Lawson Software F1Q08 (Qtr End 8/31/07) Earnings Call Transcript

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2007-10-04 17:11:47.0

Tags: Lawson Software Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Your first question comes from Greg Dunham - Deutsche Bank.

Greg Dunham - Deutsche Bank

Now that we're over a year with Intentia, I would like a little perspective on salesforce productivity. Where we think this can go, the impact of hiring Eduardo Sanchez in the near term and longer term and just the tactical things you're doing there.

Harry Debes

Greg, that's one of the reasons that we brought Eduardo to the team so that he could spend full time focusing on this very question. Because undeniably, though we added more salespeople in the last year, it wasn't just the 30% addition -- don't forget there was also some culling and some turnover that we had in our salesforce, so I would tell you probably closer to 50% of the total salesforce of about 200 people is relatively new to the company. It takes a little while to get them trained, to get them involved in the pipeline development and to get true productivity.

The kinds of things we're doing there is standardizing methodology, increased training and product certification, narrowing their focus so that they're actually pursuing leads and opportunities in our market so that we don't waste our opportunity time pursuing non-critical transactions, and then of course ultimately holding them accountable to those things that we asked them to do. So this is a transformation activity; it takes time, but at this point we're making progress.

Greg Dunham - Deutsche Bank

Thinking about some of the weakness in North America this quarter, I know that you guys are doing well with the Movex brand and moving that over. Have you seen any change from a purchasing perspective? Is it economic? Was it execution? What are your thoughts there in terms of just some of the contracting weakness here?

Harry Debes

So let me first of all remind you that what I said is that I believe that weakness that we had, in the U.S. in particular, is temporary. It was, I believe, a combination of a big Q4 and perhaps some execution issues. However, I have no reservation about telling you that it's temporary.

Operator

Next question comes from Brad Smith – Dougherty & Co.

Brad Smith - Dougherty & Co.

Good afternoon, guys. Good job. Just to follow-up on Greg's question on the sales perspective, I am curious if your expectations around the pace of hiring for the full year have changed at all?

 

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