JSI president Fermin Taruc said the company intends to make its flagship product ERIC (or Enterprise Resource Information and Control System) a global brand.
ERIC is a locally-developed software that offers a comprehensive solution mainly used in financial, distribution, manufacturing and personnel functions, integrating key areas and transferring focus of day-to-day administrative burden to a more customer-centered efficient response.
"Key to our offshore strategy is the development of standard localized versions of ERIC for each major market. We are developing fully translated standard local versions for China, Thailand nad Indonesia for release within the year," Taruc said.
He added that while the core product incorporates globally accepted best practices that will remain present in each version, each localized product also takes into account uniquely local requirements such as language and financial and tax reporting.
JSI, a unit of the listed investments and information technology firm iVantage, currently serves 300 companies in the Philippines and about 40 firms abroad. Some 50 percent of its client base comes from the manufacturing, telecommunications and agriculture sectors.
Taruc said their Asian expansion will be initially largely anchored on partnerships with local companies to provide the marketing and sales aspect while for the US market, a branch office has already been established to conduct market assessment and business requirement analysis.
This "soft" US market entry strategy, Taruc said, is designed to enable JCI to make more informed decisions when it pursues more aggressive marketing efforts of the US toward the last quarter of 2002.
"Nevertheless, we are not precluding the possibility of setting up direct subsidiaries where and when the size and demands of the market justify. This is the direction we are taking for the US market," he said.
Along this line, Taruc said part of the company’s expansion abroad is the eventual listing within a few years of its shares in any of the technology boards outside the Philippines, such as the US Nasdaq, for better valuations and a bigger investor base.