ASK Group

ASK Group, Inc., formerly ASK Computer Systems, Inc., was a producer of business and manufacturing software. It is best remembered for its MANMAN enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and for Sandra Kurtzig, the company's founder and one of the early female pioneers in the computer industry. At its peak, ASK had 91 offices in 15 countries and was one of the 10 largest software companies in the world. Computer Associates acquired the company in 1994.

Beginning and growth (1972–1982)

ASK was started in 1972 by Sandra Kurtzig in California. ASK was named "standing for Arie and Sandra Kurtzig" , although Arie Kurtzig was never closely involved with the company. She left her job as a marketing specialist at General Electric and invested $2,000 of her savings to start the company.

ASK was incorporated in 1974.

In 1978, Kurtzig came up with ASK's most significant product, named MANMAN (originally "MaMa"), a contraction of manufacturing management. It was a manufacturing resource planning (MRP) system that ran on Hewlett-Packard minicomputers. The first version was written with using IMAGE and FORTRAN on an HP 2100, later renamed the HP 1000 where the 20 first versions where shipped, and was subsequently ported to the more powerful HP 3000. MANMAN helped manufacturing companies plan materials purchases, production schedules, and other administrative functions on a scale that was previously possible only on large, costly mainframe computers. MANMAN initially had a five-figure software price and was aimed at small and medium-sized manufacturers. During the era when MANMAN was only running on HP-3000 systems, ASK would buy systems at a discount and resell them "with its programs for $125,000 to $300,000" as turnkey systems.

From Dec 1980, small companies desiring the least expensive implementation could use the software on a time-sharing contract, called ASKNET.

MANMAN competed with other products which ran on minicomputers and such as NCA Corporation's Maxcim, HP's own MM/3000 and the IBM's mainframe-based MAPICS.

MANMAN was an enormous success and quickly came to dominate the market for manufacturing systems and software. ASK's fortunes rose as a result. In 1981 the corporation went public on the Nasdaq, with stock symbol ASKI. At the time of the IPO ASK had MANMAN licensed at approximately 200 manufacturing companies, 98 employees and with revenue of $13m, quadrupling in just two years.

Two years later, Sandra Kurtzig's personal stake in the firm was worth more than $40 million.

International Operations

In Aug 1977 ASK licenced Scicon Ltd, to distribute and support MANMAN in Europe with a primary focus on the UK. Partially prompted by Scicon's success in signing approximately 100 customers by 1986, ASK negotiated to transfer the licences to a newly-formed subsidiary ASK(UK), with most of the employees and customers transferring to the new entity. Other European subsidiaries were formed in West Germany and France shortly after, alongside new subsidiaries in Japan and Australia.

International Development took place in UK and Switzerland focusing on local tax and other legislation. Because MANMAN relied on hard-coded English strings, full localisation was economically unfeasible. Although German and French adaptations were attempted, the software was ultimately distributed and used almost exclusively in English.

By 1992 International revenue accounted for 49% of the total revenue. with 100 employees based in Europe.

Expansion & Peak (1983–1989)

Software Dimensions: (March 1983 - June 1984)

In March 1983 ASK made its first acquisition, purchasing a privately held software company named Software Dimensions, Inc., publisher of Accounting Plus, for $6 million. After acquiring Software Dimensions, Kurtzig renamed it ASK Micro and launched an aggressive marketing program. ASK over-hired and mismanaged the sales channel for the product, angering existing sellers and ballooning the cash burn rate for the company; the product faltered. In June 1984, Kurtzig announced that she was shutting down ASK Micro, at a cost of $1 million, and auctioning off the rights to Accounting Plus. Of the company's failings in the emerging personal computer market, Kurtzig told BusinessWeek, "We have our fingerprints all over the murder weapon" that killed Software Dimensions. ASK never launched a product in the microcomputer market, preferring to focus attention on the much more lucrative minicomputer sector, which was well-suited to its sales model.

Migration to DEC VAX

The rise of the VAX from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1980s with VAX/VMS, a 32-bit Operating System with a large virtual memory space, and support for a higher number of connected terminals (a limitation of the HP3000 at the time) meant access to larger enterprise customers. In response, ASK chose to launch MANMAN on VAX/VMS. Because VMS had a distinct database (CODASYL) which differed from HP's IMAGE and VAX FORTRAN was particularly powerful the software was rewritten for the VMS platform in 1982 rather than a directly ported, This resulted in a build that was technically distinct yet (almost) functionally equivalent for the end user.

Seagate Technology's multiple facilities required more user connections than the HP Systems would allow. As a result of HP's system limitations, Seagate Technology was one of the first companies to take advantage of the VAX platform. Eventually over 750 companies uses the MANMAN suite on VAX hardware.

MANMAN: Product Expansion (1984-1989)

However, by 1985, ASK declined as its customers reduced expenditures. Exacerbating the problem, Kurtzig and her family also began selling off large blocks of their stock holdings in the company, which triggered a shareholder lawsuit. Kurtzig also backed away from ASK's day-to-day operations. In 1984, Kurtzig named Ronald W. Branniff president of the company, and in 1985 he took over her post of chief executive officer as well. Kurtzig attributed her declining interest in the business to family pressures, along with other factors. Divorced from her husband, Kurtzig devoted more time to raising her two sons, who were aged 12 and 9 at the time.

Although the company remained profitable, ASK's earnings and sales declined in 1986, falling to $5.89 million on revenues of $76 million. ASK acquired NCA Corporation for $43 million in cash in 1987 which was a significant premium for a competitor that was beating them in two out of every three deals. Despite these small advances, ASK was losing ground to its competitors. In its research and development activities, ASK began to focus nearly all of its resources on upgrading and improving existing products instead of creating new ones. Salespeople had long been bedeviled with having to sell a primitive, conversational, scrolling user interface (not long afterwards, the problem was that although not everyone knew what a relational database was, everyone wanted one.) ASK had lost its entrepreneurial edge.

In the meantime, Kurtzig had spent her time traveling, writing her autobiography, and investing in other technology companies, but this proved to be unfulfilling. In mid-1989 the ASK managing board approached Kurtzig and asked her to resume an active role in the company, and she accepted their invitation. Kurtzig spearheaded ASK's purchase of Data 3 Systems for $18.7 million, a privately owned competitor to ASK. In addition to this complementary expansion, Kurtzig began to revamp the way her old company had been run, shifting organization and priorities to new products. She changed such minor, but important, details as the quality of the food and beer at the company's Friday evening celebrations in an effort to reconnect upper level management with the company's employees. As part of this effort, Kurtzig instituted 360 degree reviews (where employees review bosses), hired entrepreneurial managers, spearheaded product entry into IBM and Sun Microsystems platforms, and opened international offices in Europe and Asia. The improvements resulted in 1989's earnings of $13.5 million.

Decline and sale (1990–1994)

In 1990, ASK purchased the Ingres Corporation, a declining software company that developed the database management system called Ingres. The deal called for 30 percent of ASK to be sold to Hewlett-Packard and Electronic Data Systems (EDS) for a total of $60 million, which in turn enabled ASK to pay $110 million for Ingres. ASK's stockholders complained about this strange multi-way financing move. Shareholder James Lennane, who held ten percent of the company's shares, announced he would try to oust the company's board of directors at the next shareholders' meeting. Despite this, Kurtzig's deal proceeded as planned. ASK already made use of Ingres software in its own work, linking the accounting and manufacturing departments of its clients to its own database. Hewlett-Packard made the hardware upon which much of ASK's software ran, and the ASK resold Hewlett-Packard products as part of its software packages. Both Hewlett-Packard and EDS had strong histories of involvement with manufacturing businesses, and this heritage promised to open more potential markets for ASK.

Although this seemed like good news, ASK had mediocre results over the next several quarters, due to a lull in business while the company tried to bring new products to market. With its new purchases, ASK had moved beyond its original scope to become a much larger, global, diversified company. The unified ASK and Ingres group had yearly revenues of $400 million.

In the early 1990s, ASK concentrated on the development and introduction of new products designed to provide communication between different computer systems and programs. In 1992 the company introduced MANMAN/X, an update of its flagship product. MANMAN/x was built on the code base of a product called Triton 2.2d, from a little known Dutch company called Baan. ASK had acquired the rights to the code base and distribution in the 1990s.

In 1992 ASK was restructured to better reflect the nature of its operations. The company was renamed ASK Group, Inc., and comprised three business units — ASK Computer Systems, Data 3, and Ingres. With these acquisitions by 1992 the whole group had 91 sales offices In 17 countries and 2,300 employees worldwide ; revenues had doubled to $432m , MANMAN was in use at 2000 sites . although the original MANMAN business had actually decreased by 25%

With the merger of ASK and Ingres completed, Kurtzig replaced herself as CEO in 1991, but remained non-executive chairman until 1992. Although ASK appeared to be on solid footing to face the computer industry's challenging, competitive environment, its fortunes continued to decline. ASK annual revenues reached nearly $1 billion before being acquired by Computer Associates in 1994.

MANMAN product family

MANMAN

MANMAN was a family of Enterprise resource planning (ERP) marketed for Hewlett Packard HP-3000 and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) minicomputers. Its vendor, ASK Group, founded by Sandra Kurtzig, was selling this software from, at ASK's peak, 91 offices in 15 countries. By 1994 annual sales reached nearly $1 billion, and the company was acquired by Computer Associates (CA); both the software and CA subsequently declined.

The product family's name, MANMAN, was "short for manufacturing management," Its core components (referred to as the "4-core") consisted of:

• MANMAN/MFG: to help plan and track the manufacturing process and run MRP
• MANMAN/OMAR: (Originally FINMAN) Order Management and Accounts Receivable.
• MANMAN/AP: accounts payable
• MANMAN/GL: general ledger

Other products included

• MANMAN/FA: for managing Fixed Asset accounting to comply with US tax law
• MANMAN/GRAFMAN to allow simple graphs to be drawn on specialised terminals
• MANMAN/QUIZ a licencing agreement to resell the QUIZ Powerhouse reporting tool from Cognos

Some of the ideas for these application programs came from founder Kurtzig's exposure to several areas within "General Electric, known to be synonymous with a well-run manufacturing operation."

In 1985, a larger number of new products were released, and the software was made ready for international expansion by adding foreign currency support and VAT tax.

• MANMAN/Serviceman: provided support for a distributed service maintenance environment, originally written by Scicon Ltd
• MANMAN/Repetitive: An enhancement for Repetitive (vs discrete) manufacturing
• MANMAN/Barscan: Provided support to produce barcode labels which were Code 3 of 9 compatible
• MANMAN/DecisionMaker: Analytics package providing summary reports
• MANMAN/Projects: provide Project Accounting
• MANMAN/Quality: Allowed construction of a quality management process via sampling and surveys
• MANMAN/Planman: Taking advantage of the burgeoning PC market, allowing both budgeting and scheduling to be shared between a PC and the server

Other products brought to market later included

• MANMAN/Engineer: A link to CAD systems for Product Design
• MANMAN/Tracker An add-on to MFG which allowed lot tracking, especially for pharmaceuticals
• MANMAN/Dataport An interface technology for linking multiple systems together

Specific industry solutions were also developed and sold: MANMAN/PROCESS was a specific solution for mixed-mode and process manufacturing environments. (VAX only) and MANMAN/AUTOMOTIVE was a solution for suppliers to automobile manufacturers. (VAX and HP). systems. Specialised solutions for Human Resources and Payroll were acquired and remarketed as MANMAN products. Eventually MANMAN had 20 modules.

During MANMAN's early era when it was only running on HP-3000 systems, ASK would buy systems at a discount and resell them "with its programs for $125,000 to $300,000" as turnkey.

MAXCIM

Maxcim remained a separate product after the acquisition of NCA in 1987. It also was a Manufacturing suite, and was better better for process industries. It also ran on VAX, and was particularly popular among the hardware suppliers to DEC. 600 companies ran MAXCIM by 1991.

MANMAN on IBM

ASK hoped to capitalise on the rise of the AS/400 range of IBM minicomputers by launching a version on IBM hardware. The project ran during 1988 and 1989 before being cancelled. The IBM strategy was fulfilled with the acquisition of DATA3.

ASK/ADVANCE

In February 1990 Kurtzig announced the intended launch of a new client-server version of MANMAN: with the client on Unix Workstations, and the server running Ingres tools and database. It was to mimic the functionality of the "4 Core" modules and was originally intended to ship by December 1990. It aimed to use a beta version of Ingres GUI development environment called Windows/4GL. This was the first time ASK said it was developing an ERP product as opposed to merely MRP. This initiative led to the subsequent acquisition of Ingres. It was renamed Advance, in 1991, but the product was discontinued in 1993, effectively replaced by MANMAN/X.

MANMAN/X

In 1992 the company introduced MANMAN/X , an update of its flagship product. MANMAN/x was built on the code base of a product called Triton 2.2d, from Dutch company Baan. ASK had acquired the rights to the code base and distribution in the 1990s. Pricing was user-based and started at $25,000 for an 8-user system. For a 128-user system, MANMAN / X was typically priced at $250,000 - $300,000.

MANMAN/X was acquired by Computer Associates in 1994 and added to CA’s Interbiz products group which was sold to SSA Global in 2002. SSA in turn sold all of the Interbiz products to Infor (who had also acquired Baan) in 2006.

Resources

• Archive at Computer History Museum Contains Press Releases and IPO details.
• Interview with Marty Browne. June 6, 2008