Excite@Home Goes the ASP Route

Few events can heap as much stress on acompany, and an HR department, as a merger. There are business issues to examineand cultural issues to sort through. And before the dust can settle and a newentity can take shape, there’s also the daunting task of connecting variousenterprise computing systems.

    When broadbandprovider @Home Corporation and Internet firm Excite joined forces in May 1999,corporate controller Robert Lerner immediately recognized that integratingtechnology was a top priority. And trying to tackle the task in-houserepresented a formidable, if notimpossible, challenge. A previous acquisition had resultedin integration obstacles.

    Financial systemscouldn’t handle the companies’ combined data.

    “We had apreconceived notion that an outsource option was a better match,” Lernerexplains. As a result, Excite@Home turned to Corio’s Intelligent Enterprise, asuite of solutions that includes financial management, distribution, and humanresources functions, all powered by PeopleSoft. The ASP approach provided a morescalable and flexible ERP solution than the company could build on its own.

    Excite@Homeevaluated various ERP applications and ASPs and found that Corio’s ASP hostingmodel would result in a more favorable total cost of ownership than itcould achieve by building a solution internally.

    “The cost of theCorio model was based on the number of users. Our old system was tied to arevenue-growth model,” says Lerner.

    Today, the firm,which saw its employee base triple in 1999 and early 2000, has become anInternet powerhouse. Says Lerner: “In terms of efficiency and scale, the [ASP]model made more sense.”

Workforce, February 2001, Vol80, No 2, p. 54  Subscribe Now!