Another busy week, though fewer conferences to attend. Epicor unveiled an update to its flagship Kinetic ERP solution. Salesforce announced new integrations with DocuSign and an update to Salesforce Field Service. Other updates included Unanet and Upland Altify. Precisely also updated Assure MIMIX and its Ironstream products for ServiceNow.
FinancialForce added Huron to its partner ecosystem, and Brightpearl welcomed Coes to its customer ecosystem. Several companies, including IFS, announced results.
Pick of the week
Screendragon unveiled release 6.3.1 of its work management platform this week. It contained five key updates.
- It has added dynamic revenue recognition forecasting to the project resourcing module.
- A new Kanban view enables users to view projects in both status and phase views
- The marketing calendar, launched in 2020, enables users to click on an asset and action it immediately. Users can review, revise, and upload new versions, see a history log of changes, and track approvals.
- New widgets allow customers to personalise their home page and dashboard. Other new widgets include KPI reporting snippets, links to relevant reports and projects, planned time by the user, and a location-based clock.
- A new feature allows clients to use their forms and workflows to auto-update and push data to these matrices.
Other improvements include a WYSIWYG editor for form matrix output and better interaction on resource heat maps.
Acquisitions and Funding
The Access Group announced the acquisition of Isys, a Derby and Horsham-based organisation offering management software solutions designed to support a range of industries throughout waste management, aggregate and material sales to dairy and food services.
Alteryx has acquired Silicon Valley-based Lore IO, a no-code AI-enabled data modelling platform that rapidly deploys analytics that adapts easily within a changing business environment.
Anthology and Blackboard Inc completed their previously announced merger. Blackboard and Anthology will create the most comprehensive and modern EdTech ecosystem at a global scale for education.
insightsoftware is acquiring Magnitude, a leader in operational reporting and continuous intelligence for data-driven enterprises.
IRIS Software Group acquired Dataplan, a leading specialist in outsourced payroll, pension and HR services.
Pipefy, the low-code workflow management software platform that transforms the way teams work, today announced the completion of $75 million in Series C funding, bringing its total funding to date to $138.7 million. SoftBank Latin American Fund invested $50 million, with additional participation from STEADFAST Capital Ventures, Insight Partners, Redpoint Ventures and others.
Prophix announced the acquisition of Brussels, Belgium-based Sigma Conso, a CPM software and services provider with recognized expertise in financial close management and financial planning and analysis.
SD Worx has sold ASPEX to Trustteam, a Belgian IT partner for SMEs. It was not part of its core offering.
ServiceNow has acquired Denmark-based Gekkobrain. With Gekkobrain, ServiceNow will extend the power of ServiceNow Creator Workflows, including App Engine, to help organizations identify and understand custom code in their ERP deployments and the business processes they support.
Appointments
Celonis has appointed Ariel Bardin as Chief Product Officer. Bardin will lead product strategy and development for all Celonis Execution Management System (EMS) offerings.
Dr Christopher Howard has joined Ellucian’s Board of Directors.
Charlie Kimbell has re-joined MISys as Director of Sales and Marketing.
Pipedrive has appointed experienced finance executive Dan Dizon as VP of FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis).
Ritu Bhargava will join SAP on November 15, 2021, to become chief product officer for SAP Customer Experience. His appointment will follow the retirement of Bob Stutz.
Séverin Cabannes, a former Deputy CEO of Société Générale, has joined the ServiceNow EMEA Advisory Council, an independent body of senior business leaders with deep experience of key industries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Xactly appointed Megan Ackerson as the company’s new Chief Human Resources Officer.
Business
ActiveCampaign celebrated its 1,000th employee in a business update that shared its global growth, new senior hires and customer success.
PIXID Group announced an international partnership with Bullhorn. The combined expertise and increased service offering from the partnership reinforce both companies’ position in key global recruitment markets.
Ellucian announced an expanded partnership with D2L, a global learning innovation technology leader. Based on customer demand, the organizations will extend their existing technology partnership to enhance go-to-market capabilities to serve customers better.
Microsoft announced its Q3 results with revenue up 22% to $45.3 billion.
Newgen Software announced Q2 2022 results. Total Income of Rs 192 cr in Q2 FY’22 was up 22% YoY and net profit was at Rs 37 cr, up 28% YoY.
NinjaRMM has rebranded as NinjaOne. Sal Sferlazza explained why in a blog but cited that its product now does far more than just RMM.
Planful announced that the record-breaking growth it reported in the first half of the year is continuing with strong increases in subscription bookings, new customer acquisition, and global partnership expansion in the third quarter.
Qualtrics is to open a new data centre in Japan. The company is scaling its operations in the country in response to the growing demand for the Qualtrics Experience Management (XM) Platform.
Qlik launched a new cloud region in Singapore. Strengthening its commitment to support the growing customer demand for innovation in Asia Pacific (APAC).
Ramco Software announced the results for the second quarter of 2021-22. Income was USD 19.68m (Rs 144.6 cr), and loss after tax amounted to USD 1.76m (Rs. 12.9cr).
Rocket Mortgage, a leading mortgage lender, announced a partnership with Salesforce to make the company’s mortgage origination technology available to banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions nationwide through Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.
Ahead of COP26, the UN climate change conference in Glasgow, Salesforce has announced two new, natural climate solutions: a global tree equity and urban reforestation initiative in partnership with American Forests, One Tree Planted, and SUGi; and a blue carbon program to protect and restore oceans and coastal ecosystems. In addition, Marc and Lynne Benioff and Salesforce announced a $300 million investment to accelerate 1T.org — a global movement to restore, conserve and grow one trillion trees by 2030—and advance climate justice initiatives.
ServiceNow announced financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2021, with subscription revenues of $1.427 billion in Q3 2021, representing 31% year‑over‑year growth, 30% adjusted for constant currency.
Visma announced total revenue for Q3 grew 17.9% to €505 million, while EBITDA increased 15.8% to €166 million. Compared to Q3 of last year, all of Visma’s business areas grew substantially. Visma Nordics grew 18%, Benelux by 21%, Visma Custom Solutions by 14%, and Visma’s geographical expansion areas in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America by 65%.
Zendesk revealed that its Q3 revenue increased 32% year over year to $347.0 million. It also announced the acquisition of Momentive and its iconic SurveyMonkey platform.
Customer
Vontobel, a globally operating financial expert with Swiss roots, is deploying Appian Robotic Process Automation (RPA) across the company to accelerate its business transformation and automation initiatives.
The clean beauty brand known for approachable, accessible products for you and your family, Odele has chosen Domo’s modern business intelligence platform to supercharge growth across multiple retail channels.
Mondelēz International, one of the world’s largest snack companies, has been using DronaHQ to implement low-code apps that give salespeople access to personalized information “in a timely manner,” according to Mondelēz’s Global Solutions Owner Andrew Scott.
Huida Sanitary Ware Co Ltd has rolled out Infor LN. The move has enabled comprehensive standardization of business processes for Huida and ten of its subsidiaries so far. Metito, a global leader in sustainable water management and alternative energy solutions, has also deployed Infor LN ERP.
Axi, a top 10 global online broker for retail and institutional customers, has signed a global enterprise deal for KX Insights, its cloud-first, real-time streaming analytics platform.
New Zealand’s longest-serving trustee company, Trustees Executors Limited, has partnered with MuleSoft to deliver new customer experiences and more efficient communications among its employees, clients and stakeholders.
Philippine Airlines (PAL), the flagship carrier of the Philippines, has switched to Rimini Street Support for its Oracle E-Business Suite, Fusion Middleware and Database software portfolio. Mitsubishi Corporation Life Sciences, a food ingredients manufacturer within Mitsubishi Corporation’s Food Industry Group, has switched to Rimini Street Support for its JD Edwards applications.
Palace Resorts and Siemens Energy are among the hundreds of companies worldwide to have chosen SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass solutions in the third quarter to help digitalize procurement and external workforce management. The state of Louisiana has selected SAP software to move its human resources (HR) technology to the cloud and build a foundation to transform its people strategy.
Charles Sturt University, Australia’s largest regional and leading online university, has selected TechnologyOne’s OneEducation enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to transform and streamline its business processes and technology landscape.
McAneny Brothers, Inc. has selected VAI’s Food ERP software solution to run its full-service convenience and grocery store distribution business.
Product
BlackLine has expanded its accounts receivable (AR) automation offering, unveiling the next generation of its full-functionality AR automation suite – marking the industry’s first unified platform for end-to-end cash flow optimization, including cash application and collection, credit and risk management and dispute resolution.
The Celigo iPaaS solution for SAP Business ByDesign is now available on SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings.
DronaHQ has added a new UI Editor, Firebase Realtime DB Connector and the ability to import JS libraries and use its reference to run complex JS operations and bind data to your controls directly.
HR Acuity announced the launch of managER, a new technology product designed for people leaders that simplifies managing employee issues. managER solves decades-old problems of inconsistent processes, inadequate documentation and ineffective resolutions related to employee issues such as performance problems or policy violations.
IRIS Software unveiled updates to several applications, including IRIS Earnie, IRIS Payroll, IRIS HR Professional and IRIS Cascade.
Jenzabar announced the enhanced model of Jenzabar Communications, an end-to-end suite of communication and collaboration tools designed to enable modern, seamless experiences for all constituents across campus.
Newgen Software has launched OmniDocs Mobile 11.0, an upgraded version of its OmniDocs mobile app. Key features include an image crop and rotate feature, image compression and the ability to define file upload size limits.
The NICE CXone Fall 2021 release includes innovative capabilities that help businesses address the growing demand for digital interactions and intuitive self-service. NICE also announced the launch of Enlighten AI for Vulnerable Customers to support UK businesses in providing fair treatment to vulnerable consumers and driving compliance with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulation.
Pandle announced two updates this week, the addition of credit limit warnings on invoices and improved customer and supplier import process.
QAD announced the release of the 2021.1 version of QAD EQMS (Enterprise Quality Management System). This release allows users to access more comprehensive data securely and with less effort.
Qlik announced Qlik Forts, a new hybrid cloud service based on the Qlik Cloud platform that securely extends Qlik’s cloud analytics capabilities to wherever data and compute needs to reside.
SalesAgility announced the launch of SuiteCRM 7.12. It includes a new default PDF Engine, a new high contrast Theme (Noon), and support for Elasticsearch 7. Next up is version 8.
SAP and Qualtrics announced the availability of Concur Experience Optimizer, a new solution that allows companies to improve employee experiences and confidently adapt travel and expense programs for the future of work. Concur Experience Optimizer combines the listening and analysis capabilities of Qualtrics EmployeeXM, the leading product for employee experience management.
The integration of the SAP Sales Cloud solution with Microsoft Teams is now available to all customers.
Scoro unveiled the latest changes to its platform. They include workflow and usability improvements.
Teradata announced the integration of H2O AI Hybrid Cloud, the company’s state-of-the-art AI platform, with Vantage, Teradata’s multi-cloud data platform. The integration enables Teradata and H2O.ai’s customers to quickly and easily make, deploy, and operate AI solutions that solve business problems and drive business value.
Research
The Jitterbit 2021 State of Salesforce Integration report has revealed how most companies use Salesforce SalesCloud today but have goals to expand their Salesforce footprint into new areas. It also shows enterprises increasingly looking to streamline their customer experience by integrating their enterprise systems. Key findings include:
- 90% of respondents plan to integrate systems with at least one cloud endpoint.
- More than 50% of organisations rely upon manual integration with central IT departments shouldering the bulk of the burden.
- The majority of the 100 companies polled use Salesforce. Interestingly, while a greater percentage of larger companies use Salesforce compared to smaller ones, the gap is narrowing.
A new Informa Pharma and Oracle study show the Pharma industry is not looking back following the changes introduced during the pandemic.
- 84% implemented alternative tactics to continue their existing clinical trials and/or start new trials during the pandemic
- 97% of pharma professionals will continue newly adopted clinical trial approaches as the industry evolves
An Oracle study of more than 14,600 employees, managers, HR leaders, and C-level executives across 13 countries found that people all around the world have felt stuck in their personal and professional lives but are ready to regain control of their futures.
- 75% of people feel “stuck” personally and professionally
- 88% of people say their meaning of success has changed since the pandemic started
- 85% of people want technology to help define their future
A new IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Oracle Construction and Engineering study, shows that most architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms are looking to predictive analytics to improve project outcomes and mitigate risks.
- 29% of respondents are currently utilizing a predictive analytics tool
- 60% plan to invest in a predictive analytics solution within the next 24 months
AEC companies see having a predictive view across projects as key to anticipating and lessening delays, reducing change orders, creating more accurate budget forecasts, and better managing health and safety risks.
Sage partnered with the Angus Reid Group for a newly commissioned report, Forward Together: Building a Resilient Future. The report uncovers new insights into the current hiring challenges among Canadian businesses and how they are moving forward in 2022.
Xero unveiled its Australian Small business index. Jobs declined 82 points, the first decline of 2021. It inferred the stay-at-home orders continued for Greater Sydney, Metropolitan Melbourne and the ACT as one cause. Joseph Lyons, Managing Director Australia and Asia, Xero said, “In September, we were witnessing a tale of two economies. The areas in lockdown saw jobs growth decline and sales stagnate, while states like Queensland and Western Australia thrived without restrictions.”
The positive news is that sales grew by 6.6% year over year during the month. All states prospered, though hospitality (-9.2%) and the arts and recreation (-8%) declined.
The Xero Small Business Index for New Zealand also showed the impact of the business lockdown in Auckland. National small business sales were down 7.1% year-on-year (y/y), largely driven by an 18.4% y/y decline in Auckland.