One of the reasons why Infor, despite its over 70,000 large customer base, hasn’t been regarded as a serious enterprise applications contender has been the company’s spotty relationship with its channel partners. Partners currently contribute only about 25 percent of Infor’s license revenue (except for Latin America, where that ratio is 50 percent).

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My recent post (Software and Human) Help Wanted in Overwhelmed Retail Stores talked about how much attention (and IT investment) retailers pay to their merchandize planning and supply chain optimization processes as compared to their store-level task execution, even though this is where “the rubber meets the road.” I concluded my post with the fact that there are dozens of retail workforce management (WFM) vendors and solutions, but not many have the required store-level task management capabilities.

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In this service economy it is not surprising to hear about smart innovative companies whose businesses have been blossoming due to the superior customer service they provide. Zappos and its “Powered by Service” tagline is a crown example.

Many vendors that offer customer service software solutions, especially those that bundle customer relationship management (CRM) with business process management (BPM) capabilities and even infuse knowledge in the service process, have been doing quite well, such as Pegasystems, SwordCiboodle, salesforce.com’s Service Cloud 3, inQuira, RightNow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Care Framework (CCF), and so on and so forth. But achieving consistently excellent customer service and satisfaction is not easy by any stretch of imagination. Research shows that over the last 15 years customer satisfaction has dropped by over 20 points (true, we as customers are becoming more fastidious, but that is our right, isn’t it?) while the cost per interaction has more than doubled, in great part due to agents’ errors and repeated service resulting in issue resolution calls.

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Part 1 of this blog series analyzed the runaway success and genesis of Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). The article outlined the main reasons for the collaborative product’s widespread use and then analyzed its evolution.

Part 2 talked about SharePoint’s typical proven use case scenarios as well as about the product’s shortcomings and points of concern. Due to its workflow management and document management system (DMS) capabilities companies often attempt to use SharePoint as a full-fledged business process management (BPM) platform, but how successfully?

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My recent series on Quantum Retail presented the many difficult merchandise range and assortment planning issues that retailers face, and the ensuing tough decisions that they have to continually make in that regard. But a lesser-known fact is that even though retailers spend multiple billions of dollars on planning activities and supporting tools to bring customers to their stores, they only execute at about 60 percent efficiency in their stores at best, thus leaving trillions of dollars in merchandise at risk. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced Needham, Massachusetts (US)-based Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC, NASDAQ: PMTC), which is an over US$1-billion large software company that develops, markets, and supports product development software solutions and related services. My post analyzed the company’s genesis from its inception in 1985 through the mid 2000s.

Part 2 then analyzed the most recent acquisitions of the products that have meanwhile been turned into integrated modules for the idea, concept, and product design phases of the product lifecycle within PTC Windchill 10.0, which started shipping in April 2011. My post established that the product lifecycle management (PLM) arena, also referred to as “Enterprise Solutions,” and the realm of computer-aided technologies (CAx), referred to as “Desktop Solutions,” the two distinct markets that PTC serves, represent different growth opportunities for the vendor.

Part 2 concluded with an analysis of the PTC Windchill PLM suite [evaluate this product], which is one of PTC’s main product lines and growth engines. Part 3 of this blog series will analyze the current state of affairs of PTC’s desktop solutions (including the novel PTC Creo suite of applications) and the company’s competitive positioning.

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Part 1 of this blog series analyzed the runaway success and genesis of Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). The article outlined the main reasons for the product’s widespread use and analyzed its evolution. So, what is it that SharePoint’s treasure trove of tools (a la “grandma’s attic”) can (and can’t) do for companies?

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Part 1 of this blog series introduced TAKE Supply Chain, a supply chain management (SCM) division of TAKE Solutions, Ltd. The parent TAKE Solutions is a global technology solutions and service provider, which focuses on two principal business areas – life sciences and SCM (the company is listed on the Indian Stock Exchange).

My first post described TAKE Supply Chain’s genesis since its inception in 1994 as BPA Solutions, through its ClearOrbit phase from 2001 to 2007, and finally from TAKE Solutions’ ownership on. Throughout all these changes, the company’s mission has remained intact: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.”

Part 1 also analyzed TAKE Supply Chain’s current product lines, starting with Demand-Driven Supply Network (DDSN) solutions. The first DDSN offering was OneSCM, which is an online supplier relationship management (SRM) platform that features multi-tier, multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) architecture and is designed for mid- to large-sized manufacturers and distributors.

Part 2 continued with the analysis of TAKE Supply Chain main product lines, in particular the Xtended Process Control (X.PC) SRM suite within the DDSN product line and the Enterprise Returns Management (ERM) suite within Demand-Driven Distribution & Fulfillment solutions (TAKE’s second major SCM product line). The final part of this blog series will now address TAKE Supply Chain’s remaining product line: Mobile & Auto-ID Solutions, and will discuss the company’s competitive landscape.

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Notwithstanding Microsoft’s recent purchase of Skype, some pundits have started to question its relevance in the long term (in view of the ongoing consumer mobile devices and/or social media success of Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, salesforce.com, etc.).

However, there are still many Microsoft products that are quite relevant. One of them is undoubtedly Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). Until the recent runaway success of the Kinect for Xbox 360 “gesturing entertainment platform” (which Microsoft hopes to deploy well beyond the juvenile games playing use, say, in harmful industrial environments), SharePoint was the product that reportedly grew the fastest to the US$ 1 billion mark in revenues (and it had been the fastest growing Microsoft technology for three straight years before the advent of Kinect). Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced Needham, Massachusetts, United States (US)-based Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC, NASDAQ: PMTC), which is an over US$ 1 billion large software company that develops, markets, and supports product development software solutions and related services. The article analyzed the company’s genesis from its inception in 1985 through the mid 2000s.

In addition to delivering Pro/ENGINEER (a.k.a., Pro/E, recently renamed Creo Elements/Pro) the first parametric, associative feature-based, solid (3D) modeling computer-aided-design (CAD) software in 1988, PTC has since acquired 18 companies to add both technology and industry expertise to its offerings. The article paid special attention to the following noteworthy acquisitions:

• Computervision in 1998 for its competing CADDS product, but which also, as a byproduct of the acquisition, provided PTC with Windchill Technologies and its first-to-market Internet-based product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. Today, the PTC Windchill PLM suite [evaluate this product] is one of the company’s two main product lines and growth engines (as it will be analyzed shortly)
• The Division Group in 1999, for the visualization ProductView product, which was recently renamed Creo Elements/View in connection with the launch of PTC Creo, which will be described in more detail in subsequent articles
• Arbortext in 2005, for its technical product data authoring and dynamic publishing solution, followed by the acquisition of ITEDO, a 2D and 3D technical illustration and animation software company, in 2006. The added capabilities for dynamic authoring, publishing, and service information have enabled service organizations to create and manage the content needed by field service professionals
• Aptivis Technology Corporation in 2005, which formed the basis of Windchill FlexPLM [evaluate this solution], a specialized version of Windchill that has enabled PTC to address the enterprise PLM needs of retailers as well as footwear and apparel/fashion (so-called “softline”) manufacturers and retailers
• CoCreate in 2007, for its direct modeling 3D CAD capabilities, primarily to add its existing customers and history-free, dynamic modeling capabilities to PTC’s CAx (computer-aided technologies) arsenal. The product was recently renamed Creo Elements/Direct (see Part 1 for more detail on the differences between parametric/history-based and explicit/direct modeling approaches) Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced TAKE Supply Chain, a supply chain management (SCM) division of TAKE Solutions, Ltd. The TAKE Solutions parent company is a global technology solutions and service provider, with significant focus across two principal business areas – life sciences and SCM, with an almost even breakdown of revenues between these divisions (the company is listed on the Indian Stock Exchange).

My blog post first described TAKE Supply Chain’s genesis since its inception in 1994 as BPA Solutions, through its ClearOrbit phase from 2001 to 2007, and from the TAKE Solutions ownership on. Throughout all these changes, the company’s mission has remained intact: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.”

Then, the article analyzed TAKE Supply Chain’s current product lines, starting with Demand-Driven Supply Network (DDSN) solutions. The first DDSN offering was OneSCM, which is an online supplier relationship management (SRM) platform that features multi-tier, multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) architecture and is designed for mid- to large-sized manufacturers and distributors.

Part 2 of this blog series will continue with analysis of TAKE Supply Chain’s main product lines, in particular looking at the rest of the DDSN products and at its Demand-Driven Distribution & Fulfillment solutions (the second major product line).

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Part 1 of this series analyzed the transformative events during the last few years at Sage Group, Plc (LSE: SGE) and its Sage North America subsidiary. These changes have led to its analyst day in Boston in February 2011, where Sage took a giant leap towards clarifying its position in the market. The analyst day started with Sage Group’s CEO Guy Berruyer’s and the outgoing Sage North America’s CEO Sue Swenson’s reports on their respective companies’ current state of affairs.

Part 2 talked about the subsequent presentation by Himanshu Palsule, Executive Vice President of Product Strategy and Marketing of Sage North America’s Business Solutions, on Sage North America’s strategic “Extend, Connect, Grow” framework and related Web strategy. In this presentation, Sage espoused somewhat differing cloud computing approaches for the small business and core mid-market segments.

But how do Sage customers and partners fit within the “Extend, Connect, Grow” strategic pillars?

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Needham, Massachusetts (US)-based Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC, NASDAQ: PMTC) is an over USD 1 billion large software company that develops, markets, and supports product development software solutions and related services. The company’s solutions help its client companies design products, manage product information, and improve their product development processes. PTC’s software solutions and services have helped its customers increase innovation, improve product quality, decrease time to market (TTM), and reduce product development costs.

PTC offers solutions in the product development market, which encompasses the product lifecycle management (PLM) market (i.e., product data management [PDM] and related collaborative solutions) and the so-called CAx (computer-aided technologies) market, which includes computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and computer-aided engineering (CAE) solutions. The company’s software solutions provide its customers with an integral product development system (PDS) that enables these enterprises to create digital product content, collaborate with others in the product development process, control product content, automate product development processes, configure products and product content, and communicate product information to people and systems across the extended enterprise and design chain. 

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Over the past several years I’ve repeatedly heard of a supply chain management (SCM) software and professional services company called ClearOrbit that was recently renamed TAKE Supply Chain. I admit to initially being in a quandary how to figure out the company’s exact value proposition and differentiation, given that its corporate Web site and press release (PR) messages as well as webinar topics seemed to be all over the SCM map: from labeling, printing, and package visibility, via reverse logistics, warehousing, radio frequency (RF) and RF Identification (RFID) mobility, to procure-to-pay (P2P), and supplier relationship management (SRM).

After a while, I finally had my “a-ha!” moment of epiphany and realized the company’s mission: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.” There are indeed many business problems encountered in managing globally extended supply networks.

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In the deluge of news revolving mainly around the Big Five product lifecycle management (PLM) vendors, i.e., Siemens PLM, Dassault Systemes, Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), Oracle Agile PLM, and SAP PLM, hardly any noise comes from smaller PLM providers in the lower end of the market. To be certain, many smaller PLM players, who had been catering to the mid-market, such as former MatrixOne or Agile Software, have lately been gobbled up by their larger counterparts.

Thus, in addition to Arena Solutions and its pure on-demand PLM offering as well as Aras’ open source PLM offering, the only other viable choice for smaller enterprises remains Omnify Software. Privately held Omnify Software is headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts (US), with another US office in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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