Coronavirus is impacting vendor and industry conferences. It has seen Pega, SAP, Infor, QuickBooks, Appian, Gartner, SUSE and the Linux Foundation (KubeCon) cancel events. More are likely to follow in the future. This is causing huge costs for vendors and their insurers and will almost certainly have an impact on future revenues. However, Salesforce, having cancelled World Tour Sydney carried out a very successful virtual conference with many sessions streamed live. Is this what conferences will look like in 2020?
Acquisition
Access has created a significant player in the HCM market with the acquisition of CoreHR. This follows its acquisition of People last year. The combined Access People business unit will have revenues of £100 million, growing to an estimated £200 million by 2024.
Aptean has strengthened its food and beverage ERP portfolio with the acquisition of UK based Paragon Software Systems. Paragon provides transportation management software for the food and beverage, distribution and retail industries. Terms were not disclosed.
BMC is acquiring Compuware from Thoma Bravo. John Park, KKR Partner commented: “The acquisition of Compuware brings together two highly complementary, best-in-class technology offerings. We believe the combination of these two companies will create a leading, end-to-end platform focused on driving innovation for our mainframe customers worldwide.”
Pipedrive has announced the acquisition of Mailgen. Mailgen provides an email marketing automation. This is the first acquisition by Pipedrive, terms were not revealed. It will work to integrate the products in the coming months.
Visma has acquired FirstAgenda, a fast growth Danish SaaS company whose platform helps with the preparation, content management and conduct of meetings.
Appointments
Billtrust has appointed Mark Shifke as CFO. Shifke previously served as CFO of Green Dot. He was also Managing Director, M&A and Corporate Finance Advisory at J.P. Morgan. This might perhaps indicate that Billtrust will look to leverage his experience of acquisitions.
Nicholas Hinton and Jason Matlof have joined ContractRoom’s Board of Directors.
Datto has appointed Jon F Abbot to the role of CFO from March 2nd 2020.
ThinkHR and Mammoth has appointed Carla Yudhishthu as Vice President Of People Operations. She was previously Head of People & Talent for BCG Platinion, a division of The Boston Consulting Group. Yudhishthu commented: “I’m thrilled to be a part of ThinkHR and Mammoth as the companies continue to lead the way in delivering smart, innovative HR solutions to employers. With the recent integration of these two companies, this is a particularly exciting time to join the team and I look forward to empowering our People Operations function and our employees.”
Business
Domo Business Cloud is now available from the Canada region of AWS.
EBP has created a new engineering division that will provide customisation services to large enterprise partners and customers. Jean-Baptiste Haentjens, already director of studies and digital services at EBP heads up the new business unit. It hopes that the initiative will raise revenues at EBP by up to 15%.
Ecteon, the contract life management solution for complex environments has reviewed its performance in 2019. It revealed that it had its strongest performance for a decade without revealing any numbers. Although it did add three of the largest healthcare networks in the Midwest and West Coast.
K2 and Celonis have partnered to leverage process mining to accelerate digital transformation results for enterprises worldwide that are focused on mission-critical processes.
ThoughtSpot has opened its first office in France. The new Paris office will be lead by Spencer Tuttle, VP, ThoughtSpot EMEA. The team there will sell the ThoughtSpot Analytics Program into the European market. It is its second office in Europe with the first in London, UK.
Xero announced that it has offset 100% of its carbon emissions for its financial year ended 31 March 2019. It will continue to do this in the future as part of its Net Zero @ Xero initiative
Customer
AOC has deployed Clarizen One work management software to improves the efficiency of internal collaboration and its project management.
Arkansas State University system has selected Ellucian Banner as its next generation Cloud based ERP. In the first phase Arkansas State University Jonesboro will migrate its current Ellusian System to the cloud in early 2020.
Anchor Fabrication has completed a case study highlighting the benefits that its recently installed Epicor ERP has delivered. This includes a saving of $100,000 per year in order planning costs, an increase of 200% in productivity and an improved customer experience.
Infor celebrated three customer stories. Al-Jazira Equipment Co Ltd (Autoworld) has selected Infor CloudSuite Equipment and Faber France selected Infor CloudSuite Industrial. Additionally Colart went live on Infor WMS with the assistance of SNS.
Oracle Hospitality OPERA Sales and Event Management Cloud Sertvice (Oracle Hospitality OSEM) is now live for several early adopters. These include Banff Park Lodge and The University Plaza Waterfront Hotel. The feature-rich sales and catering management application is localised for more than 200 countries and can help hoteliers increase revenues.
Constellation, a growing portfolio of medical professional liability insurance companies, is using the OutSystems low-code platform to create new digital offerings and kick start innovation inside the company.
Sage Intacct released a case study detailing how Halstatt saved more than $1 million in accounting time annual having moved from Microsoft Dynamics GP to Sage Intacct.
Womble Bond Dickinson is leveraging the Sunrise ITSM platform to improve its IT support operations. The team of 48 staff support 1,400 staff across 9 offices and handle 2,400 requests each month. As a result of the implementation first time fix rates have risen 10% to 85%. IWBD is now rolling out the solution to other service teams including the Risk and Best Practice help desk.
The city of O’Fallon, Missouri has signed a seven year SaaS agreement with Tyler Technologies. It will deploy solutions including: Munis enterprise resource planning (ERP), ExecuTimeworkforce management, EnerGovcivic services, Socrata Open Finance Tyler EAM Tyler Notify and Tyler Meeting Managersolutions.
Meliá Hotels International is deploying and using the UiPath RPA platform to carry out a significant change in the organisation. It is rolling out use cases across credit and insurance, hotels, administration, and HR teams with positive results.
Amadeus, a leading provider of technology to the tourism industry has selected Workday HCM for its 19,000 employees. Patricia de la Fuente, People and Culture Digital Initiatives Lead at Amadeus commented: “We were looking for a solution that’s designed around the employee and provides them with a simple and intuitive experience. With Workday we have that, as well as everything we need to improve talent management, anticipate future business needs, and simplify administrative tasks, helping us to become a more agile organisation.”
Product
Criterion HCM has integrated its solution to Sage Intacct using REST APIs integrating payroll, HR and financial processes. It is now available on the Sage Intacct Marketplace.
At its annual conference Momentum 2020 DocuSign announced the acquisition of Seal Software and the DocuSign Agreement Cloud 2020 Release 1 and new eSignature features. It also launched DocuSign for Forests.
Harmony PSA released version 4.2 of its PSA product. Updates to project planning include an improve Gantt chart view and the ability to assign multiple tasks to multiple assignees during work item creation. Work items can now be scheduled on an hourly or daily basis. There are improvements to project date calculations. It has added a new feature; Skills Matrix that tracks skill sets of employees which help with resource management.
Kronos unveiled the new Work Application within Workforce Dimensions. The feature helps to improve operational performance in manufacturing. Kylene Zenk, director, manufacturing practice, Kronos commented: “While technology is the foundation of digital transformation, people are the driving force in manufacturing. It’s the intersection of the two that will foster the future of work. Workforce Dimensions has the power to transform manufacturing operations by empowering employees and managers alike with real-time information to drive intelligent decision making and improved operational performance.”
Monday.com has added several feature improvements to its product this week. Improved UI for Timelines that makes labels visible regardless of the size of the task or its duration. It has also enabled users to create a connection between high and low level boards.
Pandle has introduced a feature that prompts users when the enter transactions for a new tax year whether they have completed the old one. By indicating yes the accounting partner is automatically informed, speeding up the process for tax returns.
Tally has released version 6.6 of Tally 9. It includes the availability of Tally 9 reports on the go from any device. There is better support for Indian GST reposts and support for UAE invoice Format 2.
Research
QuickBooks released research written by Oxford Economics that found improving digital skills of small to medium businesses in the UK could add £9.9 billion to the UK economy. It also found that improving the digital infrastructure could improve the economy by a further £5.4 billion.
A third of New Zealand small business owners feel that Kiwis do not receive enough annual leave according to research commissioned by Xero. The research focused on work culture and productivity. It also found that a quarter of small business owners considered their part-time staff to be more efficient than their full-time employees! The research also looked at the barriers to growth. It found time, talent and education were the biggest barriers. Though 50% felt that the situation could improve if the New Zealand government lowered taxes.
