Like the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, cloud vendors today are rushing into new territory to stake their claims. One provider that has joined the land rush is FinancialForce.com, which recently announced new branding to signal its claim in cloud ERP. This post provides an overview of the cloud ERP landscape and the latest vendor to stake a claim.
With three strategic acquisitions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can now be considered a complete offering for sales, marketing and customer service. In addition, Microsoft’s CRM offering is showing its ability to move up-market into large enterprises. This post assesses Microsoft’s latest offering for CRM.
When thinking about innovation, business leaders often set the bar too high for themselves.
What executives need is a more expansive view of innovation and think beyond technology to business process and business model innovation. In this post, we provide a framework for thinking about innovation in the context of a specific business and industry.
The major enterprise software providers promote their pre-built integration as a selling point in capturing new business from existing clients. But do suites always win? Based on recent deals observed in our work with enterprise software buyers, it appears that the integration story is not resonating as it once did.
Applications for social networking are easy to see in the business-to-consumer space for functions such as sales, marketing, and customer service. But is there also a role for social tools in heavy back-office B2B processes? This post outlines ways in which principles of social business can be, and are being, applied to supply chain management systems.
Software-as-a-service simplifies much of the complexity involved in implementing and using enterprise software. However, some SaaS providers may be neglecting key elements of success for buyers. This post shares lessons learned from recent from recent SaaS deal negotiations performed by Strativa consultants.
CEO Steve Ballmer recently announced corporate-wide organizational changes at Microsoft. Although the reorg includes changes across many Microsoft functions, what does it mean specifically for the Dynamics group, which is responsible for Microsoft’s business applications?
Salesforce.com and Oracle this week announced a “new strategic partnership.” For their mutual customers, the announcement represents a welcome thawing of relations between the two companies. But it remains to be seen whether it represents a strategic change of direction for Salesforce.com (SFDC). Not a Radical Departure for Salesforce.com The press release is quite short, […]
As the first cloud-only manufacturing ERP system, Plex Systems has a wide footprint of functionality. Nevertheless, after more than a decade of development, Plex has fewer than 1000 customers and its presence is limited mostly to smaller manufacturing companies in a few sub-sectors. So, what does Plex need to do to grow at a more substantial pace in the coming years? We see six mandates.
At its annual user conference in May, cloud ERP provider NetSuite promoted enhanced functionality for manufacturing companies. As manufacturing firms are increasingly open to cloud solutions, NetSuite is at the right place at the right time. Nevertheless, there are a number of decision points for NetSuite as it continues to build out its manufacturing footprint.