Apax’s announcement of the acquisition on April 4 came the same day that Apax declared it had acquired another company, Epicor Software, and planned to merge it with Activant.
At press time, Activant officials had declined several requests by ProSales to say how the changes will affect their services to construction supply firms. It’s clear the implications are great: A technology survey conducted by ProSales in early 2010 found that more than half of the 215 dealers surveyed used an Activant product.
“It’s one more change [independent dealers] will have to deal with,” says Chris Rader, CEO of Rader Solutions, an information technology and management consulting firm focused on construction and LBM.
Rader says the news could prove painful if Activant decides to stop supporting software systems that are positively ancient in computer years–some Activant programs never have advanced to Windows format.
“As the economy has come down quite a bit over the past four or five years for people at lumberyards, a lot of these people have stopped spending money [on IT], so they are tied into these legacy products,” Rader says. “They don’t want to make the leap to reinvest in software because they don’t have the capital.”
