Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Aberdeen Group: Oracle, SAP Users Find Composite Apps Make Difference Inside IT

Aberdeen Group: Oracle, SAP Users Find Composite Apps Make Difference Inside IT

Duet Brings New Ease-of-Use to Enterprise Applications > Windows in Financial Services > The Mag

Duet Brings New Ease-of-Use to Enterprise Applications > Windows in Financial Services > The Mag

Microsoft and SAP have answered the prayers of millions of business end users who wanted to leverage the power of SAP business applications through the intuitive interface of their Microsoft desktop.

Duet, a jointly-developed solution, enables business users to access SAP applications like time and expense management, budgeting, travel management, as well as business intelligence applications directly via Microsoft Office.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Ariba showcases for financial services

The banking and insurance industries got a close look at Ariba during the spend management vendor’s Financial Services Industry Summit, with customers and prospects gathering to exchange experiences and best practices for spend management in the sector. While the Summit focused on the top three priorities of the financial industry as identified by executives in a recent study—generating meaningful and measurable results, accessing and analyzing spend data, completing projects on time and within budget—the issues extend to many other industries as well with lessons for all.

These priorities continue to reinforce the importance of ongoing procurement transformation. Procurement professionals must focus efforts on automated processed and workflows to free up time so they can put their energy into strategic initiatives that deliver measurable and meaningful results. Such results demand a company use spend management to set strategies and objectives, formulate the plans, and then track the progress. For a detailed look at how financial services are bringing spend under control, see, “Financial Services Offers Spend Management Lessons for All”.

Epicor posts milestone (AMR)

Epicor closed 4Q06 and the fiscal year in milestone fashion, with revenue for the quarter topping $100M. Net license revenue was up 26% from 4Q05 to $32.3M. Year-end revenue came in at just more than $384M (up from $289M in 2005). The company added 750 new customers (228 in the fourth quarter alone) and reported $99M in license revenue alone for the year (up from $77M a year before). In fact, the top 10 deals for 4Q came in at $300K from sales of the Vantage and Enterprise products. The largest revenue contribution for the quarter came from maintenance at $38.3M ($150M for all of 2006).

Epicor reported winning back just more than 450 accounts for maintenance alone in the year as well. While this is a small number for a company with more than 20,000 customers and specific percentage ranges for the maintenance agreements were not disclosed, maintenance revenue is a valuable metric for midmarket ERP providers. As the competition in this space continues to increase and battles brew over new deals, maintenance revenue continues to be a valuable annuity.

The success of the firm’s acquisition of CRS Retail Systems in late 2005 has been a particularly bright spot. At the time of the acquisition, Epicor had a minimal presence in retail, and there was a tiny cross-sell potential for CRS into the Epicor customer base, too. However, CRS contributed $14.1M in total revenue in 4Q06 and $69.7M total for all of 2006.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

FTD.de - Köpfe - Nachrichten - SAP baut europäische Führungsspitze um

FTD.de - Köpfe - Nachrichten - SAP baut europäische Führungsspitze um

Der unerwartete Abschied des Technologievorstands Shai Agassi von SAP wirkt sich auch auf die europäische und deutsche Führungsetage des Softwarekonzerns aus. Nicht nur Köpfe, auch Strukturen werden neu verhandelt.