Last week Epicor held its annual conference, a physical event in Las Vegas. It announced findings from its Insights report and also about its progress on moving customers to the cloud. Precisely completed the acquisition of Winshuttle and the latter also revealed that it is growing its ecosystem in EMEA, though surprisingly these are not Precisely partners, so more may follow. Zoho also unveiled its next-generation Analytics platform.
In the PSA sector, Accelo revealed its latest update and Workday revealed that RSM US LLC will roll out ERP, PSA and HCM in the organisation. Mavenlink published a whitepaper on the importance of Unified Data Models with some useful takeouts. Enterprise Times also published two interviews of note, one with Tony Kender, CRO of FinancialForce and a second with Denis Whelan, CEO Projector.
Pick of the week
According to the June quarter ELMO Employee Sentiment Index (ESI), 62% of Australian workers support mandating employee COVID-19 vaccinations. 44% of workers are uncomfortable going to work if their colleagues are not vaccinated.
Two worrying trends are that only 41% believe Australia is on track for its vaccination program. The proportion of workers feeling burnt out rose 8% to 42%. ELMO Software CEO Danny Lessem says the COVID-19 vaccine will become a tough challenge for employers in the coming months.
“We are already seeing different companies take different approaches to managing vaccination requirements in the workplace. It’s far from a cut-and-dried matter and will require employers to be able to engage in transparent one-to-one communication with their employees.
“The vaccine rollout is an important issue for workers’ perceptions of economic security with 76 per cent stating the economy will only return to normal if the rollout is successful. The message from Australian workers is clear – to kickstart the economy we need to kickstart the vaccine rollout.”
Acquisitions and Funding
insightsoftware has secured a $1 billion investment from Hg, a leading global software and services investor. It will join TA Associates in the $4 billion company as a significant minority shareholder. Genstar and ST6 still maintain a stake.
N-Able has raised $225 million in a private placement with institutional accredited investors.
Visma has acquired UseltGroup, including its construction software Bouwsoft. It also acquired administrative software for architects and garden professionals marketed under the product names Archisoft and Groensoft. UseltGroup will continue to operate independently.
Appointments
Vikas Mehta is to join the Anaplan executive team as Chief Financial Officer effective 19th July.
ConnectWise has named Regina Marrow as its new Chief Information Officer.
Delphix has appointed Tammi Warfield as Senior Vice President of Customer Success.
Kaseya has appointed Karen Sandhu as Director of Security Operations.
Business
ActiveCampaign, the leader in Customer Experience Automation (CXA), launched its inaugural $2 million Developer Fund. The fund incentivizes app developers to create new integrations with the ActiveCampaign CXA platform. ActiveCampaign also delivered a business update for its Q2 following its $240 million investment. It now has 850,000 customers and 850 employees worldwide.
As part of its sustainability program, Acumatica has achieved Climate Neutral Certification.
ADP celebrated reaching 100,000 clients for its workforce management (WFM) client. It is helping businesses of all sizes respond to the constantly changing needs of their workforce. It is doing so with enhanced skills-based scheduling and AI-enabled forecasting.
Infor has achieved the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) Travel and Hospitality Competency designation for its Infor Hospitality solution. Infor also announced support for the AWS for Health initiative from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help unlock operational efficiencies and insights, respond with agility to unforeseen circumstances, lower costs, and realize clinical and patient care improvements.
Microsoft announced updates to its Business Applications ISV Connect program. It will reduce revenue sharing from 10/20% down to 3%. Microsoft is introducing a new license management capability, and provide better go-to-market support at lower rates.
QAD is actively looking for partners to expand its QAD Global Partner ecosystem. QAD Vice President, Global Partner Strategy & Management Mohan Ponnudurai explains, “We are looking for channel and services partners, specifically sales-driven organizations with a proven track record in ERP and Manufacturing Operations sales and the proven ability to deliver high-quality project implementation services.”
Qlik announced a new Cloud Services track to help partners navigate shifting technology needs, new customer buying behaviours, and evolving partner ecosystems through a collaborative engagement with Qlik.
Salesforce has enhanced the AppExchange with a new AppExchange Chat feature and Trusted reviews.
SD Worx has appointed Carlos Pardo as Managing Director SD Worx Iberia to lead its new payroll business in Spain and Portugal.
Visma announced its Q2 results; total revenue for the quarter was EUR 520 million, while EBITDA increased 23.2% to EUR 140 million.
Customer
KONE Inc, a leader in the elevator and escalator industry, will now use Billtrust’s Invoicing platform and Business Payments Network (BPN) in Canada.
Ampol, the fuel and convenience retailer, uses the Boomi AtomSphere Platform to drive agility and speed to market for critical business projects.
The BIMM Group, the largest specialist provider of creative arts education in the UK, has selected Ellucian to modernise its technology operations.
ConvaTec, a global medical products and technologies provider, has automated its order management process using Esker’s Order Management solution.
Harman Heavy Vehicle Specialists is the 100th Customer to go live on Infor CloudSuite Distribution.
Christmas Tree Shops has chosen Jesta I.S.’s cloud Sales Audit and Loss Prevention solutions to ensure transaction and inventory data integrity and accuracy and gain insights into potentially fraudulent transactions across its enterprise.
Carasoft Technology Corp has named Kofax as a manufacturer on the Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software 2 (ITES-SW2) contract for the U.S. Army
TTX Company, a railcar pooling company that operates more than 165,000 railcars across North America has replaced SAP with Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite to support its mission of improving regional transportation efficiency. The University of Pittsburgh has implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) to provide a better employee experience for staff, faculty, and students.
Banco Galicia, a leading financial institution headquartered in Argentina with more than three million clients and 5,600 employees, has selected Qualtrics EmployeeXM.
NIBC Bank from the Netherlands joined forces with Salt Edge to combine their lending expertise with open banking-enabled data analytics to refine loan monitoring processes.
Polyeco, one of the most prominent waste management companies in SE Europe, has chosen the SoftOne ERP platform to embark on its digital transformation journey.
Baptist Community Services, a nonprofit continuing-care retirement community, is building a reliable and engaged workforce to support cost-effective, quality care delivery by leveraging the UKG product suite.
The Police & Crime Commissioner for Cheshire has selected Unit4 ERP, FP&A and HCM solutions to deliver a modern and integrated information infrastructure supporting Cheshire’s police force.
With 2700 franchisees across the US and Canada, Liberty Tax has selected Xero as the preferred cloud accounting software for its new small business service offering.
Product
Aptean launched a new, integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for their Food and Beverage Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) products.
DocuSign unveiled Release 2:2021 of its Agreement Cloud. The features include a DocuSign CLM Connector for SAP Ariba, DocuSign Insight Connector for Salesforce, Obligation Management for CLM, and AI-enhanced search and reporting with CLM+. There are also several enhancements to DocuSign.
Ellucian Experience, a SaaS-based, fully extensible user experience platform, is now available in Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific. It follows the launch in April to the Americas.
2021 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform are now available.
Oracle introduced new enhancements to Oracle Cloud ERP and Oracle Cloud EPM. They included:
- Machine learning-enhanced intelligent performance management
- Financial reporting skills for Oracle Digital Assistant
- New Oracle Risk Management workflows and dashboards
- Unified project planning, budgeting, and execution.
Newgen has launched Newgen One. It enables enterprises to leverage low code to develop and deploy complex, content-driven, and customer-engaging business applications on the cloud.
Procore announced the availability of its global ERP Connector platform, along with four new Procore-built accounting integrations. The four new connectors are for Sage, MRI, Acumatica, and Yardi.
EmployeeXM Qualtrics has launched Experience Design for Hybrid Work and Workplaces to help organizations use employee feedback to create new work experiences that enhance productivity, innovation, and growth in the new world of work.
Salesforce unveiled Advertising Sales Management for Media Cloud to automate Ad Sales and improve campaign performance for publishers. It also announced Marketing Cloud for Non-profits.
Salesloft has announced Onboarding and Workplace Works. Onboarding provides a standardised methodology to help clients plan, configure, deploy and accelerate their use of Salesloft. Workplace Works, available from October, gives its employees a choice of working in the office, from home or flexibly. It is one of the first to publish its working options publicly.
ServiceNow announced updates to its Workplace Service Delivery solution. New features include Intelligent and intuitive reservation capabilities, new space utilization capabilities and enhancements to the Workplace Space Mapping application.
Trintech announced a new automated multi-way transaction matching feature in its Adra Suite to help mid-market organizations save time and reduce risk in the transaction matching process.
QuickBooks launched QuickBooks Card Reader, a new innovative payments device integrated with QuickBooks Payments.
Xero introduced Analytics Plus, part of a new suite of planning and forecasting tools powered by artificial intelligence and designed to help businesses and advisors plan for the future confidently.
Research
Kronos revealed that 83% of UK employees feel colleagues are not heard equally. The findings form part of the report entitled “The Heard and the Heard-Nots” by The Workforce Institute at UKG and Workplace Intelligence.
Research from Oracle and Merlin Entertainments, operator of LEGOLAND®, shows US consumers ready to cut the screen time and get back to their favourite theme park attractions and treats. Key findings include:
- 54% of people would love to plan their itinerary so they can beat the queues
- 59% favour some sort of “fast pass” system which provides priority access to food, shops and facilities
- 58% would like to see hotspots on a map to avoid the busiest places in a theme park or attraction
Zellis has found that four in ten businesses in the UK and Ireland believe their HR processes have become less efficient since the start of the pandemic. 28% now believe that they will outsource HR. The full report is available here (registration required).
George Dunnett, Chief Product Officer at Zellis, commented, “Whilst the pandemic has shown the importance of flexibility in the face of unforeseen challenges, many organisations have understandably struggled with managing their HR resources over the past year and a half. The pandemic has put more emphasis on the ‘human’ element of HR, with businesses focusing a lot of time and attention on employee wellbeing, as well as easing the transition to hybrid working.
“Whilst this is to be welcomed, this change in focus has put a large strain on business-critical HR processes like payroll, recruitment and onboarding, and information management. That’s why we’re seeing an increased need to either implement better technology or outsource to specialists in order to ensure the quality and continuity of employee services.”
