by Barry Burke
The enthusiasm of youth is a great thing. In 1998, my partners and I made a bold decision to set up Developing World Systems Limited (DWS). At the time, we had no idea of what lay ahead of us.
Despite our naivety, we had the good sense to align our company to the JD Edwards ERP product. It proved to be a wise decision as, 20 years on, there is a thriving global community of over 6,000 JDE customer organizations.
We were convinced that if we wanted to do more than merely survive in the extremely competitive services industry, we would need to develop (and sustain) a gold standard reputation as a partner and supplier.
At times, this meant making some tough decisions. On more than one occasion, we chose to turn down a project if we felt that it had unrealistic expectations. We weren’t in it to make a ‘quick buck’, but rather to show our customers (and Oracle) that we were invested for the long term.
Over the past 20 years, we have had the privilege to work with some extraordinary customers, staff and partners. Nobody can ever know everything, and its true to say that we continue to learn new things all the time. The JDE community is enriched by customers who are doing some very clever things with the software.
DWS has helped contribute to the community in its own way down the years. Our commitment to innovation has seen us introduce a range of JDE E1-specifc products and services; including Analyze™, our upgrade audit service, SwifTest™, our test automation software, and Tempo™, the first code-current service for JDE E1 customers with a fixed-price subscription.
We have witnessed a great deal of change over the years; from host-centric to client-server and now web-based computing. We’ve kept ourselves agile and have adapted well to everything the industry has thrown at us. Remember when there was resistance to remote working? Now everything is optimized for mobility.
Cloud-based services look set to dominate the future of ERP, offering customers greater choice and control. DWS is well placed to help customers on their journey to digital transformation; as we maintain the commitment that has seen us help hundreds of customers from around the world.
Here’s to the next 20 years!
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