Prospectus Summary
You should read the following summary together with the more detailed information regarding our company and the common stock being sold in this offering and our consolidated financial statements and notes to the consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this prospectus.
We develop and market product content management software, which is software that enables companies to collaborate over the Internet by interactively exchanging information about the manufacture and supply of products and components. Our suite of software products is designed to improve the ability of all members of the manufacturing supply chain to communicate and collaborate with one another about new or changing information concerning the manufacture, source or supply of products or components. We believe that our products are well-suited for participants in outsourced supply chains, as well as companies managing multi-site engineering, manufacturing, sales and distribution operations, connected via the Internet. Since June 1996, when we shipped our first product, we have licensed our products to over 350 customers in the computers and peripherals, components, consumer electronics, data networking and telecommunications equipment, electronics manufacturing, medical equipment and semiconductor equipment markets.
The competitive environment for manufacturing and supply companies has intensified dramatically and expanded globally in recent years. Many of these companies are shifting their organizations from traditional manufacturing approaches, where a manufacturer controls most phases of the manufacturing process of its products from raw materials to finished goods, to a manufacturing process where much or all of the manufacturing process is outsourced to multiple companies as part of a supply chain. Outsourcing production is geared toward creating supply chains that are more efficient, dynamic and flexible than manufacturing operations that are controlled by manufacturers. A critical aspect of managing the outsourced supply chain across multiple suppliers is finding effective ways to store, access and share information within the manufacturer, as well as with all participants in the supply chain during each stage of the production process.
The Internet has created new and evolving ways for conducting commerce. Companies that have successfully implemented strategies to communicate with their customers over the Internet now face the challenge of utilizing the Internet and intranets to gain the same level of increased efficiencies in their supply chain.
The Agile solution is designed to facilitate communication and collaboration within and among supply chain members without requiring substantial investments in additional technology infrastructure. We believe that our solution enables companies and their supply chain partners to increase revenues by accelerating time-to-market, facilitate cost-effective production by increasing output, reducing inventory and shortening the production process, and enhance return on investment by facilitating rapid implementation.
Our growth strategy is to be the leading provider of business-to-business collaborative supply chain applications to global organizations. We will focus on providing superior customer satisfaction to continue to build a highly referenceable customer base of market leaders in targeted manufacturing industry vertical markets. We seek to capitalize on network effects that can be created when our software is deployed across the supply chains of our customers, enabling even non-customer participants in the supply chain to experience first-hand some of the benefits from our solutions. We will also seek to continue the development of our technology to extend the features and functionality of our product content management software.
We incurred net losses of approximately $11.4 million for fiscal 1999 and $8.4 million for the six months ended October 31, 1999, and as of October 31, 1999 we had an accumulated deficit of approximately $34.9 million.