SEDONA is moving aggressively to capture a major share of the small and mid-sized financial market in 2001 and 2002, states CEO
Marco Emrich, SEDONA
MARCO A. EMRICH is CEO of SEDONA Corporation
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TWST: Could you begin with a brief overview and history of the company?
Mr. Emrich: Originally founded in 1975 as Scangraphics, a scanner and computer peripheral manufacturer, SEDONA Corporation (Nasdaq:SDNA) went public in 1987 and underwent a significant metamorphosis, beginning in 1999. Recognizing that visualization profiling technology acquired from Lockheed Martin in 1995 held significant opportunity in the software arena, Scangraphics divested unrelated operations, renamed the company SEDONA, and began focusing exclusively in the software industry. In October 1999, I had the pleasure and opportunity to join the company, and leveraging the state-of-the-art technology acquired from Lockheed Martin, a number of software acquisitions and strategic license agreements, an aggressive internal development plan, and we started the process of realigning our business. Today, SEDONA is a fast-growing company that delivers a comprehensive Internet Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, which enables small and mid-sized businesses to optimize their return on customer relationships by personalizing the interactions between those small or mid-sized businesses with their customers. We have selected the financial services market as our first target, and as such we market and sell our CRM solution to community banks, credit unions, savings and loans, brokerage firms, and insurance agents with total assets below $10 billion. However the robustness and completeness of our CRM solution has provided us with the opportunity to acquire new customers with total assets as large as $25 billion.
TWST: Today, as you plan ahead, specifically over the next 12 months, where will the targets and focus be?
Mr. Emrich: SEDONA is moving aggressively to capture a major share of the small and mid-sized financial market (over 22,000 organizations) in 2001 and 2002 using highly effective sales distribution channels and innovative marketing programs to garner awareness and market leadership. The single strongest step toward this goal was our announcement in December 2000 of the Customer Service Agreement (CSA) with IBM’s Mid-Market Banking, Finance and Securities Group (BFS). Under the terms of this agreement, IBM will market SEDONA’s Intarsia CRM application to its financial services customers and prospects to run on the IBM iServer platform. With the IBM relationship in place, we will continue to implement our strategy of extending and building new marketing and sales distribution channels, focusing on core banking systems providers such as Jack Henry and Associates, enterprise-wide customer relationship management solution providers such as Acxiom Corporation and integration and consulting services organizations targeting the financial services markets, such as Profit Resources and DataMentors. The success of these partnerships will certainly provide us with an opportunity to expand to a new vertical market.
TWST: Is cash or capital a limitation as you look at all of these opportunities?
Mr. Emrich: These may always be an important factor when an acquisition opportunity presents itself to you. We must make sure that you are well capitalized when these opportunities occur. SEDONA has developed a number of relationships with private and institutional investors who believe in the company’s fundamentals and future potential, and may provide the necessary capital when such an opportunity presents itself.
Tickers included in this excerpt: SDNA |
