Lawson Deepens Health-care Expertise

Lawson acquires Apexion Technologies, provider of health-care surgical instrument management and supply tracking software.

Digging deeper into vertical markets, Lawson Software Inc. announced this morning the acquisition of Apexion Technologies Inc., which provides health-care surgical instrument management and supply tracking software. Lawson, of St. Paul, Minn., develops enterprise resource planning software.
The acquisition will help Lawson develop greater expertise in the health-care vertical—a key area for the company as it looks to expand into a number of vertical markets through technology acquisitions—and should assist hospitals in tracking operating room instruments and optimizing ERP systems, officials said. Apexions applications provide visibility and control of inventory. This is a propitious time for Lawson to strengthen its product portfolio as the ERP software industry braces for the next big shakeup—or consolidation, as the case may be. With the acquisition of Apexion, Lawson is hoping to better compete with the No. 2 ERP software provider in the world, PeopleSoft Inc., which has a partnership with Apexion, of San Francisco. PeopleSoft recently completed its own acquisition—of J.D. Edwards & Co., a midtier ERP player that specializes in manufacturing. That acquisition catapulted PeopleSoft, which is prominent in the human resources and government verticals, ahead of rival Oracle Corp. in terms of ERP market share. Oracle, for its part, launched a hostile takeover bid at PeopleSoft earlier this summer, hoping to regain its foothold in the applications market. That merger is under investigation by the Department of Justice and is expected to resolve itself sometime in the fall. Subject to shareholder agreement, Lawsons acquisition of Apexion should be finalized within the next 45 days. Lawson expects to retain most of Apexions employees. Apexions president, Maher Hakim, will become vice president of product development of Lawsons health-care business unit. A new product based on Apexions applications and mobile platform will be announced by the end of this year, Lawson officials said.