It appears that Reflexis has been aggressively bundling/cross-selling its newer WFM modules into its traditional breadwinning task management deals to try to achieve a wider market acceptance.  The Reflexis platform of integrated task management, key performance indicators (KPI)-based compliance, time and attendance (T&A), and labor scheduling (including budgeting and forecasting) solutions enables retailers to align store labor activities to corporate goals and institute best-practice response to real-time metrics.

We might still want to note that what may appear to be 22 new customers is “only” 22 new brand logos that belong to 6 existing retail holding corporations that Reflexis has had for a while. Now, it’s certainly possible that some of these deployments have been extended over time, but these are not necessarily a dozen brand new retail customers.

But this is still the logical way for Reflexis to compete and achieve great results down the track, given that one third of the total count of retail logos on the vendor’s website use Kronos for WFM. Reflexis is currently number 3 in market share for retail labor scheduling in North America, with 14% compared to 17% for Kronos, according to IHL Research. As for task management, Reflexis is the leader with 54% market share, compared to #2 RedPrairie at 24%, again according to IHL.

For more background on Reflexis, see http://blog.technologyevaluation.com/blog/2011/07/20/talking-to-and-learning-from-a-retail-store-execution-software-leader-–-part-2/

The recently held PlanetPTC Live 2012 conference espoused the following two mantras – “Systems are Today’s Products” and “Product and Service Advantage.” Look for an exhaustive report from the conference and on PTC’s Winchill PLM (product lifecycle management), Creo CAD (computer aided design), and MKS Integrity application lifecycle management (ALM)/system engineering strategies.

Most recently, on August 8, 2012, PTC doubled down on its latter mantra by announcing it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Servigistics, Inc., developer of a broad suite of service lifecycle management (SLM) software solutions, for approximately US$220 million (USD) in cash. Pending regulatory approval and satisfaction of other customary conditions, the transaction is expected to be completed in September 2012. The Atlanta, Georgia-based privately held company has roughly 400 employees worldwide and generated approximately $80 million (USD) in revenue in the last 12 months. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC is pleased to announce that WorkflowGen, Advantys’ business process management (BPM) solution, has joined the ranks of TEC certified BPM systems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series analyzed a snapshot of the SAP HANA offerings’ achievements at the time of the product’s first anniversary in June 2012. SAP is now a de facto database provider that intends to become the #2 database vendor by 2015. The company’s recently unveiled real-time data platform combines the SAP HANA platform, Sybase data management offerings, and SAP BusinessObjects solutions for enterprise information management (EIM). The combination is being touted as an answer to handling the data abundance (the so-called “big data” phenomenon) with near-zero latency.

Read the rest of this entry »

Among the interesting developments at the recent Grape Escape event in Boston was the announcement of UNIT4’s multitenant model for its Agresso ERP offering, which generated a great deal of discussion, if not some controversy. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Ventura Manufacturing selects IQMS
Industry tags: Manufacturing, Assembly
“Ventura Manufacturing, Inc. has adopted IQMS’s manufacturing ERP software after reviewing multiple top-tier ERP vendors. Venture Manufacturing is headquartered in Zeeland, Michigan, and provides component assembly for furniture and automotive customers. Ventura will also run IQMS’ EDI module and customer/vendor portals, and plan to implement the IQMS quality modules. The ERP system will replace Ventura’s previous in-house developed system, which reportedly lacked data integration and was missing tools to support the growing complexities of its business.”—Ted Rohm, TEC ERP Analyst

• IQMS profile
• Compare ERP systems now!

Six London boroughs select Oracle ERP
Industry tags: Public administration and defense
“Application sharing is an ongoing trend for European governmental structures, and particularly in the UK. Six boroughs of London have agreed to pool their resources and benefit from lower costs and economies of scale. The latest version (version 12) of Oracle’s E-Business Suite won the deal. But in contrast with several cases involving UNIT4 wins, separate boroughs are expecting to use the same ERP system technically, but each in its own way, so the winning system needed to support this requirement. At the same time, boroughs will be able to easily exchange or share certain data if required.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• Oracle E-Business Suite profile
• Compare ERP systems now!

Read the rest of this entry »