ERP Software

PeopleSoft ERP Software Review

The PeopleSoft name and product line are today marketed by the Oracle Corporation, the company that bought PeopleSoft in 2004. PeopleSoft was started by Dave Duffield in 1987 when together with Ken Morris, he wanted to work in a business that would focus on personal computer networks –an area which he viewed with much potential. Duffield took an interest in the burgeoning personal computer networking industry. At a time when mainframes were still the dominant platform for large and mid-sized companies, and Integral (Duffield’s previous company venture) had profited handsomely by chasing that big market, striking out to pursue the development of something else entirely took a lot of foresight.

By 1988, the company already enjoyed revenues of two-hundred thousand dollars; and it was only the first year of sales. This same year, PeopleSoft was able to sign a deal with Eastman Kodak and this represented a huge vote of confidence.

It did not take long for PeopleSoft Inc. to reach the status of global leader in enterprise application software. With more than four-thousand customers total in the varying fields of customer relations management, human resources management, financial management, and supply chain management, clients included businesses of all sizes –from small to some of the largest enterprises in the world.

In the early 90s, the explosive growth of PeopleSoft was truly unparalleled. During those years, PeopleSoft controlled an impressive fifty percent share of the entire human resources software market. The company rose to prominence based on its unique management formula combined with the growth in client-server systems. By the time many former mainframe software developers began joining PeopleSoft in the client-server market, PeopleSoft was already benefitting from 'clean technology,' meaning that its applications had been written specifically for client-server rather than been converted from a mainframe environment.

By the middle of the decade, PeopleSoft controlled roughly twenty percent of the United States client-server software market. The company continued to benefit from tremendous growth and profitability. In fact, PeopleSoft's sales more than tripled to five-hundred and seventy-five million dollars in 1994. Net income also rose from eight million to fourteen million dollars over the same period of time.

PeopleSoft entered the giant manufacturing market in 1995. That was when the company first began to design for manufacturers of automobiles, electronics, and consumer durables. The manufacturing industry offered tremendous growth potential because client-server software sales to that sector were growing at a rate of seventy-eight percent annually, at that time.

According to a research firm's report, PeopleSoft gained a lot of industry recognition in 1997 when it redesigned its product using a three-tier architecture, which provided corporate users of the software system more flexibility in how the software was implemented and how it was used.

Written by :

Amy Cruz