Sean Hoban, CEO Kimble, led off Kimble Connect and delivered a keynote about bouncebackability in professionals services organisations post-pandemic. Meanwhile, Forecast raised $19 million in a Series A funding round and will expand in North America. Syncari raised $17,3 in another Series A round. A third funding round saw Lance closed $2.8 million in seed funding. Agiloft added a Sourcing & supplier module to its CLM platform.
Pick of the week
EasyProject announced version 11 of its Project management solutions. The new release has eight areas of improvement, according to EasyProject.
- Performance and responsiveness have increased by leveraging Rails 6, Ruby 3.0, Sidekiq in its technology stack.
- A new UI with a new blue and grey design also features a home button, meeting calendar, search bar, logout button, user profile, and More Menu.
- There is a new Easy Project app available on both Google Play and Apple App Store. Features include the ability to see tasks and projects, create, edit, and comment on tasks, track time to individual tasks and projects and see your spent time stats.
- Smart email notifications that consolidate project updates for those working within Easy Project can now filter the activity feed to see relevant updates quickly.
- EasyProject has added dynamics filters to searches, enabling users to find what they are looking for quickly.
- The embedded text editor uses CKEditor 5, enhancing and improving how Project Managers update information on tasks and projects.
- New integration with GitLab. With data in two fields and a single click, all-important entities are imported.
- Easy Project is now compatible with Microsoft Azure Active Directory. This provides EasyProject with single sign-on and multifactor authentication.
For more information on Jun 3, 2021, at 03:00 PM (CEST), Jan Pavera, the Head of PM at Easy Project, will host a webinar explaining in more detail the new release.
Acquisition
Astorg and Bridgepoint have acquired Fenergo in conjunction with its management team from Insight Partners.
SD Worx has increased its investment in Teal Partners and acquired 74% of the company.
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting announces today that it has signed and completed an agreement to acquire Vanguard Software Corporation (Vanguard Software), a global provider of cloud-based integrated business planning (IBP) solutions, for approximately $110 million in cash.
Appointments
Asite has appointed Jas Mann as Head of Supply Chain Management.
Blue Prism has appointed Patrick Finn as president and general manager of Blue Prism Americas.
Celonis appointed Omesh Agam as Chief Information Security Officer.
Delphix appointed David McJannet, CEO of HashiCorp and former Executive in Residence at Greylock Partners, to its Board of Directors.
N-able appointed Dave MacKinnon as its new chief security officer and Peter Anastos as executive vice president, general counsel.
SirionLabs is increasing its North American team to support its growth strategy. It has appointed two new sales vice presidents: Minneapolis-based Joe VanLoy, formerly of Best Buy and KPMG, and former ISG executive Laura Mersinger, based in Chicago.
Trinet appointed Jonathan LeCompte as Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer. Lecompte joins from Verizon Communications.
Business
Alteryx has formed Alteryx Ventures, a $50 million fund that will invest in companies with innovative technology and services that complement and expand Alteryx’s analytics and data science products and further its analytics process automation (APA) platform.
Asite has opened an office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its first office in continental Europe and will help it expand in the EU.
Starlink is now Blue Prism’s distributor in the Middle East and has launched a Blue Prism intelligent automation practice.
ConnectWise has launched a new partner program for TSPs and MSPs with an initial offering to support the development of cybersecurity practices.
DQ Global and Workbooks have established a long-term partnership. Workbooks DQ will leverage DQ Globals data quality solution to enhance customer data in the CRM.
Domo released a Forrester Total Economic Impact report that found customers achieved an ROI of 345% over three years and recouped their investment in less than six months.
Esker has strategically partnered with KPMG France to guide companies to e-invoicing.
Experian published its full-year 2021 results with revenues up 4% to $5.357 billion.
First Derivatives increased revenue from £237.8 million to £237.9 million in its annual results ending 28 Feb 2021. It is targetting growth in the next year across its three brands: real-time streaming, KX (25%), managed services and consulting business First Derivative (10%)and ABM solution, MRP (20%).
Planful launched Planful Champions Club, a program to promote the achievements and skills of Planful experts and advocates across the company’s ecosystem.
Procore Technologies Inc announced the initial public offering of its common stock at $67.00 per share. Procore is offering 9,470,000 shares of its common stock.
Salesforce re-opened the Salesforce tower in San Francisco, intending to provide a safe place to work. It also gave a quarterly update on its progress on its racial equality and justice initiative, revealing improvement to hiring, philanthropy and procurement, and policy.
ServiceNow has formed an EMEA Advisory Council. Council members include Russell Chambers, Lone Fønss Schrøder, Rüdiger Grube, Fred Kindle and Juan María Nin.
ServiceNow also opened a new office in Dubai Internet City (DIC), Dubai, to expand in the Gulf region.
UKG announced Q2 Fiscal 2021 results. Revenue grew to $798 million, and bookings increased by 32% in the quarter.
Customer
ELMO has added yet another sports club to its roster. The Parramatta Eels Rugby League football will use ELMO HR and Payroll software, and ELMO will become a sponsor of the club.
Hotel Am Triller in Saarbrücken, Germany, will deploy the Infor Hospitality Management Solution (HMS) in the AWS cloud. Midwest Wheel is leveraging Infor Coleman AI-driven parts recommendations to boost customer service — reducing sales order processing time by 30% and helping customers save money by ordering the right mix of parts.
Jenzabar announced that 14 higher education institutions selected Jenzabar’s solutions in the first quarter of 2021.
Oxford University and Oracle have created a Global Pathogen Analysis System (GPAS) combining Oxford’s Scalable Pathogen Pipeline Platform (SP3) with the power of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts announced the rollout of the next-gen Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud Property Management (PMS) to its full-service hotels, making it the first major hotel company to adopt the system globally. The decision comes following successful pilots at nearly 50 Wyndham hotels over the last nine months.
Qualtrics announced several customers have increased investment or chose Qualtrics for the first time, including DocuSign, the Bank of Montreal, Clean Harbors, Yamaha Motor Company, Okinawa City, Perez Companc Group, and Alto.
Footwear maker Deichmann SE and chemical company Wacker Chemie AG are among leading European organizations that have selected SAP Customer Experience products to gain a 360-degree view of their customers.
Air conditioning technology manufacturer BITZER has implemented the SAP Ariba Buying solution with guided buying capability to help streamline and digitalize its procurement operations.
Arapahoe County, part of the Denver metropolitan area, has completed its migration to SAP S/4HANA on time and under budget.
TechnologyOne is helping the City of Melbourne move one of its key finance applications from an on-premise environment to a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform
Allianz will deploy the Totalmobile Mobilise and Optimise solutions to support Allianz’s motor engineers when they are out in the field.
Product
Accounting Seed announced its Koali Release. According to Accounting Seed Chief Operations Officer, Caroline Beatson: “The Koali Release brings more automation, an enhanced UI, and real-time calculations that puts more power in the user’s hands to manage their bank reconciliation with ease.”
Alteryx unveiled new products at its virtual Inspire conference. They included Alteryx Machine Learning, Alteryx Intelligence Suite, Alteryx Designer Cloud, Alteryx Designer 2021.2, Unified Platform API + SDK and updates to the Alteryx Community.
During Billtrust Summit 2021, Billtrust unveiled the next major version of its Business Payments Network 4.0 (BPN). BPN 4.0 now supports the bi-directional exchange of transactional data and documents, enabling invoice presentment to accounts payable portals in addition to its existing payment and remittance acceptance capabilities.
Blue Prism Service Assist on Amazon Web Services (AWS) is now available. It is a comprehensive, no-code, intelligent automation contact centre solution that combines intelligent digital workers and native AWS services so enterprises can deliver faster, more efficient, and more engaging customer experiences.
The next major release of the Mulesoft Anypoint Platform™ is now available. Developers can now instantly discover, access, and serve data from multiple existing APIs with a single query without writing any additional code. The new Anypoint DataGraph allows customers across industries to create composable business capabilities and deliver seamless digital experiences faster.
Neo4j has been approved for inclusion in Iron Bank, the Department of Defense Centralized Artifacts Repository (DCAR), and is approved for use across all Department of Defense (DoD) networks with reciprocity across security classifications.
Sage has added a customise option for invoices and credit notes in Sage Accounting. Customers can change the logo and template with support for customised emails and headings.
SAP has added in context Built-In Support for S/4HANA Cloud available. It includes intelligent search and chat functionality with experts.
SAP launched SAP Learning Hub, edition for SAP Next-Gen, a free educational offering designed for students and lecturers.
SAS has added cloud-native support for Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, with Red Hat OpenShift coming later this year SAS Viya. This follows on from its availability on Microsoft Azure in November 2020.
SugarCRM launched SugarPredict, a powerful AI engine that breaks down sales and marketing barriers, holding back the full potential of CRM and marketing automation solutions. It also updated its branding and messaging.
ThoughtSpot has launched support for Databricks as part of a new partnership. The integration will allow users to run search and AI-driven analytics directly on the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, powered by Delta Lake
Research
Boomi announced the findings from a new global survey revealing that 94% of organisations worldwide are embracing a Composable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) strategy to overcome the limitations of legacy applications and modernize their businesses to gain a competitive market advantage.
Based on a survey of 1022 UK workers, HR software provider CIPHR revealed that only 15% of UK workers, who have been working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, want to return to the workplace full-time. The survey also looked at attitudes to pay, health and safety, and vacation.
Oracle published x pieces of research this week. An Oracle Food and Beverage survey shows that 71% of US diners are ready to eat out again, and 42% feel comfortable being seated indoors. A study of over 3,200 consumers in the UK, US, and Australia found how attitudes to life post-pandemic differ considerably between geographies, genders and ages – often in surprising ways. 78% of Brits say hugging is most missed during the pandemic
A Pega sponsored study by Savanta revealed that poor service can bring customers to the brink of tears and cost companies significant revenue. Key findings included,
- 67% of customers think businesses need to improve service quality on non-traditional channels, such as web, mobile app, and chatbot/intelligent virtual assistant.
- 45% of customers surveyed are more likely to use self-service today than before the pandemic.
- 85% of businesses expect to invest in AI technology in the next few years
Pipedrive released its annual State of Sales report, featuring key insights from global research on the industry’s perceptions, implications, and unexpected opportunities.
Sage launched the ‘Global distributors transform to adapt, survive and thrive’ report created by IDG. Key findings how distributors are meeting the challenging environment by:
- Improving customer service and experience (39%)
- Implementing cloud-based apps (37%)
- and improving e-commerce capabilities (36%)
The report also found that 75% of distributors have adopted a circular economy strategy, but 74% find sustainability and profitability do not go hand in hand.
Xero released “The Tipping Point: Making the Jump to Self-Made”, a report based on responses from 1,200 small business owners in the US. 58% of owners give themselves five years to make their business successful. The report looks at why entrepreneurs start their business.
- 46% cited a passion for entrepreneurship as their defining moment to starting a business
- 13% cited horrible bosses and leadership at previous jobs
- 9% said not getting promoted or recognized for their contributions
The report also looked at how entrepreneurs determined success. The respondents also revealed cautious optimism about business levels in Summer 2021. It also looked at differences between generations and gender with some intriguing findings. Xero also published a similar report from 1,200 Canadian entrepreneurs
