This week was dominated by news from Salesforce and its ecosystem. Salesforce issued several announcements several of which were covered in the week. It included:
- A stronger partnership with Amazon Web Services, with Salesforce leveraging Amazon Connect.
- A stronger partnership between Apple and Salesforce.
- A commitment by Salesforce to sustainability and other CSR initiatives
- MuleSoft announcing updates to its Anypoint platform
- Automobili Lamborghini is leveraging Salesforce blockchain to trace, certify and authenticate its classic cars
- ENGIE has selected Salesforce and Vlocity with Accenture to deliver services and support its customer relations. It also hopes to achieve a zero carbon target.
- Salesforce announced Single Source of Truth, the next iteration of Customer 360
- Einstein Voice is becoming available across the portfolio with different use cases available.
- HSBC has connected disparate systems to create the connected bank of the future using the Mulesoft platform.
Appointments
Gérard Dahan has been appointed Senior Vice President EMEA for Determine, a Corcentric company. He joined the company in 2017 as CRO and CMO. Is this is a step towards a more senior position in the company in the future and part of the succession plan?
Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow has appointed Gina Mastantuono as Chief Financial Officer at ServiceNow as he starts to build out his new leadership team. Mastantuono joins from Ingram Micro where she was also CFO.
JDA has appointed Umesh Gaur as MD of its India Centre of Excellence. It has also appointed Vinok Sequeira as senior vice president, Associate Success for Asia-Pacific and India CoEs. Both appointments are aimed at strengthening its leadership in Asia
Business News
Cloud Integrate, a Salesforce consultancy based in Amsterdam and operating across Benelux, has become an Apttus Solution Implementation partner.
Ascentis has announced the appointment of Chris Heim to its board of directors. Heim was CEO at HelpSystems and also serves on the boards of Calabrio, Field Nation and Digi.
Conga is demonstrating its successful growth with the opening of its first office in Paris. This follows a doubling bookings in EMEA year over year and 30 new hires in the region since February 2019.
Deltek announced a new partnership with Alirrium (a UiPath partner) and UiPath at Deltek Insight. Deltek will now be able to offer Robotic Process Automation to its customers.
Givewith has announced a partnership with SAP Ariba to help organisations achieve CSR goals. Givewith is now available as an application extension on the SAP App Centre.
Oracle is expanding its Chicago Innovation Lab. It will increase the size of the lab bringing in new technologies and enabling a greater number of visitors to benefit.
ServiceNow has opened its first office in South Korea as it expands its footprint in the country. It will also open its first data centre in the country in H1 2020.
simPRO has partnered with Square to deliver payments in simPRO and its mobile app simPRO mobile. It is looking to switch its existing simPRO payments customers to Square.
TechnologyOne has released its annual results with profits up 208% to $AU76.4 million. SaaS recurring revenue is also up 44% to $102 million. Total revenues rose 13% to AU286 million with costs falling.
Tipalti has extended its partner network with the addition of Kodella, a NetSuite implementer. It has also added Escalon Services, the business outsourcing specialist who will use Tipalti for its customers. Additionally, it announced a technology partnership with YayPay that will help customers strengthen their AR functions with automation.
Visma announced the acquisition of Onestop Reporting AS. Headquartered in Oslo it sells cloud-based solutions for reporting, budgeting and analysis to the Nordics region. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
At Xerocon Asia, Xero announced a new partnership with OCBC for a new bank feed. It also revealed it joined the PEPPOL network earlier in the year.
Customer News
Braun, the medical products and services company, has implemented Apttus contract lifecycle management. The first phase will cover procurement with a later phase covering sales contracts.
CoverMe has leveraged the Jitterbit API integration platform to underpin the CoverMe Healthcare Finance Marketplace. The marketplace will enable it to connect to disparate data sources as it looks to reduce administration costs for healthcare providers and their patients across the US.
MHR announced that the Shaw Education Trust in Staffordshire, England has implemented its payroll and HR solution. It has replaced manual processes and disconnected systems for its 1500 employees.
Arab Jordan Investment Bank (AJIB) has deployed a solution using the Oracle blockchain platform to facilitate cross border payments.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco is using Sage Intacct. YBSA has increased budgeting accuracy by 30%. It has also increased the productivity of its finance teams 25%. This has eliminated temp worker costs of $30,000.
Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E team is using SAP HANA and SAP Sports One solution as it prepares for the sixth season of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship. It has completed the implementation of SAP S/4HANA in time for the first race of the competition.
Lufthansa Group Airlines is now integrated with SAP Concur TripLink. This enables purchases made by business travellers on Lufthansa.com or via the Lufthansa App to sync with SAP Concur automatically.
SAP SuccessFactors announced a series of customer wins from this quarter. They include Ametek, Profi Rom Food, SV Group and Vonovia.
TigerGraph has announced five new customers looking to improve fraud detection and credit risk assessment with its graph database analytics solution. It was unable to name three of the brands merely describing them as a major US financial services software company, a US multinational investment bank and the worlds largest payment card provider. It also named China Construction bank and Pagantis. All are major deals for the relative newcomer in the space.
Funding and results News
Automation Anywhere has raised $290 million in a series B funding round led by Salesforce Ventures. Other investors include Softbank Investment Advisers and Goldman Sachs. Unusually it is smaller than its Series A round that raised $500 million. The addition of Salesforce as a key investor makes this interesting. Does it presage a potential acquisition by Salesforce?
Intuit announced its Q1 2020 results this week. Total revenue is up 15% to $1.2 billion. This was strongly supported by the small business online ecosystem that grew by 35%.
Product news
Act-on unveiled its Fall 2019 release. The customer driven marketing automation platform has improved its UX, provides deeper CRM integration and now provides an automated and free SSL certification. Improved CRM integrations include Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Salesforce and SugarCRM.
Asana has unveiled its latest updates including the addition of filters to timesheets, a deeper integration to WordStream, HubSpot Partner Portal, Practice Ignition and Google Analytics.
Bizagi announced the availability of a combined solution that brings together process automation tools, artificial intelligence, and cognitive services in a cloud native platform for the enterprise. Customers are able to use Bizagi’s Studio Collaboration Services for free from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace to model, build, and run intelligent automation across business operations.
At Dreamforce, Conga announced it has connected its Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution to Salesforce manufacturing cloud.
At Deltek Insight, the company unveiled Acumen Touchstone. This is the first product in its next generation Project and Portfolio technology. It is also a founding component of its Project Intelligence Cloud vision. The solution includes automated project scheduling, configuration management and real time project status visibility.
iCIMS has released a connector between iCIMS Recruit and LinkedIn Recruiter Systems Connect. It enables organisations to synchronise data between the two recruitment products. The solution will also improve the efficiency of recruiters who will no longer need to switch between the two applications.
Konvekta AG has migrated its ERP to Infor CloudSuite Automotive. The German manufacturer of vehicle cooling systems replaced Infor LN with a cloud-based solution to connect its international locations.
Sweden-based renewable energy and recycling company, Borås Energi och Miljö AB, has implemented Infor CloudSuite EAM with the assistance of Prevas, an Infor partner. The solution will support the newly constructed wastewater, power and heating, and biogas facility in Sobackan, Sweden.
Intuit announced “five” new capabilities for QuickBooks Online Advanced, its solution for the low to mid market. New features include a revenue streams dashboard card, workflow management, batch invoices and expenses, support for custom fields and more third party integrations.
Keap has added PayPal as a preferred payment option for Keap Grow and Keap Pro users.
Longview Fall 19 release for its corporate performance management solution is now generally available. It includes a improved UI and functional improvements across the application.
Rootstock has launched an account based forecasting engine on Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud. It brings together sales and operations planning across the manufacturing process. It will help to ensure that components for manufacturing sold items are in place at the right time.
Sage Intacct has unveiled 2019 R4 with updates to contract preparation, project tracking, inventory, reporting, budgeting and planning and general ledger.
Swiftpage has delivered the latest release of Act!, a cloud enabled CRM and marketing automation platform for SME businesses. The new release includes a customisable customer console, marketing automation templates and new turnkey campaigns for users. The release also heralds a new set of pricing plans.
Research
Research from BlackLine shows that investors are preparing for a recession. More than 83% or respondent believe we are on the brink of one. Worryingly, 82% of investors also believe that their portfolio companies adopt legal but creative accounting methods.
Forrester Consulting has published research, sponsored by Oracle, that investigated the challenges faced by organisations with data management. It highlights the challenge many face to gained a unified view of the customer.
Freshworks unveiled research into the usage and reception of AI and Machine Learning tools in CRM today. While only 12% are currently using ML or AI tools, 75% are looking to use more.
IBM Bluewolf unveiled its annual official 2020 State of Salesforce report. It highlighted four key trends. Organisations are building themselves around Customer 360. AI efforts are scaling up. Sellers want more mobile solutions. There is a growing recognition that Salesforce needs management.
Oracle has published research entitled Building a Hyperconnected City. It highlights how cloud, security and technologies such as IoT, AI, blockchain and biometrics will have a significant impact on Smart City deployment.
Pega has released the results of a global survey of 3,600 employee from 7 countries around the state of technology use among customer service reps.
SAP has found that 80% of organisations no longer expire their software based on time. The research looked how companies are changing their approach to buying cloud software often through digital buying.
Research by SDWorx revealed that 69% of European employers trust their HR departments to provide accurate data-based insights. The research looked at trust in data on employee costs, employee satisfaction & engagement and productivity. The study also looked at the common barriers.
Skillsoft has unveiled research that shows IT professionals are not receiving enough training and support to implement digital innovation in their organisations.
