The “little” SAP Business One solution is an unsung hero of sorts at SAP. Indeed, more than 38,000 customers worldwide in nearly 30 languages and over 630 partners are often ignored as less newsworthy by market observers. The business management solution for small businesses (with 10–20 users, on average) can be deployed on premises or in the cloud, and is accessible via mobile devices.

During the SAPPHIRENOW 2013 conference, SAP announced the general availability of the 9.0 version of the SAP Business One running on Microsoft SQL Server (which is the product’s original database). With more than 50 new features, the latest version offers enhanced capabilities for warehouse management, infrastructure, and inventory management, as well as improved systems performance.

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NetSuite is on a roll with whopping growth and expansion (16,000 customers, 2,000 employees, and 700 partners) and is even now talking about profitability, positive cash flow, and a hefty cash position (contrary to the popular belief that cloud software vendors are not profitable in general). The company’s third SuiteWorld annual conference brought about 5,000 attendees, which is significantly higher than the 3,000 and 1,200 attendees respectively for the previous two years’ events. While retail and multi-channel e-commerce was the main theme at SuiteWorld 2012, SuiteWorld 2013’s main theme was that manufacturing is ready for cloud computing too.

NetSuite for Manufacturing
This week’s release of NetSuite Manufacturing Edition brings to the marketplace a solution for manufacturing and product-centric companies that includes a portfolio of capabilities such as production routings and scheduling, financials for manufacturing with standard cost and work in progress (WIP) accounting, inventory management with available-to-promise (ATP), and supply chain integration. While previously NetSuite mainly targeted outsourced offshore manufacturing, NetSuite Manufacturing Edition now caters to manufacturers that make their own products. The offering is still a fairly generic discrete manufacturing solution, but it is likely that NetSuite will make it more vertical, in part based on tuck-in acquisitions and partner offerings.

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SYSPRO recently announced that Freedom Smokeless, a manufacturer of e-cigarettes, has selected SYSPRO ERP software to facilitate growth. According to the California-based company, SYSPRO ERP will be a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in the company’s new factory, where the software will manage manufacturing and facilitate bar code scanning, inventory controls, and product traceability.

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Deacom, Inc., a provider of DEACOM, a broad enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for process manufacturers, announced recently that Cloverdale Foods Company, a food manufacturer of high-quality processed meats, has licensed the DEACOM ERP system to streamline its manufacturing operations. Cloverdale has an aggressive plan for growth in mind and recognized that it would need a new ERP system in order to handle increased demand. Read the rest of this entry »

The Epicor Retail division of global business software solution provider Epicor Software Corporation provides solutions for retailers seeking to streamline processes, integrate channels, and leverage intelligence  in a variety of industries including apparel, footwear, discount, general merchandise, automotive aftermarket, lumber and building materials, nursery, and pharmacy. Epicor is the retail technology partner of choice for thousands of retailers—from Aeropostale, Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance, and Build-A-Bear Workshop, to General Nutrition Centers, True Value Company, and Under Armour ( more details here).

New Epicor Retail Strategy
Early in 2013, Epicor unveiled a multi-year strategic plan to grow its market share and expand its global footprint in the retail technology space. While Epicor is recognized as the No.1 provider of point of sale (POS) software among the top 250 largest specialty soft goods and hard goods retailers by IHL Group, the multi-year strategic plan was designed to enable Epicor to maintain and grow its leadership position. Initially, Epicor has been focused on the following four strategic priorities: global expansion, cross-channel execution, and continuing investments in both POS and enterprise cloud technology.

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NetSuite continues to round out its exacting capabilities for retailers and distributors. Having acquired the Retail Anywhere cloud point of sales (POS) system in early 2013, on the eve of the SuiteWorld 2013 conference NetSuite has acquired OrderMotion Inc., a provider of order management solutions based in Burlington, Massachusetts, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of OrderMotion’s cloud-based Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Order Management capabilities adds to NetSuite’s own cloud-based order management system, furthering NetSuite’s focus on this increasingly important and complex business challenge and critical functionality—omnichannel order fulfillment.

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Abas-USA recently announced that Carolina Color Corporation has chosen abas Business Suite for its future planned growth and business. Carolina Color provides accurate matching services and eco-friendly, proprietary colorant solutions for unique customer applications.

Carolina Color reportedly started an enterprise resource planning (ERP) selection process in 2007 to replace a homegrown system. Read the rest of this entry »

SAP has announced SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service, taking the logical but no less important step of taking its SAP HANA platform to the cloud, giving organizations a new deployment option for the in-memory platform.

The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service will enable organizations to run mission-critical instances of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and Netweaver Business Warehouse solutions in the cloud, powered by HANA.

SAP plans to deliver the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud through its partners within what SAP calls an “open + us” strategy, offering the capabilities from the partner data centers and/or SAP’s own data centers located worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »

At the recently held Inforum 2013 conference, many ears pricked up at the announcement of Infor Sky Vault, a big data initiative that leverages Infor’s ION middleware, micro-vertical expertise, and visually appealing dashboards developed by Infor ION business intelligence (BI) experts and designed by Hook & Loop, Infor’s recently incubated Manhattan-based in-house design agency. Infor Sky Vault is planned to launch in the second half of 2013 with predefined content for sales finance, and production. Additional functional areas and industries will be added in subsequent iterations.

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IQMS, a manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) software provider for the repetitive, process, and discrete industries (automotive, medical, packaging, consumer goods, etc.), announced that Rebling Power Connectors has selected IQMS EnterpriseIQ as its new unified manufacturing solution. For more than four decades, Rebling Power Connectors has been manufacturing high current battery receptacles and disconnectors for the aviation sector and defense land vehicles, in addition to its custom thermoplastic and thermoset moldings for the medical, consumer products, and automotive industries.

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In its quest to become an ever more global enterprise software company, IFS recently announced a partnership with Infosys, a global provider of consulting and technology services. The global partnership covers joint sales activities toward targeted industries in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific, as well as development of skills in the IFS Applications software suite within Infosys, which should aid in the delivery of successful projects.

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The slew of product announcements at the recent Inforum 2013 conference was underlined by the announced general availability of Infor 10x, an enterprise release that in Infor’s view marks a major step forward in achieving its vision. Infor 10x unites a multi-purpose middleware platform featuring social, mobile, analytical, and cloud capabilities with Infor’s suite of solutions.

All major applications feature a reinvented HTML5 user experience, the new Infor Ming.le platform for social collaboration, business process improvement, and contextual analytics, and pervasive in-context analytics embedded throughout workflows that are packaged within the Infor ION integration framework for managing business process flows, workflows, and alerts. Read the rest of this entry »

UNIT4, a cloud-focused business software  and services company, has announced a partnership with Amazon, one of the top global providers of cloud services. Under this agreement UNIT4 will develop the necessary consultancy services and technical support to deploy its UNIT4’s business software with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. Read the rest of this entry »

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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