As COVID vaccines start to roll out globally, there are glimmers of hope that some kind of normality will return during 2021. At the moment, it still seems a long way away with many people still staying at home, either enforced by law or by choice. Organisations are starting to adapt to the new situation, and many are responding to help out. Workday launched a Vaccine management Solution but has not yet joined VCI, a new organisation.
The Vaccine Credential Initiative aims to enable individuals vaccinated for COVID-19 to access their vaccination records in a secure, verifiable and privacy-preserving way. It is backed by organisations including CARIN Alliance, Cerner, Change Healthcare, The Commons Project Foundation, Epic, Evernorth, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MITRE, Oracle, Safe Health and Salesforce.
Perhaps the PSA sector’s biggest news was the announcement that Planview is to acquire both Changepoint and Clarizen. Coming after the acquisition of Workfront by Adobe, it sees further consolidation in the market. Who said expenses is a struggling sector, SalesTrip raised $1.4 million in a new funding round.
Enterprise Times also published an interview with two of the veteran co-founders of Fluence Technologies.
Pick of the week
KeyedIn published information from its 2021 PMO Outlook Survey. Based on more than 200 responses, it found that the role of the PMO is evolving. It found that 21% of the respondents said visibility and reporting was their biggest challenge (ahead of resourcing, prioritization and financial management).
On visibility, key reasons are:
- 37% cited disparate systems as a primary concern,
- 27% felt a lack of real-time project portfolio data
- 24% saw a lack of centralisation of project portfolio data is an issue
The survey also broke down findings around resource management and prioritisation too. For resource management, it found the top three most challenging elements are:
- Capacity planning (45%)
- Resource allocation (28%)
- Resource utilization (13%)
Prioritisation has some familiar challenges as well. 33% of respondents find it difficult to say “no”. Other challenges included aligning projects with corporate strategy and accurately scoring portfolio projects. It might have been interesting to get deeper insights into why PMO find it difficult to say know and the additional challenges that brings. Are they talking about internal or external projects? Were resources available to scale up the PMO to meet the additional requirements? Also, where were these projects coming from and who exactly is approving them? Does the PMO need a better voice at the leadership table?
Acquisitions
IRIS Software acquired Senta, a vendor of cloud-based practice management for accountants and bookkeepers. Terms were not disclosed.
Pegasystems Inc acquired Qurious.io a software vendor of a cloud-based real-time speech analytics solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service teams.
Visma Onguard has acquired Outstanding24, a Dutch vendor of debtor management software.
Appointment
AccountsIQ appointed Luke McKenna as Business Development Manager in the UK offices. McKenna was previously at Sage.
Acumatica has appointed Sanket Akerkar as its new chief revenue officer. Akerkat was previously at Nauto and also worked in leadership positions at Microsoft, after working for McKinsey & Co.
Agiloft has lured Andy Wishart to become Chief Product Officer from Thompson Reuters where he led the legal drafting and productivity solutions teams.
Blueconic appointed David Visi as Vice President of Professional Services.
Celonis appointed Lars Reinkemeyer as Vice President of Customer Transformation.
ConnectWise has promoted Tom Greco chief information security officer (CISO). Chris Timms has joined as EVP of growth, and Tony Clancy joined as SVP of engineering.
Cornerstone appointed Chirag Shah Chief Financial Officer, effective February 1st 2021. Interim CFO Trish Coughlin will continue as Chief Accounting Officer. Unusually, Shah has been at Cornerstone for more than a decade most recently as SVP and General Manager of Growth Markets.
Ellucian appointed Greg Giangrande as Chief People Officer. Giangrande was most recently a senior advisor at McKinsey & Company.
Peter Andersson is the new CEO of Hypergene as Per Hidenius stepped down.
KCS has appointed Anthony Cornwall as Account Director Automotive within its Automotive division.
Neo4j has appointed Kristin Thornby as Vice President of People. In 2020 alone it added five business leaders to its senior leadership team as it prepares for growth.
Rimini Street announced three senior appointments in its US operations. Emmanuel Richard, becomes group vice president and general manager, North East region. Chris Bahr was appointed group vice president and general manager, Central and North West region. Stephen Zimmerman, became group vice president and general manager, South and South West region.
Qualtrics made two announcements about appointments as it strengthened its leadership team before the proposed IPO. In the first Brad Anderson joins as President of Products and Services. Stephanie Barton will join as Managing Director of the EMEA region, and Abhi Ingle will become COO of Revenue Operations, Pre-Sales, & Industry. In the second Julia Anas will join as Chief People Officer and Edward Chen joins as Head of Corporate Development and Strategy. Gina Sheibley will also join Qualtrics as Chief Communications Officer.
Sage appointed Aziz Benmalek as Executive Vice President of the global partner organisation. He previously worked for Splunk and Microsoft.
Adaire Fox-Martin is leaving the supervisory board at SAP at the end of the month. Julia White has been appointed to the role of as chief marketing and solutions officer. Scott Russell Russell will head SAP’s Customer Success organization. Both will join the executive board.
Laura Atkinson has been appointed as Chief Partner Officer for SAP UK & Ireland, reporting to Managing Director Michiel Verhoeven.
Business
Active Campaign published a business update for 2020. It has onboarded 40,000 customers during the year and now has 130,000 customers. The summary also covered product launches and awards.
Alteryx announced a partnership with Snowflake, the Data Cloud company that further integrates Alteryx analytics automation and data science capabilities with Snowflake’s platform.
Billtrust and South Mountain Merger Corp have completed the merger that will see Billtrust listed on NASDAQ as BTRS.
CherryRoad Technologies Inc, a leading integrator of public sector software and digital technology solutions, has become an Infor partner. It will resell enterprise software for financial systems, resource planning (ERP), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Community Development Resources (CDR), Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) to the public sector.
CIPHR, a leading UK provider of SaaS HCM solutions, has partnered with Mintago, which offers financial wellbeing and support for all employees.
Cleo has partnered with Integress, a leading data analytics services firm to target the transportation and logistics market with its integration solution.
DocuSign has raised $690.0 Million in 0% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2024, including a $90.0 million option to purchase additional notes granted by DocuSign to the initial purchasers. It has also agreed a revolving credit facility for a further $250 million.
Employee Navigator, a leading benefits administration & HR software provider, raised $34 million in a growth equity funding led by JMI Equity.
Froged, a software vendor delivering an onboarding and retention solution for SaaS companies, has raised $500k in a funding round led by BStartup (Bank Sabadell). Other investors include Athos Capital, Chile Ventures and some Spanish business angels.
IFS is to announce a new IFS Cloud platform on March 10th.
KeyedIn has planned the migration of its UK Cloud operations to AWS for January 16th, and service will resume on the 17th. The change will not impact the US or Australian data centres.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Verily, an Alphabet company, and Microsoft Corp announced a strategic partnership to accelerate biomedicine innovations through the Terra platform.
iGrafx, Kortical and Coterie Solutions have joined the Nintex Technology Alliance Program (TAP) as affiliate partners.
OneStream Software revealed a business update for 2020. It increased ARR by 85%, its customer base by 40% of its workforce by 65% and its partner ecosystem by 30%.
SAP revealed preliminary Q4 and full-year results ahead of full results on January 29th.
Alvarez & Marsal, the global consultancy has joined the partner network of SideTrade, partnered the Artificial Intelligence platform dedicated to accelerating company revenue and cashflow.
Navisco, a leading IT sourcing consultancy in DACH and SirionLabs announced a strategic partnership. The companies plan to offer an integrated solution combining best-in-class Sourcing Strategies with AI-powered Contract Management Technology.
Milsoft Utility Solutions, a utility software solution provider, is expanding its relationship with SugarCRM to leverage a unified CRM and Service platform to serve customer needs better.
Tableau launched the Data Literacy for All, a free eLearning program featuring seven modules at various skill levels, designed to help anyone upskill, reskill and establish a foundation of data literacy.
TalentQuest has partnered with Dr Jagdish N Sheth to leverage his expertise in consumer psychology, relationship marketing, competitive strategy, and geopolitical analysis. Microlearning modules will be available for clients based on his research and body of work.
InfoCepts has become the exclusive distribution partner for ThoughtSpot in South East Asia.
XCD raised £2 million in a funding round led by BCF for its cloud HR and payroll solution.
Workato has raised $110M in Series D funding at a $1.7B valuation. Altimeter led the round, joined by Insight Partners and existing investors, Battery and Redpoint.
Customer
Athletic Brewing Company has selected Crafted ERP to support its rapid growth and expanding business operations.
Austin Engineering Company deployed eCMS v4.1 and several other applications as part of a digital transformation strategy. Doing so has introduced automation, increased efficiency, and improved evidence-based decision-making into its business processes.
Fenergo will provide Know Your Customer (KYC), Customer Due Diligence (CDD), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) systems and risk scoring services to a top-five global investment management firm. It did not name the customer.
Homeplus Co, a South Korean grocery and outlet retailer, has switch support for its Oracle applications and database software to Rimini Street.
LKAB one of Europes largest Iron Ore producers has selected IFS EAM to help it deliver a digital mine.
Jersey Electric has begun to roll out an Infor EAM solution across the island with the help of Progressive TSL, an Infor partner.
Sheffield-based One Health Group is to deploy the MHR People First platform to support HR, recruitment and onboarding.
Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) has selected NICE Actimize to drive its AML Cloud Transformation.
United States Steel Corporation has selected the OneStream Software CPM solution.
BBC Media Action has selected Qualtrics CoreXM, and Singapore Life selected Qualtrics Customer XM for its Customer Experience program.
Agemark, one of the nation’s most trusted senior living providers, has migrated from Sage 50 to Sage Intacct in a successful project. It has seen it increase the business but without the same impact on growth within its finance team.
Sally Beauty Holdings (NYSE: SBH), the leader in professional hair colour, has partnered with Salesforce to implement cloud-based enhancements supporting the shopping experience for beauty enthusiasts and salon professionals. It will leverage Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud.
Agero, a leading driver assistance and safety services provider, has leveraged Sigma to help it scale, optimize, and accelerate its products and services while cutting BI tooling and operational costs.
Snowflake, the Data Cloud company, has selected Wrike to help centralise, streamline, and standardise their project management. It will expand and standardise the use of Wrike across the organisation.
Product
Accelo has introduced changes to its redesigned list screens it launched last year in beta. In a separate announcement, Accelo revealed it has improved the timer function within its mobile application.
Asana unveiled Project Overview. A new tab is available within Asana, which gives users the essential information for each project. It includes project members and their roles, key resources, and related Portfolios and Goals.
Asite has completed an integration with ProjectWise using the Microsoft Power Automate connector. Asite users can now connect their account and data to the ProjectWise platform.
Centric Employee File is now available on the SAP App Center. It integrates with both SuccessFactors and SAP ERP HCM. It provides document management that presents employee data and documents in a single view.
Criterion has created an integration between its Human Capital Management system and Walton Management Services, a leading provider of tax credit and incentives consulting services. It provides seamless access to Walton’s award-winning Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) screening technology platform from within the Criterion HCM system. There is a small cost for the functionality.
Kaseya unveiled the next generation of Unified Remote Monitoring and Management within its Kaseya VSA product. It also took a look back at the innovations it has rolled out during 2020, including the expansion of IT Complete.
Oracle has made its APEX low-code application development platform available as a standalone OCI service.
Pipedrive has added a new integration to Microsoft Teams. It is available to users on Advanced, Professional and Enterprise plans through the tools and integrations menu.
Prophix Software is now an “Acumatica-Certified Application”, and the CPM solution is available on the Acumatica marketplace.
SAP and DNL GL have partnered to launch Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) Manager. It is designed to tackle a major problem facing the integrity of oil and gas plants.
Research
Asana released the annual Anatomy of Work Index, a detailed look at how people spend time at work and the factors shaping those changes. In a year influenced heavily by the pandemic, some significant changes occurred. Findings included:
- 87 per cent of employees are working late—455 hours every year, compared to 242 hours in 2019.
- 26% of deadlines are missed each week as a result of unrealistic expectations and unclear processes.
- 3 in 4 employees struggle to disconnect from work with 7 in 10 experiencing burnout at least once in 2020.
Domo published findings from a new report that provides insight into the pandemic’s impact for non-grocery retailers in 2020. Key findings included:
- In January and February, footfall soared year over year but plummeted 75% in March and April. Footfall has not yet recovered.
- Buy Online, Pick up in-store (BOPIS) experiences could draw in more foot traffic with declines of only 1.2% during the year versus the 23.3% decline that retailers without BOPIS saw.
- The only sector to buck the trend is Home and Garden with 7% greater footfall as people turn to DIY.
- Mall retailers saw a 38.8% decline in footfall versus 9.4% for those outside malls.
MHR found that 33% of working parents have lied to their boss about coping with work-life balance. Based on a survey of more than 1,000 respondents, other findings included:
- 42% reporting their employer has failed to offer flexible working options to ease the burden of home-schooling.
- 23% have not felt confident enough to ask or have not considered asking for greater flexibility so they can educate their children as well as doing their job
- 13% of respondents have had to take unpaid leave to support their children with home learning.
Nintex published a study that found 67% of workers feel they are more productive at home. 41% believe they are getting their work complete in less time. 37% are calling on their firms to increase automation through software. It also studied generational differences, highlighting that Boomers’ highest priority is getting a raise, but Gen Z employees want automation software. Despite these figures, 56% of employees are excited by the prospect of a return to the office, and 50% believe productivity will increase.
Research by SD Worx, which spanned Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom looked at employee priorities. Asking for a pay rise tops the list (28.2%) with upskilling and job security the next most important. While ‘company culture’ (11th place) and ‘vision and policy’ (12th place) are last on the list, SD Worx did not announce further details.
Skillsoft published its Lean Into Tech: 2020 Tech Skills Trends & 2021 Predictions report. It highlighted the six most in-demand technology skills in 2021 would be:
- Programming languages like Python
- Data analytics
- Data security fundamentals
- Agile methodologies
- DevOps and SecOps
- Cloud fundamentals
Vena’s 2020 Industry Benchmark Report revealed that 42% of businesses face data expertise and data strategy challenges. With responses from Canada, the US, the UK it found that finance teams are still bogged down with manual processes such as data collection and manual entry.
