The Alps June Image by pasja1000 from PixabayLast week, KeyedIn and Changepoint announced updates to their PSA solutions and several companies published research reports. It includes one from Boomi about the state of digital transformation and innovation. There were a number of other studies also published from Coupa, Igloo and Mendix. Additionally, Xero published some data relating to the impact on small business in Australia from the pandemic.

Business

Akerna, the fast-growing ERP and compliance canna-business software vendor, has announced a $17 million debt refinancing deal with two investors. The loans are now payable in 2023, with interest due from October 1st 2020.

Alight has announced that it is to offer healthcare navigation support. It is available to purchase by both pre 65 and post 65 retirees as part of their elections during annual enrolment. The service will help retirees understand the increasingly complex landscape of healthcare services.

Asite has partnered with 3D Repo to streamline BIM file management, improve collaboration and reduce complexity. 3D models automatically upload to the Asite CD once the configuration for the integration is complete. It also supports bidirectional synchronisation.

AgilePoint, Pintec and Rainbird have joined the Blue Prism Technology Alliance Program as affiliate partners. These companies provide low-code application development environments, embedded intelligence, data analysis, auditing, and database management capabilities to complement Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce.

Capgemini and BlackLine have formed a global strategic alliance. Capgemini will offer the BlackLine cloud platform to clients to help them remove manual processes from their finance teams.

FreshBooks has launched a new community for Accounting firms aimed at sharing knowledge about working with FreshBooks and small businesses. The FreshBooks Accounting Professionals Program starts with a three-part webinar entitled: ”The Future is Collaborative”.

Phenom has revealed it has achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification. A blog announcing the achievement stated: “This achievement is a testament to Phenom’s commitment in reducing security risks for its users and stakeholders. And it is with great pleasure that we can now display the ISO certification badge so that all employers, recruiters, CHROs, and HRIS practitioners feel confident in their decision to partner with Phenom.”

Prophix is to collaborate with PwC Canada who will use the Prophix CPM solution to deliver financial services with a focus on tax processes.

SAP and Honeywell have partnered to create a new cloud solution based upon Honeywell Forge and the SAP Cloud for Real Estate solution

UiPATH and Oracle have deepened their relationship with a technology alliance which will see UiPATH RPA deployed and made available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,

Customer

Advanced completed a major project at the DWP in the UK. It has re-platformed the Job Seeker’s Allowance Payment System (JSAPS) – the largest and most complex service of the DWP’s application legacy modernisation programme. The scope of the project is enormous. Fifty-four databases with 6.3 billion records were migrated to a modern RDBMS in less than 24 hours. Gordon Wilson, CEO at Advanced, commented: “The current crisis places immense pressure on all public services. The new system ensures that all local job centres and call centre staff using the system can help citizens quickly get the support they need from the JSA service. Both Advanced and the DWP have been working extremely hard to get this replacement service live. Together, the work achieved has been spectacular, giving the DWP real flexibility moving forward and highlighting the benefit of accelerated digital transformation in the public sector.”

Conga announced that Jungheinrich AG has accelerated the digital transformation of its legal operations with the company’s Apttus Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution.

Blue Prism partnered with ABBY and Lateetud to develop a solution for several US Banks. It automates loan applications for small businesses which are backed by the US Government.

Elvenite, a Swedish systems integrator, has deepened its relationship with Infor. It is now able to sell and implement Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage. Mathias Dyberg, CEO of Elvenite, commented: “The collaboration with Infor gives us access to the latest technology. It means we can combine Infor’s industry-specific CloudSuite with our knowledge of the food industry’s challenges, business and business processes, a combination that is extremely valuable for our customers.”

Law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner is successfully using the Mendix low code platform to digitalise high-volume legal workstreams across commercial contracts, data requests, and real estate services.

Oracle is starting to reveal more about what its solutions are helping to achieve during the pandemic crisis. It latest announcement is that it has developed a chatbot using the Oracle Digital Assistant to help manage the volume of calls fielded by the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise IT desk. It also delivered an app to the state’s Department of Human Services that tracks time and purchases related to COVID-19 work.

Using Qlik, Adviseinc developed an application that has been deployed by more than 200 Healthcare and Social Care organisations. It helps them track and manage stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Burger King has selected Qualtrics CoreXM and Cepheid selected Qualtrics CustomerXM. Additionally, Energy Queensland recently selected Qualtrics BrandXM.

The Iyo Bank, Ltd., a major regional bank in Japan, has switched support for its Oracle Database system to Rimini Street. Mr Shota Yano, IT department manager at The Iyo Bank commented: “Moving away from Oracle Database with high reliability was not an option for us because we rely heavily on our current system, but maintenance and related costs were a huge burden for a bank of our size. We were impressed by the cost benefits of Rimini Street’s third-party support, which will allow us to continue to maximize our database system for many years to come with no required upgrades, and as a result, we expect a much higher return on our database software investment.”

Tyler Technologies announced that the city of Buffalo, New York, has launched the Socrata solution to communicate with City hall staff about COVID-19.

Product

Act-On introduced several new features for its marketing platform. These include SMS Messaging, Event Triggers, transactional emails, deeper integrations to Zapier, interactive reporting and several enhanced content creation tools.

Automation Anywhere unveiled the latest version of its digital workforce platform that powers its RPA solutions. It highlighted four key improvements in the press release:

  • Attended automation: human-to-bot collaboration advancements
  • Seamless API-based integration
  • New developer portal for RPA skills enhancement
  • Launch of Private Bot Store

It is also now possible to purchase Automation Anywhere Cloud starter kits online.

Blue Ridge Price Optimisation Suite App has achieved ‘Built for NetSuite’ status. The price optimisation tool helps retail and distribution organisation by simulating pricing strategies to maximise revenues and profits.

ECI Software has introduced an order status customer portal for M1 ERP users. Users can now make available to their customers the current status of orders automatically, without interaction. The portal is customisable for each customer and is accessible on mobile devices as well as desktops.

Jitterbit announced API360. API360 is a series of integration templates and best practices for organisations to accelerate the integration of solutions across their business. It consists of four elements.

  • Connectors: Between applications such as Epicor, NetSuite, Oracle, Workday and Adobe.
  • Integration Recipes: Predefined business integrations to move data between two applications or systems.
  • Process Templates: Predefined business templates that facilitate data transfer between applications.
  • Delivery Services: Jitterbit offers a fixed scope engagement for specific integration requirements.

Keap has launched an Outlook calendar integration for Keap Appointments. It is in addition to the Google Calendar functionality it already had. The recent May update also included improvements to the Campaign Builder and Keap Mobile application.

Logi Analytics has announced the Logi Composer. This new tool delivers an out of the box development experience for embedded analytics. It has several features:

  • Developers can easily create, customise and embed data visualisations with complete control over the end-user experience.
  • Embedded self-service can be tailored and configured to match the skill level of end-users while enabling them to modify and share their visualisations.
  • z-Engine and Smart Data Connectors unlock modern data connectivity and query performance, while also working with your existing tech stack.
  • A cloud-ready microservices architecture provides application teams with an elastic scale that their finance team will love and their DevOps team will respect.

QAD, the ERP vendor is powering its adaptive manufacturing applications with Logi Composer.

NICE introduces Agile CX, a new educational program. It will help customer experience leaders develop an extreme business agility state of mind and benefit from technology infrastructure. Agile CX also allows them to continuously adapt to changes amid the uncertainties they are all experiencing. It will commence during CX Week with a 3 part webinar on Agile Service, Agile Insights and Agile Workforce. It also released the latest version of its Automation Studio. The  NICE Robotic Automation Community Edition is available free of charge for six months and helps RPA professionals with content, tutorials and best-practices in building automation.

Pandle has added a feature that enables users to correct an error in VAT returns simply and easily before filing and without having to edit the original transaction and is done within the VAT return. It does not seem to correct the original transaction if wrong though, which might lead to challenging questions should a VAT inspection arise. There is no indication that it is possible to add a reason for the change, or clarity around the provision of an audit trail.

Pulseway added several features for version 8.2 of its software. These include enhancements to automation workflows by enabling the automation of custom fields. It also supports multitasking within the iPad application as two apps can run simultaneously. Finally, there are now 86 third-party applications for which that Pulseway supports patch management. It recently added nine more including Microsoft Edge and GIMP.

Qualitest has announced the global launch of Qualisense, a suite of machine learning-powered software testing tools and services. It is the next generation of the Qualisense Test Predictor service.

Qualtrics announced Back-to-School solutions. It will help higher education institutions and K-12 school districts safely and confidently reopen their campuses. It includes pre-built automated solutions including a Digital Open Door, Return to Work (Faculty & Staff) Readiness, Student/Family Confidence Pulse, Staff/Student Symptom Checker & Self-Certification and Contacts Tracing. Qualtrics also unveiled a new TeleHealth solution aimed at assisting healthcare organisations to optimise the patient experience.

Simpro launched version 20.2.6. It includes profile photos for technicians, new UI enhancements and the ability to support hourly allowances and prevailing wages for US customers.

SolarWinds updated its APM Suite of products which includes AppOptics, Pingdom and Loggly. It added service maps to AppOptics, which shows dependencies between services and the metrics which impact them. There is a new transaction recorder for Pingdom and enhancements to the Loggly search UX with a custom parsing algorithm.

SuiteCRM unveiled version 7.11.15. It includes several security fixes and 45 other fixes based on community contributions. It also announced Version 7.10.27 of SuiteCRM LTS.

ThoughtSpot announced the launch of ThoughtSpot Embrace for AWS. The new solution enables users to run search and AI-driven analytics directly in an AWS Redshift database. It has also achieved Amazon Redshift Ready designation.

Research

Coupa has published the results of a global study of 667 senior finance decision-makers on the likelihood and depth of any recession. Key findings include:

  • 87% believe a recession is likely
  • 53% think that it will last six months or longer
  • 70% of respondents are containing costs by making broad or departmental cuts over the next 6-12 months
  • A majority of them (76%) are reliant on traditional or outdated methods to manage their business spend
  • Only 23% are using a single, unified spend management solution to manage their business spending
  • 83% are concerned about the health of their suppliers or their suppliers’ suppliers

Coupa also revealed finds of its Q2 2020 Coupa Business Spend Index (BSI). Spend sentiment plummeted across all industry sectors except Health and Life Sciences.

Igloo published its third annual State of the Digital Workplace. It found that more than half of employees avoid sharing documents with colleagues because they cannot locate the documents. More than half of employees (51%) are overwhelmed by non-work content from messaging apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Despite COVID-19 bringing in more home working, it seems that employees are struggling more than ever.

Research carried out by Mendix reveals that organisations are putting more pressure on IT leaders to deliver digital transformation. There is also a significant change in priorities. 70% report that IT projects are now on hold due to the lockdown. Instead, investments organisations are making investments in technologies such as remote access app development (28%), COVID-19 related apps (21%), collaboration (14%) and digital customer interactions (12%). The survey polled 1,000 IT leaders in Germany, The Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Xero unveiled some insights into the impact of the pandemic on Australian small businesses. Jobs have fallen by 13% since mid-march. The JobKeeper initiative stemmed this sharp decline. Small businesses were disproportionately impacted compared to larger organisations that lost less than 10% of jobs. Revenues have also fallen 11% with Hospitality (51%), and Arts & Recreation (49%) hit hardest.

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