Eventful year for plant applications vendor

With the market topping $1 billion in revenue for the first time, 2005 was a very good year for manufacturing execution system (MES) providers, and few did better than Citect. The Australian vendor of next-generation industrial and facilities automation and real-time intelligence systems enjoyed explosive growth: 80-percent revenue gain and 1,400-percent profitability increase in the Americas.

No wonder Schneider Electronic acquired Citect. Citect also had a big-name win with Energizer: its Ampla MES will be installed in Energizer's alkaline battery plants in the U.S., Singapore, China, and Switzerland.

Citect's recent successes continue an impressive turnaround engineered by COO Darren Trumeter, who signed on in 2003 as head of Citect's Americas region.

The company had been struggling with flat sales and unprofitable operations for several years running. With a solid product portfolio in place, Trumeter focused on the organization and how Citect went to market.

After ensuring the right people were in the right jobs, Trumeter's executive team set out to improve the performance of the indirect sales channel, and create a new direct channel to focus on even larger implementations.

"We changed the way we pursued opportunities and how we sold—not necessarily the products and services we sold," says Trumeter. "We kept a laser focus on what we've done well historically, which is large-scale, complex installations."

The new approach has paid immediate dividends. Energizer, forone, let Trumeter know that Citect's consultative selling approach and deep knowledge of the industrygave Citect the edge over other competitors.