Targit's software solutions in demand in thrifty times

The fall of 2008, with its Wall Street meltdown and national credit freeze, wreaked havoc on the balance sheets of many small businesses.

For Ulrik Pedersen and a dozen employees working with him in a suburban office in northwest Tampa, it was boom time. Their entourage, the U.S. operation of Danish software solutions company Targit, grew revenues 23 percent in the last four months of the year. They wound up with $3 million in sales, up 26 percent from the prior year. This year, he forecasts 28 percent growth.

"They say business intelligence is recession-proof," Pedersen said with a smile. But his business success is more than just being in the right industry at the right time.

It helped to have a product that meets the needs of budget-conscious customers.

Targit is the biggest business enterprise software company in Denmark, but it struggled to establish a foothold in the United States after opening an office in Atlanta in 2000. Three years ago, Pedersen arrived from the home office and transferred the U.S. unit to Tampa, opening a two-person office here as the new country manager.

Targit pitches its chief product, business management software that costs roughly $30,000, as far cheaper than competitors' software and easier to use. The goal is to help managers use fewer clicks to get to the information they need, be it about an employee's productivity or sales trends. Alerts are sent to their desktop whenever something unusual happens in the data tracking.

"You don't need the IT department to notify you," Pedersen said. "It gives greater control to the manager."

One profit-saving move Pedersen recalls: When a Danish grocery chain installed the software, it soon found out that one of its seven supermarkets was selling huge quantities of a certain candy bar. Checking into it, the company discovered that the store had put the candy bar on a heavy discount six months earlier and never marked it up again with the rest of the chain.

To teach the ins and outs of the software, Targit holds training classes at its Tampa offices — two-hour sessions to teach managers the basics and daylong sessions to learn more in-depth analysis features.

About 10 percent of the company's sales are to end users; a large part involves partners who peddle the software to various business niches. Historically, retail and manufacturing have been the biggest customer base, but financial services is a growing niche. The latest niche that Targit is targeting: credit unions.

Much of Targit's growing U.S. customer roster, firms like Atlanta-based Mohawk Industries, are far from its Tampa hub. Forty of its customers are in California.

Despite local networking efforts, Pedersen acknowledged that it can be more difficult to "harvest in our own back yard" as companies seem to hold vendors farther away in higher esteem. "It's a little bit ironic," he said.