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Lawson buys Ijob

Lawson Software is moving to make its first acquisition in 15 years by acquiring Ijob, a maker of software that helps human resources departments recruit.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
Lawson Software is moving to make its first acquisition in 15 years by acquiring Ijob, a maker of software that helps human resources departments recruit.

The privately held ERP (enterprise resource planning) company said it signed a letter of intent to buy all assets of Edmond, Oklahoma-based Ijob and fold the company's Web-based software into its Insight human resources process suite, which automates employee training and benefits tracking.

Minneapolis-based Lawson also plans to license Ijob software independently with its Business Management System.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The move is unique for Lawson, a $200 million firm, which typically develops its own software or partners with companies instead of acquiring them. In this case, Lawson executives said an acquisition was the best way to integrate both companies' products. The company last acquired a retail merchandising and planning firm in the mid-1980s, a spokeswoman said.

In other news, Lawson last week also announced Open Component Solutions, object-based technology that enables customization of ERP user interfaces in multiple development languages.

The technology will allow programmers to customize reports, charts, and data-entry forms using Microsoft Visual Basic, C++, Lotus Domino, Java, or HTML/JavaScript.

The Open Component Solution is available for Visual Basic now. Versions for Lotus Domino will be available this month and for Java in June.