In Part 1 of this blog series I admitted to being a late adopter of a sort, in part for not immediately jumping onto the social media bandwagon. In particular, my initial reaction to Salesforce Chatter (a.k.a. Collaboration Cloud) was tepid when it was introduced at the Dreamforce 2009 conference.

However, a few months have passed and this period has helped salesforce.com craft the much clearer cloud computing evolution message that was analyzed in Part 2. The article then also went on to explain my change of heart and discussed Salesforce Chatter’s current state of affairs (in terms of the current number of beta users and third-party solutions).

Salesforce Chatter became generally available (GA) as of June 22, 2010. Salesforce.com is even entertaining the idea that Chatter could be a general enterprise platform on its own. One Chatter-based application was recently announced by FinancialForce.com and is called Chatterbox.

Chatterbox comes within the FinancialForce Accounting product but the idea is to also sell it to accounting departments as standalone. For more information on the product, see the company’s press release (PR), a related blog post from WebCPA, and the product’s dedicated Web page.

The final part of this blog series will explain many design principles and possible use of Chatter and Chatterbox from my dialogue with Jeremy Roche, FinancialForce.com CEO and President, and UNIT4 CODA chairman.

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Part 1 of this blog series explained Plex Systems’ ebullience and growth despite a hostile and depressed environment, especially in the discrete manufacturing sector. While the software as a service (SaaS) model is now mainstream in many functional areas of business, the article concurred with Frank Scavo’s recent assertion that, for the time being, there is only one true SaaS enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for manufacturing companies: Plex Online [evaluate this product].

Part 2 then zoomed into Plex Online’s capabilities in terms of technology, customer size, international capabilities, and so on and so forth. The article ended with an analysis of Plex Online’s traceability capabilities that are critically important to medical devices manufacturers.

The final part of this blog series will peer into Plex Systems’ future, and will conclude with a brief question and answer (Q&A) session with the company’s top executives. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this series began the analysis of the recent merger of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) and Savvion Inc. Progress has this way made a large leap into the business process management (BPM) space, from where it had been notably absent. My post detailed how Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 [evaluate this product] is one of the most mature BPM suites in the still-evolving market, with the ability to handle high volumes of workflows that coordinate people, data/documents, and systems.

Part 2 analyzed Savvion’s capabilities with regards to the three common usage scenarios of BPM systems, i.e., human-centric business processes, system-centric (integration) processes, and document-centric processes. Moreover, in its white paper “Understanding Usage Patterns An Enterprise BPMS Must Support,” Savvion identifies and describes four other equally important usage scenarios that are neither very well understood by users nor well supported by BPM vendors.

Savvion claims to currently be the only BPM provider that can accommodate all seven of these usage scenarios. Part 2 then also analyzed the case management and rule-based (decision-intensive) processes, whereas Part 3 continued with the project-oriented and event-centric BPM usage scenarios. My post also ushered the Progress’ recent novel concepts of “operational responsiveness” and the grouping of its portfolio of products into three logical groups with the “responsive” moniker.

Progress touts that three important possible benefits can result when companies are in control of the systems and processes that drive their organizations. First, they gain deeper insight into the operations and events that impact their business. Next, they become faster (and better) at pinpointing and responding to potential opportunities, challenges, and risks.

And finally, they bring about continuous improvements that drive greater profitability. The final part of this blog series will explain the lofty responsive process management (RPM) idea in more concrete terms and examples. 

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There wasn’t a lack of big news in the product lifecycle management (PLM) industry in the past few weeks. On May 20^th, Siemens PLM Software unveiled High Definition Product Lifecycle Management (HD-PLM) at the World Exposition Shanghai China 2010 (Expo 2010). On June 7^th, PTC told PTC/USER 2010 attendees that a virtual launch event for Project Lightning was schedule on October 28^th, 2010. Two days later, Dassault Systèmes announced the acquisition of Exalead (read the press release). Since the month of June is packed with three major PLM events in the world (PTC/USER World Event, Dassault Systèmes SwYm Conference, and Siemens PLM Connection) in a row, it is no surprise to have some big PLM news  for the sake of marketing. However, this time I also see some new things beyond marketing purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

Positioning Part 3: Why we should love dumb questions

Part 2 was about the choices to consider when formulating your campaign positioning—now we’ll see why those initial choices are probably wrong.

Over the years, I’ve learned to love the uninformed viewpoint. At TEC, we call this unbiased (and yes, refreshingly ignorant) perspective the tourist’s view. We worship the “innocent bystander”—the guy who asks the dumb questions. Because he’s often the only genius left in the room—the one not tainted by endless research, deliberations, or contrived, clever twists of phrase. He’s the guy that brings into question all the hard work of campaign committees, experts, and executives with this simple exclamation; “I don’t get it.” Bless his soul, because if we listen to him, he might save us. His name is often Larry.

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In Part 1 of this blog series I admitted to being a late adopter of a sort, in part for not immediately jumping onto the social media bandwagon. In particular, my initial reaction to Salesforce Chatter (a.k.a. Collaboration Cloud) was tepid. To be frank, Marc Benioff, salesforce.com’s flamboyant and engaging CEO, gave an atypically incoherent and dry keynote speech when he introduced Chatter at the Dreamforce 2009 conference.

However, a few months have passed and this period has helped salesforce.com craft a much clearer message. In addition, Chatter has reportedly been used within salesforce.com’s own organization (as the largest beta site/tester), which has given the vendor much more time and experience to improve and tweak the product.

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In the enterprise open source space, a notable change came to light today affecting Compiere users and partners. Consona announced its acquisition of Compiere.

Compiere started back in 1999. One of its founders explained to me that the company’s business (circa 2004) largely came from support, migration, and priority requests from clients. An integral component of the delivery model was Compiere’s partners. So Compiere focused on providing second-level support to their network of local partners. These areas are where I’m most curious about Compiere’s move to the Consona fold. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series explained Plex Systems’ ebullience and growth despite a hostile and depressed environment, especially in the discrete manufacturing sector. While the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is now mainstream in many functional areas of business, the article concurred with Frank Scavo’s recent assertion that, for the time being, there is only one true SaaS enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for manufacturing companies: Plex Online [evaluate this product].  Read the rest of this entry »

Although malpractice is usually a term used in medicine, its definition (“any instance of improper professional conduct”) shows that the term can be used in any profession. In my opinion, malpractice can also be found in customer relationship management (CRM).  It can result in financial damage (lost sales, penalties for not delivering on time, etc.) or loss of confidence, which can jeopardize the relationships between companies and their customers.

Here’s an example of improper professional conduct I witnessed when dealing with my bank.

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Recently, I attended the TDWI Conference in Chicago. This conference was a great opportunity to learn insights from the people who are involved in the industry.

In each conference, it’s always interesting to see how the BI sector has matured. The interest in gaining more and more control and improvement in the BI terrain is still a growing process. I’m glad to know there is still a lot to say and do in the data management space. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series began with an analysis of the recent merger of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) and Savvion Inc. Progress has this way made a large leap into the business process management (BPM) space, from where it had been notably absent. The article summarized that Savvion BusinessManager 7.5 [evaluate this product] is one of the most mature BPM suites in the still-evolving market, with the ability to handle high volumes of workflows that coordinate people, data/documents, and systems.

Part 2 then analyzed Savvion’s capabilities with regards to the three common usage types of BPM systems, i.e., human-centric business processes, system-centric (integration) processes, and document-centric processes. Moreover, in its white paper “Understanding Usage Patterns An Enterprise BPMS Must Support,” Savvion identifies and describes four other equally important usage scenarios that are neither very well understood by users nor well supported by many other BPM vendors.

Savvion claims to currently be the only BPM provider that can accommodate all of these seven usage scenarios. Part 2 also analyzed the case management and rule-based (decision-intensive) processes, and Part 3 now continues with the project-oriented and event-centric BPM usage scenarios.

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Following the general opening session presented by keynote speaker Peter Burrows, CIO Emeritus, Head of Enterprise Architecture, adidas Group, the media and analyst discussion session with Burrows allowed me to learn more details about adidas’ FlexPLM implementation.

In addition, I also had a 1:1 interview with Kathleen Mitford, VP, Product and Marketing Strategy focusing on the consumer products, retail, footwear, and apparel industries, to learn FlexPLM’s achievements and product roadmap of FlexPLM.

After all that, I have to give my personal Day Two keyword to “FlexPLM.” As to my keyword for Day One, I believe it was “strategy,” as I indicated in my previous blog post. Read the rest of this entry »

Distribution organizations play a key role between the manufacturers and retailers. Being the middle organization between a manufacturer and a retailer, a distribution center (DC) needs to have a robust operation and accurate information for delivering products and services to its customers. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, after the TEC certification process for PTC Windchill 9.0 (download the certification report), I was convinced that this solution is quite functionally comprehensive.

In the meantime, I also outlined some weak spots of Windchill. For example, the solution’s capabilities on product cost estimation and product service data management are relatively limited. After the first day at PTC/USER World Conference 2010, the most important message I’ve received is that PTC is on a strategic move to a more powerful product lifecycle management (PLM) portfolio comprised of multiple PTC brands, or in other words, product lines. Read the rest of this entry »

My attendance of RedPrairie Corporations’ RedShift 2010 user conference (for the first time ever) confirmed what I have long sensed about the company’s corporate culture and its install base. That is, the previous blog series on a few supply chain management (SCM) players has, inter alia, expressed my opinions about RedPrairie (formerly McHugh Software), and I believed that these were mostly on target.

However, the recent conference provided a few more eye-opening findings and experiences that cannot transpire through occasional conference calls and brief analyst briefings. In his keynote speech, Michael Mayoras, RedPrairie’s CEO said that the privately held company had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20 percent in last 5 years (to estimated ~US$260 million in revenues in 2009). 

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