy new Capital One sign on the headquarters building in downtown Wilmington.

Philly EnterpriseTech Highlights 2/12 & 2/13

Former Inquirer owner

Exton-based Bentley Systems confidentially files S-1 for Public Listing

Tom Paine

Infrastructure management software firm BenItley Systems announced late this afternoon that it has confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC to have its existing Class B common publicly traded.

As I understand it, this would be what is known as a direct listing. Slack is one recent example of a direct listing. It would not be an IPO.

Bentley has kicked the tires of an IPO before, filing in 2002 and 2015, but didn’t proceed to an offering.

2018 revenue was $700 million.

One issue that comes to mind is the China market, which is where much of Bentley’s recent growth has come from.

Philly EnterpriseTech Highlights 2/10 to 2/11/20: Will Bill McDermott and ServiceNow Be CRM King-Makers?; Judge Approves T-Mobile Merger With Sprint

Today in Philly Tech History 2/10/1998: CDNow completes IPO

On February 10, 1998, CDNow, started in 1994 by twin brothers Jason and Matthew Olim out of their parent’s basement in Ambler, completed its initial public offering. The online music retailer, which sparked a revolution in music distribution, closed the day up 37.5% at $22, from its opening price of $16. CDNow raised $65.6 million, and had a market capitalization of $342 million at day’s end. Based in Jenkintown at the time it went public, it later moved to Fort Washington.

When it went public, its prior year revenue was $17.4 million, with a net loss of $10.7 million. Shortly afterwards, CDNow acquired its largest competitor, another Philadelphia area company named N2K. Revenue grew rapidly to a $150 million run rate, and CDNow was an early innovator in ecommerce and web marketing techniques.

However, as the crisis in the Internet economy materialized in 2000, investors lacked confidence in CDNow’s financial performance and future outlook. The company slashed its workforce and soon sold itself (after a prospective merger with Columbia House fell through) to German media giant Bertelsmann in the summer of 2000 for $117 million. The brand later ended up with Amazon, and gradually faded away.

Mike Krupit was serving in a CIO/CTO role for CDNow at the time of the IPO. He soon afterwards became COO and later CEO after Bertelsmann took over. He had already seen a couple of companies he had been with go public, including Infonautics. I asked him by email what things were like for CDNow at the time of its IPO. His response:

“CDNow was one of the first dotcom and ecommerce companies to go public. Obviously, we were thrilled to be able to put the money in the bank and have [it] to invest in our growth. But we also knew it didn’t guarantee our success. It was tremendously exciting for the team, [though] as you’d imagine, the honeymoon doesn’t last too long.”

“Culturally, it’s a double-edged sword. The expectations of the IPO isn’t always met by the reality. The dream of the value of our equity is now something easily calculated. When the stock is up – great; when not, demotivating. We also had to stop sharing lots of information with the team. A lot of healthy chatter had to stop by being a publicly-traded company, which was a big change to CDNOW’s startup culture.”

Krupit told Technically Philly last summer that what ultimately killed the company was the planned merger with Columbia House; CDNow focused much of its resources on that and when it fell through there wasn’t much of a backup plan.