Like it or not, gamification is here to stay and help bolster user engagement. Employee engagement has become the holy grail in private companies and government agencies, as numerous studies show that engaged employees are far more productive, and stay longer than their non-engaged peers. Companies are increasingly using gamification to reward and recognize both their trading partners and their employees.

When gamification capabilities are added to social software, the idea is for companies to access data and analytics that should provide much needed insight into employee behavior, and then reward employees in a way that increases their commitment to what they are doing while also keeping them aligned with company goals. To that end, Socialtext, a renowned provider of enterprise social software, announced its partnership with Badgeville, the leading gamification and behavior management platform, to infuse gamification capabilities into its variety of applications, widgets, and mobile tools.

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In November 2012, Revionics, Inc., a cloud-based provider of merchandise optimization solutions, acquired SkuLoop, a provider of social commerce-driven promotions for retailers and consumer brands, from GIIV, Inc. Revionics’ solutions use predictive analytics and demand-based science to help retailers obtain the best results across all touchpoints in the multi-channel shopping realm—online, in-store, social, and mobile—by  aiding with decisions in product, price, promotion, placement, and space allocation. Read the rest of this entry »

On December 4, 2012, Pegasystems (a.k.a. Pega), a prominent business process management (BPM) and customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions provider, announced its new Pega Process Extender offering. The product aims to enable organizations to leverage their SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications with new work automation and user experience capabilities. Pega has significant experience complementing SAP ERP applications, and large enterprises can now take advantage of all of Pega’s BPM, dynamic case management, and next-best-action predictive analytics solutions to unlock and leverage their data, logic, and processes in SAP.

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The traditional Microsoft Dynamics Fall Analyst Event (FAE) 2012 started with a tour of the flagship Microsoft Store in an opulent mall in Bellevue, WA, where Windows 8 and Surface were all the rage. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, Apriso announced general availability of FlexNet 9.6, its next generation manufacturing software platform that offers much more than traditional manufacturing execution systems (MES) in terms of digital manufacturing. Namely, FlexNet 9.6 more readily supports conversion to paperless manufacturing environments, whereby enhanced role-based electronic work instructions (eWI) can more easily be updated by business users, without the need for IT staff to be involved. Read the rest of this entry »

In late November 2012, Siemens and Bentley Systems announced a strategic collaboration to integrate digital product design and manufacturing processes design offerings by Siemens PLM Software with information modeling for facilities lifecycle design offerings by Bentley. Initially, the companies will focus on the digital factory for automotive and discrete manufacturing. In other words, the Siemens Industry Automation Division and Bentley will initially collaborate on common file formats and content, integrated workflows for factory layout, and the convergence of process and layout. This work is an extension of earlier collaborations between the two organizations that resulted in each deploying technology offerings developed by the other (see the related news item).

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On November 1, 2012, RedPrairie Corporation and JDA Software announced their merger. Under the terms of the agreement, the entities affiliated with RedPrairie will effect a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of JDA common stock for $45 per share. My initial positive and negative thoughts on the merger were outlined in Part One of this blog series, while Part Two discussed how the merger might work and some points to consider when evaluating the merger.

After any merger of two large companies in a specific market, there is inevitably a shift in the market landscape, and opportunities become available that a savvy competitor will take advantage of. A look at the current state of the SCM market reveals that we need much more innovation than consolidation in the market, such as new solutions and capabilities in addition to “upgrades” and increased ease of use. RedPrairie/JDA will now have to be focused on product family rationalization, stabilizing their employee base, and retaining customers. But at the same time the smaller vendors in the space such as Logility, Manhattan Associates, Kinaxis, E2open, and ToolsGroup, will, if they’re smart, be focused on innovation, new customers, customer success, and growth—real growth on a global basis.

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Descartes Systems Group is the first logistics service provider to sign an agreement with Nippon Automated Cargo and Port Consolidated System, Inc. (NACCS Center) to electronically file customs documents to Japan Customs in compliance with the country’s newly enacted Advanced Filing Rules.

On March 30th, 2012, a bill to amend part of the Customs Tariff Law was passed through the Diet legislature in Japan. This amendment enacts the Advance Filing Rules, which require a vessel operator or non-vessel operating common carrier (NVOCC) to electronically submit to Japan Customs the information on maritime container cargo intended for a port in Japan.

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On November 1, 2012, RedPrairie Corporation and JDA Software announced their merger. Under the terms of the agreement, the entities affiliated with RedPrairie will effect a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of JDA common stock for $45 per share. My initial positive and negative thoughts on the merger were outlined in Part One of this blog series.

Cynical and jaded market observers will see this merger as a déjà vu whereby two software companies that have been unable to perform to their full potential are coming together with the hope things will improve just like that. Read the rest of this entry »

Ongoing mergers in the enterprise applications continue to make strange bedfellows of fierce competitors. Most recently, Precision Software, a transportation and global trade management (GTM) division of QAD and a Gold level member of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN), announced that it has achieved Oracle Validated Integration of Precision Software Transportation Management System (TMS) Parcel v2012 with Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) 6.2. Needless to say, QAD and Oracle do compete in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) arena, but Precision Software has had autonomy with regard to its marketing activities and partnerships. Precision’s strategy includes integration with all the major ERP players, and QAD will not object to some money for the caviar coming from its competitors. Read the rest of this entry »

Intuit’s payments group launched Intuit Pay, a mobile payments pilot geared at small businesses in the United Kingdom (UK). The service offers users an inexpensive way to accept card payments anywhere with a free mobile app and low-cost chip and PIN reader.

A survey of 1,000 small businesses in the UK found that 19 percent of micro-businesses (firms with fewer than 10 employees) currently accept card payments. Almost half (47 percent) said they would accept cards if there was a more affordable way of doing so using their smartphone or tablet. There are an estimated 4.6 million micro-businesses in the UK.

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Infor announced a collaboration result with VMware through which the parties confirmed the compatibility of Infor’s flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite with a variety of VMware products, including VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director, and VMware vFabric. Through this collaboration Infor and VMware have jointly developed a reference architecture for Infor10 ION middleware and Infor LN. This setup provides customers with a full-fledged Infor LN ERP system that can be used as a virtual appliance, incorporating built-in security, performance management, and monitoring. Read the rest of this entry »

The Terlato Wine Group has announced that it selected Vistaar Technologies’ pricing solution to optimize distributor price management throughout its organization. Founded in 1955, Terlato is a leading importer, marketer, and producer of luxury wines that are sold across the globe, representing more than 50 brands spanning the world’s finest wine regions, varietals, and styles. Read the rest of this entry »

A week before the Autodesk University 2012 conference, Aras, a provider of enterprise-class open source product lifecycle management (PLM) software solutions, announced the launch of Aras VPLM, a commercial offering designed specifically for companies that run Autodesk Vault with Inventor for three-dimensional product design and AutoCAD for two-dimensional design. Aras VPLM for Autodesk Vault provides packaged functionality for corporate-wide PLM business processes within companies that run Autodesk product data management (PDM) software.

Built on top of Autodesk Vault Professional, Aras VPLM extends the capabilities of Autodesk Vault for new product development and introduction (NPDI), complex configuration management, enterprise change management, outsourced manufacturing, quality compliance, and other functions across a company and its supply chain, by allowing collaboration between product development, operations, quality, purchasing, sales and marketing, and other groups.

Autodesk Vault is by far the best computer-aided design (CAD) file manager for designers using Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD. Read the rest of this entry »

One major cross-sale opportunity in the recent merger of Epicor and Activant into a new Epicor was unveiled on November 20, 2012, when Epicor announced the availability of the Epicor ICE business architecture for the Epicor Prophet 21 wholesale distribution enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

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