Hi Rob.
Everything you mentioned is true. The real key for the company will be if they can translate all the money they have invested in R&D into a viable product. Last I heard they were developing a non VFP version. Also I am wondering how long they can keep operating at a loss. I don't know what there results are for this year & quarter. Unless they start making money this quarter, they will face some tough decisions to make toward the end of the year.
It will be harder for them to post a gain in the last quarter of the year, since most large purchase decisions by businesses to buy software will be made before then.
Good Luck with your decision,
Alp
>Hi Alp:
>
>I did check the M2M financial pages, including the SEC filing docs, and what I saw was a big loss for 1999 vs 1998, but considering Y2K procurement slowdowns, plus their fresh investments in e-business portal, SQL server version, and so forth, it did not look unreasonable. There looked like reasonable sales made for the period as far as I could tell, but I'm no financial wizard. The question, of course, is whether the investments will pay off in more sales to offset the cost of the investments in the internal company infrastructure... Sure, I'd like not to have seen the loss last year, but I'm not sure I can project that into ongoing problems unless you know of something else I should be looking into.
>
>I do know that the source code is held in escrow, and licensees have the ability to obtain it in the event the company (M2M) goes out of business, so I'm not so concerned as I would be otherwise.
>
>Do you know anything more specific or is the concern just the drop in profit compared with past years of ever increasing sales and profits?
>
>Thanx for your insights and help.
>
>Rob
>
>>Hi Rob.
>>Check out there web site
www.made2manage.com for financial statements or check out some related Wall street market web pages for Made2Manage.
>>Alp
>>>>>Hi All:
>>>>>
>>>>>Just started working for a company that makes the robots that make computer chips. We have an existing home-grown Paradox-7 app for tracking sales orders, inventory, production status (with graphing), purchasing, etc. The existing application is flaky and slow, to say the least, under NT, and probably won't even run under Win2000, and the Paradox programmers have all left, so I got agreement to migrate into a VFP platform - or some client/server system. The total current and projected data file needs are less than 500 MB, so VFP should be just fine...
>>>>>
>>>>>In the interests of expediency, I hope to find a 3rd party manufacturing system package that covers the majority of what is in the existing app, then add on custom features as needed. I know of the Lahey and TIW Corp add-ons for SBT, and I think TIW can also work with AccountMate. We won't need all the accounting features from SBT or other package, as the front office now uses Computer Associates GL, etc. (although that could change). I have had very limited contact with SBT and AccountMate in the past, and not much recently. I know they have supporters and detractors here. In any case, these all look like possibilities, but I wondered if anyone else on UT has other suggestions?
>>>>>
>>>>>I am just wrapping up my analysis of the existing system, so I need to get serious about evaluting alternatives.
>>>>>
>>>>>Your thoughts on this will be much appreciated.
>>>>>
>>>>>TIA
>>>>>
>>>>>Rob
>>>>
>>>>Rob,
>>>>Some Thoughts: M2M's SQL server interface can be slow in a production environment. Also I believe the Company has been having financial issues you may want to examine their financial postings, they are a publicly traded Company.
>>>>
>>>>Alp Berker
>>>
>>>Hi Alp:
>>>
>>>The SQL Server performance issue is not important to us at this time as we will start with VFP only.
>>>
>>>The financial stuff, though, is very much of concern, so I will have to look into that first thing tomorrow after I get settled back in...
>>>
>>>Many thanx for the tip. I hope its unfounded, but if not I owe you big time!
>>>
>>>Thanx.
>>>
>>>Rob
