Agile ERP Vendor Ditches a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Alliance for, well, its own CRM Solution (Part II)

Part I of this blog topic has revisited Agresso’s post-implementation agility capabilities (as to accommodate businesses living in a change — so called BLINC’s), and its devised growth strategy via in-house developments, complementary acquisitions and/or partnerships. Most recently, Agresso expressed the intent to acquire the United Kingdom UK-based competitor CODA, but the analysis of this potential merger deserves a blog post on its own. For now, some other blog posts, such as these one from AccManPro on the merger and on CODA’s recent software as a service (SaaS) forays, should do.

As for the future customer relationship management (CRM) offering, I could quite understand Agresso’s initial temptation for leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM [evaluate this product], whose latest version, formerly code-named “Titan” has been completed and released to manufacturing in December 2007. The new version is offered under two product names: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for on-premise and partner-hosted deployments and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live for Microsoft-hosted deployment.

Designed with a single unified-code base for both on-premise and on-demand deployments, the product enables customers to choose the right deployment model for their specific business and information technology (IT) needs, with the flexibility to change deployment models over time if their needs or preferences change.

The new Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM service is offered only in the United States (US) and Canada, and is currently available to a limited number of customers via the Early Access program. Some of the significant new benefits and capabilities of this new release include these:

* An advanced multi-tenant architecture that supports multiple customers per server;
* Extended global capabilities including user choice of more than 25 languages and pervasive support for multiple currencies;
* New business intelligence (BI) capabilities including cross-entity views and an end-user ad hoc reporting wizard;
* Advanced business process automation (BPA) based on Microsoft Windows Workflow; and
* New collaboration capabilities with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 including real-time presence indicators within the CRM application;

The new release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been in extensive use over the past year by more than 600 partners around the world and more than 100 early access customers representing a broad range of on-premise, partner-hosted and Microsoft-hosted deployments. One such renowned partnership would be with Epicor iScala [evaluate this product]. The most recent Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live events were captured in this ZDNet blog post.

So, why then did Agresso have an 11th hour change of heart? Well, Agresso acquired the Spanish CCS ERP product line a year ago or so, to further penetrate the market in Spain. The product that has meanwhile been renamed in November 2007 as Agresso CRM, and which brought to Agresso a base of 1,700 customers (nearly 10 percent of which are in a software as a service [SaaS] model), has been evaluated independently against other vendors in the mid-market by the European technology evaluation firm, Penteo ICT Analyst.

Penteo is headquartered in Spain where it is the market leader, but it also has offices in London and Paris. The firm provides independent expert analysis of market trends and market research, and issues vendor positioning diagrams about technology solutions and vendors. Penteo’s recent report titled “SMB Business Solutions Spanish Market 2007″ positions CCS Agresso and its technology (which now includes Agresso CRM) as a “Star” in the “Universe Map”. Stars are players providing services, solutions or technology with remarkable viability, features and functionality performance.

Penteo believes that Stars are sound players that lead their markets. Agresso is reportedly a leader in the Universe Map (consisting of “stars”, “planets”, “satellites” and “comets”), as a result of a broad functional coverage for medium-sized businesses and strong support. Other noted products in the Spanish market are Microsoft Dynamics NAV , Microsoft Dynamics AX, SAP Business One and Sage Logic Class.

Still, somewhat embarrassingly, Agresso at long last took a look “under the hood” and realized that CCS had a strong CRM product too as well as a sizable and seasoned CRM implementation team. In fact, Agresso CRM offers five distinct advantages that lead against competitive software offerings:

1. A thin web interface, including a web-based executive dashboard;
2. Support for multiple operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS (wow and cool, since Microsoft Dynamics CRM supports only Windows);
3. Support for multiple databases, including Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server (again, Microsoft Dynamics CRM supports only SQL Server);
4. A right-priced and better feature/function match-up to mid-market service company requirements versus those of market leaders more oriented to tier one or manufacturing companies; and
5. Agresso’s customary lower total cost of ownership (TCO), while pre- and post- implementation ongoing change capabilities help too.

Agresso has hereby also established a CRM Service Hub of more than 100 full-time professional services experts. This team collectively has decades of CRM experience selling, implementing and supporting Oracle Siebel and Microsoft products, as well as the original product underpinning Agresso CRM (formerly CCS CRM). The Agresso CRM Service Hub is based in Barcelona, Spain and will lead the roll-out of the new offering to Agresso subsidiaries and partners throughout the world, most likely starting from Spanish speaking regions.

As said earlier on (in Part I), Agresso CRM will be the first BLINC ERP Solution Plug-In, whereby the similar Agresso Talent Management and Agresso RISK Management add-on’s are slated for 2008. The above-mentioned Agresso VITA architecture also implies a “Living Architecture”, for having supported multiple generations of technologies: from mainframe, via client/server and Web Services to service oriented architecture (SOA).

However, Agresso offers SOA-based deployments of disparate applications with one caveat: if underlying software components (services) are badly designed, an SOA concoction will be badly delivered. In other words, combining loosely-coupled applications will not provide business agility. We will have to see how Agresso will blend native VITA-based and non-native SOA-enabled plug-in solutions so that user companies can now get the combination of, e.g., a world-class CRM or talent management solution, albeit with unimpeded post-implementation agility.

Again, what is your view towards Agresso’s above CRM move (under the “self do, self have” proverb) and professed combined organic and plug-in footprint expansion strategy? Can a functional footprint indeed be significantly expanded without hampering the inherent core system’s agility?

Dude, where (and how safe and pristine) is my hosted compensation data?

Sure, anyone observing the enterprise applications market and still naysaying the bright future of the software as a service (SaaS) on-demand deployment model and closely-related Web 2.0 technologies, is in serious denial or similarly delusional. He/she would sound similar to those lost souls that deny even a remote possibility of a global warming and climate changes, but, oops, this is not a political blog…

Anyway, recent predictions for 2008 by the two ZDNet bloggers, Phil Wainewright and Dion Hinchcliffe summarize well the reasons why these phenomena are not only here to stay, but to even take more slices out of the entire applications market pie. At this stage, I am still reluctant to believe that these advancements will render the traditional on-premise integrated (packaged) applications deployment mode completely obsolete any time soon.

In fact, as I have pointed out some ongoing drawbacks of SaaS applications in my recent series of articles, many comments on these two blog posts talk about similar lingering SaaS concerns. Most notably, there is still a discomfort among some users about their hosted data security and integrity, and what these SaaS vendors (and their hosting providers) can do about being more secure and compliant.

Further, in some malfeasance prone areas like managing sales and partners/channel compensation data, there is a pressing need to ensure higher levels of security and process controls for the purpose of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance. For that reason, most publicly traded companies and other large-scale enterprises initially rejected the idea of SaaS because they thought they needed to take greater responsibility for their own SOX compliance.

This brings us to the realm of on-demand sales performance management (SPM) and enterprise incentives management (EIM), which has been one of the areas with a significant uptake of SaaS deployments. Indeed, companies of all sizes increasingly use on-demand packages for sales compensation and other incentives management, to accurately and strategically model and forecast commission/incentives costs and benefits, calculate commission and bonus earnings and gain real-time visibility into employees’ performance metrics.

These trends have prompted TEC to recently publish the pertinent up-and-coming Incentive and Compensation Management Evaluation Center.

On the other hand, the security and integrity of such remotely held sensitive data and processes has been in the back of every executive’s mind and a cause of serious anxiety. Compliance analysts keep on telling Chief Compliance Officers, Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and Vice Presidents (VPs) of Finance that SaaS solutions are affordable, safe and effective alternatives to traditional on-premise software, but only to the extent that their service providers (vendors) have the necessary controls and audits in place. It is relatively easy to say “Sure, we can do this and that to protect your data”, but it is another thing entirely to have those process controls documented, practiced consistently and audited.

Enter Centive, the Burlington, Massachusetts, United States (US)-based provider of on-demand SPM solutions. More than 100 user companies with nearly 16,000 total individual subscribers currently use Centive Compel [evaluate this product], a salesforce.com AppExchange certified solution and a winner of multiple software press/media awards.

Good news is likely to continue coming from Centive in light of its ongoing quarterly product releases, such as Winter 2008. The gist of the latest enhancements would be along the lines of interactive dashboard analytics, which graphically present multi-dimensional, interactive earnings and performance data to help sales representatives and their managers better monitor and measure individual and team performance.

The Winter 2008 release of Compel also features enhanced reporting (dynamic reporting to analyze revenue and commission spend across any transaction or dimension attribute, such as customer, product, territory and region), enhanced document distribution and acceptance workflow, personal multi-currency management (enables local currency views for all sales reps and managers while providing corporate reporting in any relevant currency), and deeper application programming interface (API)-level integration with Salesforce.com [evaluate this product]. Last but not least, a sales commission cost analysis tool can detail the credit distribution and exact commission cost of every sales event, including commissions paid across all plans at all levels of the organization.

Prior to that, the Summer 2007 release of Compel featured enhanced custom reporting capability by adding calculated fields to reports on-the-fly, with full charting and graphing capabilities. The release also added the support for Adobe Flex 2.0 forms and introduced fully auditable and integrated crediting suite to provide crediting on combinations of dimensions, such as territory and product (with the support for direct credit, split credit, team credit, rollup credit, etc.).

Also noted has been the mid-2007 partnership with ADP, whereby Centive became a new original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner for ADP. What that means is that ADP’s National Account Services (NAS) division has been selling Centive Compel as privately branded ADP Automated Incentive Compensation Management, and as a natural extension of ADP’s business. With $7.8 billion in revenue in 2006 and with about 600,000 customers worldwide, ADP is one of the first in the human resource management system(HRMS) and payroll industry to offer this SPM solution as part of a full-suite of on-demand HRMS offerings [evaluate the ADP Enterprise HRMS product].

Other related ADP on-demand services include, in part bolstered by the 2006 acquisition of Employease: management of payroll and HR systems; benefits administration; time & labor management; and administration of Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA). Both ADP and former Employease have been on-demand pioneers and savvies, which should bode well for “mashing-up” with Centive’s SPM solution. Further, ADP’s NAS division serves customers with over 1,000 employees, which should mean much more subscribers’ inflow for Centive down the track (currently, an average number of subscribers per customer for Centive is about 150 or so).

However, the most related news to our topic du jour would be the January 7, 2008 announcement by Centive that it has successfully completed an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) Type II audit by Ernst & Young. Centive is now the first and only on-demand SPM vendor to be recognized as a SAS-70 Type II service provider.

The SAS 70 Type II report is internationally recognized as the authoritative benchmark of the AICPA against which service providers report control activities and processes to customers and their auditors. The Type II form of SAS 70 examination is the most stringent form; it not only includes the service organization’s description of controls related to information technology and security processes, but also includes detailed testing of these controls over a minimum six-month period. This is becoming an increasingly important issue as companies strive to conform to compliance initiatives such as SOX.

A SAS 70 Type II report basically serves as a proxy for a customer’s internal audit (for more on SAS 70, please see this great source ). So for example, when an XYZ Company undergoes its annual audit, the auditors will see that the company outsources some processes and stores some data off-site. They will ask for a SAS 70 Type II report from each service provider XYZ works with, and those reports will serve as a proxy for the security and integrity of the related systems.

We should, however, note that some companies have issued releases about providing a SAS 70 Type I report. This report serves no purpose for the vendor’s customers because it is not recognized by the AICPA as a proxy for an official audit. A Type I report merely says “A company has the following controls in place” but there is no audit to test those controls. For instance, Centive’s fierce competitor, Xactly Corporation issued exactly (no pun intended) such a press release back in early 2007.

Also, most SaaS vendors do provide SAS 70 Type II reports, but those reports typically come from their hosting partner (like CSC or MCI). Few vendors have put the proper controls in place and allocated the resources to undergo a six-month audit of their own internal controls. Again, that is what Centive has painstakingly done to supplement the Type II report from its hosting partner - CSC. In this market space, no other vendor currently provides a SAS 70 Type II report verifying their internal controls. For instance, Callidus Software [evaluate this product] and Xactly provide SAS 70 Type II’s from their hosting providers only.

Centive strongly thinks this will definitely help it with wooing future prospects, particularly amid publicly traded companies, but also with private companies that value the effort the vendor has put into ensuring it has the controls and processes in place (and validated by an independent third party) to protect their sensitive data. Centive is optimistic that the audit will make a difference in about half or more of the deals the company hopes to close in 2008.

On the down side, however, the hefty investments by Centive, mentioned above, on product development and the SAS 70 Type II audit will only postpone the break-even point, whereby the company should finally reach profitability. Also, I am not sure whether these moves can address Centive’s need for more international expansion. For more on Centive’s challenges, see TEC’s earlier series of articles on the vendor.

Is Epicor Poised to Rule the Mid-Market Retail Sector? (Part II)

Part I of this blog topic introduced Epicor Software and its traditional vertical solutions. It also analyzed Epicor’s forays into the attractive retail sector via the CRS acquisition two years ago. Designed for integration and scalability, the Epicor/CRS Retail Suite can support a wide variety of retail enterprises’ requirements.

These environments range from the rapidly expanding regional retailer requiring point-of-sale (POS), store operations and merchandising, to the large, global retailer requiring central management, visibility and control over hundreds or thousands of distributed stores and outlets.

Epicor/CRS customers include leading retailers such as Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Ann Taylor, Cache, Chico’s, Coach, Eileen Fisher, Factory Connection, Foot Locker, GNC, J.Crew, Stage Stores, Trans World Entertainment, Tuesday Morning, Inc., Yankee Candle Company and Zumiez, among others. The retail division employs more than 360 employees based in Newburgh, New York, the United States (US), with regional offices in Seattle, Washington, US and Bracknell, the United Kingdom (UK).

The Epicor/CRS Retail Suite was devised to assist retailers in integrating their sales channels, order management, pricing, inventory, and resources to more effectively manage a real-time (or close to), multi-channel enterprise. Some of the retail applications that are presently generally available in the suite are:

* Epicor/CRS Merchandising Suite [evaluate this product] is a set of applications that includes tools to manage items, inventory, purchase orders and pricing. Modular applications in the suite include Allocation, Orders and Fulfillment, TransfersPlus and ECommerce. The merchandising suite includes the tools for users’ distribution centers (DC’s) to ensure more accurate receiving, replenishment, merchandising reporting, and more efficient distribution to the stores. In addition, through detailed transaction logging, the optional SalesAudit module provides an unbroken, audit trail of everything that happened in each store across each type of transaction for sales audit and loss prevention purposes. Also, a detailed Customer Sales Analysis module provides the information to build and broaden sales through the customer base. In addition to key applications for replenishment and reporting, the merchandizing suite includes interfaces to accounting systems.
* Epicor/CRS RetailStore [evaluate this product] is a Microsoft.NET Framework-based POS store system designed to assist store personnel to provide a better customer experience, and more effectively manage store operations.
* A more complete store system includes store management, operations and reporting applications, in addition to POS. Store operations are in that case managed through Epicor/CRS RetailStore Office, which provides the store manager the flexibility to work on inventory, employee maintenance, or other tasks while still monitoring the sales floor. The RetailStore Office module provides store management with secure control of tasks including employee maintenance, time & attendance (T&A), store opening/closing, preferred customer management, layaway management, inventory, POS administration, cash management, electronic journaling and reporting.
* Epicor/CRS RetailStore Central provides even more comprehensive systems management solutions to chain store retailers who need centralized control of store software and configuration profiles. Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, the solution uses secure publish/subscriber-based technology to allow retail chains with hundreds to thousands of locations to monitor and manage their store system configurations and business rules more easily and with greater control. RetailStore Central provides control, monitoring and tracking of all unique changes, including those related to policies, procedures, payroll, security, marketing, taxes and inventory. Changes to RetailStore POS and back office configuration profiles can be managed remotely on a store-by-store basis or through user-defined store groupings without requiring information technology (IT) resources or customizations.
* Epicor/CRS MobileStore is designed to extend access to key store functionality and information beyond the cash register and manager workstation. Through wireless devices running the MobileStore application, store managers and sales associates can remotely perform inventory control, item lookup, manager authorization, along with other key store functions.
* Epicor/CRS RetailCRM is a customer relations management (CRM) solution based on Microsoft .NET framework. By gathering and analyzing customer information from multiple channels, RetailCRM can deliver a more accurate and comprehensive view of the customer to assist sales associates and marketing teams with better information to serve customers. Utilizing the data integration, analysis and reporting capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, the CRM application aggregates information on customer purchase history and shopping behavior across sales channels, enabling retailers to deliver a higher level of one-to-one marketing and personalized customer service at all points of customer interaction.
* Epicor/CRS ReturnsManagement is a multi-channel returns management application enabling retailers to reduce refund fraud and ensure accurate refunds, while improving customer service and employee compliance.
* Epicor/CRS EnterpriseSelling combines real-time inventory and location management with a configurable order manager to integrate inventory transaction processing of multiple sales channels allowing retailers to sell merchandise and satisfy customer demand from anywhere within the distributed enterprise.
* The Epicor/CRS LossPrevention module can be used at the corporate office or in the field to quickly identify patterns of suspicious actions, evaluate exceptions, track potentially fraudulent activities, and investigate individual employee behavior, to assist investigators in dismissing innocent mistakes or building cases for prosecution.

Finally, the Epicor/CRS Retail Integration module provides an integrated offering across the Epicor Enterprise Financials Suite [evaluate this product] and Epicor/CRS Merchandising Suite. Through Epicor Service Connect , a Web services-based business integration platform that came from the above-mentioned Scala acquisition, a secure, auditable two-way integration is supported across these diverse solutions. Service Connect functions as the central integration point for implementing secure workflow orchestrations within Epicor applications and with third-party applications to enhance collaboration and automate business processes. The Epicor/CRS Retail Integration provides the integration for feeding store-level information from merchandising to the financial application.

This brings us to the fact that Epicor’s products are increasingly developed on and use service-oriented architecture (SOA) concepts, which can help manufacturers, distributors, retailers and services organizations to more quickly and efficiently respond to changing business requirements and practices. SOA is a modular, standards-based approach to software development and its deployment is designed to provide a more agile and adaptable application foundation, which can help companies more effectively align their IT resources and enterprise software with their overall business objectives. Epicor’s early adoption of Microsoft .NET and Web services technology allows its product offerings, development and services to leverage the benefits of a SOA and provide growing mid-sized businesses with increased flexibility, inter-operability and cross-platform capability.

To be able to service its growing list of international retail customers, over the past year Epicor/CRS has engineered its POS product to support global market requirements. The latest version of RetailStore, 3.1, released in Q3 2007 – supports French Canadian, Italian, French, and Spanish languages. The release handles capturing customer data for multiple country formats and supports multiple currency denominations and rounding. Additionally, the solution is compliant with the Unicode standard for engineering software that works across multiple regions, countries, languages, alphabets, and scripts. And in early 2008, RetailStore is slated to support Unicode for the Japanese and Chinese markets.

Also, to further support its international retail customers, Epicor is continuing to grow and leverage its UK office located in Bracknell as its implementation and support services hub. The company’s Europe Middle-East & Africa (EMEA) consulting team also grew considerably in 2007, opening additional offices in Slovakia, South Africa, Kenya and India, as well as an office in Egypt, operated jointly with consulting partner IDTA. Epicor also plans to extend its Center of Excellence in Malaysia, which will provide implementation, training and help desk and support services, as well as maintenance, disaster recovery, and support for new store openings.

To further expand its presence and prowess in the retail sector, in December 2007 Epicor and NSB Retail Systems jointly announced that they have agreed on terms for the acquisition of NSB by Epicor for approximately US$320 million. NSB provides a range of software and hardware solutions to apparel, specialty, and department store retailers (which all sounds quite similar to the CRS’ offering).

As a vendor of software for retailers of apparel, footwear and other “specialty” merchandise, NSB is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and registered and publicly traded in the UK. In 2007, NSB had over 600 employees and projected revenues of $91 million (with some sizable profitability too) from about 200 customers (mostly in the US). The deal is expected to close in February 2008.

Part III of this blog topic will analyze a continuation of Epicor’s strategy to capitalize on the red-hot retail software market, where it initially jumped into with its acquisition of CRS Retail two years ago. Your views, comments, opinions, etc. about Epicor’s moves in the retail sector are customarily welcome in the meantime.

IT Project Management Tools: MS Project and Its Alternatives (Part 2)

In my last posting I wrote about the functions of project management. When I considered alternatives to MS Project, I started thinking about the functions of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software and concluded that they were similar in many respects.

• Design
The project blueprint and design stage where are all Business Process Models are developed
• Modeling
Interviewing stakeholders and developing the transactional and business process to support enterprise software deployment
• Execution
The go-live stage to implement the business process and software solution
• Monitoring
Monitoring the end results to achieve the KPIs that were introduced as part of the justification to introduce the software solution

Advantages
The benefits to consider when using a PPM solution are:
• guaranteeing the availability of competencies and resources upon which project success depends
• providing key stakeholders a complete view of the project portfolio
• directing cost savings by prioritizing beneficial projects and eliminating unproductive projects
• aligning IT and other projects with the enterprise’s business strategy

Potential Vendors to Consider
To learn more about the vendors featured in this blog –post and to learn about other vendors in this knowledge space PPM consult TEC’s vendor showcase.

Deltek
Deltek provides an integrated toolset for PPM. Modules include portfolio analysis, risk management, planning and scheduling, project collaboration, and earned value management (EVM). This modular, integrated suite provides selective information to project participants, from CEOs, to project managers, to team members.

Epicor
Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 adds enhanced PPM, contingent workforce management, and advanced collaboration and customization capabilities, all enabling greater planning, performance, and execution.

Primavera
Primavera offers professional and new product development services. Its solutions include role-based dashboards, product-based forecasts, graphic trends reporting, and other customizable reporting. Users can establish priorities, view the status of current projects, and allocate resources, as well as receive early warning indicators and view performance trends.

There are a number of PPM tools available with a variety of features and functionality. Please refer to TEC’s website for a complete listing of what is new within PPM software, along with whitepapers that can further your understanding of the complexities of PPM.

A Guide to Selecting Process Enterprise Resource Planning Software

In today’s global economy, manufacturers are facing new challenges. One of the main issues today’s manufacturers must contend with is compliance. As new chemical engineering meets present-day demands in such industries as food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and textiles, manufacturers must now adhere to both domestic and international standards.

According to Technology Evaluation Centers’ (TEC’s) research, over 80 percent of companies that need to evaluate enterprise software to help automate and streamline their business, in addition to addressing compliance and other industry issues, do not use a standardized methodology, and thus run over time and over budget. On top of this, once a selection has been made and the software implemented, over 50 percent of the implementations fail to meet functional and total cost expectations. Project teams run into trouble for three main reasons:

1. They have no effective way to identify the critical vendor and product questions necessary to successfully initiate the evaluation process.

2. They have no ability to prioritize the different criteria, once identified, relative to one another. Consequently, final priorities are often more the result of internal political agendas than true needs and requirements.

3. They have no ability to gather objective, validated, updated data on different vendor alternatives. Vendors often have a tendency to exaggerate product, service, and corporate capabilities if it enables them to move to the next phase of the deal.

So What's the Solution?

The solution to the problems listed above is to create a structured, repeatable process for evaluating technology solutions and the vendors that provide them. Best practices drawn from TEC’s clients that have completed internal technology selections suggest that project teams examine five key categories of criteria. The first two categories examine product-specific capabilities, while the remaining three investigate the software vendor's overall corporate capabilities.

Let's review these five key criteria categories:

Category number 1—Product Functionality

Product functionality is the primary phase in process enterprise resource planning (ERP) software selections. Simply put, this phase of the evaluation assesses the features and functions delivered by the product as it currently exists—i.e., what capabilities are available out of the box. Other criteria, such as service and support, corporate viability, and strategy, also contribute to the software selection.

Category number 2—Product Technology

Product technology defines the technical architecture of the product and the technological environment in which the product can run successfully. The definition of mandatory criteria within this set often allows the client to quickly narrow the long list of potential vendors to a shortlist of applicable solutions that pass muster relative to the most basic mandatory selection criteria. Sub-criteria include application architecture, software usability, administration, platform and database support, application tools, workflow and document management, and reporting capabilities.

Category number 3—Corporate Service and Support

This set of criteria defines the capability of the vendor to provide implementation services and ongoing support. Repeated industry surveys have identified this category as the single largest differentiating factor among potential selection options, as well as the greatest indicator of ultimate user implementation success and long-term vendor viability. A proper professional services and support evaluation should include both subjective, qualitative measures validated by current product users, and objective, quantitative criteria within both the professional services and product support categories. Service and support includes such categories as consulting, systems integration, project management skills, geographic coverage, language and time coverage of the vendor help desk, and delivery mediums.

Category number 4—Corporate Viability

Corporate viability (also known as vendor viability) is a critical yet often overlooked category that examines the financial and management strength of the vendor. Given the huge number of dollars spent on IT procurement, the financial stability of the vendor simply can't be stressed too much. The vendor viability category should combine quantitative Wall Street ratio-and-metric analysis with qualitative management and corporate evaluations. Only by combining these two components can IT executives accurately assess the risk and benefit of corporate investment in a specific product and vendor option.

Category number 5—Corporate Strategy

Corporate strategy evaluates the corporate road map and strategy of the software vendor with regards to specific timelines of how the product will be developed, sold, and supported within the process ERP software market. This is the most strategic and long-term set of evaluation criteria, and it rates how effectively the stated vendor's three-to-five year product, support, and sales strategy maps to the overall market direction.

Snapshot of the Process ERP Software Landscape

The growth of the ERP market has been a direct result of the fierce global competition, short product life cycles, highly distributed operations, and information-driven management that characterize today's business environment. A process ERP software is a collection of technologies, components, and services that address the needs of the process manufacturing industry. A typical process ERP system today is suited for organizations manufacturing products that cannot be disassembled into constituent components, such as paints, chemicals, pharmaceutical products, plastics, food and beverages, and so on.

Process ERP applications, like all ERP software, aim at full integration of management, staff, and equipment. They also offer broad functional coverage; vertical industry extensions; a robust technical architecture; training, documentation, implementation, and process design tools; and so on.

The major issue facing process manufacturers is compliance. The steady increase in global trade and competition over the past 10 years, combined with a new awareness of health and governmental regulations, requires manufacturers to comply with both local and international standards. Following are the five main issues that process ERP vendors are focusing on in today’s global economy:

#

Compliance within process ERP software.

Software vendors that provide process ERP applications are meeting today’s compliance challenges by providing the following functionality: advanced planning and scheduling (APS), product data management (PDM), manufacturing execution systems (MES), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), and e-commerce tools. Within each module listed, certain functionalities that may be required are addressed. For example, within the BI module, the compliance needs can conform to industry-specific standards.
#

Sharper vertical focus.

Typically, ERP vendors have used a generic approach when developing their software. However, as businesses require industry-specific functionality, vendors have developed specific functionality that will meet these needs. Since process manufacturing has many different verticals, ERP vendors have developed modules to handle process manufacturing in different industries, such as pharmaceuticals, different chemical industries, and so on.
#

System flexibility enabled by adaptable architecture.

Given the increase in competition, number of regulations, globalization, and mergers and acquisitions, software architecture plays a key role in how quickly vendors can implement, maintain, expand, customize, and integrate their products. Software architecture does much more than simply provide functionality, the user interface, and the platform support; it also determines whether a product is going to endure, whether it will scale to a large number of users, and whether it will be able to incorporate emerging technologies—all in order to accommodate increasing user and regulatory requirements.
#

Web and e-commerce enablement of ERP systems.

For the process manufacturing industry, the ability to conduct business online is crucial. Web-based collaboration between companies and their customers and suppliers has become the reality of doing business each day. In terms of compliance issues, companies can upload information from different Internet sources in order to keep abreast of new standards and to improve business activities, and to integrate these new pieces of information into the process ERP system.

Another advantage of Web commerce is that by extending the existing ERP system to support e-commerce, organizations not only leverage their investment in the ERP solution, they can also speed up the development of their e-commerce capabilities.

Leading ERP vendors have also made moves to adopt Web portal strategies. Essentially, the goal is to create a virtual, personalized workplace and marketplace for ERP users, where the ERP applications, other disparate back-end systems, and external content and services (such as catalogs, directories, travel services, benefits administration, and so on) can be seamlessly and transparently accessed by users via the Web.

5.

Intensified market merger and acquisition activity.

Presently, three vendors sit at the top of the ERP vendor market: Oracle, SAP, and Infor. Each offers very broad functionality, but each has made so many significant acquisitions that all three have vertical expertise in many areas as well. Since ERP software historically has been focused on manufacturing, these three vendors have extremely well-developed manufacturing modules.

Some other notable vendors that have a strong presence within the ERP market include CDC Software, IFS, Lawson, and Microsoft. Some older software vendors (those that have been in the industry for 10 to 20 years) have chosen to focus on specific verticals; they do well, but they cannot compete with such “giants” as Oracle or SAP.

A Brief Summary of Market Trends

ERP remains the information backbone for contemporary manufacturing enterprises. But today's ERP systems can also be characterized by new types of technologies, such as software as a service (SaaS) models and service-oriented architecture (SOA). These technologies have addressed more than the manufacturing process that is taking place within the walls of an enterprise. The advent of the above technologies has been a direct influence from Web and e-commerce. Other trends include easier enterprise applications integration (EAI), more flexible pricing, a lesser need for application customization, and the embedding of analytical applications and knowledge management within solutions.

ERP Showdown: Infor ERP LN 6.1 vs. Epicor Vantage vs. Lawson M3 Discrete Manufacturing Solutions

Introduction

With enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems being the information backbone of the organization, we decided to take a closer look at three of the more popular discrete ERP solutions for the mid-market. Using TEC's ERP Evaluation Center, we compared Infor ERP LN 6.1, Epicor Vantage, and Lawson M3 Discrete Manufacturing Solutions head-to-head, based on the most recent data supplied to us by the three vendors.

We looked at eight standard ERP modules. To eliminate any chance of bias, and to ensure a level playing field, all 3,600 criteria that make up the modules and submodules in our ERP Evaluation Center were given equal weight and priority. In other words, no area of functionality was treated as being more important than any other.

The chart below shows the overall rankings.

Results

As you can see above, straight out of the box, Infor ERP LN 6.1 ranked first overall, with Lawson M3 Discrete Manufacturing Solutions coming in second, and Epicor Vantage placing third. (Overall scores were based on the average level of support the vendor offers across the entire ERP spectrum.)

As the chart below shows, Infor finished first in five of the eight modules (although by some fairly small margins in a few cases), with Lawson finishing first in three modules (two of which were extremely close), and Epicor failing to finish first in any of the eight modules.

As you can also see in the chart below, there’s an especially wide range of results in Human Resources. Infor ERP LN 6.1 is the only one of the three solutions that currently provides full HR functionality. Epicor Vantage requires third-party functionality, while Lawson M3 plans to offer full HR functionality in future releases. (It should be noted that clients do not always require an HR component in a new ERP system, as many prefer to retain their existing HR solution or add on a third-party solution.)

However, as with most aspects of enterprise software, it's not that simple or clear-cut.

Rankings, either overall or by module, do not tell you everything you need to know. What they do provide is a basic, high-level view of vendors' general strengths and weaknesses right out of the box. However, the fact is, few businesses, if any, can use an ERP solution right out of the box. Businesses have special needs and priorities that need to be supported by any ERP solution they use.

For example, if your business requires an especially robust quality management functionality, even though Infor finished first overall, Lawson scored higher in the Quality Management module, and may therefore be a better choice for your organization.

The same applies within individual modules, where the top-ranking vendor may not necessarily be the right one for your organization's needs. Although Infor placed first overall and in Product Technology, the chart below shows Lawson as stronger in both the Reporting and Workflow and Document Management submodules. If either of these functional areas is key to your organization's business model, Lawson may be a better choice than Infor.

Conclusion

Given that 'out of the box' rankings rarely, if ever, reflect the real-world needs of an organization, and that the rankings can shift depending on what area(s) of functionality you look at, how then do you determine which ERP solution is best suited for your business?

The fastest, simplest way is to do what we did to produce the results you see here: use TEC's ERP Evaluation Center. We got our results in less than 20 minutes, versus weeks—or even months—of struggling with huge Excel spreadsheets.

TEC's ERP Evaluation Center allows you to set priorities that reflect your organization's business model and special needs at every level of functionality. At the modular and submodular levels—even down to the individual criteria—you can tell the system which business processes are critical, important, or not important to your organization. The system then compares your priorities against the vendor responses to produce a shortlist of solutions. You get a custom comparison—one that ranks vendor solutions not on out-of-the-box functionality, but rather on how well that functionality matches the business requirements of your organization.

It's the best way we know of to evaluate ERP solutions, and we invite you to try it out. Simply click on the link below to visit our ERP Evaluation Center and conduct your fast, free custom ERP comparison. After all, there's no other organization quite like yours.

The Certification of an ERP Accounting Package

Flexi wins again.

I recently completed a certification exercise for the Flexi Software’s FlexiFinancials package, a functionally rich accounting package that is complete in every way and geared for the banking, insurance, and financial services industries. A package that has integrated business objects with drill-down searching and with full functional and reporting capabilities.

We proceeded as follows: I prepared a certification document that I e-mailed to Flexi­ Software (Flexi). Flexi (www.flexi.com) set up a remote desktop and I logged on from my office one thousand miles away, to begin the certification process. To review the items that were certified, visit the vendor showcase on our website at

http://www.vendor-showcase.com/browse/174/Accounting-ERP-for-SMB.html

My role was “to verify the Flexi Financials application’s functionality and to verify the vendor’s claims.” Together with Flexi, we stepped through the certification document using it as the “show me it does what you claim”. During the demonstration, I asked for additional related tasks to be done and they were demonstrated. I noted that the application exceeded the capabilities offered by some other accounting modules that are integrated into other ERP systems. I noted that the software has clearly laid out menus, and forms, making it easy to use

The bottom line is that the Flexi product passed with excellence. It met all the vendors’ claims and more. The following list is just a summary of what we audited and certified.

FlexiFinancials Suite:

* setup of the chart of accounts, including budgets, sub-ledgers, for multi-company and regions within the companies
* perform transaction processing, including reversing entries
* perform month-end and year-end operations (closing, reopening, etc)
* examine all onscreen displays, control reports and financial statements
* verify all aspects of accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, vendor and customer management
* perform additional processing against accounts making use of journal entries, memos, and vouchers
* examine project and job management
* test the purchasing and order entry systems, testing invoicing, purchase limits, credit limits, escalation when limits are exceeded, and respective adjustments.
* perform buyer and salesmen handling
* examine field and user security controls
* ad-hoc reporting demonstrated with Flexi Vision, with drill down from onscreen displays.
* Accounts payable workflow and approval

I highly recommend the Flexi Accounting package as it is functionally in the competition class with packages from SAP, Oracle, Epicor Lawson and Sungard.

My efforts and the vendors’ at preparing for the certification was a labor-intensive activity for both of us. I am certain that we are both glad that all ended well.

As an addendum, the preparation time at my end was about three man days, and the time to complete the certification, three hours.

It’s About Process (or the Ability to be Responsive) — Part III

Part II of this blog series continued the introduction of the concepts of workflow automation and business process management (BPM). It also zoomed in on similarities and subtle differences between the two related software categories. Finally, the idea of on-demand workflow and/or BPM solutions was introduced.

To that end, Webcom Inc. has leveraged its vast expertise earned while addressing many complex sales quote-to-order (Q2O) process issues (i.e., channel quote approvals, special pricing approvals, special non-standard product feature request approvals, etc.) and has created a brand new workflow engine, which can be (and is already) used for many generic business processes.

Such examples of processes would be: RMA (Return Material/Merchandize Authorization), NFR (New Feature Request), ECN (Engineering Change Notice), NPR (New Product Release), Bug Tracking, Engineering Change Request, and many other business processes that require approval steps.

The Ability to Respond, On-demand

In May 2008, Webcom announced the availability of ResponsAbility, its newest offering addressing the case management and workflow processing areas. ResponsAbility is designed to speed the “time-to-resolution” process, eliminate unnecessary time delays and improve overall value chain communications and productivity through improved transparency and collaboration.

The idea behind this case management and workflow solution was to help organizations keep their projects on track and their employees on the same page, thereby making the lives of internal and external team members much less complicated (and more productive and enjoyable).

This straightforward application provides a central location (repository) for managing the key aspects of many types of cases, including product and service defects, customer and supplier complaints, non-conformance issues, health and safety incidents, and RMAs. Separate tabs keep key information within easy reach, whereby team members can log issues as they arise, prioritize them, and update their status as appropriate.

Built-in reports let users see open issues by project, projects by stage, and many other categories. On a proactive side, the tool can be leveraged by companies to create and implement corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) and to support a plethora of regulatory and compliance requirements. All in all, users that have always had the responsibility now have the “ability to respond”, as required.

This case management software may not currently have all the bells-and-whistles associated with full-fledged BPM packages, such as programmatically driving a workflow engine, visual process modeling, process monitoring and optimization, or automatic task allocation based on workload. Still, it seems well suited for small and medium size companies, who can leverage such a software tool with an intuitive user interface (UI), for handling many, if not all of their processes, in an incremental manner.

The design and enforcement of processes is enabled because both administrators and end-users are able to design workflows, notifications, and data collection forms, as well as setting up permissions accordingly. The system manages cases by ushering each case through the resolution process, and by tracking the progress of each case throughout the entire process.

The multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) delivery model ensures that a customer can be up and running quickly with all of the selected critical processes being modeled and functional. No onsite deployment is necessary and the software only requires a Web browser and some modest to minimal data and process setup to be up and running.

Brethren Software Vendors as Likely ResponsAbility Users?

For example, a software development company can deploy this tool within a day or two and allow its customers to report bugs. This information can then be internally routed according to a customized workflow to the support department, then to the engineering and testing staff, and then back to the customer for approval and case closure.

To elaborate, the Software Bug workflow logically starts with the customer reporting a software bug. Then a default assignee at the software vendor reviews it, and then either resolves it on the spot (hopefully) or assigns it to the software engineering staff by providing a test case. Then the software engineering team determines a cause for the bug and either provides a workaround, fully fixes the bug, or determines that the software behaves as designed after all.

At the same time, ResponsAbility can be used to allow customers to create new feature requests, which are then routed via a different customized workflow starting from project management, via development, release scheduling, back to development, quality assurance (QA), documentation (technical writers), product management, and finally to marketing teams.

Again, if the bug can be fixed, the case is assigned to the testing staff, back to the support team, and finally back to the customer for approval and case closure. But, if the issue turns out not to be the bug after all, the case is then converted to a new feature request and follows an entirely different workflow.

To that end, the New Product Feature Request process starts with customers, sales & service people, channels and/or product managers requesting a new feature. Often, the existing users (install base special interest groups [SIGs]) are allowed to vote on it, and based on the number of votes and other factors, some new features are assigned to the engineering department to estimate the effort entailed to implement the requested feature.

Based on the estimate and other criteria, some new features are then assigned to the engineering or research and development (R&D) departments for implementation. Upon implementation, the new feature is assigned to the QA department for testing and approvals. Finally, based on the QA results, a new feature is returned back to engineering for a rework or is scheduled for production (or general availability).

Apparently, various instances of a process (called cases) can be changed midstream. For example, something that was initially entered as a bug upon investigation may be classified as an expected behavior. The customer who did not expect such behavior from the software can then change a case type of this instance from a bug to a new feature request, without having to re-enter any information and this case will then follow the prescribed new feature workflow process.

Also, a built-in notification and permissions engine ensures that all communication and collaboration happens within ResponsAbility, so everybody is aware of anything that anybody ever stated about the case via comments, file attachments, etc.

Unlike some of the simple issue tracking software packages mentioned in Part II, ResponsAbility can be used not only for tracking things, but also for enforcing a process in order to ensure that things get done correctly. For example, a workflow engine can be set up to make sure that a process status cannot be changed from “bug fixed” to “in testing” until a concrete test case scenario is provided by a user via customizable online forms.

Webcom — “Eating Own Dog Food”

It might be interesting to note that Webcom, as a software developer itself, has since late 2006 been using ResponsAbility internally for its older sibling WebSource CPQ product’s bug tracking and new product features introduction.

The traditional model, whereby the dedicated product/project manager and support staff were the only bidirectional conduit between the client’s team (i.e., WebSource CPQ users and administrators, local project manager, application owners, stakeholders, etc.) and Webcom’s team (i.e., developers, modelers, QA, consultants, product managers, etc.), has over time been shown to have many disadvantages.

Namely, despite the dedicated project manager’s intimate knowledge of the individual client’s installation and the established relationship and hand-holding comfort level, the challenges have repeatedly been the bottleneck nature of the dedicated project management and support team, with no significant value being added by this additional layer of communication.

Other disadvantages would be the all too often “black hole” syndrome due to the lack of a single project/client/tasks/issues depository. Therefore, priorities are often managed on an inefficient (and often redundant or conflicting) one-to-one basis.

The advantages of the new support model, with ResponsAbility providing a single repository of all cases (in a hub-and-spoke manner), start with collaboration and the ability for all parties to both instantly contribute to the case/task/issue and have instant visibility into the case status. Also, new resources that include clients, Webcom employees and third-parties (partners) can all immediately participate and be notified, while the enabler for everyone is also an advanced searching capability within the system.

The Webcom Q2O clients’ adoption was initially somewhat tepid due to the ingrained human habit of emailing or calling directly the preferred contact or due to the clients having their own issue tracking systems. Of course, there is always the need for a human touch and chatting (as a “bonus”) with Webcom associates about the “critical” issues like a “lovely” winter weather in Wisconsin or about the Green Bay Packers’ revival.

Nonetheless, joking apart, from the end of 2007 ResponsAbility has been the sole vehicle for communication, tracking and managing tasks and cases at Webcom. Prior to that, Webcom had used the JIRA issue tracking system, which at the time allowed users to create a workflow based on a set of offered statuses.

However, at the time (the things might have meanwhile changed though) there was not the user’s ability to create statuses and workflows at will. For instance, the offered statuses were “open,” “in progress,” “closed,” etc., but the user could not create a custom status like “material returned”, “in engineering”, “being analyzed” or so.

Further, users could add custom fields, but they could not design forms in a drag-and-drop fashion. There was no way to specify forms and fields for each action (task) either, so that, e.g., when the process passes from the “bug fixed” into the “in testing” phase, the user could not create a mandatory field named “test case.” While administrators had ample controls, the end users had very little control over what fields they could see on the screen, and so on.

Key ResponsAbility Design Tenets

In contrast, ResponsAbility was built with several design concepts in mind, starting with scalability in terms of users’ ability to create an unlimited number of cases, processes, statuses, status transitions, custom fields, users, user types, departments, etc.

There is also flexibility in terms of creating permissions (e.g., by project, by process, by custom fields, etc.) and the assigning of rules and permissions is visible system-wide. As for data flexibility, there are custom fields and forms and process-related fields and forms, while at each process point (step) fields can be assigned as read-only (viewable), editable, and/or required (mandatory). There is also a flexible definition of assignments, notifications, and recipients, whereby conditional actions drive implicit and explicit notifications.

Furthermore, the ease-of-use concept translates into hardly any training required, whereby the idea for the tool is to be perceived by users as their enabler for getting things done instead of an enforced mandatory tracking tool by the “ivory tower.” Some examples of the ease-of-use features are:

* An intuitive drag-and-drop interface for administrators to design and preview online forms;
* An instant system feedback regarding the field size, informing users how many characters they still have left or by how many characters they have exceeded the maximum field size, and all of this happens dynamically while they are still typing;
* When looking at the list of cases, dragging a mouse over a case will bring additional fields in a hover (a so called “mouseover”), so that a user can find out more about each case while browsing a list, without having to open each case (thereby saving valuable time); and
* Each list of cases can be customized (personalized) by users in order to show fields as columns based on what that user is interested in or what a user considers to be important. If, e.g., a case type has 100 fields, it is impractical to put them all as columns in a list of cases on the screen. It is also impossible to select 10 most important fields universally because their importance depends on individual user needs. Therefore, each user can determine (select), in a drag-and-drop manner, which fields are truly important for them.

Last but not least, the ease-of-setup tenet starts with a pre-built library of processes, but companies can certainly create their own processes with an intuitive and flexible setup of forms, workflows, notifications and permissions. In addition to the abovementioned advanced search capability, users have a facility of unlimited comments and uploading of attachments.

The administrator is able to create brand new processes, new fields and forms and to define the workflow(s) for new processes. He/she can define which field and when in the process is mandatory, visible, hidden and for whom. The administrator is also able to define who has access to which types of cases and projects, who can oversee which users, and so on.

It is thus small wonder that ResponsAbility has reportedly been deployed in only a few days at some customers including setting up processes, users, permissions, and import of legacy data.

Part IV of this blog series will continue to delve into the Webcom’s ResponsAbility on-demand workflow/BPM offering. In the meantime, your comments, thoughts, suggestions or individual experiences with workflow/BPM tools are more than welcome.

TEC’s I&CM Evaluation Center (Slowly but Surely) Gaining Traction – Part II

Part I of this blog series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better commission and incentives calculations and best sales performance management (SPM) practices. It also introduced the latest entry in TEC’s I&CM (Incentive & Compensation Management) Evaluation Center, Varicent Software’s flagship product, Varicent SPM [evaluate this product].

Varicent SPM Architecture Overview

The product suite’s architecture consists of several layers, starting with a number of source systems that can handle diverse structured data. Such data can come from customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and from the order entry, human resources (HR), payroll, accounts payable (A/P), and general ledger (G/L) modules of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The source systems layer can also handle unstructured data coming from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents.

At the data storage layer, there is support for the Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and IBM DB2 databases, while at the presentation and analytics layer, there is support for the IBM Cognos TM1 (formerly Applix TM1), Microsoft Analysis Services, and Oracle Hyperion Essbase online analytic processing (OLAP) platforms.

Finally, the output destination layer presents several options from Microsoft Excel documents and hypertext markup language (HTML) Web pages, via mobile devices, to business intelligence (BI)/online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes, G/L and Payroll systems.

Out of the above layers, the Varicent Application Layer encompasses the data storage layer, Varicent SPM’s calculation engine (written mostly in the Microsoft .NET Framework) and the presentation & analytics layer. Such multi-layered architecture was designed with scalability, flexibility, and openness in mind.

Furthermore, based on the above-mentioned architectural blueprint, the system features advanced reporting & analytics, modeling & simulation, and dashboards & alerting capabilities. For example, users can use a plethora of dimensions for out-of-the-box reporting purposes such as: accounts, time period, customer, product, territory, payee, payee group, etc.

Broadening Reach

The recently released Varicent SPM 5.0 ’s user interface (UI) is backed by a calculation engine that leverages an Excel-based syntax, allowing business users to more easily replicate and manage their company-specific compensation models directly within Varicent SPM. This empowers end-users to control the application, including integration with source systems and scheduling routine tasks such as importing and exporting information to and from other enterprise systems.

Without relying on the IT department, business users (or end users) gain the ability to have a comprehensive review and approval wrapped around business processes while also managing compensation plans, creating and scheduling automated maintenance tasks, and configuring the system directly. In its quest to broaden the product’s reach to less IT-savvy users, the new UI features more workspace, and an improved layout and presentation based on customers’ feedback.

In July 2008, Varicent announced that its newly released Varicent SPM 5.0 features integration with Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. The combined solution makes it possible for organizations to deliver a holistic solution for both SPM and corporate performance management (CPM). Specifically, Varicent SPM 5.0 now:

* Offers synchronization of SPM data – including details on territories, quotas, incentive compensation and related analytics – with Microsoft PerformancePoint Server;
* Includes Microsoft Office SharePoint Server dashboards, providing customers with a single, integrated source of corporate information; and
* Enables Varicent SPM 5.0’s Quota Planning module directly in the financial planning mode of Microsoft PerformancePoint Server, delivering a single application for both financial and quota planning.

Varicent, previously a Microsoft Certified Partner, has now achieved a Gold Certified Partner status in the Microsoft Partner Program. This distinction shows that Varicent has demonstrated proficiency with Microsoft-based technologies.

Varicent’s Current State of Affairs

Varicent SPM is a relatively new offering (started in 2003), so gaining visibility and getting in more competitive selections has been its primary challenge to this point. In some instances, providing a number of reference clients of a certain size and in a certain industry quickly can be somewhat problematic, in comparison to better established players like Callidus Software or Oracle Incentive Compensation (OIC).

Also, having thus far supported only English and being primarily present in North America have been additional limitations for the vendor. While this is true, Varicent has achieved significant traction in the marketplace, including triple digit revenue growth year-over-year for the last four years and is tracking to do the same in 2008.

2008 would mark the year of expansion in terms of management team, board members and rank-and-file employees, as well as international expansion into the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. In addition to the above-mentioned Microsoft Gold certification, Varicent has announced partnerships with Deloitte Consulting, Revelwood and Merador and signed its first Fortune 10 customer.

In late April 2008 Varicent announced the general availability of Varicent SPM 5.0, which introduced:

* a newly designed UI that allows organizations to more broadly deploy Web-based SPM reporting, analysis and dashboards throughout the enterprise;
* enhanced workflow, data collection, task management and audit capabilities to better manage and control complex variable pay plans and processes;
* improved dispute resolution functionality for faster, real-time management and tracking of field inquiries;
* a Web Form builder so business users have more flexibility in the design and rollout of Web-based input templates, performance scorecards and compensation reports (both with quantitative and qualitative metrics); and
* Varicent Composer, a new graphical management capability that gives business users visibility and control of sales performance management business processes.

Besides new UI, broader reach is hoped to be bolstered via the Web Form builder and input templates. These tools enable flexible design of reports, performance scorecards, wizard driven template creation, and data validation fields. The remaining new features (bullet points) from the list above will be fleshed out shortly.

Key Tenets of Varicent’s Success thus far

Varicent wins most often when prospective customers value the speed, flexibility, and visibility of their EIM/SPM processes. When it comes to “speed,” Varicent SPM is designed to be administered and maintained by business users (process owners) with minimal IT staff involvement.

Given the vendor’s financials management focus and heritage (rather than its focus coming from the HR management pedigree of many competitors), the product also has advanced dispute resolution, modeling, reporting, analytics and other capabilities that give organizations the ability to make quicker business decisions and speed in terms of performance management.

As indicated earlier, Varicent SPM 5.0 includes a new simplified UI designed for various business professionals across the enterprise: sales representatives, management, finance, HR personnel and executives. The new UI enhances the human interaction and usability of the solution, which makes the product accessible to more casual users who need to gain insight into sales productivity, profitability and performance.

Existing and New Flexibility and Visibility Enablers

As for “flexibility,” Varicent SPM was designed to meet the broad requirements of mid-size companies to large Fortune 500 enterprises. The product can scale from hundreds to tens of thousands of users, and has advanced workflow management capabilities out-of-the-box that can be tailored to organizations business specifics. It has other notable capabilities including the above-mentioned Varicent Composer, which is a graphical visual application manager that gives system users insight into incentive calculations, business rules and data flows.

Varicent SPM 5.0 includes built-in business rules, and supports the creation and maintenance of any type of unique or customized business process flow. Companies can also easily configure their own approach to payment approvals, retroactive period adjustments, exception alerts, performance scorecards, management by objectives (MBO) management, field inquiries, document sign-offs, data collection and reporting.

The new Workflow module can be based on groups and/or hierarchy trees. In a drag-and-drop manner, users can create workflows for managing plans, reports, Web forms, documents signoffs and inquiries. Workflow management can help with inquiry and dispute updates and with faster, real-time management and tracking of field inquiries.

For its part, Varicent Composer enables system administrators to create and edit dynamic graphical representations of calculations, business rules and data flows, thereby giving them greater visibility and control over incentive compensation rules, territory assignments, deal crediting, adjustments, overlays and exceptions which are usually buried deep in custom configuration or code. This new visual illustration tool, with the drag-and-drop and drill down ability (all the way to database tables) provides a visual representation of the entire process from source data through to final compensation payouts.

As a recap, Varicent SPM’s flexibility makes it easier for end users to learn, set up, manage and show complex calculations, business rules and data flows. Users and companies thereby gain more insight and control over incentive compensation rules, territory assignments, deal crediting, adjustments, overlays, exceptions, and so on.

Final Thoughts

Last but not least, in terms of “visibility,” Varicent gives business users greater visibility into plan and organizational changes with notable audit capabilities and the Varicent Mobile module (in a partnership with Vaultus, and currently the only SPM hand-held offering in the market, to my knowledge).

Meeting the increasing need for better visibility and compliance, Varicent SPM 5.0 introduced enhanced audit and security mechanisms for more system control, better audit trails and improved user activity tracking. Users can drill into summarized audit reports to get detailed transactional information. The solution’s audit reporting and analytics capabilities are designed to meet ever-changing compliance and audit requirements.

As said in Part I, Varicent is headquartered in Toronto, with direct sales and reseller partners throughout North America and EMEA, and a reseller partner in Australia. This way, Varicent has its system users in more than 20 countries around the world. To facilitate global requirements Varicent has multi-currency input and payout capabilities, multi-rate set functionality and supports both centralized and decentralized (e.g., geographic based) SPM processes and systems.

Varicent SPM is distributed in English and a language translation support layer is provided to translate the application into other required languages. The vendor has mentioned translations for six languages in process at this stage.

Varicent has both traditional on-premise and more modern on-demand (albeit in a single-tenant hosted manner) offering. The vendor claims to not have a deployment mode preference and believes the choice should best meet the customer’s business requirements. Whether on-demand, or on-premise, Varicent delivers the same comprehensive SPM functionality (i.e., Incentive Calculation Engine, Workflow, Territory Management, Quota Planning, Performance Analytics and Mobile Handheld capabilities). Varicent also lets organizations switch from one mode to the other, in both directions, as business needs change.

Hence, dear readers, what are your views, comments, opinions, etc. about Varicent’s moves and abut the EIM/SPM software market in general? We would also be interested in your experiences with this nascent software category (if you are an existing user) or in your current (possibly painful) practices, and your general interest to evaluate these solutions as prospective customers.

Microsoft’s Underlying Platform Parts for Enterprise Applications: Somewhat Explained – Part 2

Part 1 of this blog series concluded that Microsoft would not converge all of its diverse Microsoft Dynamics product lines into a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Rather, the vendor has been attempting to leverage the best practices and technologies across all of the products, where possible.

The idea is to deliver applications that have the following characteristics: are familiar to users within their organizations, fit with existing corporate systems, fuel business productivity, and enable confident and informed decision making processes.

Reporting, Analytics & Collaboration Enablers

To expand further on the use of the Microsoft SQL Server database that was discussed at the end of Part 1, all Microsoft Dynamics reporting capabilities will in the future come natively (which also means without new license fees) through SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and associated tools. This was first developed within Microsoft Dynamics GP 9 and Microsoft Dynamics AX [evaluate this product], and will be adopted more broadly across other Dynamics products. In the Microsoft Dynamics AX 4 release, there was the capability of creating ad hoc reports, whereas most recently released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 also uses SSRS for all production reports.

Innovation is now surfacing as a result of integration between the Microsoft Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET) development platform and SQL Server. Namely, there is now the ability to launch Precision Report Designer and maintain the Dynamics AX semantic models in VS.NET and to pass the data in a closed-loop manner to and from Dynamic AX logic models. These models can in turn look into the Dynamics AX database (SQL Server) via database secure views. The future development will make these currently static models dynamic for report-customization purposes.

Along similar lines will be the use of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), whereby all Dynamics role centers within the user experience (UX) project (mentioned in Part 1) will feature embedded contextual business intelligence (BI). Currently, Dynamics AX 2009 has the cube generation capability, whereby analytics perspectives have been added to the business logic model, and which can generate Data Source Views (DSV’s) and Online Analytic Processing (OLAP) cubes. The future research and development (R&D) forays will likely enable the round-trip (between VS.NET and SQL Server) advanced features that will require similar features to the abovementioned reporting tools.

As a little caveat, these native reporting and analytics features will not be automatically available to the users of the proprietary Microsoft Dynamics NAV C/Side database (about half of the install base) and Dynamics AX Oracle instances. For Dynamics NAV customers using the older C/Side database, most of them upgrade to SQL Server when they move to a new NAV version anyway, while Dynamics AX users on Oracle can access the new reporting and analytics features by adding SSRS and SSAS to their deployment. Still, Microsoft will, for the foreseeable future, honor the ongoing support for these databases alongside its SQL Server.

Sharing SharePoint and Unified Communications

Microsoft SharePoint is the platform for portal-based collaboration and document management/enterprise content management (ECM). The product also works tightly with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Unified Communications (UC), both Microsoft technologies that will be described in detail later on. This integration provides great visibility for workflows related to documents and document libraries, and improving collaboration through the “presence” and “click to communicate” features.

Today, SharePoint is the universal portal technology for the Dynamics portfolio; for example, in Dynamics AX 2009, the AX Enterprise Portal (formerly Axapta Enterprise Portal) is now based on SharePoint. The portal was devised from the standard SharePoint design experience, whereby a gallery of Dynamics AX Web parts is now available, making it very simple to bring to the surface Dynamics AX data (with the inherent AX security model enforced) on SharePoint portal pages.

In addition to Web parts, other strategies for SharePoint integration are its Business Data Catalog (BDC) Web Services feature (currently used within Microsoft Dynamics GP [evaluate this product] and Dynamics CRM [evaluate this product]), and data binding (within Dynamics AX). It is likely that BDC services will grow further in importance, and we should expect a broad Microsoft Dynamics consistency around this feature.

The abovementioned UC technology provides the ability for applications to identify users’ “presence” and enable “click to communicate” capabilities. Via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics CRM 4.0 currently work with UC (which is envisioned for the upcoming Dynamics ERP releases too). For example, whenever a user sees a person in the application screen, he/she can also see a presence indicator showing if they are “out of the office”, “in a meeting”, “on a call”, or “available”. By clicking on the indicator, a user gets to pick the preferred method to communicate with them with a single click, whether it might be via email, instant messenger (IM), or phone, if the company has the computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities.

The Microsoft Dynamics team is working together with the UC team to develop even more advanced scenarios that bring people closer to the processes represented in their applications. One such possible scenario, “Call Center of the Future”, was showed at Convergence 2008 during Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech. Expected scenarios for the next version of UC platform will revolve around how to factor in application embedding, advanced in-context collaboration scenarios, and blending UC and business process management (BPM).

What About the Microsoft .NET Framework Parts?

The situation is much less “crystal clear” when it comes to leveraging components of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Namely, on the programming and development platform side, only Microsoft Dynamics SL [evaluate this product] is leveraging Visual Basic.NET (VB.NET), one of the languages embraced by .NET. Having already abandoned the gut-wrenching route of a single code base, as noted in Part 1, Microsoft now has to live with the proprietary platforms within Dynamics GP (i.e., Dexterity) , Dynamics NAV (i.e., C/Side AL), and Dynamics AX (i.e., X++/MorphX).

But, on the upside, the abovementioned Windows WF technology, which is an application-hosted workflow orchestration engine, and with a VS.NET design experience, is much more pervasively used throughout Dynamics. WF tools are VS.NET-based tools for developers that add simplified analyst (information worker) experiences.

The technology originated in the Microsoft BizTalk Server team (to be described later on), and in a future major release of BizTalk, WF will become the orchestration engine for BizTalk. WF is used in SharePoint and within Dynamics applications (i.e., Dynamics GP 10, Dynamics AX 2009, and Dynamics CRM 4.0) as the workflow engine. A distinct feature is its Tracking Provider architectural design (Dynamics AX 2009 implements this) that allows users to capture process execution information in the same database as the transaction data.

There is the ability here to track and record data about WF instances as they execute, such as the current status of long running processes, time spent across parts of/the whole process, exception paths taken, etc. This enables an analysis like, for example, how much time or how many escalations is it taking the user to approve Purchase Orders (PO) for his/her preferred suppliers with PO’s value under US$25,000.

Furthermore, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), formerly called Indigo and WinFX, is an application web services inter-communication framework, and can be used to access Dynamics AX 4 and 2009 business logic through web service interfaces. This provides a higher level document interface to the application for integration, complementing the .NET Business Connector which offers more granular, lower level component interfaces to the Dynamics AX business logic. Microsoft’s .NET Business Connector replaces the older Microsoft Component Object Model (COM)-based COM Business Connector.

What Else Might Come Down the Track?

As a glance into the future, Microsoft BizTalk Server, which delivers orchestration and integration capabilities between disparate applications while handling broad ranges of scale and volume, is envisioned to expand the Dynamics ERP and/or customer relationship management (CRM) products’ integration and BPM capabilities. Dynamics products occasionally work with BizTalk for tricky orchestration and integration between third-party systems, for example handling orders in business-to-business (B2B) commerce integrations, whereas WF is used for orchestration inside an individual Dynamics application.

Other potential ambitious undertakings in the future should revolve around Master Data Management (MDM), whereby the Stratature acquisition in 2007 should be a good start towards embedding MDM capabilities into SharePoint. The Dynamics products are seen as key drivers for scenarios in a future Microsoft MDM offering. Along similar lines should be the FAST acquisition in 2007, when it comes to the enterprise search capabilities (that entail both structured data and unstructured/rich media files).

Part 3 of this blog series will analyze the ever-evolving user interface (UI) and visualization technologies, and related approaches of Microsoft and other independent software vendors (ISVs). Your views, comments, and opinions about and/or experiences with any abovementioned solution are welcome in the meantime.

One Year Later at Deltek: More of the Same (And Then Some More) – Part II

Part I of this blog series explained Deltek’s ebullience despite a hostile and depressed environment. The continued cash-generating operation has been complemented by in-house developments, acquisitions, and partnerships.

The previous blog post also talked about the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Professional Service line of business, which is largely represented by Deltek Vision [evaluate this product]. Parts II & III will analyze the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s remaining lines of business.

Government Contracting (GovCon) Market

Deltek has invested in a lot of research and development (R&D) in the GovCon market recently, with two major product announcements being the availability of the new release of Deltek GCS Premier [evaluate this product] and the release of the Deltek Performance Management (DPM) suite. GCS Premier 5.0 was a huge release for Deltek because the goal behind the launch was to put to bed perceptions that its competitors (most frequently Microsoft Dynamics and its network of partners) have been putting in the marketplace for a while.

Namely, GCS Premier has long featured an old technology foundation (with a “welcome to the 1980s” look-and-feel), and the market perception has been that Deltek is not really committed to improving the product. Deltek’s presumed strategy was to force GCS users to upgrade to the upper-range Deltek Costpoint [evaluate this product] suite. These assumptions could not be further from the truth, and the 5.0 release is proof.

Generally available from late August 2008, GCS Premier 5.0 delivers significant enhancements to the renowned and widespread project accounting solution for small-to-medium-sized government contractors. The release is focused on producing enhancements to the following three important areas:

1. Ease of use
2. Improved invoicing
3. United States (US) Defense Contract Auditing Agency (DCAA)-mandated compliance reporting.

GCS Premier 5.0 delivers a new user interface (UI) with a more versatile and contemporary look-and-feel, and bolstered billing capabilities that make invoicing faster and easier. The latter capability is accomplished by the addition of flexible invoicing to the billing process (Microsoft Office Excel-based) and the first installment of billing functionality improvements.

In addition to completely changing the product’s UI to make it more intuitive and modern, Deltek also updated reporting schedules and formats that reduce customers’ reporting workload. The release also added additional compliance reporting capabilities such as Incurred Cost Submission (ICS) reports, and important integration with Microsoft Office for billing. Some GCS Premier clients that have upgraded to the 5.0 version have reportedly seen billing times go from a few hours to 90 seconds (which should translate in a much better cash flow).

The familiar workflow graphics that GCS customers have traditionally liked remain in this new version. However GCS 5.0 also adds greater navigational ease with the new UI that features the Explorer-Tab-Icon combination, and that puts users almost instantly anywhere they need to go (a couple of clicks away from anywhere).

Incidentally, Deltek believes its decision to invest in GCS Premier was a wise one: it has been among the best-selling software packages within Deltek over the last year or so given the number of small government contractors that continue to enter the market. With Obama’s potential spending plans, GCS is likely to continue to have a strong run.

Furthermore, Deltek continues to invest in GCS Premier. In keeping with a performance management theme you will see below, the company is planning on releasing Executive Dashboards in 2009 and new reporting capabilities that will leverage all of the key data in GCS to allow government contractors to make better business decisions.

Nothing Without Business Performance Management

DPM was released in the late summer of 2008, and it was an important release for Deltek because – as we all know – analytics, dashboards, and business performance management (BPM) are all the rage these days. While companies could always do reporting within Deltek Costpoint, DPM puts the power of analytics into the hands of the end-users and out of the hands of the information technology (IT) department.

The idea was to empower all employees with self-service access to the information they need to make more informed decisions on a daily basis. DPM is based around IBM Cognos 8 business intelligence (BI) technology and includes 50 pre-built reports that are further configurable, 13 ICS schedules, 181 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) control screens, and has a standardized look-and-feel and drill-thru capabilities.

The offering is integrated and compatible with Deltek Costpoint 6.0 and 6.1 and with the Deltek Time & Expense 8.0 and 8.1 products. Sales of Costpoint and Cognos have evidently been so strong that Deltek was named Cognos’ original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner of the year at Cognos’ recent conference.

For the future, Deltek’s major focus within the GovCon line of business is on the Costpoint side, specifically completely converting it to a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) architecture (from the original Gupta/Centura blueprint) and continuing to invest in executive dashboards and scorecards for improved usability. Namely, the current Costpoint 6.1 release’s focus has been on enterprise-class scalability and performance, support for SOX via Segregation of Duties (SoD), auditing and other internal controls, and support for earned value management (EVM) via Deltek Cobra integration. Last but not least, there are improved GovCon project accounting capabilities via support for the Accounting Classification Reference Number (ACRN) Bills, Wide Area Work Flow (WAWF) Interface, and Award Fee Revenue.

Another important GovCon focus is on expanding the capabilities of Deltek GovWin, Deltek’s business development/capture management solution for government contracting. In this tough economy, responding to the right bids and winning business are more important processes than ever. With this upcoming release, GovWin will manage the complete business development lifecycle, from opportunity identification and management, to contract award.

The product follows this specialized sales lifecycle from gathering and tracking competitive, market and human intelligence to opportunity identification and management, pursuit decision management (bid/no bid), capture planning and proposal management. The release will also allow users instant access and search of all documents and information from competitive information to pricing and estimating information to existing contracts and proposals.

Deltek Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Portfolio

The Deltek EPM product portfolio has also been a top seller for Deltek over the last year or so. Compliance and tight project controls are paramount during these economic times, and the US government has stepped up enforcement and project auditing. According to the proverb “might makes right,” Deltek’s customers like government agencies’ contractors, systems integrators, aerospace & defense (A&D) manufacturers, and capital investment architecture, engineering & construction (A/E/C) companies have no choice but to comply.

Deltek is also gaining traction inside government agencies themselves who use Deltek EPM solutions to better manage their programs. Therefore, these companies badly need the likes of Deltek as they strive to do more with less while eliminating inconsistent project management practices and meeting a plethora of mushrooming compliance requirements. The overwhelming set of requirements could include:

* The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 300;
* Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (or DFARS);
* British Standard (BS) 6079;
* SOX;
* The US Department of Defense (DOD) 5000 2R, Part 11; and
* The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 748-98A.

Particularly, having the EVM capability is no longer optional when dealing with the abovementioned federal agencies. Impacts from failure to comply and missed schedules can be devastating. For example, how would you feel about losing EVM accreditation and having up to 10 percent of supplier payments withheld by the agency for failure to adequately implement and maintain a validated EVM system?

Making matters even worse, the requirements from US agencies like Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Energy (DoE), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), General Services Administration (GSA), and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are continuing to expand into ever smaller projects (in terms of the contract value thresholds) with ever more reporting requirements. The ability to manage earned value is no longer just a nice thing to do (to impress the “big brother”), but is being rigorously enforced. There are the indications that the government is also considering lowering the dollar thresholds for all the projects where EVM is mandated.

The Deltek EPM solution set [evaluate some of these products] accordingly incorporates all aspects needed to manage project performance. From material management, time collection and cost accounting (within enterprise resource planning [ERP] systems like Costpoint) to cost management, EVM, scheduling, and risk management. This information rolls into analytic reporting and then down into dashboards for easy viewing via the Deltek WelcomHome project collaboration software.

The final part of this blog series will analyze the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at the Deltek EPM line of business. Your views, comments and opinions, particular experiences with the aforementioned products, etc., are welcome in the meantime.