At the beginning of the week, ConnectWise announced the acquisition of Service Leadership. The major product news last week was the launch of Microsoft Viva, an employee experience platform. Oracle enhanced its Employee Care package within Fusion HCM. The newly named Reputation launched the new Reputation platform.

Aptean and PSA vendor Inspire Planner joined the growing number of companies rebranding for 2021. iCIMS published a thought-provoking report on Talent, the iCIMS 2021 Workforce Report.

Enterprise Times also published an interview with Peter Lee, CEO and co-founder of Cloud Coach as it prepares for growth in 2021.

Pick of the week

Oracle published a global study that looks at the challenges organisations face around mental health. Workplace Intelligence, an HR research and advisory company, surveyed more than 12,000 employees, managers, HR leaders, and C-Suite executives across 11 countries. Its key finding is that it C-Suite execs (53%) struggle more with lockdown than their employees (45%). In terms of global differences, employees in the UAE, China, and the US have struggled more with mental health during the pandemic.

The younger generations are also struggling but are also more receptive to solutions provided by AI. 90% of Gen Z workers said COVID-19 has negatively impacted their mental health. Gen Z workers are 105% more likely to talk to a robot over their manager about stress and anxiety at work than Baby Boomers.

There are three key findings from an illuminating report that employers should take note of:

  • 78% of workers say the pandemic has negatively affected their mental health.
  • 76% of people believe their company should be doing more to protect their mental health.
  • 83% would like their company to provide technology to support their mental health.

Emily He, senior vice president, Oracle Cloud HCM commented: “The pandemic put employee mental health in the global spotlight, but these findings also showed that it created growing support for solutions from employers including technologies like AI. The way the pandemic changed our work routines makes burnout, stress and other mental health issues all too easy.

“Everyone has been affected in different ways and the solutions each company puts in place need to reflect the unique challenges of employees. But overall, these findings demonstrate that implementing technology to improve the mental health of employees needs to be a priority for every business.”

Acquisition

Ceridian has acquired Ascender, a leading payroll and HR provider in APAC. It could have cost Ceridian as much as AU$750 million, the sum reported in Financial Review that Ascender was hoping to raise in an IPO.

Salesforce has completed the acquisition of Acumen Solutions strengthening its professional services team.

Appointments

The Access Group has appointed Charles Butterworth as Managing Director of its Access People division.

Appian appointed Denise Vu Broady as Chief Marketing Officer. Broady was previously Global COO of the Industry Cloud organization at SAP.

Seasoned technology executive Steve Fisher has joined the Bill.com Board of Directors.

Concentric has appointed Sunil Padiyar as Chief Technology Officer. Padiyar previously served as the CTO at FacilitySource and was Co-founder and VP of Development at SalesLogix.

ECI Software Solutions Names Trevor Gruenewald Chief Executive Officer. Ron Books becomes  Chairman, and Sarah Hagan is named President and Chief Operating Officer

PeopleStrategy has appointed Chelsea Owens as Director of Marketing, Owens is responsible for the expansion and execution of PeopleStrategy’s complete go to market program.

Brian Duffy is to lead the recently formed RISE with SAP organisation. Irfan Khan, previously president of SAP’s Platform and Technologies, has become the president of SAP HANA and Analytics.

Salesforce named David Schmaier, President & Chief Product Officer. Schmaier joined Salesforce through the acquisition of Vlocity, where he was co-founder and CEO.

UiPath has appointed Rick Harshman as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Asia Pacific and Japan. Harshman joins from Google Cloud where he was as Managing Director of Asia Pacific.

Workday promoted Doug Robinson to Executive Vice President of Global Sales.

Business

5Feedback’s Feedback for Employee Development application is now available on the SAP Store. Integrated to SAP SuccessFactors and enables employees to request and give ongoing feedback to inform their professional development.

Agiloft took a look back at its success in 2020. It achieved a 124% increase in sales, a 40% increase in headcount, and completed a $45M funding round. It continued to develop its product, and Eric Laughlin, Agiloft CEO further strengthens the leadership team.

Akerna’s MJ Platform Connector Achieves SAP Certified Integration with SAP NetWeaver.

Alteryx and HCL Technologies announced a global strategic alliance to accelerate analytics automation and digital transformation for global 2000 enterprises. HCL will become an Alteryx Elite Alliance Partner.

Bill.com announced its Q2 fiscal 2021 results. Revenue was up 38% year over year to $54 million, and it increased its customer base by 27% to 109,200 customers. Net loss was up to $17.2 million compared to $7.6 million last year. However, cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were $1.7 billion at December 31, 2020.

Blue Prism and Lateetud are partnering to offer a turn-key, SaaS solution for fast-tracking loans offered as part of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

Delphix published  a business update with growth of greater than 85% over the year ending January 2021. It also achieved an NPS of 89.

Demandbase took a look back at 2020 without revealing many figures. It noted the acquisition of Engagio and the launch of Demandbase One. It claims its win rate since launching Demandbase One is up 50%.

Stoddart Group, a leading supplier and installer of products to the residential building industry, has selected several IFS modules, including Field Service management, to replace a legacy solution.

Infor has made a range of new courses available on Campus, its LMS. They include courses on Infor OS, Cloudsuite Healthcare, Infor Financials & Supply Management and Infor HCM.

Intuit has teamed up with the UK’s largest renewable energy provider, Octopus Energy, to provide alternative energy solutions, including solar, wind and water to its employees and customers. Intuit employees and QuickBooks customers in the UK may sign up through Octopus Energy’s affiliate links to receive energy credits toward their utility bills.

IRIS Software Group (IRIS) has been appointed to the UK Government’s public sector technology framework, G-Cloud 12. IRIS solutions are now available to public sector organisations purchasing through the Digital marketplace.

Newgen Software has partnered with Glia to enhance its banking solutions further. As a part of this partnership, Newgen will integrate its online account opening and lending portals with Glia.

Nintex, announced a deepened partnership with Datacom to support the growing demand amongst public and private sector organisations in New Zealand for document generation and automation through Datacom’s Salesforce Practice.

Mastercard and Oracle have launched an automated, end-to-end solution to help governments, non-profits and financial services firms streamline the delivery of economic assistance around the world.

Ramco Systems revealed Q3 updates, preferring a QbyQ rather than a year over year comparison. Revenue grew 8% in Q3, USD 23.73m and profit was US$ 2.44, an increase from US$).82 million the previous year.

RapidMiner announced a partnership with Hivecell the Edge-as-a-Service company, to allow users to rapidly create and operate models with streaming data from the edge.

Globalization Partners announced a technology integration partnership with Sage. It will integrate its AI-driven automated and compliant global Employer of Record platform with Sage Intacct.

SAP is to reduce the license fees for partners for test and demonstration environments. In another partner-centric announcement, it launched the SAP Learning Hub, partner edition. It aims to provide all the learning materials that partners need as part of the SAP PartnerEdge program.

Scratchpad has secured $13 million in new funding led by David Sacks at Craft Ventures, with Accel continuing to participate after leading its seed round last year.

SDWorx has opened its first office in Poland, in Katowice. It intends to expand initially in Poland and then across Eastern Europe.

SirionLabs and KPMG announced a strategic alliance focused on helping enterprises accelerate their business transformation journey to drive better outcomes in third party relationships.

Tipalti has strengthened its partner network with Colu, a civic engagement platform, Fusion Partners, an investment development and innovation firm, and Queue Associates, a global full-service consulting firm and Microsoft partner.

Zendesk announced a 23% revenue increase year over year in its 4th quarter to $285 million. Full-year revenues reached $1.030 billion, an increase of 26%. The company also revealed that CFO Elena Gomez will step down as CFO on 31st March.

Customer

The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) is using the Appian Low-code Automation Platform for a new curriculum course on Intelligent Automation for the 2021/2022 academic year.

Dorsch Gruppe, German-headquartered and global engineering consultancy firm selected Deltek Project ERP as its global ERP solution in a competitive tender.

The world’s first digital trade finance bank, Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank (AGTB) Limited (“AGTB”), based UAE, has chosen Fenergo, to deploy its CLM platform.

Scottish housing association Viewpoint has upgraded its Infor SunSystems solution to the latest version with Kick ICT’s help. It also implemented Infor Dynamic / Enterprise Performance Management (d/EPM) to improve budget processes at Viewpoint.

The business unit dedicated to services at NSE Group, a company specializing in the design, manufacture, and maintenance of high-tech electronic equipment, has chosen Infor SyteLine, supported by Infor factory Track on Infor OS.

Kaiser Permanente, a leading US healthcare provider, is accelerating its use of cloud in strategic collaboration with Accenture and Microsoft.

Deutsche Bahn AG (DB) is to implement Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) to modernise its human resources management and digitise most of its processes. This will impact more than 210,000 employees, 100,000 pensioners, and many external staff. SAP might have hoped to wean the German giant from PeopleSoft to SAP SuccessFactors but appears to have failed. Nemours Children’s Health System is also moving to the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, for Finance and HCM.

Arlo Hotels has upgraded its Oracle hospitality solution to OPERA Cloud across its four hotels. It also plans to replace systems across all its food &beverages operations to Oracle MICROS Simphony Cloud Point of Sale.

Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad (“Astro”), Malaysia’s leading content and consumer company serving 5.7 million Malaysian households, has selected Qualtrics CustomerXM.

Ampol Limited, Australia’s leading transport fuels provider, has switched to Rimini Street Support for its SAP ECC 6.0 and Business Objects applications, as well as its SAP HANA Database software. In doing so it enablement Ampol to increase investments to innovation.

GEA Group AG, one of the largest technology providers for the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries, has completed phase one of its SAP digitisation strategy. It is rolling out S/4HANA for central procurement supported by SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass. According to SAP, the combination of SAP FieldGlass and SAP Ariba completed more than 300 deployments in Q4 bringing the 2020 total to more than 1,100.

Groupe Qérys, owner of seven Do-It-Yourself (DIY), hardware, and homeware retail brands, has selected SugarCRM to help enhance the customer experience for new and existing customers across its portfolio of companies.

HMR haia, an analytics platform powered by SpotIQ from ThoughtSpot is now available. It provides pharma users with a Google-like search engine delivering instant answers to support optimal product, marketing, and sales decisions.

Product

Calabrio Launch: QM Connector is now available on the Salesforce AppExchange. It integrates Salesforce Service Cloud and Calabrio Quality Management (QM), part of the Calabrio ONE workforce engagement management suite.

Ivanti Wavelink, the supply chain business unit of Ivanti, launched Ivanti Wavelink Velocity Solutions Directory. It enables device manufacturers to rapidly validate their supply chain and warehouse solutions for the Ivanti Wavelink Velocity platform. It also provides a centralized portal where Ivanti Wavelink solution partners and customers can access information on validated devices.

Namely has partnered with digital verification service The Work Number database from Equifax.

PandaDoc has improved its integration with Zendesk. The new version supports consolidated documents, auto-populated fields, brand consistency and streamlined payments, and collaboration.

Pulseway has enabled Siri shortcuts for its RMM solution. Users can now use voice control to run patch policies, reboot systems, control the maintenance mode, and more.

Ramco Systems announced that its CHIA Chatbot (Virtual Assistant) added Signal and Telegram to a long list of social media platforms which already includes WeChat, Microsoft Skype, Microsoft Teams, Web Chat, WhatsApp, Google Assistant, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Workplace, Line, and Slack.

Skillsoft unveiled stackable digital badges powered by Accredible awarded to learners as they complete Skillsoft’s role-based and skill-based learning paths called Aspire Journeys.

Zendesk released a new omnichannel messaging solution within the ZendeskSuite. The new solution connects conversations across web, mobile, and social channels, including WhatsApp and others.

Research

Research carried out by Alphabeta (part of Accenture), on behalf of Xero, revealed that sales in the UK small business sector were down 10.3% year over year during the Christmas period. Employment remains static on average with arts and recreation (-22.9% compared to pre-crisis) and hospitality (-18.4%) continuing their decline since March.

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