Microsoft Extends Midmarket Foray Into POS Arena

Anaheim, Calif.-based Sales Management makes point-of-sale (POS) software for small and midsize retailers. The company is privately held, and financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Sales Management's offerings would join a growing portfolio of business applications with which Microsoft hopes to establish its .Net platform.

Earlier this month, Microsoft said that it would pay $1.3 billion for Navision, a Danish maker of ERP and manufacturing software for the midmarket. Through that acquisition, along with the April 2001 buyout of Great Plains, the company is building a slate of enterprise applications for midmarket companies.

Later this year, Microsoft's Great Plains group plans to debut MS-CRM, an offering developed on and for .Net. But even as Microsoft adds to its midmarket applications, the company faces the challenge of continuing to attract third-party ISVs to support .Net.

Sales Management's QuickSell line is Windows-based POS software that includes QuickSell Commerce, a Web-enabled POS application for in-store and online sales; QuickSell Commerce Headquarters, which helps manage multistore retailers by integrating POS and back-office data from multiple locations; and QuickSell 2000 for managing single-location stores.

The Sales Management lineup competes with Intuit's QuickBooks Point-of-Sale Solutions For Retailers, released last month.

Microsoft said it plans to offer a package integrating Sales Management's POS and retail management applications with Great Plains Dynamics and Small Business financial software. That combination is slated to ship in the third quarter in North America. Pricing for the package will start at $2,285, according to Microsoft.