In a previous post I discussed how the social revolution impacted customer relationship management (CRM) and underlined that while processes designed to derive value in CRM remain valid, they are far from being sufficient in the context of social CRM (SCRM). Yet most organizations need structure to conduct their activities.

As far as CRM is concerned, the social aspect has brought to the surface what already existed but had been dodged by businesses, for a long time—the pervasive opinions and attitudes of their customers. By widely spreading individual opinions, social media has encouraged businesses to transform their exchanges with customers. As a consequence, quite a few businesses today have SCRM strategies in place. In this post, I’ll outline some of the potential benefits of SCRM to businesses and their clients. Read the rest of this entry »

Siemens’s Industry Automation division, which includes Siemens PLM Software, continues with its strategy of offering manufacturing organizations virtually anything they might need—from product ideation and design to actual manufacturing execution and plant automation (including even the actual hardware products from sister divisions at Siemens). Still, the giant knows that hardly any large manufacturing company will procure everything from a single vendor, and thus it is more than happy to provide customers (and even competitors) with its best-of-breed (BoB) software components. Either way, Siemens is happy to help customers make smarter product development decisions, at various lifecycle stages, leading to better products. Read the rest of this entry »

Kronos, the global leader in delivering workforce management (WFM) solutions in the cloud, is preparing for its KronosWorks 2012 conference early next week, and continues to fire on all cylinders. Tens of thousands of organizations in more than 100 countries—including more than half of the Fortune 1000—use Kronos to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity. During the recently held 15th annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition in Chicago, Kronos announced a series of enhancements to its fast-selling cloud WFM suite for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), dubbed Kronos Workforce Ready. Read the rest of this entry »

In a slew of announcements at the recently held Workday Rising 2012 user conference, one major theme has been that Workday, the cloud software company that initially started with providing human resource management system (HRMS) and which later added payroll software, now has 40 financial management customers as well (10 percent of its customer base). Most recently, the roster of Workday Financial Management customers has been joined by the University of Rochester, TripAdvisor, and J.B. Hunt.

Workday 18 Financial Management

The recently released Workday 18 had major Workday Financial Management application enhancements to bring more global capabilities to large multinational organizations, together with advanced industry-specific functionality (see the related PR). Some advancements to Workday Financial Management included the following: Read the rest of this entry »

Seeking to incorporate real-time communication and social task management into its social business platform, Jive Software has acquired Meetings.io and Producteev. Meetings.io’s platform facilitates human interaction with its capability to create video and chat connections instantly, through a web browser. In addition, the platform can be accessed from anywhere across the world without sign ups or downloads. Producteev has developed a cloud-based social task management solution which provides real-time task management and task progress tracking functionality. Read the rest of this entry »

Blackboard released a new update for its Blackboard Learn platform. Improved usability appears to be the major addition to the experience proposed by Blackboard to its end users—both instructors and students. Read the rest of this entry »

In late October 2012, Emcien was named the 2012 Supplier of the Year in the software as a service (SaaS) Solution Provider category, presented at the NCR IT Supplier Summit. The award is a reflection of the strong working relationship between NCR and Emcien, as NCR IT Services voted on those vendors that are most strategic and valuable to the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

The learning solutions provider Desire2Learn has launched Desire2Learn Learning Suite v10.1. The release introduces a series of new features: quick course creation enabling instructors to embed rich media in learning and assessment activities and personalize learning experiences to improve students’ learning results. Students are able to access course materials from any device. Read the rest of this entry »

Mzinga has announced the release of OmniSocial Engaged—a social business platform that envisions fruitful interactions between organizations and their clients. The platform proposes several tools meant to “drive website traffic, amplify customer and buyer loyalty, and increase customer satisfaction.” For instance, OmniSocial Engaged allows businesses to design customized ’social ecosystems’ to reflect their customers’ needs and profiles. Social applications and widgets can be easily integrated into an existing web presence with the help of a self-service solution. In addition, social analytics provides insight into the social success of organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a lot of hype about companies moving to the cloud, but are they actually doing it? Cloud adoption is not as rapid as some providers might lead you to think, but TEC data shows that interest in cloud computing is picking up.

The 2012 TEC Market Survey Report for Discrete Manufacturing shows that cloud computing has moved beyond the early adopter phase and is now moving into the early majority phase of the technology adoption lifecycle. The question now is not “if”, but when and how information technology (IT) organizations will adopt cloud computing technologies.

If you’re thinking about a cloud deployment, there are a few things you should know. There’s also an easy way your organization can test a cloud deployment before committing to a larger cloud initiative. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC’s business intelligence analyst, Jorge García, will be presenting at Salon BI 2012 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, this Tuesday, November 6 (9:35 am).

Jorge will be talking about three areas that are receiving a lot of research and development attention and dollars—augmented reality, motion-based technology, and voice-recognition technology—and their applications to the BI space.

Trimble Navigation is primarily known for its advanced positioning solutions and hardware, such as GPS receivers and rangefinders. The company has been developing and producing those products for years; however, a key segment of the business is linked to engineering and construction. Read the rest of this entry »

Ameristar Casinos, an important casino gaming organization has chosen Oracle’s GoldenGate real-time data integration product—a single solution for integrating data across a wide number of data sources, all in real time. Ameristar is taking this step in order to improve its corporate marketing strategies. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of its approach to big data, QlikTech, the provider of in-memory–based business intelligence (BI) solution QlikView, is launching Direct Discovery, a new offering that enables direct access to big data sources using QlikView apps. Direct Discovery is able to link data already in-memory with data coming from big-data sources on the fly, giving users the capability for rapid analysis and without a pre-loading process. Read the rest of this entry »

I have attended several enterprise software events in recent months that discussed trends and changes in IT, with big data, mobile computing, social collaboration, and cloud computing at the top of the list. For instance, at its recent SAP Retail Forum North America, SAP announced the availability of a retailing solution built on SAP NetWeaver Cloud (part of the SAP HANA Cloud platform) that effectively combines these trends.

How these current IT trends are converging was also highlighted at the keynote presentations session on the first day of the recently held TUCON 2012 conference, titled “Everything is Different.” Read the rest of this entry »