On Wednesday this week, Enprise Group held a public meeting of shareholders to approve resolutions to allow Datagate Innovation Ltd to issue up to 2.5M new $1 shares to new shareholders and to allow me (as a director of Enprise Group) to buy shares in Datagate at a pre-money valuation of $1.5M. This allows investors to invest directly in to Datagate and for Datagate to become its own more-independent vehicle.
As soon as these resolutions were passed I wasted no time in buying Datagate shares, along with two other investors. More investors will follow in buying Datagate shares in due course, bringing even more new capital in to the business.
This has changed Datagate’s shareholder composition from being 100% owned by Enprise Group to being partly owned by Enprise Group and partly owned by other shareholders (including myself). As of today, Enprise Group owns approximately 70% and other shareholders approximately 30% of Datagate. This will of course change further as other shareholders come on board.
Datagate’s board of directors currently consists of Dr. Jens Neiser as chairman (representing Enprise Group) and myself. Other directors will be added in due course.
I see this as a very positive move that will benefit the customers and partners of Enprise Software, whilst enabling Enprise Group to consolidate its focus on its two remaining businesses, Enprise Solutions and Datagate Innovation.
ProjectLine has been a very active reseller of Enprise Software products in the Canadian market and their team has a high level of expertise in Enprise products as well as the North American SAP Business One market. Their branches across Canada put them in the right time zones to give superior support to Enprise Software partners and customers right across North America and beyond. All current Enprise Software staff members will be retained within the business and Enprise Software Inc. will be a separate entity within the ProjectLine group.
Most of Enprise Software’s partners and customers reside in North America, so will be better off by having more localised support. All of Enprise Software’s partners and customers will benefit from the bigger team now backing the Enprise products.
Derin Hildebrandt (pictured) and his team at ProjectLine are high quality professionals, with a lot of experience in the SAP Business One market. They have an excellent reputation and I’m certain that Enprise Software and its team, partners and customers are in good hands. I wish them all the best!
Among Enprise’s market announcements made last week, one of the most significant was the investment made by Malcolm MacDonald, one of New Zealand’s most successful tech entrepreneurs, who bought 500,000 Enprise Group (NZAX:ENS) shares at 50 cents each.
In addition to investing in Enprise Group, Malcolm is also in the process of investing directly in to our Datagate business.
Malcolm was one of the founders and directors of BankLink, a very successful accounting software business that had direct data links to all the banks in New Zealand and Australia. BankLink was sold to MYOB in 2013 for $136M.
I am thrilled to have Malcolm join Enprise and Datagate. We have big aspirations for these businesses and Malcolm brings a significant amount of experience, expertise and wisdom to our group to help us achieve them.
This month, Enprise co-founder and former CFO, Elliot Cooper has taken up the CEO role at Enprise Group and I have shifted to a new role as CEO of our Cloud start-up business, Datagate Innovation Ltd.
Elliot and I have worked together in a number of technology businesses, starting from PC Direct in the mid 1990’s, then Exonet (creating the software now known as MYOB EXO), then Datasquirt, Enprise and EMS-Cortex.
Elliot was the initial designer of our popular “Enprise Job” Job Costing module for SAP Business One. The product is often praised as having the best General Ledger integration of all the Project Costing modules available for Business One and this is thanks mainly to Elliot’s initial design.
After being the CEO for thirteen years, it makes a nice change for me to go back to running an early stage start-up business, along with another of my long-term colleagues, Steve Southon.
Enprise Group is in good hands with Elliot at the helm. Nobody knows that business better than he does and he’s been there right from the start.
After almost thirteen years as the CEO of Enprise, I have decided to change my focus at this time to become the full-time CEO of our high-growth Cloud-Subscription Billing Engine subsidiary, Datagate Innovation.
Datagate is a new business with a compelling value proposition to the global “Cloud Economy”, in particular to resellers of Telco, Utility and on-line services. It has an exciting growth path ahead of it, which is going to involve serving businesses, large and small, all over the world.
Enprise Group has a new CEO – Elliot Cooper, who is no stranger to the business as an Enprise co-founder and CFO for almost thirteen years. In addition to his financial expertise, Elliot has extensive experience in the financial software business and was a designer of popular software products including Enprise Job and Exonet.
I will stay on board as a non-executive director of Enprise and retain a significant shareholding in the business.
We believe these changes will maximize Enprise Group’s shareholder value and better fulfill the potential of each Enprise business.
Enprise Group will retain a significant shareholding in Datagate and a director on the Datagate board, whilst allowing other investors, including myself, to invest directly in to the business.
As a high-growth Cloud company, we will raise direct investor capital to build Datagate through its formative years, before crossing over to profitability through its build-up of recurring SaaS revenues.
This week Cathy Masters and I traveled to Austin, Texas and attended the ASUG SAP Business One Summit, along with Greg Robinson and Kevin Smith of Enprise America.
This annual ASUG event is a great opportunity to catch up with Enprise’s North American reseller partners along with their customers and prospects.
This year, Cathy and Kevin demonstrated the latest versions of Enprise Job and Enprise Anywhere to our partners and their prospects.
During one of the breakout sessions, Ron Mondor of Zantek IT and Moty Moshin of coresystems demonstrated a fully integrated mobile job costing solution, comprising coresuite time, Enprise Job and SAP Business One.
Enprise Software has recently partnered with USA-based Pilot Solutions to be “Enprise North America”, offering local sales, technical and implementation support to North American Enprise channel partners.
The United States and Canada are very important, strategic markets for Enprise. Our new North American office offers local support in North American time zones. It gives our network of American and Canadian partners access to specialist resources that extend their own teams when dealing with Enprise add-ons. These include pre-sales engagements, marketing and lead development as well as implementation and consulting services.
In addition to our new local presence, we have some great new products, like “Enprise Anywhere” and “Enprise Job for SAP HANA” which we think will drive more sales for the North American channel.
Greg Robinson and Kevin Smith of Pilot Solutions (pictured above in Miami, Florida) have been friends of mine and the Enprise team for many years. They have an exceptionally good level of knowledge and experience around Enprise products and the SAP Business One channel.
I’m extremely glad to have Greg, Kevin and the Pilot team working in North America, as part of the Enprise team.
Enprise‘s development team has recently switched to using an SAP HANA development environment, hosted by I-BN.
We have been delighted with the quality of service that we’ve received from Gary Feldman and his team at I-BN. They are very responsive to our requests and have deep expertise in the software and technology they are working with.
Based in Georgia USA, I-BN are specialists in hosting business software in the Cloud. In particular they specialize and have many years of experience in hosting SAP Business One and the SAP HANA platform.
Enprise Group has a proven strategy and track record when it comes to building successful, valuable software businesses. We are listed on the NZAX, we are based in New Zealand and Australia, – and we deliver software solutions to businesses around the world.
I recently recorded this video to outline what we do.
Enprise Software’s newest product, “Enprise Anywhere” has been well received by the North American SAP Business One channel, with several large orders received within days of the product’s release.
Enprise Anywhere is a mobile extension of our popular “Enprise Job” solution and allows mobile workers to look up and update job information from out in the field, using a tablet or smart phone.
Last week, Enprise Software GM Cathy Masters and I met with our North American partners at the SAP Business One Innovation Summit in Miami. Everyone there was upbeat about the many exciting new product innovations from SAP and from solution partners like Enprise.
Of particular interest was SAP’s demonstration of the new HTML5 version of SAP Business One, which looks just like the Windows version, has similar capabilities and runs in a web browser. This will be an ideal companion to Enprise Anywhere, where the emphasis of the Business One suite is moving towards the browser.
Mark Loveys 