Activant Acquires Eclipse

Activant’s acquisition of Eclipse could have benefits to Eclipse distributors and the electrical industry. Eclipse distributors will get the benefit of access to additional Activant services such as Trading Connect, Vista Information Services and possibly other services easier while at the same time we presume that there won’t be any changes to 1) the system and 2) to the customer service component. Yes, there will be changes after the sale to create some synergies, but it is doubtful that Activant would do anything to harm the business and will seek to gain cost efficiencies to improve their return (maybe some salesperson changes, some back-office (accounting/HR) synergies).

From an industry viewpoint, the benefit could be greater support for industry issues since Activant would now be able to develop solutions that would benefit a greater number of distributors “quickly” or more easily. Activant is a key partner for IDEA in supporting the IDX2 and IDW2, so we think this can only help the industry with more distributors eventually on a more common platform (or similar functionalities – although we surmise that they will have some differences to justify different brands.) The only “downside” from an industry viewpoint is now there are only 2 broad-based major ERP providers (Activant and Infor (NxTrend)), with SAP making inroads at larger independents and some national chains, but there are lots of little companies in the industry (and 3500 distributors). While price competition could be slightly affected, longer-term distributors may see higher monthly support and training fees.

From an industry viewpoint, it would also be good if IDEA could acquire Trade Service Corp as the sole distributor/contractor pricing system since IDEA is already providing the product data attribute information for TSC. This would streamline industry processes even further and help improve the quality of data throughout the industry (while helping IDEA reach a greater number of distributors). This is something that NAED and its members as well as NEMA and its members should encourage.