Corel is badly managed, that's all there is to it. There are several methods by which could turn Corel into a multi-billion dollar outfit but they don't have the clarity of thought to see them. First of all, they are the also-ran office product and the "standard" has been set by Microsoft. Corel should go out of their way to conform in as much as possible to Microsoft's user-interface visually and mechanically. They should be the no-name, store-brand product that is every bit as good as the "real" thing but a lot cheaper. There are some compelling business reasons for doing so.
Business only cares about the work product and the total cost of production and I'm convinced that the default look and feel of Corel's products should match Microsoft's precisely. Microsoft already made sure that they have no legal claim to the interface by winning the legal battle with Apple. Moreover, Microsoft file formats should handled totally transparently and Microsoft's file formats should be adopted as the standard for Corel's products. Along those lines, the industry should insist on standard file formats such as XML which in time could replace Microsoft's. Until then, let's not forget we're still in Rome.
The second thing I would do if I were the CEO of Corel, is to simply annihilate Visio. That's an area where Corel should have been focused years ago but Visio is so incredibly lame that the door is still wide open there. Why Corel doesn't have this dirt-simple, vector-based drawing package is beyond me. Of course, this would take a team of skilled object-oriented software engineers and Corel proved that they didn't have that talent with the failed Java office-pack effort. They may have learned from that experience, let's hope so.
Finally, I would incrementally wipe out IBM's eSuite. Software has a time-value which makes it difficult for late starters to catch up to the level of stability and feature sets incorporated into seasoned software -- provided that software is coherently designed. All of this could be achieved with focus and one sure way to achieve that is to lose the unfocused, headless chicken currently at the helm. |
