MICROS-Retail to Incorporate eOne E-commerce Solutions
Retail technology provider Datavantage/CommercialWare, a subsidiary of MICROS Systems, Inc., will integrate solutions from e-commerce solutions provider eOne Group into the renamed MICROS Retail later this year.
Datavantage/CommercialWare has just acquired a 51% interest in eOne Group, which will allow MICROS Retail to offer extensive e-commerce applications to its users in addition to the currently available Datavantage/Commercial suite of retail solutions.
We believe that this good acquisition is an excellent move, both for the MICROS Retail suite of applications and for CommercialWare customers. eOne can give most direct marketers a high percentage of the functionality that they need at a cost-competitive price. eOne will be sold as a fully integrated product with CommercialWare and as a standalone e-commerce solution for non-MICROS customers. For those who don’t have experience with eOne, it’s far more sophisticated than the elementary storefronts and shopping carts that most order management software providers offer.
This acquisition is part of the long-term push by software vendors that we mention in our article “ERP Software and the Multichannel World,” which describes how order management vendors are developing ERP suites of applications. Escalate Retail (acquiring Blue Martini), Sigma Micro and Junction Solutions have developed or purchased e-commerce solutions prior to this acquisition by MICROS Retail; software-as-a-service provider PCS is developing its own e-commerce solution.
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Curt Barry is president of F. Curtis Barry & Co., a fulfillment consulting company assisting multichannel businesses with order management and inventory management systems evaluation and implementation; online at: http://www.fcbco.com.