New CFO for Lawson

Lawson Software (LWSN) appointed Stefan Schulz as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) effective Jan 1, 2010. Stefan will succeed Robert Schriesheim, who will continue to serve on the Lawson board as a non-employee director.

Schriesheim is leaving Lawson to become the CFO of Illinois-based Hewitt Associates, Inc.

Schulz is currently the Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer. He joined Lawson in Oct 2005 from BMC Software, where he had worked for 12 years in various roles.

Lawson provides enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions and professional services to mid-market enterprises in the health care, retail, public and professional service industries. The company derives its revenue from software license fees, customer support and maintenance fees and consulting fees.

Lawson earlier reported in-line numbers for the first quarter of fiscal 2010.

The company is currently resizing its services business in light of current demand for consulting and implementation services in Europe.

In fiscal 2009, Lawson took measures to reduce costs in response to the current global economic downturn and to vertically align the company’s organization structure. The company continues to reorganize its operations in 2010. The reorganization has led to improvement in margins, which partially offset the impact of lower revenues in the given recessionary environment.

Meanwhile, the increased competition from Oracle (ORCL - Analyst Report), SAP AG (SAP - Analyst Report), JDA Software (JDAS - Snapshot Report), Microsoft (MSFT - Analyst Report) and others continue to put pricing pressure on the company. In particular, SAP AG and Oracle Corporation, both large global ERP vendors, are increasingly targeting mid-sized businesses as their traditional larger-customer market becomes saturated. It remains to be seen whether Lawson can sustain itself by adopting the strategy of reducing prices.

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