What a week, with both Workday and Sage Intacct holding conventions. Several PSA vendors announced new releases including a major update from FinancialForce. Mavenlink focused on improving its resource management functionality.
Salesforce unveiled a major update to its Work.com platform. Other notable product announcements came from Act-On, Pulseway, Wrike. Acquisitions last week include several below and Athenians acquihire of Redox Technologies.
Pick of the week
Oracle has published a study, “Getting Past the Breaking Point of Yesterday’s CRM,” (registration required). It was created in partnership with analyst firm Beagle Research Group. Users are frustrated with existing systems, and a majority would prefer to carry out mundane tasks such as cleaning a bathroom than replacing a CRM.
The study, based on responses from over 500 sellers in the US found that 90% believe that parts of their job take longer than they should. While 35% said this includes updating a CRM, 31% fault sales training activities. A furthers 86% are frustrated by certain elements of their job, mainly dealing with technology. Worryingly 85% have been embarrassed by faulty CRM data. This is concerning with data protection laws increasing in volume.
There are still challenges with the adoption of CRM, with only 47% using CRM regularly. Instead, they use eight different tools to accomplish their responsibilities. The top five tools are email, the internet, smartphones, video conferencing, and Word documents. This lack of use of CRM is leading to inefficiencies, and instead, sellers are looking to develop superpowers, the most commonly desired include:
- predict the future (30%),
- having a perfect memory (19%),
- knowing a prospect’s mood (13%),
- being extremely organized (12%),
Katrina Gosek, vice president, Oracle Cloud CX. Commented: “Our research has proven that traditional CRM systems are simply not working. Sellers are tired of having to piece together information across the sales process and tired of conventional CRMs that are an endless burden of data entry.
“At Oracle, we are reinventing the selling experience by leveraging front and back-office data, providing a modern AI-driven user interface and offering clear guidance through real-time customer insights that put sales teams on the path to success—and closer than ever to the superpowers they need.”
Acquisition
Advanced has acquired Clear Review, its third acquisition in 2020. It extends its HCM capability with the global performance management and employee engagement software company.
IRIS Software Group has acquired iSAMS to strengthen its education software portfolio. iSAMS provides management information system (MIS) solutions to over 500 UK independent schools and over 500 international schools across 80 countries.
Qlik acquired Blendr.io an easy-to-use, scalable and secure embedded integration and automation platform. Qlik did not disclose terms. Qlik hopes to roll out integrated solutions in 2021.
Appointment
Freshworks has appointed José Morales as Chief Revenue Officer. Morales was previously head of global field operations at Atlassian.
Kimble Applications has appointed Geoff Pople to the role of Chief Customer Officer. Pople commented: “We are aligning all of our customer-facing teams to make sure the customer is at the heart of everything we do. Our aim is to provide outstanding customer experience, delivered at all touchpoints, starting at initial implementation and continuing throughout the customer’s lifetime. We will continue to build strong, long term relationships with a deep focus on delivering incremental value, so our customers remain confident of their investment in Kimble.”
Intuit appointed Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo’s Chief Operating Officer, to Board of Directors.
Charlie Kimbell has rejoined Manufacturing Information Systems, Inc. (MISys) as Director of Sales and Marketing.
Onna, the knowledge integration platform has appointed Michelle Wideman Chief Customer Officer, a new role which reports to Kelly Griswold, COO.
SirionLabs appointed former EY and KPMG leader Mark Voytek as Chief Customer Officer.
Unit4 has appointed Michelle MacCarthy as Global Head of Customer Success. MacCarthy was previously VP of Global Customer Success at Flexera.
Business
The Access Group reported its full-year results. Revenues up 47% YoY to £315 million. The continues 15 years of growth for the company backed by Hg and TA Associates. Chris Bayne, CEO of The Access Group, said: “I’m extremely proud of this year’s outstanding financial results and pleased that our leading investors continue to support us as the company continues to grow and evolve. Hg and TA’s further investment in The Access Group is a sign of our business and team’s strength. We look forward to continuing our relationship with our partners as we embark on further organic and acquisitive growth projects, as well as geographic expansion.”
ActiveCampaign now has more than 120,000 active customers, a growth of 20% since May 2020. It has more than 326 integrations on its marketplace with 85,000 customers using those integrations. In recent months it has received analyst recognition from Gartner and added several key executives.
Alteryx has partnered with Adobe. It will combine the Alteryx Analytic Process Automation Platform and Adobe Experience Platform, enabling organisations to automate marketing analytics to achieve fast analytics-driven outcomes.
Arcoro, the leader in modular HR management solutions for the construction, field services and other high compliance industries, has completed its Service Organizations Controls 2 (SOC 2) audit
Asite has launched the Asite Ecosystem. It is made up of partners, consultants and resellers who are building in partnership alongside Asite to help capital projects across the globe to build better.
Billtrust is to list on Nasdaq after its acquisition by South Mountain Merger Corporation (Nasdaq: SMMC.U) (“South Mountain”) in a deal worth $1.5 billion. After the acquisition completed, it is likely to change the ticker and name to BTRS Holdings Inc.
BMC has launched BMC Helix Remedyforce solution, built on the Salesforce platform in South Korea.
Clients First Business Solutions of Texas has partnered with Cleo to provide its integration platform to its Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer base.
Datto completed a successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE: MSP. The company raised around $549.5 million. It closed the week $2 above its asking price at $29 and has a market cap of $4.57 billion.
Demandbase announced record growth in its third quarter and achieved profitability six months ahead of plan. Gabe Rogol, Chief Executive Officer, Demandbase commented: “Digital Transformation is happening faster than ever today. Our technology is ideal for helping customers increase revenue and improve retention, no matter the business climate. This, combined with our enhanced focus on operational excellence, has allowed Demandbase to deliver what all companies hope for, accelerating revenue growth and stronger profits.”
Domo has launched Domo Election Tracker, a free, interactive resource with polling data and other relevant data sources on this year’s presidential election.
Ivanti announced a new partnership program for Ivanti Wavelink its supply chain business. The Ivanti Wavelink Strategic Alliances Program will create an ecosystem for hardware and device manufacturers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and other technology partners which have validated solutions for Wavelink.
KCS has launched its first intern program in South Africa. It will consist of 10 new interns.
Over the last twelve months, over 90% of Neo4j customers have opted to run their graph-powered applications in the cloud.
Qualtrics revealed that its partner network has grown to more than 300 over the last 12 months and that the Qualtrics Developer Platform now has more than 100 integration solutions.
Accenture and ServiceNow invested millions in the Accenture ServiceNow Business Group. It aims to help private, and public sector clients accelerate their digital transformation and better address today’s dynamic operational challenges.
TaskRay revealed its November 2020 release. New features include a template builder to help build project templates. There is also an advanced scheduler to enable bulk rescheduling of tasks. There is also a new mobile app powered by Salesforce Lightning. The update will be available in a sandbox from October 31st.
UiPath is partnering with eSentire to deliver an end-to-end security policy automation across multiple Microsoft Security services.
Workato has refreshed its brand with a new logo, tone and headline: “Automate the w*rk out of everything” to reflect the company better.
Customer
Supplies For Candles has chosen Brightpearl to support the growth of its eCommerce websites thesoapkitchen.co.uk and suppliesforcandles.co.uk and to improve upon the delivery speed and efficiency at which it is servicing customers.
Cold Spring Construction has gained significant benefits from leveraging eCMS’ advanced Business Intelligence and Analytics functionality, having installed eCMS Interactive Data Inquiry (IDI) to supplement its eCMS ERP solution.
Varonis, a pioneer in data security and analytics, is now using the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform for contract management.
The International Finance Corporation’s (IFC’s) Global Trade Supplier Finance (GTSF) Program has transacted more than $1.5 billion of trade each year using the Infor Nexus network.
TrainingPros, a specialized staffing agency, achieved rapid scale and agility by replacing their previous solution with Sage Intacct cloud financial management software.
Bio Partner Schweiz AG will implement Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage with the help of Infor partner, Maximum Solution Consulting Group GmbH. In a separate announcement, Infor revealed that Norsk Kylling has also deployed Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage. Infor won the deal in a competitive tender against SAP.
Nice announced several customer wins. Midland States Bank selected NICE SATMetrix, and a leading European bank is now using NICE Authentication to improve security and customer experience. Finally Lancashire Constabulary is leveraging Nice Investigate.
C&A Mexico is digitally transforming operations for its 75 stores and correlating distribution centres with Oracle Retail solutions. It is rolling out Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning, Oracle Warehouse Management, Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting, Oracle Retail Merchandising System and Oracle Retail Allocation.
Qualtrics customer announcements this week include Boyd Gaming selecting Qualtrics EmployeeXM, Tata Capital using Qualtrics CustomerXM, StepStone using Qualtrics CoreXM, Standard Life selecting Qualtrics CoreXM and the Community Health Network is to use Qualtrics CustomerXM.
Ramco Systems announced that it has secured additional order for its flagship solutions, Ramco ERP Suite and Ramco Global Payroll & HR Solution from Jamna Auto Industries. Ramco also announced that in Australia Lendlease has gone live on Ramco Global Payroll.
Brazil’s largest pharmaceutical company Hypera Pharma has switched support for its heavily customised SAP ECC 6.0, MS SQL Server and SAP Business Objects to Rimini Street.
Finom, a fintech data aggregation platform, has selected SaltEdge and will use its PSD2 APIs to integrate with European banks.
The Iowa Clinic, the largest physician-owned, multi-speciality group in Central Iowa, is using UKG Pro to support a culture focused on employee and patient satisfaction.
Product
At Bizagi Catalyst, the intelligent process automation vendor announced a new customer onboarding & KYC accelerator for financial services clients. It also revealed a Permit Lifecycle Management Accelerator for public sector clients. There were also two new connectors unveiled for ABBYY and Microsoft Cognitive Services Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Blue Prism announced Blue Prism Accelerators for use with SAP ERP. These provide new automation capabilities specifically designed for SAP ECC and S/4HANA enterprise users. They are also free for qualifying customers.
BMC announced BMC Helix Control-M, a SaaS application workflow orchestration solution built on BMC’s leading Control-M product.
MineralTree introduced automated purchase order matching for Sage Intacct.
Monday.com announced deeper integration to solutions in the Adobe Creative Cloud. It is now possible to:
- see updates at a glance
- quickly update your columns and task statuses directly within your Creative Cloud apps
- access project briefs quickly
- receive real-time feedback without switching between tools
- get notifications for every step or milestone of your team’s creative process
Plugins are available for Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro.
Procore has announced App Management Metrics. This new feature gives customers a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of their third-party application usage on the Procore platform. It also introduced two new features to its platform: Real-Time Labor Productivity and Time & Material Tickets.
Qualtrics is releasing a vaccine management solution to help governments deliver the COVID-19 vaccine safely and efficiently to their communities.
The Replicon Time Tracking for Service Organizations application is now available for purchase on SAP App Center.
SuiteCRM released phase 1 of SuiteCRM Alpha preview this week.
Suti HR revealed its latest update. The release is focused around improving the performance review process.
TigerGraph announced the results of the first comprehensive graph data management benchmark study using nearly 5TB of raw data on a cluster of machines
QuickBooks announced its Fall update with improvements across Income Tax, Payroll, cash flow management, Payments and for Accountants.
Wrike announced the first of several integrations to Adobe solutions. The Adobe XD integration allows designers to access Wrike functionality without leaving XD. Next up is an integration with Adobe Experience Manager.
Research
BMC released its initial findings from a global study that indexes the competitiveness of organizations on their journey to becoming an Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE). Compiled by 451 research from across 18 industries and 11 countries key findings include:
- 41% of respondents said their organizations currently have distinct digital lines of business
- 38% are currently planning or evaluating to do so
- 90% of those surveyed called it out as an important, very important, or essential differentiator from their competition
- 4% of surveyed organizations are automating business, and IT processes broadly across their operations today
- 7% have called it out as part of their 2-year plan
- 86% of respondents saying it is an important, very important, or essential differentiator
- 8% of respondents say they are executing within several lines of business a data-driven approach to decisions and operations
- 4% saying they will scale out their data-driven initiatives across their enterprises in the coming two years
- 90% of all respondents recognize it as an important-to-essential component for the competitiveness of their ADE