November 25th, 2009

For Professional Services, the World is Still Round

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 12:29 pm

Categories: CEO Interview, Current Affairs, India & Services, Outsourcing, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services

Tags: Professional Services, Services Team, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Food & Beverage, Outsourcing, Operational Accounting, Enterprise Software, Software, Manufacturing, It Operations

Today, I turn over the writing chores to Morris Panner, the OpenAir CEO. I’ve known Morris for quite some time. Since we’ve had several conversations of late re: SRP (services resource planning), I suggested to Morris that he take a stab at the topic and here it is:

by Morris Panner, OpenAir

One of the most popular trends in healthy living has been the “eat local” campaign.
Global and processed food solutions make today’s food economists worry – there are massive trade-offs in quality for the benefits in cost and convenience.

Oddly enough, there is a similar debate raging in the services world of today.

Thomas Friedman (author, The World is Flat) captured one side of the debate best when he wrote of a world where ubiquitous access to Internet and computing skills meant that companies could outsource anything to the cheapest markets.

Increasingly though, companies have started to see the other side of the debate. Books such as The World is Curved have started to explore the notion that “local competencies and skills” make a big difference.

That said, let me propose something of a hybrid theory – which is what I think is actually happening in the world today.

On the one hand, certain commodity services – standard and repeatable coding tasks connected with product enablement or other back office tasks that don’t require customer interaction - truly are moving offshore and should do so. In the old days, there was immense frustration from clients – and great benefit to the system integrators – when they had to pay exorbitant rates for routine services. Moving these commodity services offshore is virtuous. There is little contact with the customer and there truly is no reason for it to be performed on site.

On the other hand, there is another set of services that truly starts to get at the core relationship between company and customer, where the culture of the company and its commitment to its customers is most truly expressed. These interactions are true gold for the company as you can learn valuable things from your customers about how they use your product and how they want to use the product. Mastering these interactions is core to an effective retention strategy and are outsourced at great peril.

Years ago, David Brooks, the renowned New York Times columnist, referred to the services teams in companies as “the camels of innovation.” These individuals would travel anywhere to bring the distinctive human element to the deployment of a company’s technology. Over the past several years, we have seen these services teams become more and more important and we have watched technology product companies revolutionize their views of value added services on their core offerings, transforming them into a must have on a global scale.

It began with IBM, but has continued with HP, Dell, Xerox and Fujitsu, as these technology product companies have seen the need for services teams to help customers see the truly special value of their products. Today, it is not just the behemoths that have services teams to help deploy technology. Almost every technology firm of any size sees the strategic need for a services team to aid deployment and gain the all important customer loyalty, not to mention adding valuable revenue in a challenging economy.

At a recent Technology Services Industry Association (www.tsia.com) conference I attended, JB Wood and Thomas Lah, leaders of the association, elegantly made the point that the technology business – both hardware and software – has become a services business. Here is some data they created and presented at the conference reflecting the share of services revenue as a percentage of total revenue of the leading software and hardware companies.

*source: TPSA, JB Wood, Complexity Avalanche, 2009

The notion that our economy is becoming more and more dominated by services is not new, but the way in which this development is expressing itself surely is. The human element is becoming the most important element in a company’s presentation to its customers. It is becoming very hard to differentiate on a product alone – rather, it is the way the customer experiences it that has become the dominant factor. Human talent, rather than being devalued in a highly mechanized world, is being elevated.

The implications of this are profound for how the modern enterprise must manage itself today. Gone are the days when Enterprise Resource Planning systems ruled the roost and the key competence was effective manufacture and delivery of products. In those bygone days, services were an afterthought.

SAP made its name by understanding that the global supply chain revolution in production required a whole new way for companies to interact with supply chains and inventory. Now, we are seeing the need for a whole new approach to managing the global enterprise.

New Services Resource Planning systems are required. Simply put, people cannot be treated as a collection of interchangeable parts. The global coordination of a services business requires a discipline even more subtle and intense than ERP. It involves not only managing a roster of professionals with varying skills, but forecasting when you’ll need those skills and where and for how long. It means managing projects on time and on budget, and billing for and recognizing the revenue they bring in the most efficient manner. It means catering to the road warriors that make up that same services business so that they can be most effective, no matter where they are in the world.

Finally, a new system of managing people is required. Communication across the enterprise means that collaboration will replace top-down, command and control directives. In one address, Cisco CEO John Chambers noted that he was awfully good at the command and control part of managing a business, but it was the collaboration and distributed management that required constant innovation and work.

In today’s world, the core challenge facing all of us who run a business that includes services – which is increasingly all of us – is to develop those core competencies and systems which will allow us to provide highly localized services in a global economy.

Talent matters and customers recognize the difference on-site services make as they navigate the difficult waters of product installation and deployment. It is no surprise that the most dynamic area of tech M&A is driven by product-focused companies acquiring services businesses – look for that dynamic to continue.

The implications in systems, training and management are only just beginning.

November 15th, 2009

Before you do that BPO, Audit, Consulting or other services deal, check out these costs

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 8:25 pm

Categories: Contracting, ERP, GRC - Governance Risk Compliance, Implementing Technology, Notable Research, Outsourcing, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Selling Professional Services, Service Providers, Sourcing, The Application Software Buyer, expense management, expense reporting

Tags: Rental Car, Hotel, Audit, BPO, Consulting, Business Services, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), CAD, It Operations, Software

Is your services partner wisely spending its/your money????

I’ve spent a lot of money on travel. Over one 10-year period, I went through $2.5 million just on airline travel alone. I think I understand travel well.

I always look through the annual Business Travel News top 100 travel spending report. Companies are ranked by the amount of air travel spend they incur annually in the U.S.

In reviewing the latest issue, I was pleased to see several systems integrators, software companies, hardware vendors and other technology related firms have instituted some great practices in recent years. I even compared this year’s report with data in a prior year (see graphic).

Where the Money Goes

Now, some firms are spending more on air travel and total T&E (travel and entertainment). Why? Well, last year’s fuel costs drove air fares up demonstrably and that got reflected in higher travel costs. Some firms grew organically and some took on substantial acquisitions (e.g., SAP buying Business Objects, HP buying EDS, etc.). Growth should trigger higher travel costs as more headcount usually translates to more travel cost.

But, buyers of services need to look a bit deeper and question potential service providers as to the measures they are taking to ensure that the money they spend on travel and T&E is worthwhile and cost-effective.

Here are some areas to probe:
- Are training trips booked with 21-day advance purchase fares?
- Do employees use the lesser of the integrator or the client’s negotiated rates with carriers, hotels, rental car companies, etc.?
- Do employees car pool/share rental cars on long-term out of town engagements?
- Do employees stay in apartments or extended stay facilities in lieu of hotels for long-term engagements?
- Do employees use 7-day advance (or longer) fares for internal meetings?
- Are internal meetings scheduled for days when employees would normally be in their home office location (e.g., Friday)?
- Does the integrator/software firm aggregate travel spend globally to maximize its pricing power?
- Do the integrators/software firms utilize closer-in personnel so as to avoid air travel altogether?
- What percentage of trips are booked for travel that will not be chargeable/billable? How can this number be reduced further?
- What class of travel is being booked for short-haul, long-haul and international travel?
- Are service workers allowed to choose the carrier? How can a client be assured that the lowest fares are being selected?
- Does the service firm discipline employees who violate travel policies? Does the client have to pay for these excesses?

Beyond airfare, the size of the T&E numbers is what really gets my attention. Admittedly, I’m surprised when my rental car bill or my hotel bill exceeds my airfare. It happens more frequently these days as rental car rates have shot up in many markets. You’ll really see it when you stay more than a day in a given market (I rarely get that luxury).

I’ve seen service people charge in some whoppers on their time reports. Usually, they get nailed for it. You know what I’m talking about. Staffers taking clients out for mega-expensive dinners and charging it in. Lazy staff who don’t book travel until the last second. Staffers who insist on staying in resort hotels, use valet parking, etc. I have a name for those folks: ex-employees.

I once had a boss who insisted on only staying in the absolute finest hotels and dining in restaurants that only the most well-heeled gourmet could afford. And, of course, he only flew first class.This person was an empirious cad without empathy. This ultimate narcissist was hell to work for and a major expense control problem for his clients.

I spend a lot of time in software and service negotiations outlining the rules of the road, so to speak, on how service providers will operate when engaged with my clients. Trust me, if you don’t have these conversations, you will lose a lot of money.

So, what are the most egregious T&E sins of service providers you’ve seen?

October 28th, 2009

Cloud-to-Cloud Integration - Another Big ERP Challenge!

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 11:36 am

Categories: Current Affairs, ERP, Future of Application Software, Implementing Technology, Oracle, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, SAP, SaaS and Beyond, Software Vendors, The Applications Market, Think About IT, software. applications

Tags: Solution, NetSuite Inc., ERP, Integration, Maintenance Revenue, Brian Sommer

If Your ERP Provider can’t to multi-tenancy, How can they do this????

This week’s been interesting so far. SAP announced earnings this week and the figures aren’t a cause for celebration. In contrast, NetSuite’s OpenAir group has been conducting their annual user conference in Boston with a pretty good-sized crowd of attendees. The company’s leaders have made a couple of big announcements at the show but one of these announcements has some subtleties that should really rattle old school, on-premise ERP vendors.

OpenAir announced their Open Connect capability. Essentially, this permits their SRP (services resource planning) solution to connect, out of the box, with solutions from Salesforce.com, NetSuite, SAP and Oracle. So what, you may ask. Isn’t that what modern platform products (i.e., products built upon services oriented architectures (SOA)) are supposed to do? Yes, but in this case, the delivery models they are connecting to are both on-premise and cloud based. Also, some of these connections will be to products that are multi-tenant (and hence changing/updating/improving daily) while others are not. Open Connect, therefore, must provide not only 1-time integration between two systems at the time of systems implementation but also continuous integration between systems that get continual updates.

Let’s look at this further. Some of the connections NetSuite is now making are cloud solutions (e.g., Salesforce.com, NetSuite or OpenAir products) connecting to on-premise products. That’s a bit more challenging than the old-fashioned integration of two on-premise applications together. Those static ‘interfaces’ were gold to systems integrators. Those ‘interfaces’ consumed a lot of implementation time and, once set and tested, were hoped to last the life of the application. They rarely did as one application or another would get an upgrade that changed the interface needs.

Those interfaces were expensive to do and subjected a company to a lot of risk if they didn’t perform perfectly. These interfaces are probably the number one reason a lot of companies do not apply upgrades, new releases and enhanced functions of older on-premise products. These product enhancements are too costly to implement given the miniscule benefits they’ll throw off. This then causes software users to defer upgrades and get locked into an older version of the product. The on-premise world begets a world of old apps that users can’t justify upgrading.

Cloud-based applications don’t suffer this problem especially if the applications were designed to be multi-tenant. Multi-tenant apps let a vendor (not the customer) apply upgrades and enhancements simultaneously to all customers. Customers don’t have to pay anything to receive the immediate benefit of the enhanced functionality. Cloud-based apps have this – on-premise apps do not. This is a huge deal for CIOs as they are ones who must get the budget to do application software upgrades. Without an upgrade budget, applications do not get upgrades. Without this extra customer expenditure, on-premise solutions get stuck in time. Customers, logically, decide to defer some of these upgrades and instead rely on a stable, proven, low-risk and unchanging application. On-premise vendors then find themselves knee deep in customers who do not want the latest release or version of the product. These customers then wonder why they are paying maintenance for a product they don’t intend to change. This scenario puts on-premise vendors at risk for income declines as more customers opt to go off maintenance.

Maintenance revenue is a top of mind item for the CEOs of on-premise solutions. It isn’t for cloud solutions vendors. One such cloud provider said that to me just today.

Now, look at what Open Connect is doing. It is not only connecting these very dynamic cloud based apps to on-premise apps, it is also doing cloud-to-cloud connectivity. Imagine your accounting application running on one firm’s cloud environment, interacting with another cloud’s CRM solution that’s also interacting with another services automation solution on a third cloud environment. Then, just to make it more mind-blowing, imagine that all three of those cloud applications are changing, simultaneously and continuously. Each system will need the awareness of the other solution’s changes. Interfaces will become fluid and very dynamic. Finally, consider that the user may be unaware that these background changes are even occurring. Now that’s a big jump in integration. That’s a jump the on-premise vendors can’t complete.

When many on-premise vendors cannot even create a multi-tenant version of their product line (most can only offer hosting services), how can they deliver the level of cloud-to-cloud integration that the market will demand?

Next ERP solution you evaluate, verify that:

- the solution can do on-premise to on-premise, on-premise to cloud, and, cloud-to-cloud integration
- the solution can, independent of end-user interaction, dynamically update interfaces and system-to-system integration
- the solution can update its functionality without IT or end-user assistance, budget or time
- the solutions will always contain the latest functionality, latest process flows, etc.

I still need to see the proof points behind Open Connect and the market will tell us whether it delivers on all aspects of cloud-to-cloud connectivity. Yet, the potential of this capability should be enough to scare the wits out of the number crunchers in the on-premise firms.

September 25th, 2009

Shouldn’t services firms have their own ERP?

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 9:41 am

Categories: CEO Interview, Future of Application Software, HR, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Selling Professional Services, The Applications Market, software. applications

Tags: Staffing, ERP, Services Firm, Service Firm, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Sales Strategy, Enterprise Software, Software, Sales, Brian Sommer

I caught up this week with Morris Panner, CEO of OpenAir (now part of NetSuite). One aspect of our wide-ranging conversation concerned the continuing evolution of businesses, the economy, etc. towards a greater services orientation. Drawing on that, we discussed how services firms need their own version of ERP.

Here are just some of the ways I believe a Services ERP would differ from a traditional ERP:

1) Services firms need visibility in their ‘resources’ so that the best/optimal staffing decisions can be made. If the best resource (as measured by value delivered) is available in one country but the work is sold in another and eventually delivered in a third, can these resources be optimally scheduled? ERP/MRP solutions optimize capital resources (e.g., stamping machines, extruders, CNC machines, etc.), customer orders, inventory and other assets. But, in services firms, the optimization software is still in its infancy or non-existent. Sadly, this staffing is often controlled (not optimized) by individuals whose allegiance is to a local sales or operations person and not to the service firm or its shareholders.

2) The CRM component of ERP is also structured to serve Industrial Age firms. Service firms need information about people, availability, real-time pricing data about people, etc. and this is different from products. For example, if your service firm knows it will soon offload a very large number of SAP implementers from a big project, would you want to offer some discounted pricing to prospects to soak up all of that upcoming bench time? And, would you want to be selective in offering these discounts for only some personnel while actually boosting the rates of others who have distinguished themselves as real experts in this subject matter? ERP solutions don’t do that.

3) Sales commission calculations are/should be different in services firms. Some sales people would prefer to sell only domestic work as they are paid a percent of total revenues. Selling a mixed mode project (i.e., where some work is performed offshore and some on shore) results in a lower total fee estimate and lower sales commissions for the sales person. Shouldn’t the sales commissions be driven on which projects drive the greatest margin for the employer or greatest value to the client (and not greatest income to the sales person)? Do ERP systems address this? Do ERP systems show a local sales person the staff availability of personnel in another country? Do ERP systems recommend the best value people for a project regardless of location?

4) ERP systems (still) don’t integrate non-accounting data into their software well. Service firms need to capture, reuse, modify and expand prior work plans, intellectual property, ideas, etc. into their projects, deliverables, work plans, etc. They need a flood of information about people so they know who to staff and where. That sort of information changes daily and is rarely found in the standard HR system. This is why resource managers exist in service firms and knowledge management components are essential in service firms’ IT solutions. ERP providers have tried to bolt on project tracking and some PPM capabilities to their ERP offerings but it doesn’t work well. ERP was designed first for accounting transaction data and then updated for Industrial Age firms. Overlaying ERP on service firms is an unnatural act and not optimal for these firms.

PSA (professional services automation) firms did some great things to get services firms more productive and efficient. We all owe them a big thank you just for making time entry a one-time event and eliminating all the reconciliation work (between the project tracking module, payroll and budget/estimating systems). PSA vendors also made billing, collaboration and other project work easier, too.

The initial focus of PSA has been to stitch together a number of service functional needs into a smaller collection of better integrated solutions. Service firms now have better, larger, more robust and more efficient systems. They still have islands of service automation software and data that include: PSA, spreadsheets, accounting software, HR/Payroll software and BI/Analytics. It’s time for that to come together as a more unified solution set.

These larger solutions will likely form the nucleus of a SRP (services resource planning) offering but won’t initially deliver the full capability of SRP until someone adds the unique business functionality that only service firms have and need. Functionality like support for global service delivery models, billing and currency reconciliation for global projects with globally sourced team members, resource staffing optimization models, etc. That may be a few years off but it’s what will eventually come. The question is which vendors will deliver it?

I’m pleased NetSuite kept Morris after they acquired OpenAir. It speaks volumes to their support for the service industry. The question now is will NetSuite create a full, robust SRP for the services space?

September 16th, 2009

Interview with Microsoft’s Seth Patton

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 4:49 pm

Categories: PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Service Providers, Software Vendors, software

Tags: Microsoft Corp., PPM, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Brian Sommer

More from the Project Conference

Seth Patton is the senior marketing director for Microsoft Project. I got thirty minutes alone with Seth at the Microsoft Project Conference 2009 show this afternoon.

We discussed several topics impacting the PSA (professional services automation) and PPM (project portfolio management) software space. Here are the highlights from that conversation:

1) How will Project 2010 impact other PPM competitors? Seth and I discussed how the 2010 version of Microsoft Project makes the solution more competitive with existing PPM solutions, especially those targeting the SMB (small-medium business) market. Independent software vendors in that space will definitely feel more competition from Microsoft. More specifically, these vendors will see more energized competition from Microsoft vast army of channel partners. Seth discussed how Microsoft customers are desirous of solutions that take advantage of other Microsoft products like SharePoint, Office, Exchange, etc. Many customers are looking to consolidate or reduce the number of software vendors they are dealing with. As Microsoft’s Project technologies continue to improve, Microsoft may continue to drive out more independent software vendors from customers’ IT departments.

2) Why did Microsoft make so many ease of use and interoperability improvements to this product? Seth discussed how making the product easier to use means more people can utilize the product immediately. By reducing the product’s learning curve, Microsoft expands the potential user base. More novices and more users in different sized firms are now target customers for Project 2010.

3) How will Project 2010 interoperate with other ERP and PPM solutions? Better than before. Avnet is integrating Project with SAP application software. Seth indicated that they are moving time sheet data between the two systems. Project 2010 will come with out-of-the-box integration with two MBS (Microsoft Business Solutions) accounting products: Dynamics SL (nee Solomon) and Axapta.

4) Are professional services firms using Project or are they using PSA products instead? According to Seth, several large services are big users of Project. He specifically mentioned CSC and EDS as two examples of this. While PPM products, Microsoft’s included, contain many of the functions needed by professional services firms, they are still some key functions not available within Project just yet. These include: client billing; dedicated time entry for vendor, client, contractors, etc.; two-way interfaces with payroll systems; proposal tools; and, more. Nonetheless, Seth reminded me that thousands of Microsoft partners are service firms as well as users of Project in client work.

5) Is Microsoft seeing an uptick in Project sales due to ARRA (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009)? Seth stated that they have seen some big deals pop in on the big federal deals but state and local action has been minimal to date.

6) Does Microsoft have anything to report on the NPD (new product development) front? Microsoft has struck deals with PLM vendors. One of these is PTC. If you are into this functionality, you should also check out Planview’s and CA’s offerings here.

I’ll do one more post tomorrow after Gary Hamel speaks. Until then…

September 16th, 2009

More on Microsoft Project 2010

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 1:37 pm

Categories: PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Software Vendors, software

Tags: Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., Capability, Collaboration, Content Management, Groupware, Microsoft Project, Team Management, Enterprise Software, Software

The Completeness of the PPM Solution Grows

(More from the Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix)

As the demonstrations of Project 2010 continue, I noted the following:

1) Microsoft has added a lot of functionality in its Resource Management and Time Entry components. The resource management capability gives project managers, staffing professionals and others a lot of visibility into the project conflicts, overbookings, under-utilization, etc. of potential team members. I have seen slicker capabilities in some high-end PSA (professional services automation) systems but the version I saw today is a big jump in capability compared to the older version of Project that is on my desktop computer. Likewise, time entry capabilities are slicker. Microsoft even added a well-controlled/secured ability to let a project manager enter time for sick team members or third party team members who do not have access to the software.

2) Project 2010 has functionality to support: Demand Management, Portfolio Selection, Resource Management, Schedule Management, Business Intelligence and more. As I posted earlier today, the product is no longer just a project tracking/management tool. It’s a PPM (project portfolio management) tool.

3) Connecting Project 2010 to SharePoint opens up additional capabilities for users. Specifically, SharePoint brings Collaboration, Project Portal, Knowledge Management and other capabilities to this PPM solution. While SharePoint integration is not entirely new to the product, the enhanced capabilities, easier tailoring and more powerful reporting are. These improvements make the product a stronger player against other PPM solutions on the market.

Users of this software might need four components: Project Web Access (to access project data on the go (i.e., via laptop, cell phone, etc.), Project 2010 Professional for the desktop/laptop (to do more complex project tasks), Project 2010 Server (to execute key processes and facilitate the sharing/updating of shared project data), and, SharePoint Server (to facilitate project portals/web pages, collaboration, etc.).

More to follow….

September 16th, 2009

Microsoft’s Project 2010

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 10:15 am

Categories: PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Portfolio Management Function, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Brian Sommer

The conference announcements so far…

I just watched Microsoft executives demonstrate the upcoming Project 2010 product here in Phoenix at the Project Conference 2009.

Here are my first blush comments/observations:

1) The product has matured significantly as a PPM solution. The portfolio management functions are more robust, more graphical and address executive what-if needs quite well. This observation alone makes one wonder whether other PPM vendors will continue to freely integrate Microsoft Project solutions with their own as the degree of functional overlap appears to have increased significantly. The competitive conflict should be most felt by those PPM vendors who serve SMB organizations needing a project or project portfolio management solution. ***UPDATE*** A reader contacted me to clarify this part of the post. He correctly pointed out that other PPM vendors integrate the project tracking aspects of Microsoft Project and not necessarily the full-blown version with the PPM server and its attendant PPM functionality. More precisely, this reader said:

There are two distinct differences which may not be evident within your article, first MSP desktop does not provide things like “portfolio management functions” and second MSP desktop would continue to be a valuable integration piece for other PPM vendors as it is moreover the defacto standard for project managers today.

2) Microsoft has simplified the product line and product naming. Going forward, there will be three products: Project Standard 2010, Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010.

3) Drag and drop/cut and paste interoperability between Microsoft Office applications and Project has been enhanced. I was particularly pleased to see much easier connectivity between Excel and Project. Just being able to copy several columns over to Project from Excel and having Project retain the indentation was a big improvement.

4) This announcement is part of a number of Microsoft announcements for 2009 and 2010. These include: Windows 7, Bing, Xbox 360 Project Natal, Windows Azure, Office 2010, Sharepoint Server 2010, upgrades to SQL Server 2008, the Yahoo search deal and more. If all of these go well, Microsoft should experience a good PR and revenue boost in the near term. These initiatives should keep Microsoft channel partners quite busy in the near term as well. The key to success though will be in managing the successful rollout of all of these new/improved products.

5) PSA (professional services automation) functionality has not been discussed yet. Does this mean the Project product line is still a PPM solution only? Probably.

6) There was one brief mention of integration of the Project products to MBS (Microsoft Business Solutions) software products and that involved Dynamics SL.

More to come…..

September 15th, 2009

Interesting things I've been briefed on lately...

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 12:47 pm

Categories: Current Affairs, ERP, Mergers & Acquisitions, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, SaaS and Beyond, Software Vendors, Sourcing, The Applications Market, software, software. applications

Tags: Food, Open Source, Information Technology, NetSuite Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., iTrade Network, Meridian Project Systems, UC4, Food & Beverage, Manufacturing

NetSuite, CA, iTrade Network, Meridian Project Systems, UC4, Project Open,….

NetSuite has some new financial consolidation/planning functionality in their SaaS solution. It permits global firms to handle currency conversion. Adaptive Planning’s software is at the core of this solution. This technology does not currently use an in-core memory resident database. The more of this sort of advanced financial capability that NetSuite builds into its products, the more upmarket they’ll become.

iTrade Network is the result of three related firms coming together to solve an important problem in the food industry. iTrade is providing the traceability needed in this sector to protect us, food manufacturers and distributors and others from problems in our food supply. Their solution can expedite recalls and hopefully drive a more complete and accurate removal of contaminated products from the selves. The company has already attracted a lot of big name customers. Last year, I did a white paper for SYSPRO on the food sector. Product recalls were one of the most contentious issues that I discussed in that piece.

ARRA (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009)– You’ve likely seen this acronym on a road project near you. In fact, my daughter and I recently drove from Colorado to Chicago and we passed a lot of construction sites benefiting from these rehabilitation monies. Meridian Project Systems briefed me many months ago about this and now CA is out there with their Grants Management functionality. CA’s solution is an offshoot of their PPM solution (nee Clarity). Meridian has scheduled a more detailed briefing with me later this week.

UC4 has put the 2.0 moniker on something called Automation 2.0 for the IT data center. Their software puts all kinds of scheduled tasks under a single, integrated toolset. Why is this technology needed? Just look at how many different applications and activities IT groups support now versus a 10-15 years ago? Email archiving, CRM applications, web applications, data resident on SaaS systems, etc. are all relatively new IT responsibilities. Each of these requires backups, report runs and other processes and they all must be scheduled. IT shops don’t need to buy a different scheduler for every database, application, reporting tool, etc. IT data center personnel should experience greater productivity and should be available to work on more strategic initiatives. UC4 claims a 6-12 month ROI.

UC4 also acquired an event-driven technology, SENACTIVE, to complement its offerings.

Project Open is an open source project portfolio management solution based out of Europe. The software has attracted a fair following there and is used by a number of professional services firms (e.g., Cambridge Technology Partners). The software is frequently used in an on-premise mode although hosted versions are available from the firm or selected partners. I only had time for a cursory examination but the functionality appears fairly robust for service groups of 20+ people. It’s a PSA/PPM option for those looking at open source solutions.

September 8th, 2009

Imagine that! More innovation in PPM

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 10:25 am

Categories: Current Affairs, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, software

Tags: Innovation, Software, PlanView, Tools & Techniques, Product Marketing, Project Management, Management, Marketing, It Operations, It service Management

When Ideation Meets Project Management

Innovation in the PSA/PPM space was missing for much of this decade. Professional Services Automation software and Project Portfolio Management software had fallen into a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) status for a while.

That’s definitely changed lately.

The use of PPM software to develop new products is a hot idea for this space. The software you use to manage projects can now be used to manage R&D efforts and solicit input for new product development.

This last year, I was briefed by both CA and Planview as to their respective NPD (new product development) capabilities. Last week, Planview upped the ante by announcing new functionality to enable the capture of customer input, employee input, etc. in the creation of new products or extensions to existing products.

I’ve seen firms use this type of capability before. Dell has a solution (built on Salesforce.com technology) to capture customer ideas re: their products. Planview’s approach is a bit different in that the solution integrates with their project management tools. I like the integration because just capturing ideas isn’t enough. You need to get new ideas and flow them into the development cycles/plans.

July 22nd, 2009

Wedding Bells: NetSuite + OpenAir + QuickArrow

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 6:45 pm

Categories: Current Affairs, ERP, Financial Software, Future of Application Software, Mergers & Acquisitions, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, SaaS and Beyond, Software Vendors, The Applications Market, software, software. applications

Tags: Software-as-a-service, NetSuite Inc., OpenAir Inc., ERP, Software As A Service (SaaS), Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Emerging Technologies, Enterprise Software

When PSA (and SaaS) Got BIG!

Today, NetSuite announced it is buying QuickArrow, an Austin, Texas based PSA (professional services automation) vendor. This $20 million deal will put QuickArrow with OpenAir, another PSA solution that NetSuite acquired a little over a year ago. Click here for the official release.

NetSuite has been aggressively targeting service industries and has developed a number of solution capabilities beyond just the PSA set. Additionally, NetSuite has a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), a full set of financial applications and many other SaaS (Software as a Service) capabilities.

This deal brings NetSuite serious service industry street credibility. Combined, QuickArrow and OpenAir have 80,000 users and some of the largest service firms in the world as customers.

Deals like this should wake up those ossified, old-school ERP vendors who are still on the fence about their own SaaS offerings. Vendors like NetSuite are:

- growing organically (i.e., product line and revenue growth)
- continuing to innovate
- growing inorganically (via acquisitions)
- building impressive market share

Old-school ERP vendors should realize that continuous market share gains by SaaS vendors into old ERP accounts are going to start to hurt the old-school firms’ bottom lines. When SaaS vendors got the occasional CRM deal, it really didn’t hurt. Now, SaaS vendors are increasingly their:

- vertical industry penetration
- breadth of product line
- up market movement

The times, they are a changin’ and the old ERP vendors aren’t….