For a long time, PROS Inc. was a prominent pricing management software provider for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) industries. Lately, however, the vendor has been leveraging its decades-long experience in handling large volumes of data to provide big data applications for sales effectiveness (pricing being only a part thereof). In other words, PROS now delivers prescriptive analytics and data science to help customers identify sales opportunities, develop offers, and set prices.

PROS has announced that it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with SAP to embed the SAP HANA platform with its big data apps. SAP HANA is a real-time in-memory database platform that streamlines analytics, planning, predictive, and sentiment assessments to allow business to operate in real time.

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Based on a recent slew of announcements by Epicor, both in terms of customer wins and product releases (across the original Epicor business as well as in the former Activant and Solarsoft businesses), I expect the upcoming Epicor Insights 2013 conference will be an interesting multiday event. Most recently, Epicor announced the general availability of version 12.11 of the Epicor Prophet 21 wholesale distribution enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Prophet 21, which came from former Activant, is a broad solution for wholesale distributors, particularly in the electrical, fastener, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), industrial, plumbing, and janitorial industries. Read the rest of this entry »

Retailers are vital to the global economy, responsible for 18 percent of the US GDP while supporting more than 41 million jobs in the US alone. It’s no secret that Microsoft Dynamics AX has marked retail as one of its focus industries, and early in 2013 Microsoft announced the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail that offers new capabilities to help retailers deliver a complete shopping experience through search-based e-commerce, new point of sale (POS) capabilities, and an omni-channel commerce engine.

But many important functional pieces will still have to be delivered by partners. Most recently, EdgeAX, a unit of Visionet Systems, Inc., announced the general availability of its apparel product lifecycle management (PLM) solution that is embedded in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and harnesses the underlying technology.

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Conventional wisdom would imply that a software company that changes its owners and CEO in the same year might be in some kind of trouble or facing stormy waters. But, Deltek vigorously claims that nothing is farther from the truth. Quite the contrary, in fact—via its 2012 acquisition by Thoma Bravo, Deltek believes it has found a dedicated and committed financial backer. In addition, there was nothing sinister in Deltek’s CEO change in late 2012. After a transformational seven-plus years with Deltek, former CEO Kevin Parker left the company under his own volition. Seven-and-a-half years is a nice run at an enterprise software company, and Parker felt that it was the right time for him to step back a bit after accomplishing a lot of the goals he set out to accomplish back in 2005 (plus, he might have begun to miss the US West Coast where he hails from).

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After a recent win at Rice Packaging Solutions, Epicor AVP has been chosen by another New England specialty packaging company, Volk Packaging Corporation, for corrugated packaging manufacturing. Volk Packaging Corporation is a third-generation family-owned and -operated company based in Biddeford, Maine, that designs, manufactures, and distributes corrugated and specialty packaging products. Since 1967, the company has grown to serve more than 1,000 customers throughout New England and Canada, and it manufactured more than 28 million boxes in 2012.

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At the Inforum 2013 user conference, Infor announced it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire longstanding partner TDCI Inc. Financial terms of the proposed transaction were not being disclosed and the parties expect to complete the transaction within thirty days (subject to some due diligence conditions).

Based in Columbus, Ohio, TDCI is a provider of configurator and guided selling solutions for manufacturers and distributors of customizable products and services. Read the rest of this entry »

At the Inforum 2013 user conference, Infor announced Infor Ming.le, a new platform for social collaboration, business process improvement, and contextual analytics. The social tool is embedded within Infor’s key systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), human capital management (HCM), enterprise asset management (EAM), etc., so employees across all areas of the business can communicate and collaborate, as well as follow people, assets, and processes relevant to the task at hand. Read the rest of this entry »

After being recently selected by Yanfeng Visteon, E2open continues to prove that supply chain management (SCM) solutions lend themselves well to cloud deployment with its most recent win. Namely, HP has just selected the E2open Business Network as one of its platforms for consolidated global procurement. The cloud-based platform for collaborative execution across global trading networks will be used across all major HP product lines.

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Apriso, a provider of global manufacturing software solutions that has recently celebrated its 20th birthday, announced the launch of Apriso Global EMI (Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence) solution—that provides a truly global and consistent platform. The solution gathers and reports up-to-the-minute information—wherever and whenever it is needed across an enterprise—tailored and presented in a way that is right for each individual decision maker.

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IFS, the global enterprise applications company, recently announced that Emirates, an airlines with one of the youngest fleets in the sky, has selected IFS Applications 8 to manage its new engine overhaul facility in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Emirates is one of the fastest-growing airlines in the world, flying to 132 destinations in 77 countries across six continents.

The airline operates 198 wide-body Airbus and Boeing aircrafts and has orders for an additional 200 aircrafts, worth more than $71 billion (USD). In 2011, the airline announced the construction of Asia’s most technically sophisticated engine overhaul facility in Dubai. The facility will cover 90,000 square meters and will serve as Emirates’ in-house engine overhaul facility. IFS Applications will support all operations at the overhaul facility, which, when fully operational, will service up to 300 engines per year.

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I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the energy and mood permeating the Saba People 2013 event. I had expected a somber mood in light of the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Bobby Yazdani’s ousting on Friday, on the very eve of the conference. Indeed, how often does a CEO (willingly or not) step down on the eve of an important annual user conference?

This issue was briefly addressed after the conference kickoff video featuring discussion clips by industry experts on the future of work (in tune with Saba’s white paper entitled “The New World of Work”). Namely, the diversity of today’s workforce—i.e., the different generations, ethnicities, geographies, motivations, expectations, and contributions—is changing the very fabric of organizations. At the same time, technological transformations—evident in the emergence of social, cloud, and mobile tools—are forging new relationships and creating business opportunities. Enterprises must adapt to these changing paradigms to be able to sustain and grow their business. Read the rest of this entry »

While some analysts may question the true revenue figure that can be attributed solely to SAP HANA (i.e., whether SAP is intentionally crediting HANA with revenues that might be attributable to other SAP offerings), the fact remains that businesses have currently only just scratched the surface of SAP HANA’s potential. For example, SAP recently announced that HANA would underpin new releases of manufacturing solutions as well as updates for existing solutions covering engineering, manufacturing, and sustainable operations. The announcement was made at Hannover Messe 2013, held April 8-12 in Hannover, Germany.

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In part 1 of this blog post series, we took a look at a major player in the field service management (FSM) market ServiceMax. In what follows is a recent question-and-answer interview with Stacey Epstein‚ vice president (VP) of marketing at ServiceMax. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC’s recent article on IFS’ recent success in the field service management (FSM) market by no means implies that other FSM players are not prospering. Indeed, one of those players is ServiceMax, which is garnering quite a bit of attention in the field service market, and more than doubles its revenues, receivables, pipeline production, and bookings each year. It also provides one of the most vibrant applications on the salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace. AppExchange currently features more than 1,700 solutions with 1.6 million installs and $700 (USD) in total revenue for salesforce.com’s ecosystem. Read the rest of this entry »

QAD, a provider of enterprise applications for global manufacturing companies specializing in automotive, consumer products, electronics, food and beverage, industrial, and life sciences products, recently announced that the Automotive Edition of QAD Enterprise Applications has greater market share in China than any other ERP solution, according to the IDC report “China Automotive Industry IT Solutions 2012–2016 Forecast and Analysis”. Of the top five ERP providers in China, QAD was the 2011 automotive industry leader ahead of SAP, UFIDA, Infor, and Siemens.

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