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January 1, 2002

The Dozen 2002

PeopleSoft Inc.

Pleasanton, Calif.

The place to start talking about PeopleSoft is the numbers. In a year most IT companies would soon like to forget, PeopleSoft's growing revenues and profits have made a lasting impression. Craig Conway came aboard in May 1999, taking control of a listing ship that was having serious execution problems. The market for ERP had hit a deep trough, and many wondered whether the mania for e-business software would sink not only PeopleSoft, but also the entire sector.

While the ERP market has recovered since those dark days, most of the key players are struggling in a weak economy. But not PeopleSoft: In the quarter ending September 30 2001, revenues increased 15 percent over the prior year, and income was up 113 percent. That might tell you something about how bad things were; however, it also speaks volumes about the correction course Conway has engineered. In launching the Web-enabled PeopleSoft 8, Conway addressed quality issues in both software and services, surrounding the company with certified consultants and systems integrators. PeopleSoft is now perceived as a mature company that addresses what customers need to derive value from enterprise applications.

What is PeopleSoft's vision? One word: collaboration. For all their efficiency benefits, packaged applications have generally not given companies an enterprisewide vision of business performance. Managers have had little ability to share data from operational systems for critical planning and forecasting. Instead, most have remained stuck in "spreadsheet hell," spending too much time trying to determine who has the best data with which to plan. While "collaboration" means many things in today's lingo — B2B marketplaces, sharing business processes with partners — the bottom line is that no collaboration can be effective without an enterprise (and potentially, interenterprise) view of reliable, high-quality data.

DATA-DRIVEN COLLABORATION

In other words, PeopleSoft got data religion. The cornerstone is Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) — a comprehensive, analytic-application platform that emphasizes closing the loop between analytics and operations. Using Informatica's PowerMart and open interfaces to other BI providers, EPM offers a serious "buy" alternative in the "buy vs. build" debate currently roiling the data warehousing industry. However, EPM's true payoff is in linking analytics to processes and enabling users to move from mere business performance measurement to sophisticated planning, including scenario development. EPM also helps PeopleSoft enrich its role-based portals with event-driven analytics and exception-based reporting.

Next on Conway's agenda: enterprise services automation. Standing on solid performance, PeopleSoft's expansion sounds credible.

MAJOR MOVES IN 2001

· Introduced PeopleSoft 8 CRM

· Acquired Cohera Corp.

· Released PeopleSoft 8.4 Strategic Sourcing, for managing complex bidding and procurement negotiation

CLASSIC CUSTOMERS

· Detroit Edison used EPM's Activity-Based Management to analyze the performance of business processes

· Thomson Financial created an enterprise CRM platform, enabling it to manage all aspects of client relationships from a single system