(...)"The outlook for 2009 is to maintain or slightly increase sales in comparison with last year”(...)

Rui Santos, Arquiconsult CEO

Arquiconsult is an information systems consulting company which was born in 2004, bringing together a group of 15 people. This team had been working since

2000 with solutions by Navision, a company that was meanwhile bought by Microsoft, giving rise to Dynamics NAV. In a talk with Semana, Rui Santos, the

Arquiconsult CEO, explained that they were the first Microsoft Portugal partner in this area of business, with their line of products representing around 75% of his company’s sales. In 2008, these figures amounted to around 2.8 million euros, comprising Dynamics NAV and Dynamics CRM solutions, as well as Dynamics AX – a ERP, designed for the medium and medium/high entrepreneurial segment. which is not localized for Portugal and which Arquiconsult implemented in 5 multinational delegations operating in Portugal.

This Portuguese technological company now has around 50 consultants who, besides working with the Microsoft ERP, build verticalizations and localize products for different sectors of activity. It was not by chance that it was the first partner to develop an add-on for the Navision platform, precisely with NAVRH. This product appeared in May 2001 and since then has been improved with new functionalities and updates, which have accompanied the changes in legislation and the modernization of technological platforms. It is not by chance that Microsoft Portugal acknowledges that «the NAVRH module of human resources is the most implemented in Portugal».

Given the good performance and acceptance of this module in the market, the company has wagered in new developments for the areas of transport, navigation, construction and space management. It should also be noted that, since 2002, Arquiconsult represents in the Spanish and Portuguese markets, the solutions of the Icelandic company Landsteinar-Strengur (LS Retail), a solution addressed to commerce and distribution implemented in 80% of POS using Microsoft Dynamics NAV all around the world.

Within the range of Microsoft products, Arquiconsult also deals with Sharepoint; in terms of business intelligence, the implemented solutions are based on SQL Server. As for performance management, the solutions can be integrated with the customers’ ERP, namely Navision, or PerformancePoint. To this list of solutions, this Portuguese technological company adds Quickview’s business intelligence and OutSystems platform tools.

A year marked by gaining new customers

Last year was also marked by the gain of nine new customers, who had never worked with Arquiconsult. Rui Santos stresses that most of them did not have Dynamics solutions. The exception was a great customer in Switzerland, who had already acquired the solution, but relied on Arquiconsult to execute the project. With the installed base, this integrator executed three projects related to upgrades, the rest being maintenance and specific work for small-sized clients.

«The business outlook for the current year is in line with the results obtained in 2008» said Rui Santos. According to him, and given the economic situation, a great growth is not expected. But if one or two proposals that are in a stage of decision taking are awarded, they would amount to half the 2008 sales. However, given the long decision processes, that in these projects could take more than a year, the company’s CEO acknowledges that «it is hard to say whether the [company’s] proposals will be accepted or if the decisions may yet take place this year».

The CEO acknowledges, however, that Arquiconsult never had so many market proposals representing such high figures. That is why, our interlocutor said that, in normal market circumstances without any surprises, the company’s business estimates for 2009 would be around 3 million. To this amount we have to add more than 400 thousand euros made by Centrality, a company that sells and installs equipment with Arquiconsult holding 49% of its capital.

According to Rui Santos, this company results in important dependencies because «Arquiconsult can provide a complete solution to a customer working with hardware, platforms and infrastructure, and this not the company’s core business».  To solve this situation, without using Arquiconsult’s resources in a technological and commercial effort, the company’s management found a highly qualified person in this area and offered him a partnership, and a majority of capital, since «it is not Arquiconsult’s scope to enter the hardware market».

Altogether,  the two companies’ business put together reached 3.2 million euros.

International experience and verticalization of add-ons, the LS Retail add-on, that the company has been representing since 2002 in the Iberian market, served to open the doors in the international market. The first customer to use this solution in Portugal was Loja do Gato Preto.  This was later followed by other strong references, like Blockbuster or Ensitel.

Arquiconsult thus began its first projects abroad, pulled by the entrepreneurialship of its customers, namely Loja do Gato Preto, Grupo Amorim e Irmãos, Itautec – a Brazilian company owned by Itaúsa – Investimentos Itaú S.A., the second largest private entrepreneurial group in Brazil – and Dufry, a company that runs duty free shops in several airports. This fact enabled the technological company to gain experience in international projects, leading it to implement several Dynamic NAV solutions in Angola, Argentina, Italy, Spain, United States of America and Switzerland.

Due to this ability to build solutions and import some of the best add-ons, like LS Retail, the company’s managers chose to create vertical solutions for Dynamics NAV. Besides NAVHR, the Portuguese technological company threw itself into the sector of navigation, with the NAVship add-on, which represents a verticalization of the shipping business, developed to meet the needs of the shipping agents, with a wide range of functionalities necessary for the activity of cargo and ship agencying.

Another sector of verticalized activity was that of real state. The Imoinvest add-on integrates all administrative and financial processes with the operations of dynamization, promotion and current management of real state spaces, ensuring the optimization and profitability of the business.

The remaining add-ons concern advanced treasury management with TRVision and AdMain, a solution for the maintenance of equipment and industrial maintenance, either preventive or corrective.

But the product which is more advanced is the human resources tool. According to Rui Santos, NAVRH is the best selling human resources solution in Portugal in this Microsoft Dynamics NAV area. This add-on can be used as a module independent from the ERP, and has already been localized for the Spanish market, where Arquiconsult has two active customers, for Angola and Cape Verde. However, during the last meeting of Microsoft Dynamics international partners, in Copenhagen, the company was approached by partners from Russia, the Middle East and Singapore, who showed their interest in localizing this product.

By Carlos Marçalo
Semana nº 913, 30 January to 5 February, 2009