Highlights this week include a massive study by ADP into the Gig Economy. QuickBooks, Pegasystems and AutomationAnywhere also published some interesting findings. There were also several product updates and launches in Australia. These including announcements by ECI, Microsoft, Oracle and Xero.

Acquisitions

Cognizant announced that it intends to acquire El-Technologies a Paris based Salesforce consultancy. If the acquisition closes it would add 345 employees to the Cognizant team and strengthen its Salesforce expertise in Europe.

Salesforce has acquired Evergage. It will add its cross channel personalisation and machine learning capabilities to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Appointment

Braze, the customer engagement platform that connects consumers with brands has announced the appointment of Isabelle Winkles as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Tara Walpert Levy, VP, Agency and Brand Solutions has also joined its board of directors as a non-executive director. Winkles previously worked at Cognizant and Morgan Stanley, this is her first CFO role. Levy is currently VP, Agency and Brand Solutions at Google.

JDA named Sue Savage Pirri as executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO). She joins the company from Autodesk where she spent 17 years in various roles rising to vice president Finance. She replaces Kevin Moriarty who recently left the company.

SugarCRM Inc has appointed Jason Rushforth as GM, Americas, and Clare Dorrian as Chief Marketing Officer. Rushforth joins having spent time at Infor and Oracle in leadership positions, Dorrian was VP of Marketing at Verint Systems.

Upland Software has appointed Rod Favaron as President and Chief Customer Officer effective March 1^st 2020. Favaron served as CEO for Spredfast between 2011 and 2018 when it was acquired by Vista Equity. He has been a member of the Upland board for the last six years. He will step down from the board on 1^st March 2020 to take the executive role.

Business

Alteryx has announced a five year strategic partnership with PwC US. PWC becomes a Global Elite Partner. The relationship is a component of PwC’s “New world, New skills” commitment which includes a $3 billion commitment to advancing digital transformation within its own workforce and for its clients and communities. The combination brings together the Alteryx data science platform and PwC services and consulting expertise.

Ceridian reported its fourth quarter and full year results for the year ending December 2019. In the 4^th quarter, its flagship product Dayforce attained a revenue of $158.7 million, up 35.4% year-over-year. Dayforce Revenue for the full year was $569.7 million, up 30.2% year-over-year. Recurring revenue was also up 31.7% to $429.0 million. As of December 31, 2019, Dayforce had  4,363 customers, consisting of 3.9 million global active users, an increase of 0.8 million users, or 25.8% year-over year.

Contentstack announced a strategic partnership with EPAM. It will combine the Contentstack content experience platform with EPAM’s digital platform engineering and software development services. Matthew Baier, co-founder and COO, Contentstack commented: “We are forming a partnership that will mean both EPAM and Contentstack customers alike are future-ready to make the most of digital experiences and operate with confidence in an omnichannel world.”

Prophix Software reviewed its progress in 2019 for its Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software. The company reported strong growth, recording an impressive 50% growth in annual contract value (ACV), an increase from 42% in 2018. It is targeting a goal of generating $100M in ACV in the near future. Revenue from Prophix’ cloud business increased 247% year-over-year, with 95% of all new customers in the cloud.

Sage has launched a new App Marketplace for the US market. It includes vendor add-on apps for Sage 100 cloud, Sage 200 cloud, Sage 300 cloud, Sage Accounting, Sage 50 Cloud and Sage X3. It does not include Sage Intacct applications which still retains a separate marketplace.

SuiteCentric has joined the NetSuite Solution Provider Program. This will enable SuiteCentric to expand its footprint beyond eCommerce and into more industries including retail and eCommerce, health and beauty, wholesale and distribution, food and beverage, manufacturing and computer software.

Customer

PAX Labs will implement Akerna’s Business Intelligence and API solution. Launched in July 2019 the solution helps customers to better understand its customers and derive actionable insights to improve the customer experience.

Asite has been appointed as the Electronic Project Management Solution for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City.

Citrus Systems has started the implementation of Deacom ERP replacing a mix of spreadsheets and a legacy ERP solution. Greg Nicholas, COO of Citrus Systems commented: “As we grow, the cost of mistakes will increase so it was important that we invested in a centralized ERP solution, like DEACOM ERP, to help mitigate these risks and open new opportunities that will drive growth,”

CMS Hasche Sigle, a leading German law firm will implement Deltek Maconomy ERP to help drive growth. Hartmut Papenthin, Managing Director Operations at CMS Germany commented: “As CMS Germany continues to expand and grow both in Germany and internationally, it has become imperative that our internal finance systems and processes are able to support our visions for the future. In choosing Deltek, we found an ERP solution designed specifically for professional service firms and based on years of industry knowledge. With Deltek as our partner, we feel confident in addressing the changing market and in achieving our future goals.”

TTX has implemented the DSI platform to optimise its Oracle SCM environment. The new solution will help to eliminate paper and manual processes from Field Maintenance Operations (FMO), repair shop and material distribution operations. John Cutrone, Assistant Vice President of Maintenance Operations, TTX commented: “We needed a solution that helps us keep track of high value inventory in the field without having to take a productive hit, and DSI fit the bill. We are also confident the DSI solution is agile enough to support us as our inventory management needs evolve.”

Lincoln University, Missouri has upgraded its Ellucian solution. It will migrate it solution to Ellucian cloud and will also implement Ellucian Analytics as part of the process.

Mainsaver Software has completed an integration of its solution to the financial management of Pures Food Specialties a leading cookie manufacturing company in Broadview, IL. It allows Purchase Orders created in Mainsaver to pass through to the ERP solution. It will automate the matching process of good receipts. invoices and purchases across both the systems.

City University of Hong Kong has deployed the Mulesoft Anypoint platform to help integrate multiple systems across its campus. This will benefit 26,000 students and 4,000 academic staff across its five colleges with workflows between systems automating many processes.

Halliburton has selected Ramco Systems Global Payroll and HR solution to manage payroll operations in China. It will deploy modules including: modules for Leave Management, Time & Attendance, Loans & Advances, and Payroll. Virender Aggarwal, CEO, Ramco Systems, said: “We are happy to have Halliburton onboard Ramco’s growing clientele. Ramco Payroll’s success in the Chinese market will help companies like Halliburton harmonize their Payroll & HR operations on a single unified bilingual platform. We look forward to scale with Halliburton and explore other markets, mutually.”

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises has selected Ultimate Software’s Ultipro as its HR software to support its 8,000 employees across 130 establishments across the US.

Product

Aderant has launched Aderant Expert 8.2.2. It includes new optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning capabilities for the Accounts Payable process. This automatically populates invoice data to speed up the process. It also includes new mobility workflow processes, enhanced rate and billing capabilities, General Ledger functionality, and broader information management at an office and department level.

Billtrust has added artificial-intelligence (AI)-based Automatic Product Recommendations to the ‘Second Phase’ of its B2B eCommerce solution for wholesale distribution companies.

BlackLine has tightened integration with SAP by gaining certifications for three more of its products with SAP S/4HANA 1909. BlackLine Connector rel. S41905 for SAP Solutions extracts data out of SAP and into BlackLine. BlackLine Web Services Connector rel. S1905 for SAP Solutions sends data from BlackLine into SAP and BlackLine Smart Close 5.05.

Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. is to launched Dayforce Payroll in New Zealand. The announcement comes after launching the solution in Australia and the acquisition of acquisition of RITEQ, a Sydney-based provider of enterprise workforce management solutions. No specific date for its availability was given.

Sales Enablement App Data Dwell has announced that it will roll out new features in the next few weeks. They include, UX/UI enhancement and a new content portal with the ability to gate content. It is also possible to block some internal IP address from accessing the solution, increasing security.

ECI Software Solutions has added customisable dashboards to Acsellerate® Customer Relationship Management. The dashboards can surface visual elements including: Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Lead Management, Sales Team Productivity, Overdue tasks.

ECI Software Solution has launched JobBoss in the Australian and New Zealand markets. The ERP solution is targeted at job shop manufacturers and has already had successful pilots.

Freshworks has launched Freshsuccess. This is a new module that tracks customer success and is integrated across its CRM platform. Freshsuccess introduces the Freshworks Master Account Record, this provides an integrated real time view of customer data including data from sales, finance, support, product and marketing.

Jesta I.S. has released the latest version of its Vision Financials module. It includes improvements to invoice processing, inventory tracking and annual budget planning at head offices. There is now support for EDI 810. Two other new features are advanced expenses management and a new budget management feature.

Macorva launched its Macorva customer feedback platform. It ties customer feedback directly to individual employee service. It achieves this through collecting data from SMS and email surveys following interactions between customers and employees

Microsoft has officially released Dynamics 365 Commerce. It delivers a complete omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, eCommerce and call centre experiences.

NICE has launched NEVA Unlimited. This all-inclusive automation package, built to drive successful automation implementations. NEVA (NICE Employee Virtual Attendant) includes Automation Studio, NICE’s advanced design tool, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to effectively handle unstructured data and Automation Finder for intelligent automated process discovery.

Nintex announced some enhancements to Nintex Promapp its visual process mapping and management tool. Checklists enable it provide instant visibility into the status and progress of any mapped process, while ensuring that procedures are well documented, responsibilities and handoffs are clear, and new opportunities for efficiency and effectiveness are highlighted. Shaun Field, Director of Product for Nintex Promapp noted: “Our new checklists make it a snap for everyone involved – especially cross-function and dispersed teams – to see what’s been accomplished, what comes next, and who is responsible.”

Oracle announced the opening of five new Cloud regions across the world. It has added Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), Australia (Melbourne), Japan (Osaka), Canada (Montreal), and The Netherlands (Amsterdam) over the last few months. It now has Oracle Generation 2 Cloud available in 21 regions and is on track for having 36 regions available by the end of 2020.

Pega has added a low-code software development methodology to its Pega Platform. Pega Express guides developers through a design thinking based methodology that rapidly decrease the time required to deliver a workable solution.

SAP has finally caved into pressure and extended mainstream maintenance for core applications of SAP Business Suite 7 software until the end of 2027 followed by optional extended maintenance until the end of 2030. SAP will also provide support for S/4HANA until 2040. This deferral is unlikely to stop the inexorable drain of maintenance revenues to Rimini Street, Spinnaker and Support Revolution.

SAP has announced a collaboration with proaxia around SAP S/HANA. It will see proaxia deliver a vehicle sales and service solution to meet the needs of vehicle and heavy equipment dealer business as well as the workshop service businesses. Proaxia VSS on SAP S/4HANA should launch in Q3 2020.

SimPRO 20.1.3 included a fresh UI with an updated colour scheme. For Australian users there is integration to Cooks Plumbing catalogue and supplier invoices. It also includes several bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Xero has announced a new integration to Uber for business in Australia and New Zealand. Organisations can take advantage of monthly billing rather than per trip expenses, reducing administration and the need for individual receipts from employees.

Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has launched Vonto app on the Xero marketplace. Developed by X15 Ventures it processes Xero data and uncovers insights delivering them in a daily news feed. Insights include: Daily, monthly and yearly financial trends and patterns, Any anomalies or unexpected behaviour and relationships between business drivers and outcomes.

Research

ADP Research Institute has published a report entitled: “Illuminating the Shadow Workforce: Insights into the Gig Workforce in Businesses.” The report is based on a huge data set payroll data of 18 million workers from 75,000 companies, coupled with 16,800 direct survey responses from traditional employees and gig workers, and 21 C-level executive interviews across the US. It found that tenured workers and retirees are capitalizing on the tight U.S. labour market and the need for skilled workers, by turning to gig work. The report also found 1 in 6 enterprise workers are actually gig workers paid as either 1099-MISC (1099-M) workers or short-term W-2 employees working one to six months.  The report takes a close look at their compensation, varied skill sets, and motivations.

Automation Anywhere published a study revealed at the IAMAI’s India Digital Summit 2020. Conducted by EY India it estimates that Intelligent Automation will help boost the Indian economy to US $5 trillion by 2024, from $2.7 trillion today.

Pegasystems revealed results from a global survey of vehicle owners about aftermarket services. It found that owners are primarily motivated by three main things: great customer service (49%), location convenience (45%), and ease of making an appointment (41%). It also looked at other factors such as brand and cost, perhaps surprisingly these scored lower. There are also some interesting insights into expectations of technology by vehicle owners.

QuickBooks has published a report entitled: “The Open Banking Revolution: Invisible, Customer-First, Feel Good”.  It found that only 60% of SME’s are aware of Open Banking two years after its launch. The report identified three trends that Open Banking has impacted.