It is always interesting to meet with members of the investment community and hear their perspective on what an effective acquisition strategy entails.   Very seldom do outsiders understand the significance of the subjective side of an acquisition in the services industry.  Our assets are, without a doubt, comprised of groups of highly intelligent people across the globe who most of the time have a number of options as to what they want to do for a living and for whom they want to work.  So, the big question is “what is the expected value of an acquisition”.  You certainly hope that the answer is that it is perpetual and will become an invaluable part of building an even better company that, as our CEO likes to say, “is built to last”.  That is what we have tried to achieve at Sierra Atlantic.  We believe that our most recent acquisition of Baytree Associates out of Charolette, N.C. will be one we look back on as a strategic step in building a great company.

Sierra Atlantic considers a number of potential acquisition opportunities each year, many of which are in areas that are complementary our strengths and capabilities.  Evaluating technical skills is actually one of the easier steps in the process.  The real work comes when you dig into the culture of the company, its people and its customer satisfaction.  That is what we looked for with Baytree.  We discovered a group of highly motivated, competent consultants who had year-after-year demonstrated the ability to grow their business, achieve consistent profitability, and win customers long-term loyalty with the high quality and reliability of their work.  That was the key as far as we were concerned.  If you achieve these three attributes, you will be successful in this business.

It has been just over a month and things are going quite well.  There have been no surprises and while we are successfully integrating the two companies, we both agreed that anything we did subsequent to the merger needed to be secondary to continuing to offer the best possible service to our respective customers.  I am confident that this is being accomplished and that everything else will fall into place.  We are seeing a strong recovery in IT services and while there are still a number of challenges brought about by the economic landscape over the  past two years, we are very optimistic about our future growth opportunities and are happy to be exploring these possibilities with our newest partners at Baytree Associates.

Hello everyone.  In only my second month with Sierra Atlantic, thanks to the blog page I am already being published!  We are 34 days into the merger of Baytree Associates with Sierra Atlantic.  When I first spoke with Raju and Bob back in January, we talked about how our two companies could fit together and complement each other.  Sierra Atlantic’s broad Oracle footprint and international delivery capabilities would be a welcome addition for Baytree.  At the same time, Baytree’s Southeast presence and functional consultants were a good compliment to Sierra Atlantic’s business.

During the first month together, those strengths are being proven out, and are already being leveraged.  What I am also discovering is that the two cultures and approaches toward our people are very similar.  I was given the privilege of presenting some kudos at the all-employees call on April 19, and it was a pleasure to read through the write-ups on the winners.  Sierra Atlantic clearly has a high caliber of people who value the quality of their work.  That is a formula for success in any business, and has been a basic tenet of Baytree’s success for 16 years.  This common strength, I think is every bit as important as the strategic alignment we saw back in January.

So I look forward to working with all of you; and meeting as many of you as possible in person; and using our common work ethic as  a strength on which to further build on our successes.

We recently conducted a very successful webinar “Peer Advice: The Inside Story on Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite R12” in collaboration with CIO.com. One of our customers Clopay Corporation, the nation’s largest manufacturer of residential garage doors along with Oracle Corporation participated sharing their insight and experience. This webinar was very well attended with large number of CIO’s and VP’s of IT throughout North America. You can view more details at our website. A large part of the webinar was devoted to Clopay Corporation discussing their R12 upgrade journey with details on strategy, business case, execution, successes measurement and finally advises to CIOs. Oracle also updated the participants on the business benefits they will realize upgrading to R12. One of the benefits to live interactive webinars is that you can get real world feedback on the fly.

When we asked the participants “Are you planning to upgrade to Oracle EBS R12? More than 50% of the participants mentioned that they are not looking for upgrading to R12 in 2010. I was really surprised that more participants hadn’t started the upgrade planning process. There are many benefits that can be realized by upgrading. Part of the reason could be waiting for Fusion. I expect Oracle will be clearer on this path over the next few months. Companies that are starting to research their service provider will be on top of their game. An interesting next question was – What is your reason for not upgrading until now? 32% of the participants cited no in-house bandwidth as the reason with 30% not sure about ROI. This partially answered above response. Choosing a right service provider to help with your upgrade is critical – given the R12 upgrade momentum, one might want to consider moving fast to get the right attention from a provider whose capabilities fit the best. Creating an ROI can be daunting; this is where methodical approach such as Clopay’s can help in overcoming the issue. Every organization is unique – with Oracle and service provider’s help, IT leadership team can make an appropriate case with ease. I would love to hear your thoughts. Have you started your upgrade yet? If you haven’t started the upgrade what is the reason? I look forward to your feedback and thoughts on this interactive blog.

As I sit down to write my first blog for Sierra Atlantic, I’m glad that I have pleasant things to share. The market is showing encouraging signs of recovery. The Sierra Atlantic brand is enjoying greater recognition worldwide. We won significant new accounts – in North America, Europe, and Asia. Our positions and revenue at current accounts is expanding. BankON, a straight-through transaction, won recognitions and customers right away. Strategically, we’re in a strong position to make acquisitions to strengthen our areas of focus or consolidate our positions. In the coming days, we’ll tell you more about our recent acquisition of Baytree Associates.

Since founding Sierra Atlantic in 1993, we built a strong foundation represented by our financial strength, our pool of talent that includes a world class management team, and a culture of innovation. One of the contributing factors to our stability is the deep relationships we have formed with our customers. A significant source of our revenue is from our lateral growth within accounts. We have focused on being an Oracle service provider of excellence to medium and large-sized companies in a few chosen sectors and, over the years, we have built a reputation for our expertise and the quality of our work in both IT services and outsourced product development.

Our fundamental, organic growth has always been strong and we built a culture and the processes that ensure the integration of the acquired companies into a whole. I believe it is very critical for a medium sized company to have a culture that encourages a strong sense of identity, ownership, and innovation. This is one of the traits that distinguish us from other outsourcing service providers and helps cultivate trusted relationships with our customers, partners, and within our company. This blog is another vehicle of communication that can help us in that effort and I’ll try to stay in touch with you through this.

Welcome to the official Sierra Atlantic blog! Let’s get to know each other, shall we?

You may recognize us as one of many things:  an Oracle partner (and Platinum, at that!), a global services provider, a source for product development…but it’s time to take our relationship to the next level. Think of it as the next logical step in our information-sharing courtship…

Not to worry; we’ll take it slowly. We’ll introduce you to our talented array of executives, offer a glimpse into our various business units, and share a little piece of what life is like as a Sierran. Sound like fun? We think so too!

Perhaps Bogart said it best:  “…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”