As part of its ongoing quest for innovation, Intuit recently announced that QuickBooks Online is now available for mobile devices. QuickBooks Online for iPad (the name is somewhat deceiving given that the product runs on multiple mobile devices and not only on the Apple iPad) is the newest addition to the QuickBooks Online suite. Through a single QuickBooks Online account, a business can access and interact with its data from a computer, tablet, or other mobile device. There are native apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones (but no native Android tablet app yet). Data automatically syncs between devices and users, so small businesses can manage their finances anytime, anywhere.

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With the release of Oracle Virtual Desktop Client 1.2 for Tablets, Oracle will be making available a new set of features to provide support for Android, in addition to the support it already provides for iPad, Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, to better support corporate client bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives.

The new offering has features to support faster connection and higher screen resolutions (including Retina display on the most recent iPads), as well as supporting many of the latest tablet features. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Part 1 of this blog series talked about my very first attendance of BigIdeas, BigMachines’ annual user conference that takes place in the fall in Chicago. I wasn’t the only one that attended BigIdeas 2011 for the first time, as in May 2011 the company’s financial backers brought in David Bonnette, a seasoned Oracle executive in the customer relationship management (CRM) realm, as the new president. Mr. Bonnette has since gradually replaced the company’s founder and former CEO Godard Abel.

The highlights of Bonnette’s keynote presentation were that BigMachines has recently moved towards acting as an established company with more structured processes rather than as a slightly disorganized rapidly growing startup. Predictable results for both the vendor and its customers should come from more simplified and prepackaged offerings, and the upcoming BigMachines 12 release was previewed.

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The fall of 2011 marked Theo Epstein’s move from Boston Red Sox to Chicago Cubs, whose fans have been yearning for a championship ring for well over 100 years and are fervently hoping that Theo’s curse-breaking success as the general manager in Boston will be repeated in the desolate Cubs nation. Well, 2011 also marked a much less important detail: after having to regretfully decline a few previous times, I was finally able to clear my calendar and attend BigMachines’ annual user conference dubbed BigIdeas, also in Chicago as the company’s base.

I have to confess that the attendance has changed my perceptions of the upbeat cloud software vendor somewhat. Namely, every time when we would meet in the past (most often at past salesforce.com’s Dreamforce and Oracle Open World events) the company’s staff struck me as too formal and somewhat standoffish. My earlier opinions on the vendor can be seen in this blog post from 2010 here.

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In this issue of BI Hits the Road, I’d like to take a look at the mobile offerings of two business intelligence (BI) software providers: MicroStrategy (see vendor profile) and QlikTech (see vendor profile). These companies’ mobile BI strategy development efforts have paid off in fervent interest in their solutions by small to large organizations in various industries. Read the rest of this entry »

The recent acquisition of Gist by BlackBerry developer Research In Motion (RIM) prompted this TEC water cooler information session between TEC’s Managing Editor Dave Clark and CRM analyst Gabriel Gheorghiu:

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Earlier this week MeLLmo, creator of the mobile business intelligence solution Roambi, announced a new product to be launched in June and included in its Mobile software stack: RoambBI Flow. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Oracle announced its new releases of Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications and Oracle Real-Time Decisions.

With these new releases of Oracle’s BI solutions, all BI applications support iPhone and iPad mobile access without additional effort or configuration. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m writing this post, more software vendors are launching their mobile business intelligence (BI) solutions. So I’ve decided to hurry up and start talking about the vendors that are shaping the mobile BI space.

In this installment of BI Hits the Road (see Part 1 and Part 2) I will describe some of the features of two specific mobile BI solutions offered by a couple of vendors: Roambi from MeLLmo and Visual KPI from Transpara. Read the rest of this entry »

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Many business applications are going mobile. And BI is no exception. Many BI software vendors are launching new versions that support mobile features, while others are launching special BI applications specifically for mobile devices. Read the rest of this entry »

Many recent TEC articles have talked about quote-to-order (Q2O) or configure, price, quote (CPQ) solutions that facilitate business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) sales, thus helping companies sell more products and services faster. A number of thriving vendors provide on-demand product configurator, pricing and quoting, proposal generator, and B2B eCommerce (self-service portals, product catalogs, etc.) software solutions. These Web-based offerings facilitate sales across their customers’ diverse channels by streamlining their sales processes, from opportunity to order.

Using Q2O/CPQ solutions, dispersed sales teams and channels can quickly configure products, generate quotes, proposals and contracts, manage complex pricing, and manage orders. Most recently, I’ve reported on Cameleon Software’s bullish posture. The company was visibly present at salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce 2010 user conference expo floor, making hay out if its Apple iPhone- and iPad-enabled sales application and integration to the Salesforce Chatter cloud collaboration product. 

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I recently had the opportunity to meet with Centric Software and get to know more about Centric 8 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Sourcing Solutions for the fashion industry. Among the interesting topics discussed, a recently launched product called Collection Book for Fashion iPad app was most impressive. In my view, this iPad app is a great product, as it takes advantage of the user interface (UI) feature of the iPad. However, even more important is the mechanism behind this popular mobile device—the enhanced connectivity between fashion designers and customers who purchase products from fashion manufacturers for wholesale or retail purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

Just when we thought that business intelligence (BI) systems were headed straight for the cloud, new BI applications are already being developed for another change in the way traditional BI tools used to work.

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In Part 1 of this blog series I admitted to being a late adopter of a sort, in part for not immediately jumping onto the social media bandwagon. In particular, my initial reaction to Salesforce Chatter (a.k.a. Collaboration Cloud) was tepid when it was introduced at the Dreamforce 2009 conference.

However, a few months have passed and this period has helped salesforce.com craft the much clearer cloud computing evolution message that was analyzed in Part 2. The article then also went on to explain my change of heart and discussed Salesforce Chatter’s current state of affairs (in terms of the current number of beta users and third-party solutions).

Salesforce Chatter became generally available (GA) as of June 22, 2010. Salesforce.com is even entertaining the idea that Chatter could be a general enterprise platform on its own. One Chatter-based application was recently announced by FinancialForce.com and is called Chatterbox.

Chatterbox comes within the FinancialForce Accounting product but the idea is to also sell it to accounting departments as standalone. For more information on the product, see the company’s press release (PR), a related blog post from WebCPA, and the product’s dedicated Web page.

The final part of this blog series will explain many design principles and possible use of Chatter and Chatterbox from my dialogue with Jeremy Roche, FinancialForce.com CEO and President, and UNIT4 CODA chairman.

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