NetSuite makes no bones about wanting to the model for VARs and solution providers, and SP100 will allow those parties to receive commissions not only for new sales, but also for customer renewals. And while NetSuite has long been at the forefront of the SaaS-ERP game, the SP100 Program is an aggressive challenge to their major competitors (Microsoft, SAP, Sage, etc.), who are slowly but surely bringing more cloud offerings to their ERP stables. And it’s definitely a smart move on NetSuite’s part, to enable the value-added resellers (VARs) whose revenues are declining because they primarily offer legacy ERP systems.

The idea seems to be that those ERP providers offering legacy solutions must bring in cloud components in order to compete with NetSuite, and NetSuite seems to assume that the competition can’t quickly produce cloud-ERP solutions that are as polished—and they might not be wrong. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how those other ERP heavyweights respond, but more than that, it’s good to see a major push to bring ERP platforms into the future and proliferate enterprise cloud services.

Technorati Tags: NetSuite, SaaS ERP, VARs

Of note, Premier Foods implemented an SAP system in 2006, and is reportedly pleased with how the platform is helping them improve processes. Premier Foods’ goal was to seamlessly integrate the front and back offices, and almost four years into their implementation SAP is working well to that end. From now until 2012, Premier Foods is planning to use the solution to streamline and cut costs for back office operations. Premier, which produces Hovis bread and Mr. Kipling apple pies (among other food items), stated they already had a pretty lean back office, and that with SAP they’re hoping to reduce the number of duplications.

The other SAP-UK news item from this week describes an SAP partner implementing SAP financials for United Stationers, to help manage distribution and product lists. All in all, the news is not much for a company like SAP—a software giant with many implementations globally, but it is a good sign. Given the recent departure of Leo Apotheker and the company’s subsequent return to the co-CEO model—and of course the barrage of bad press they received for steep prices and slow implementations—it’s definitely good to hear customers singing SAP’s praises.

When it comes to a company of SAP’s size and stature, making guesses as to the effect of certain problems is tricky. SAP’s products may seem outdated, but to see a company satisfied with a 6-year deployment process does suggest that SAP isn’t doing everything wrong.

Technorati Tags: SAP

NetSuite’s annual revenue was up 9% and Q4 revenues were at a record $43 million. Their sales increased as on-premise vendors experienced downward sales trends. SAP’s SaaS sales went up marginally, but their overall software revenues were down 27%, and their biggest boost came from the increase in support sales—typically SAP’s biggest source of income—which increased 11%. Oracle’s numbers fall somewhere in between.

So SaaS sales are on the up and up, but on-premise ERP products are not slipping entirely into obscurity. SAP’s Business Objects line does very well, despite the heavy fire they’ve endured for less effective cloud offerings. Still, RedBuilt’s switch to NetSuite is a good sign for SaaS ERP delivery. RedBuilt is an innovator and supplier of engineered wood products for the commercial and multi-family construction industry, and they’ve switched to NetSuite for managing their corporate offices and four production plants, and perhaps most importantly, the NetSuite deployment means RedBuilt no longer has to pay the $275,000 annual salary costs for SAP and database administration.

NetSuite certainly offers a very complete SaaS ERP package, as do other companies, but the SaaS deployment’s biggest coup so far is its cost, which explains why on-premise ERP is not extinct, and will probably take longer than expected to die out. When SaaS ERP packages are more extensive, then we’ll really begin to see some change.

Technorati Tags: Netsuite ERP, Oracle ERP, SaaS ERP, SAP ERP

The new offering is called Project Portfolio Management Integration Pack, and it connects Primavera P6 with E-Business Suite. In addition to integrating project management data, the new integrator also connects Oracle ERP users to invaluable financial information. It also allows them to synchronize information regardless of which platform houses the project information.

There is also a PPM Integration Pack for Primavera P6 and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, which facilitates the integration of timesheets between the two platforms.

According the press release, the project management PIPs in Oracle AIA Release 2.5 will help project managers and accounting teams to join their business objectives. One of the best things about the new integrator is that it is a standards-based method for companies to integrate their processes across both Oracle and third-party applications.

It’s nice to see a big ERP play bridging the gap between ERP and project management, and hopefully other companies will follow suit.

Technorati Tags: Application Integration Architecture Release 2.5, Business Process Integration, Oracle ERP, Project Portfolio Management

ClickSoftware has offered mobile capabilities in their ServiceOptimizatoin Suite for a couple years, but the company decided to offer the detached mobile suite due to the heightened interest in mobility they saw among their customers. Mobility Suite will connect the back-office with the field representatives through mobile workflows, optimized routing, real-time inventory data, time and attendance recording, and more. Interestingly, ClickSoftware noted that while many people prefer to get mobile platforms from a vendor they’re using for CRM, they found plenty of people looking elsewhere for those capabilities, and their seizing the opportunity to land and expand.

William McNeill of AMR Research (who evidently partnered with ClickSoftware on the development of Mobility Suite) told CRM Magazine that the product is about “getting to where technicians are, what they’re doing, the parts they’re using,” and ultimately helping them make the best decisions efficiently. Mobility Suite also offers a jumpstart on billing processes that might previously have taken weeks to fulfill. McNeill states that this expedited turnaround with curry favor with customers who’ll be able to explain billing to their CFOs within a number of days.

Ultimately, ClickSoftware’s Mobility Suite isn’t entirely a standalone product, because it does rely on information from desktop databases, but it’s a smart offering and it bodes well for the ERP market, which has been stuck in the on-premise past. It’ll be interesting to see if their offering a mobile component does in fact increase business.

Technorati Tags: ClickSoftware, ClickSoftware Mobility Suite, mobile ERP

Insight is being marketed as a Performance Management application, but it’s really an analytic dashboard environment that delivers metrics on inventory management, procurement and spending, supply chain management, and supplier performance. Customers can download a trial version of the support software, then grant FusionOps read-only access to SAP ERP information, and from there the data is uploaded and customers are notified when particular metrics and reports are available online. Some are considering it business intelligence rather than business performance management because the data supplied by the dashboard is not focused on a company’s strategic goals.

FusionOps Insight works alongside another on-demand service, FusionOps Streamline, which automates supply chain and procurement processes for SAP and Oracle ERP environments (Insight for Oracle will be available in future). Streamline was launched in January of this year, and as a SaaS ERP product, it has been lauded for it cost-effectiveness and speedy deployment times.

While FusionOps (which is not related to Oracle Fusion…this confused me at first)offers a lightweight product and good ROI, it’s tough to disagree with critics pointing out that the company will have some difficulty staying afloat if they continue running on a partner system. Oracle and SAP both have business intelligence and analytics modules, so the idea that they’d give FusionOps that business for very long is doubtful. But only time will tell.

Technorati Tags: FusionOps, FusionOps Insight, FusionOps Streamline, Oracle ERP, Performance Management, SAP ERP

First, a look at their old pricing model: SAP has given customers volume discounts based on the size of the deal, and this was a successful method until it became apparent that implementations were typically unfinished by the projected deadline. As a remedy, SAP continued dropping software prices, and created agreements with large companies that allowed them to defer license audits and define their terms of use, paying in phases—SAP account managers would work with corporate CIOs, and were mostly flexible in their concessions because the important part was closing the deal.

Now, SAP wants to woo SMEs, and has to adjust their pricing models, especially in light of the rise of on-demand software models that offer more flexible subscriptions. They’ve reduced up-front payments, but there are still some issues. Helmuth Gumbel at Information Week notes that this does not solve the shelfware issues that the older model incurred, as it provides no guarantee that companies won’t have to spend big bucks on upgrades in the future. Gumbel also points out that SAP often replaces its pre-existing agreements, which is also not the most attractive attribute of an ERP vendor.

But mainly, the high-volume, high-discount, long-contract model is too clunky to entice many SMEs. SAP will most likely have to reduce contract lengths to get more SMEs on board with their on-premise systems.

Technorati Tags: SAP, SMEs

The company’s operations manager, Joseph Eid, noted that after they took over the coatings division of Bristol paint manufacturer Barloworld, they were in need of a “robust ERP solution” that was also flexible and could facilitate the structural overhaul. They vetted several ERP solutions, including SAP—an undisputed ERP heavyweight—but found PRONTO-Xi to be the most flexible and customizable. The PRONTO-Xi deployment supports financial, manufacturing, and CRM data, and the Freeworld is also happy with the platform’s multi-currency capability.

Eid said Freeworld’s Pronto implementation time was also the quickest offered, and operations were streamlined within 3 months—which was a good time period for a rebuilding phase, but also enough time for the end users to become familiar with the product. The speedy deployment is due in part to Pronto Hosted Services (PHS), which is the Pronto SaaS model Freeworld chose to deploy alongside PRONTO-Xi.

This is not the first time SAP’s services have been passed up for a sleeker SaaS model—earlier this month, they lost an actual customer to NetSuite’s OneWorld, which runs on their SuiteCloud. It’s certainly been a rough year for the company, and the release of their Business ByDesign is surely not coming soon enough.

Technorati Tags: NetSute OneWorld, Pronto ERP, PRONTO-Xi, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP ERP

Implementation of S2K began in September of this year, and the system will go live January 2010. S2K will provide a unified platform through which management can view real-time business operations. One of the reasons Best Line Oil chose S2K was for its customer support capabilities, one of their regional managers noted. S2K has intuitive software that analyzes data to calculate best prices—through analysis of buying trends—for certain customers, which is a timesaver for Best Line Oil’s accounting department. Best Line was also impressed with the Enterprise for Distribution’s solutions for managing supply chains and customer relationships.

With iNet.Invoices, companies running SAP for Accounts Payable and Logistics can run automated invoice management by leveraging Microsoft SharePoint Server, which provides rich document management, and workflow and Office interfaces. More specifically, the application verifies information in real-time about vendors, orders, and goods received against a user’s SAP system, and through SharePoint they can engage the information through Office apps.

iNet.Invoices optimizes at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions, which is a timely offering given the state of the economy, but also considering SAP’s current pricing. Business ByDesign, their SaaS offering, won’t be generally available until next year, and in the meantime, their on-premise products (which are already more costly by nature) are about to see rising prices.

Technorati Tags: ERP-Link, iNet.Invoices, Microsoft SharePoint Server, SAP, SAP for Accounts Payable and Logistics