With the celebration of Independence Day in the United States, the news was busier at the start of the week. There were several research published, including RingDNA. Payments vendors Bill.com and Mineral Tree also published some interesting findings. In the UK, pubs opened for business this weekend for the first time in weeks, and several shops opened their doors. Brightpearl.com investigated what shoppers can expect. Tech Trailblazers launched its annual startup awards last week as well. If you are a young startup, consider applying.
Appointments
Akerna named David McCullough as Chief Technology Officer. McCullough was previously executive vice president of product & engineering and has been at Akerna for five years. He succeeds Alex Shah, who remains as president of solo sciences.
Ivanti appointed Nayaki Nayyar as Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. Nayyar joins Ivanti from BMC where she was the president of the Digital Service and Operations Management Business Unit.
Business
The Access Group today announced a new charitable partnership with The Care Workers’ Charity. It is an organisation which provides financial support and guidance to help care workers overcome life’s inevitable challenges. Access will be donating 10% of all transaction fees generated from health and social care users of the EarlyPay app to the charity.
Ultimate Software and Kronos Inc today announced the Equity at Work Council (EWC). It is an interdisciplinary group of innovators and practitioners working together to understand and develop the science underpinning diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B). The EWC, funded and operated by Ultimate and Kronos, will focus on three primary initiatives:
- An annual research study to explore the multidimensional aspects of DEI&B at work
- An Equity at Work Index (E@W Index) to establish and benchmark the quantitative and qualitative drivers of workplace equity
- A series of open-source tools and resources that help organisations identify and overcome barriers to DEI&B
MHR has announced a partnership with Wagestream. MHR customers can now provide income streaming to employees. Employers are, therefore, able to pay employees more regularly and remove the monthly debt cycle.
Namely announced support for Time to Vote, a business-led initiative that aims to ensure all employees in America do not have to choose between earning a paycheck and voting.
Priority Software Ltd announced the signing of a technology agreement with DOKKA, a global provider of machine learning-based document processing solutions. Emil Zak, CEO & Founder at DOKKA, explained: “We are excited about our new technology partnership with Priority and the opportunity to serve Priority ERP customers with a dedicated document management solution. We believe that Priority customers will benefit from this new integration offering and that once onboard, it will prompt more organizations to implement DOKKA into their workflow, and boost their Priority user experience. This is indeed further testament of Priority ERP’s system openness and flexibility, and we look forward to a mutually beneficial partnership today, and well into the future.”
SolarWinds has expanded its customer success initiative to drive greater partner enablement for MSPs. The investment includes an expanded customer team SolarWinds now offers:
- 24 x 5 global customer care team: Dedicated to helping MSP partners remain focused on maximising business success, and spend less time troubleshooting things like account questions and usage reports.
- Expanded onboarding team: Works with every new customer and first-time tool user to provide in-depth training, and chart an ongoing path for technical efficiency and improved performance.
- Enhanced localised customer success managers: Help partners with timely, relevant tools and resources through a global hub of more than 40 dedicated professionals.
- New partner advisory groups: Help fuel partner-driven solutions and feature sets.
UJET Inc has formed a strategic relationship with Calabrio. The partnership will see the integration of UJET cloud contact solutions with the Calabrio customer experience intelligence platform.
Xero has made its COVID-19 resources available through the Microsoft small and medium-sized business COVID-19 Resource centre. It is also offering 50% off a 12 months Xero subscription to qualifying Microsoft customers.
Customer
Celigo Integrator.io has achieved SAP-Certified Integration with cloud solutions. The integration is with SAP Ariba.
Signavio has selected Conga solutions including Conga Composer, Conga Contracts for Salesforce, Conga Orchestrate, and Conga Sign to shorten its approval cycle and reduce administration within its legal department.
Vistaar Technologies is now live with Freshdesk customer service software across its global operations in North America, Europe and Asia. Vijay Parmar, Director, Customer Success at Vistaar, commented: “At Vistaar, customer success is not just a business function. It’s a mindset of caring for your customer and showing it with quick action. It’s a culture that permeates across all business units and functions at our organization. We are pleased with our partnership with Freshworks, who share our vision on customer centricity and have helped us drive increased responsiveness for our customer support organization.”
Nahdi Medical Company, a Saudi Arabia-based pharmacy retail chain, has digitally transformed its financial management, payment systems, and financial planning with Infor Treasury Management. Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) in the Bahamas has selected Infor CloudSuite Healthcare Financial and Supply Chain Management applications.
ConocoPhillips has selected and deployed the Mendix low-code platform to build digital solutions that can scale across the company. In the last 18 months, it has rolled out 18 enterprise-grade applications in a faster cadence than it has ever achieved.
Oracle Food & Beverage MICROS Simphony Point-of-Sale (POS) is helping Panini Internazionale deliver on its brand promise of zero waste. It ensures that near the end of the day food is made available cheaply to students. It also donates any remaining stock to charity.
Rimini Street announced that Air Services Australia has renewed its agreement for SAP applications support first signed in 2016.
Qualtrics announced customer wins with National Grid selecting Qualtrics EmployeeXM, Great Eastern Life selecting Qualtrics CoreXM and Southwest Gas corporation selected both Qualtrics EmployeeXM and Core XM.
Jefferson City Police Department in Missouri has successfully gone live with Tyler’s New World Enterprise CAD a computer-aided dispatch solution.
Product
Automation Anywhere announced that its AI-Powered IQ Bot now supports Japanese and Korean enabled by Google Cloud Vision API. It also enables several other languages.
Asite announced an integration with Microsoft Teams and Google Meet with its Project Information management Platform. It follows on from its integration to Zoom a few weeks ago.
Nexthink, the global leader in digital employee experience (DEX) management, has launched the next generation of its platform: Nexthink Experience.
Priority Software announced the completion of the German localisation of its ERP product. The solution is now certified to Germany’s IDW PS 880 and includes local tax reporting and bank payment integration.
Pipeliner announces version 3.3.0 of Pipeliner CRM Cloud. The update includes a new “Sales POP!” content widget. It includes enhancements to Automazer, such as the addition of manual triggers and processes. It has improved the import tool and several other minor improvements.
Qualtrics has improved its integration with Voxpopme to strengthen its video feedback capabilities. Companies can integrate the Voxpopme video visualisation widget into Qualtrics dashboards. Dave Carruthers, CEO & Founder at Voxpopme, said: “Understanding consumers, customers, and employees has never been so crucial for business. Voxpopme’s integration with Qualtrics allows brands to go beyond key charts and dashboards to see real people, customers, and employees talking passionately about their experiences, not just the scores and trends alone. This rich feedback allows for an instant understanding of and empathy for their perspective, and ultimately instills more drive to take action.”
Sage announced updates to its Small Business Accounting Solution. The updates focus on improvements to Construction Industry Scheme functionality. Updates include the ability to submit CIS300 direct to HMRC.
Skillsoft today announced Aspire Journeys for Leadership Development. The new service has nine journeys with three primary focus areas: Leadership development core, leaders in transition and digital mindsets.
Smartsheet revealed that one of its platinum partners, 4EF has created and deployed a time slot booking Smartsheet Add-on. The app is available free and enables companies to manage how many staff are within each office.
Workato enhanced its platform with several updates in June, summarised in a recent blog. They include a G2 Connector, support for Slack App Home and support for OAuth 2.0 authentication.
Research
Bill.com released a report entitled: “Where Opportunity Meets Value: Business Model Trends for Accounting Advisory Services.” Co-Authored by CPA.com and the Hinge Research Institute it includes findings from a survey of more than 650 accounting firms. Kevin Au, senior director of product marketing for Bill.com, noted: “The survey results show that many firms are moving beyond traditional accounting and compliance services and offering more strategic offerings. In fact, our report shows that more than 60% of accountants surveyed offer strategic advisory services, 26% offer outsourced/virtual CFO services and nearly 25% offer cash flow analysis.”
Brightpearl.com revealed findings from a survey of 2,000 retailers about what shoppers from retail stores as they open should expect:
- 73% will be placing limits of customer capacity
- 69% of retailers will offer hand gels for customers
- 43% will close toilet facilities, and 17% will not provide changing room access
- Three-quarters of retailers believe the implementation of safety precautions and social distancing measures will severely impact their in-store profitability
- 34% are planning to switch their focus to online.
Freshworks has published a TEI study by Forrester into the value of Freshdesk Omnichannel to senior management and key business stakeholders as it pertained to their customer engagement initiatives. The study looked at mid-market companies in four industries (health technology, consumer goods, travel and logistics). It identifies at least four areas that Freshdesk Omnichannel delivered added value and cost savings:
- Reduced wait times and frustration with low-effort service experiences
- It improved agent workflow
- AI-powered customer-facing self-service, freeing up agent time
- Avoid the cost of reporting and administrative tasks
IFS published a new independent global survey entitled: Digital Transformation Investment in 2020 and Beyond: Factors That Will Impact the Success or Failure of Technology Investments in the Post-Pandemic Era. The study was from more than 3,000 IT decision-makers across Australia, France, Germany, the Nordics, the UK and the USA. It looked at vendor trust, the impact of the crisis on digital transformation spending and success factors in digital transformation projects.
K2 published findings from a survey in a report entitled “Accelerating Automation: How Businesses are Adapting to a Post-COVID World”. Key findings include:
- Ninety-two per cent of business leaders agree that to survive and flourish; companies must enable digital channels and process automation in the workplace
- Eighty per cent of businesses are facing new challenges related to COVID-19
- Sixty per cent need to develop new processes to address COVID realities
- Fifty-nine per cent are having challenges maintaining operational efficiencies in a distributed environment and enabling remote employees
MineralTree released its fifth annual State of AP report. Electronic payments adoption continues to accelerate. More companies are also automating AP processes, 38% this year, up from 24% last year. The report also looks at the challenges, including fraud, down only 2% from 59% to 57%. While larger organisations are automating faster, there are significant benefits to mid-sized businesses too. Micah Remley, CEO at MineralTree commented: “Our latest annual report shows that middle-market businesses are making real progress in their efforts to automate their accounts payable processes and gain the substantial benefits that come with that. There are clearly big opportunities as well, such as fraud prevention, continued reduction of paper-based processes, and being more realistic about what those paper-based processes are costing the business. This is especially true in the current environment where effective cash management is so critical to business operations.”
Data from Xero found that in New Zealand revenue and employment improved during May following the lockdown. In April, revenue growth was -41% year on year, in May, this climbed to -22%. Craig Hudson, Managing Director for New Zealand and Pacific Islands at Xero commented: “Despite the bottoming out of revenue due to the COVID-19 lockdown in March and April, we’ve begun to see encouraging early signs of recovery in May across the small business sector. Weekly sales across the sector climbed between mid-April to mid-May, coinciding with the nation moving down alert levels and the economy opening up again.”
