PROACTIS now helps more than 120 public sector organizations managing £15 billion of public sector spend in the UK and over 100,000 suppliers to streamline their source-to-contract and purchase-to-pay processes to achieve better value and control. The most recent win was at the Flintshire Council,  and now 20 out of 22 local authorities in Wales use PROACTIS.  Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

International distributor of high-tech metals and alloys selects Epicor ERP
Industry tags: Manufacturing, Wholesale and Retail Trade, Warehousing
“The relatively small but geographically extensive company Datum Alloys made its choice based on a few underlying premises: a need for multicurrency operations in conjunction with local accounting standards, high-quality analytical data to support decision making process, and a wide range of out-of-the-box functionality. Datum Alloys also needed to move away from home-grown and custom-made systems in favor of commercially available software, to resolve ongoing problems of support, documentation, and development. Another important selection factor was Epicor’s built-in and flexible flow management mechanism. The company staff was impressed overall with the solution’s support level in many areas.”— Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• Compare Epicor head-to-head with leading ERP software

Drake & Scull International PJSC selects Oracle JD Edwards ERP
Industry tags: Engineering and Architecture, Construction
“UAE engineering and construction company Drake & Scull International PJSC is planning to implement the following Oracle JD Edwards functionality: financials, SCM, project management, HCM, BI, and enterprise performance management. Unfortunately no selection criteria were communicated by the company’s representatives, but here’s the typical run-down for any industry, considering a system of this tier: functional depth, scalability, complete integration, flexibility in deployment options, and—also an important factor—the vendor’s reputation.”— Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• Profile: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

A. Schulman selects Infor10 ERP iEnterprise (LX)
Industry tags: Manufacturing
“Infor’s Flex Exchange program was started back in 2009, and allows existing customers to upgrade their legacy applications at preferential terms, such as reduced or no license fees, untouched maintenance costs, quick implementations, and so on. For a large company such as A. Schulman, completely replacing its ERP software is potentially extremely costly and time-consuming. As a result, A. Schulman has chosen to leverage the Flex Exchange program to replace its multiple ERP packages with one Infor10 iEnterprise application, formerly known as Infor ERP LX. The core objective of the upgrade is to promote common business practices, global data visibility, and seamless integration throughout all 30 company plants, technology centers, and remote offices.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• Compare Infor head-to-head with leading ERP software

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Part 1 of this blog series analyzed the positive impressions from my attendance of the AribaLIVE 2012 user event. Still, while it might appear that Ariba is firing on all cylinders, as is typically the case, Ariba is not all things to all people and no company is without issues. Thus this post will discuss some challenges and related rooms for improvement.

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Sure, to most of us accounting sounds as exciting as watching paint dry, but no business can survive without properly managing its financial means. Especially in these days of scarce cash, processing invoices faster and more accurately by the accounts payable (A/P) or billing department is critical so that the accounts receivable (A/R) folks can get their cash faster. An efficient A/P function is something that all companies want, but few have been able to achieve.

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For years (if not decades) now, but especially during tough economic times, companies have been trying to better analyze their enterprise spend over their comprehensive pools of sourcing categories (and individual items and commodities within these categories) and suppliers.

The idea here is to find room for improvement and savings by pinpointing strategic centralized (consolidated) procurement opportunities for a better negotiating power, discovering better (and worse) performing contracts and their individual terms and clauses, by eliminating costly maverick spending, and by dealing only with the best and most reliable suppliers. For more information, see my previous blog series entitled “Are Spend Management (or SRM) apps Suited for the Mid-market?” and TEC’s article entitled “Thou Shalt Manage (and Cherish) Thy (Best) Suppliers.”

While many companies have experienced significant benefits and improvements by deploying spend analysis solutions from specialists such as Ariba, BravoSolution, Emptoris, Oracle, Proactis, SAP, SAS, and Zycus, those benefits do not come by easily or cheaply. Namely, every comprehensive spend analysis implementation is, in fact, an implementation of a sophisticated business intelligence (BI) solution.

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My recent article entitled “Why Should Enterprises Manage their Contracts Closely?” analyzed the importance of enterprise-wide contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions and stated that many enterprises still use inappropriate makeshift tools to manage their important contractual terms and conditions. The article concluded with the fact that enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems handle transactional details of an organization whereas CLM systems handle contract and commitment management. In other words, there is room for both systems in an organization to work in tandem. 

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My recent series about the merger of JDA Software and i2 Technologies raised the issue whether any independent software vendor (ISV) can at the same time be a successful professional service provider (even without considering a possible conflict with its service provider partners). Coincidentally or not, in early October Ariba sent a message to the market that its focus going forward will be on becoming a trading partner network provider with its on-demand software at the core to facilitate trading transactions.

What happened? Accenture acquired the sourcing services and business process outsourcing (BPO) business from Ariba for a reported US$51 million price tag (after scrutinizing Ariba’s Form 8K filing with the US SEC, it appears that the actual net purchase price was in the neighborhood of US$40 million). This transaction involved approximately 160 people operating in about 20 countries with notable category expertise, sourcing process expertise, and strategic sourcing execution expertise. 

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Part 1 of this blog series introduced PROACTIS, a UK- and US-based specialist vendor of spend control and e-procurement solutions with accredited partners worldwide. I had the chance to meet the company during my attendance of UNIT4’s UK user event in early 2010, where PROACTIS was an exhibiting partner.

The article then expanded on the company’s history, its procure-to-pay product offering, customers, and partners. Part 2 will analyze recent events, starting with the latest product developments. 

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In this day and age of news flying fast over the Internet and tweets reaching every nook and cranny of the world, it still took physical attendance at an overseas event for me to learn about a lesser-known successful software vendor. Namely, during my attendance of UNIT4’s user event in the UK in early 2010, I encountered PROACTIS as UNIT4’s exhibiting partner for spend management and e-procurement solutions.

PROACTIS Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of PROACTIS Holdings Plc, was founded in 1996 under the name Get Real Systems Ltd. The company’s first product release was called the Dream  Suite and was launched in 1997. The next product’s generation was named PROACTIS 2 and launched in the late 1990s as a PowerBuilder-based client-server software suite. 

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