Comarch maintains double-digit growth in the sales of ERP solutions and keeps its position as the leading Polish provider of ERP systems on the national market. According to the report “Poland Enterprise Application Market Shares, 2018: 2019 Update”, the Kraków-based enterprise, the only Polish company ranked among the top three providers of enterprise application software solutions, has increased its share in the industry.

Sales of Comarch systems increased in 2018, and it already comprises 20.2% of the market for enterprise management systems. This places the company second in a provider ranking which includes both Polish and other companies.

Among the providers of solutions dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises (employing up to 499 workers), Comarch has kept the leading position for another year in a row. According to IDC, the company has achieved an almost 30% market share. The next ranked provider holds 19.8% in this industry.

Systematic growth

In 2018, revenues generated by the sale of Comarch ERP systems reached PLN 260 million, up PLN 24.5 million PLN on 2017. Results for the first half of 2019 prove that the company is maintaining that momentum. During the six months, sales within the ERP sector reached PLN 127.2 million, 11% growth compared to the corresponding period last year.

“Comarch’s good shape stems from the realization of the ERP sector strategy we adopted in 2016. ‘Plan 7500’ assumes that, between 2016 and 2023, revenues from the sale of ERP solutions will reach the level of PLN 500 million, and that the average annual growth rate in this period will stay at a double-digit level. The pillars of the strategy are the development of the product range offered in the cloud system, international expansion, and the increase of expenditure on research and development”, says Zbigniew Rymarczyk, Vice-President of the Management Board and Director of the ERP Sector at Comarch.

Business propelled by innovations

The development of Comarch products is possible owing to extensive investments in research and development. In 2018, the company spent PLN 180 million on R&D activities, with no subsidies. The company employs dedicated competence teams of over 100 workers specializing in the user experience and user interface areas, as well as in the application of artificial intelligence.

Since 2016, engineers at the laboratory and production center located at Comarch’s headquarters in Kraków have been developing IoT solutions. Work currently in progress is to develop and adjust Comarch ERP systems to meet the requirements of changing business models. Knowledge database discovery processes, allowing the analysis of user behavior for the needs of interface personalization, are examples of such work. Another equally important goal related to R&D activities is the creation of new products in line with digitization trends. That is why, in 2018, the company began the development of the Comarch OCR system equipped with artificial intelligence algorithms, released in 2019.

Accelerating business digitization

According to IDC, the value of the entire enterprise application software market in Poland increased by 7.5% in 2018, to USD 263.3 million. The industry’s situation has been considerably influenced by changes in regulations, such as the introduction of the requirement for micro-entrepreneurs to send standard audit files for tax (JPK), the General Data Protection Regulation, and the obligation to issue annual financial statements in electronic format. To adjust to the new processes, many enterprises have had to modify their software solutions or invest in new ones, which contributed to increased revenues generated from the sale of financial and accounting systems.

The introduction of new regulations and the digitization of legal and tax processes translate into Comarch’s revenues as well. While most changes are made to new system versions as part of the already available modules, with the emergence of new regulations or the need to electronically handle obligations which were previously processed using paper documents, we try to provide our clients with applications that work with our systems to help them cope with the new challenges quickly and efficiently. Cloud services are another business area of equal importance. Although the IDC report suggests that products developed in the cloud model are not the first choice for Polish entrepreneurs, we constantly place particular emphasis on the sales development of IT solutions offered in the cloud model, and transfer many Comarch solutions to the cloud. For this purpose, we have launched a private, unified, and flexible computing cloud with the highest security standards, based in our own data centers. The sales of cloud products for the first half of 2019 increased by 26%, reaching more than PLN 10 million. Our business is doing really well this year, and we are expecting another increase in our market share - Zbigniew Rymarczyk highlights.

Premium versions of Comarch ERP systems in the cloud model are currently used by over 11 000 companies. The value of trade and warehouse documents processed or generated by these companies using Comarch Cloud during the last year and a half amounts to almost PLN 30 million. These figures show that Comarch ERP Cloud is the largest cloud of this type dedicated to companies in Poland, and one of the largest in the world.

The digital economy is constantly growing stronger. Innovative, cloud-based systems of the ERP or CRM type are inseparable elements of digital transformation. Embracing cloud solutions is a trend which is especially visible in the case of small and medium-sized companies. Since the segment of large enterprises is much less suffused with these systems, it creates considerable business potential for experienced providers with strong foundations on the SMB market. Providing solutions which are easy to configure and will develop with the client’s business, as well as investing in product development according to latest trends such as mobility, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and BI, are the most important keys to success. Comarch fits into the current market trends really well”, comments Wiktor Markiewicz, Senior Research Analyst at IDC Poland.

Moreover, in the report “Poland Enterprise Application Market Shares, 2018: 2019 Update”, IDC analysts have prepared summaries addressing separate subcategories of business software. Comarch has been ranked second on the market of applications for enterprise resource management (ERM), supply chain management (SCM), operations management (OMA), and analytical applications (BI). Among the providers of applications dedicated to customer relationship management (CRM), Comarch ranks fifth.