Blog: Craig Schiff

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Cartesis Back on Track

Cartesis is a French BPM vendor that had achieved significant success in the area of complex, multi-national, statutory consolidation. They had two problems however - consolidation has been one of the slower growth areas of BPM, and their North American operation was stagnating. Clearly a change was in order. That change started with new investors, a new CEO in France, and a revamp of the U.S.-based executive team. We recently met with members of that team and were impressed with their execution to date and plans for the future.

The new President of North America came from Business Objects, as did the new head of marketing. We met with them at their offices in Norwalk, CT to get the lay of the land. They shared with us their two-pronged strategy for success in this highly-competitive market: reduce time to market by quickly acquiring the weak or missing pieces (budgeting, information delivery), and hire a proven BPM-experienced sales staff. Cartesis has been executing on this strategy already. In June they acquired INEA, a small BPM player, for their budgeting and forecasting capabilities. More recently they picked up a small consulting company that had developed products around information delivery. On the sales front they have been hiring ex-Hyperion and OutlookSoft reps. The strategy seems to be working. In the last quarter they closed a $ 3 million+ deal. I think they are on track to become a key player in North America. Comments welcome.

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