My recent post Bye-bye Beta announced that TEC Advisor, TEC’s online software evaluation and selection system, exited the beta phase. I highlighted its newest features that pertained to the pre-selection module (i.e., the series of questions prior to evaluation).

Since then, we’ve enhanced the evaluation module of TEC Advisor to allow users to more easily set priorities to functional areas, as well as customize how comparative results are displayed. Here’s a recap of the latest additions. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2011 Enterprise 2.0 conference’s expo floor in Boston in late June featured many of the “usual suspects,” such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Adobe, SuccessFactors, Jive Software, SocialText, OpenText, Yammer, and Cisco Systems, to name only a few well-established providers (in addition to the plethora of innovative startup companies that one could encounter there). There were also some notable absentees, such as SAP (StreamWork), salesforce.com (Chatter), and Atlassian (Jira).

But my attention was drawn to one vendor that has not been discussed as much as it deserves: Saba Software.

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We are pleased to announce that the Ultimus Business Process Management Suite has joined the ranks of TEC Certified systems providing business process management (BPM) functionality. Read the rest of this entry »

Every day business intelligence (BI) gets closer to chaos. Don’t get me wrong—I’m by no means saying that BI will one day become obsolete and that you’ll need to avoid it at all costs. On the contrary, Read the rest of this entry »

We are proud to welcome Ramco ERP to our family of TEC Certified systems.

The detailed Ramco ERP certification report (strengths, weaknesses, bells and whistles) will be available soon, but here’s a sneak preview.

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During its MicroStrategy World 2011 user conference in Monte Carlo, Virginia (US)-based MicroStrategy announced a number of new products and partnerships intended to strengthen the company’s position in the business intelligence (BI) space. Read the rest of this entry »

The recently held SAPPHIRE NOW 2011 event in Orlando, Florida had many newsworthy items with regards to SAP’s solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For one, the much publicized and anticipated multi-tenanted software as a service (SaaS) SAP Business ByDesign product has reached a milestone of 500 customers and availability in a dozen countries or so (after initial hiccups and faltering). For its part, the proven lower-end SAP BusinessOne offering has reached a whopping 30,000 customers worldwide.

The upper-end product for SMEs, SAP Business All-in-One, which packages functionality from the flagship SAP ERP product (i.e., the two products have the exact same DNA), continues to do well in its target markets. The product has lately been bolstered by 22 (and many more coming soon) SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions (SAP RDS), which are fixed-scope and fixed-price add-on (tuck-in) sets of focused functionality that can be deployed with SAP Business All-in-One, including those in the realm of supply chain management (SCM), sales & marketing, product development & manufacturing, and finance.

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Part 1 of this blog series introduced Reflexis Systems, whose task execution solutions have helped over 110 retailers and their suppliers worldwide execute their strategies and increase profits. The article analyzed Reflexis’ genesis and evolution from a task management specialist to an integrated retail workforce management (WFM) platform provider.

Reflexis’ Retail Execution Management platform features labor budgeting/forecasting/scheduling, time and attendance (T&A), task management, and key performance indicator (KPI)/compliance solutions to enable retailers to align their store labor/activities to corporate goals and institutionalize best-practice responses to real-time metrics. As mentioned in Part 1, Reflexis’ customers, many of which are Top 250 global retailers, have reported improvements in store-level compliance with corporate strategies; higher productivity of merchandising, field, and store management; and increased sales and profitability. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC certification is like a software test drive; a chance to look under the hood, kick the tires, take it around the block with some scenarios. [more on TEC Certification here]

I wasn’t disappointed during our recent certification of CDC Software’s Ross ERP. Read the rest of this entry »

I am pleased to announce that Blackboard Learn is officially certified by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) for online evaluation of learning management suites in the Human Capital Management Evaluation Center. My fellow analyst Gabriel Gheorghiu and I had the pleasure of viewing a demonstration of the product given by Blackboard’s senior solutions engineer for professional education, Burt Blair, who readily displayed his in-depth knowledge of the product.

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Part 1 of this blog series presented the opportunity of service economy and associated complexity of providing consistently an experience of customer service excellence. The article then introduced KANA Software, a provider of Service Experience Management (SEM) solutions. Although KANA has focused on enabling superior customer service for its enterprise clients since being founded in 1996, it has experienced periods of ups and downs.

Having been acquired and taken private under Accel-KKR in late 2009, the vendor has since regrouped and come out with its renewed value proposition. Part 1 concluded with KANA’s SEM approach and accompanying solutions that blend customer relationship management (CRM), business process management (BPM), business intelligence (BI), and knowledge management (KM), social media monitoring, and many other parts.

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In recent posts, we’ve learned that business software implementation failures are rampant and that the blame is all on the vendor. And though unhappy customers are suing the software vendors, little speculation is offered on the cause for the implementation failure. Read the rest of this entry »