Archive for the ‘PBS’ Category

News Analysis: Deltek Offers To Buy Maconomy For $72.7M

Published on June 4, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Acquisition Consolidates Two Market Leaders In The Project Based Solutions Market

Deltek announced on June 3rd that they would acquire Maconomy for  $72.7M ($3.39/share (DKK 20.50)).  Maconomy is a leading project based solutions (PBS) software company with ~35.6M in revenues (2009) based in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Deltek is a 265.8M revenue (2009) PBS software vendor based in Herndon, VA.   This acquisition is significant because the combined companies:

  • Improve geographic coverage. Maconomy employs over 220 employees with 600+ customers in 58 countries.  eltek reaches 12,000 customers around the world across its portfolio of product lines that includes Costpoint, GCS Premier, Vision, and its Enterprise Project Management suite. Deltek also offers govWin, an online network dedicated to solving common business problems for government contractors.

    Point of View (POV):     Maconomy’s customers mostly originate from EMEA.  Less than 12% of Maconomy’s revenues come from the US.  Maconomy built good partnerships in Eastern Europe. South Africa, Canada, and India.  Meanwhile, Deltek has a strong base of business in the US public sector and was beginning to move towards greater international expansion.
  • Address a range of PBS vertical industries. Maconomy’s products focus on professional service organizations with about 46% of its revenues coming from consulting and 26% of its revenues coming from marcomm.  Deltek dominates the architecture and engineering space along with government contracting.  The company has shown success in key verticals such as construction services, public sector, and transportation services.

    POV:     Deltek can boast that 80% of the Engineering News Record 2009 Top 500 Design Firms are customers.  Maconomy’s products X1 and PeoplePlanner demonstrate a strong professional services focus.  Together, they have an opportunity to expand into research organizations, legal services, and audit/tax firms.

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Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps

Published on August 24, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Convergent trends fuel the push for new business solutions and platforms

The future of enterprise software is evolving from web-based apps, business process platforms, and service-enabled products; to a new class of more connected, social, and collaborative business software solutions.  This transformation comes from advances in the Web 2.0 world and a growing realization that business solutions must reflect how people actually perform work.  These trends point to a convergence and expansion of 10 mega themes:

  1. Evolution versus revolution
  2. Top down versus bottom up
  3. Reactive versus proactive
  4. Transactional versus behavioral
  5. Strategic versus tactical
  6. Horizontal versus vertical
  7. Individual versus community
  8. Company versus customer
  9. B2B versus B2C
  10. Data generation versus data analysis

Future business solutions and platforms will expand beyond Enterprise 2.0 and the knowledge worker

After much digestion of what’s happening in the various Enterprise 2.0 models, (e.g. Dion Hinchcliffe’s FLATNESSES mnemonic) and studying the Social CRM market, (e.g. CRM Magazine’s June 2009 “Social Media Maturity Model”), what’s next for business solutions or enterprise apps appears to be something bigger than usability, collaboration, social media, mobility, and technologies for the knowledge worker.  Enterprise 2.0. as defined by Andrew McAfee in his April 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review, touches on a world of emergent, free-form, collaboration that bring such Web 2.0 tools to the enterprise.  This definition provides a solid basis for building on key concepts in this emerging class of software solutions and platforms.  In fact, this new category moves beyond today’s Enterprise 2.0 definition and most certainly beyond the three letter acronym world of ERP, CRM, HCM, PBS, SCM, etc.

Ten elements define this next generation of enterprise business software solutions

Recent conversations with software vendors, industry luminaries, and customers highlight 10 elements required for future solutions (see Figure 1.).  These elements include dynamic user experiences, business process focus, and community connectedness across 10 elements:

  1. Role-based design. Software designed around how users perform work including applicable security models.
  2. Consistent experience across channels & deployment options. Software that is agnostic to where or how that software is deployed and accessed.
  3. Contextual & relevant delivery of information. Software which understands what information to provide users at a point in time
  4. Configurable & adaptive. Software that can be modified to meet changing conditions.
  5. Outcome-focused & results-oriented. Software that tracks key metrics across an end to end process.
  6. Proactive, predictive, & actionable. Software that anticipates requests and supports decision making.
  7. Engaging for all stakeholders. Software that opens up the system to new types of users, collaborators, networks, and communities.
  8. Pervasive & natural collaboration. Software that embeds knowledge worker skills into existing work flows.
  9. Self-learning & self-aware. Software that tracks preferences and identifies patterns for future correlation.
  10. Secure & safe. Software that meets security and disaster recovery thresholds.

Figure 1. 10 Elements Of Social Enterprise Business Solutions and Platforms

Source: Software Insider’s Point of View – 10 Elements Of Social Enterprise Business Solutions and Platforms
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News Analysis: MultiPlus Solutions Acquisition Expands IFS’ Investment In Project Based Solutions

Published on August 17, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

On August 13th, Swedish-based ERP vendor, IFS (OMX STO: IFS), announced its intention to purchase MultiPlus Solutions AS from Qurius International Holding B.V.  IFS, a $383M vendor (2008 revenues), paid an undisclosed sum for the NOK 45.9M or $7.48M (1 NOK = 0.162878 USD ) Norwegian-based project based solutions (PBS) vendor.  Despite the small deal size, the acquisition provides IFS with multiplicative benefits such as:

  • Strengthened presence in key PBS verticals. MultiPlus Solutions delivers PBS for focused industry verticals such as EPC (i.e. Engineering, Procurement, and Construction), marine industries (i.e. shipbuilding, offshore), and project manufacturing industries.  MultiPlus’ industries complement IFS’ seven main industries that include aerospace & defense, utilities & telecom, manufacturing, process industries, automotive, retail & wholesale distribution, and construction contracting & service management.

    POV: IFS gains a significant project based marine ERP solution. In addition to supporting project based operations, the solution also delivers sales support, project management, finance, HR and payroll, logistics, production, and service and maintenance.  Strong capabilities in ship building project management and marine service and maintenance will raise IFS’ capabilities when in competition with other marine focused players such as Logimatic’s MARS and Infor’s Syteline. Expect IFS to gain mind share among industries such as oil and gas construction, ship yard development, and design and engineering firms.

  • Complementary customer base. IFS operates in more than 50 countries and serves over 2,000 customers.  The acquisition adds 100 customers in Norway, Denmark, France, the United States, and China focused on project based  solutions.

    POV:     Because both vendors have designed their solutions to be database and platform independent, customers can take advantage of product synergies.  IFS customers may seek to adopt MultiPlus’ Drawing and Document Management solution while MultiPlus customers may want to include IFS’ Value Chain Collaboration, Quality Management, and Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) solutions.  MultiPlus can run on Oracle, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft .NET, and various Unix and Linux platforms.  More importantly, customers and the two companies share a similar cultural fit.
  • Momentum towards growth goals. IFS ranks 15th by revenue in the Software Insider IndexTM(SII) among enterprise apps vendors.  CEO, Alistair Sorbie, publicly states his intention to double product revenue by 2013.

    POV:     Expect acquisitions and continued focus on project based solutions to drive growth.  Success for vendors such as IFS will require growth to $500M in revenue in the next 3 to 5 years.  Building economies of scale will allow IFS to continue its investment in deep micro vertical functionality and expand into more areas of project based solutions.

Recommended course of action – stay the course.

In general, the acquisition bodes well for MultiPlus and IFS customers.  Consequently customers should seek clarifications on issues such as:

  • Timing of code base merge. There have been no formal plans announced to integrate platforms.  Customers should continue to seek guidance on timing.
  • Continued support and future migration. IFS plans to continue its investment but may provide future migration paths.  Customers should seek guidance on how to minimize migration issues in their existing environments
  • Access to MultiPlus functionality. Existing IFS customers who seek to add MultiPlus features may want to seek clarification on whether or not it makes sense to begin deployment today or await future announcements.

The bottom line – PBS space continues to consolidate

Recent acquisitions of QuickArrow by NetSuite OpenAir and growing interest among vendors for solutions that focus more on services industries will increase merger and acquisition activities in the space.  As the developed world shifts from a product based economy to a services based economy, PBS plays a key role in solving the technology needs for a project centric world.  End users can expect more stability as larger vendors acquire PBS specialists for industry specific expertise and key capabilities in project accounting, resource planning, project management, and compliance.

Your POV.

Are you an IFS or MultiPlus customer?  How do you feel about the merger?  Do you feel that IFS will be a good steward?  Were you concerned about MultiPlus’ viability?  Please post your comments here or send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

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News Analysis: NetSuite Acquires QuickArrow To Expand PBS Presence

Published on July 25, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

On July 21st, 2009, NetSuite announced its intention to acquire Project Based Solutions (PBS) rival Quick Arrow for $20M.   A few quick facts about the acquisition

  • Existing customers will continue to be supported. NetSuite has committed to supporting the QuickArrow solution.  Customers have the option to move to NetSuite and OpenAir.  NetSuite will not force customers to migrate from Apache.  NetSuite will maintain QuickArrow’s Austin, TX based offices and staff.
    POV: QuickArrow customers should explore the opportunity to align their ERP with NetSuite to take advantage of future synergies and integration points.  Standalone QuickArrow customers should wait for the combined future product road map before evaluating any options.   Expect NetSuite to keep its promise as it would make no sense to acquire a company and not retain the customer base.  NetSuite’s acquisition mitigates financial viability concerns with QuickArrow.
  • Acquisition signals commitment to services industry business. As with the $26M OpenAir acquisition, the addition of QuickArrow will extend NetSuite’s support of professional services verticals such as business and IT consulting, legal, accounting, and government contracting.  NetSuite’s services resource planning (SRP) capabilities include investments in key processes such as marketing, sales, quotes/orders, projects, services delivery, charges, invoices, and revenue and finances.
    POV: QuickArrow adds another 35,000 users bringing the estimated total number of subscribers to about 80,000.  This significant market presence in North America gives NetSuite the opportunity to create not only economies of scale in product development, but also additional capabilities such as international expansion, third party project tool integration, and regulatory compliance support.

The bottom line – NetSuite signals its intent to go on the offense for the services industry business

Project based solutions delivered in SaaS provide rapid benefits and allow vendors such as NetSuite to go on the offensive into the install bases of larger competitors such as SAP and Oracle.  Case in point, NetSuite’s two acquisitions in the PBS space removes key competitors and provides it with 1000 customers in a growing market centered around project based businesses.  QuickArrow brings key customers such as Symantec, Genesys, Thomson Reuters, Informatica, and SalesForce.com.   Given NetSuite’s track record, one may expect the ERP SaaS leader to continue to make acquisitions to round out its capabilities in Project Based Solutions.  Expect other SaaS competitors and on-premise giants to follow suit as this market heats up and SaaS becomes a preferred delivery option.

Your POV

Are you a QuickArrow or former OpenAir customer and want to share your experiences?  Do you want to learn more about the PBS market?  Interested in speaking at a future conference or event?  Please post or send your POV to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

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Monday’s Musings: Why On-Premise Vendors and SI’s Should Go on the Offense with SaaS

Published on July 13, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

On-premise vendors still see SaaS as a loss leader due to huge ramp up and punishing revenue recognition rules

When it comes to the topic of SaaS, many on-premise vendors appear to be living in denial, hoping that SaaS fails, and/or creating confusion in the market place.  These tactics have merit as a shift to SaaS requires plenty of work with minimal return and a destruction – disruption of the current business model.  In conversations with 61 vendors and building off of SaaS evangelist Jeffrey Kaplan’s post (July 2, 2009, Seeking Alpha – “From the Vendor’s Point of View: Why SaaS Sucks”), vendors who have made this transition or have started the investment put in heavy lifting in these activities must:

  • Re-architect apps
  • Find balance between configuration and optimization of SaaS platform
  • Design product road map and rollout strategy
  • Determine SLA’s
  • Identify a hosting strategy
  • Craft pricing and licensing policies
  • Harmonize SaaS pricing with On-premise and other models
  • Create go to market strategy
  • Alleviate channel conflict with partners, resellers, distributors

After all this work to be ready for SaaS deployments, vendors also discover that FASB SOP 97-2 software revenue recognition rules prohibit them from immediately recognizing multi-year contracts. Even worse, subscription revenue can only be recognized on a month-to-month basis – leading to a long road to profitability.  In fact, vendors such as Lawson, estimated a 7 to 10 year break even period for a full SaaS model.  No wonder Harry Debes was fired up on how SaaS could be a fad in his interview with Victoria Ho at ZD Net last year.  In private, most software executives also echo such sentiments and wholeheartedly agree with his comments about the business model challenges.

Yet, SaaS adoption moves beyond the Tipping Point in 2009

However, the confluence of recessionary forces, stalled innovation from many on-premise software vendors, and success of early SaaS pioneers such as SalesForce.com and NetSuite has put Software-as-a-Service into the mainstream.  Vendors can no longer resist the move to SaaS without negatively impacting their license sales and customer mind share.   Additional facts highlight the shift:

  • Forrester State of Enterprise Software 2009 survey results confirm significant adoption rates from 2008 to 2009. Of 1000 IT executives and decision-makers, 24% were interested/considering, 11% implemented or planning to expand, and 5% piloting SaaS solutions (see Figure 1).
  • Clients continue to vote with their budgets despite marketing FUD by many on-premise vendors on the perils of SaaS. Success Factors‘ win at Siemens for 420,000 employees, Workday‘s win at Flextronics for 240,000 employees, and Ultimate Software’s win at P.F. Chiang’s for 30,000 employees reinforces how SaaS is more than CRM and SMB.
  • Concerns over SaaS have dropped significantly over the past year. Successful deployments mitigate concerns and highlight the attitudinal shift towards acceptance.  Major decreases include integration issues (43%), total cost (31%), lack of customization (31%), complicated pricing models (30%), performance (23%), can’t find the specific application (20%), security (17%), and lock in with existing vendor (17%) (see Figure 2).

Figure 1: Users expect to increase SaaS adoption in 2009

saas-deployment-2009

Source: Forrester

Figure 2.  Concerns over SaaS have dropped significantly over the past year

2009 Enteprise and SMB Survey - SaaS Concerns Declinet

Source: Forrester

Defensive SaaS strategies by vendors miss the opportunity to take market share.

As customer’s continue to demand SaaS solutions for rapid deployment, pay-as-you-go pricing models, and timely innovation, traditional on-premise vendors without a SaaS offering must now explain, defend, or develop their own SaaS story.  Concerns about the impact of SaaS have many vendors in defensive mode.  Defensive strategies have included:

  • Creating counter marketing about SaaS and the viability of the market
  • Responding with hosting options and financing options
  • Building SaaS options for a limited set of popular SaaS solutions such as sales force automation (29%), strategic HCM (29%), and customer service and support (27%) (See Figure 3.)

At first glance, mega vendors such as SAP and Oracle have started with the first two points and are evolving to the third.  They aim to counter the success of Ariba, SalesForce.com, Success Factors, Taleo, Workday, and Ultimate Software with their own offerings.  SAP’s OnDemand for LE release and John Wookey’s ComputerWorld UK interview by Mike Simons, confirms that the strategy will include “CRM on-demand and e-sourcing, with expense management set for a 2010 release.”  Wookey’s approach appears to first shore up areas where SAP customers have been defecting and then worrying about what’s next (see Note 1).  Meanwhile, discussions with Oracle product teams also hint that a release of 5 to 9 SaaS offerings to complement Oracle Siebel CRM OnDemand offerings could be announced soon.  This defensive strategy shores up competitive SaaS solutions such as incentive comp, procurement, and strategic HCM.

Figure 3.  Rate of adoption of key SaaS solutions show significant interest in CRM and other areas

2009 Enterprise and SMB Survey SaaS Interest Areas

Source: Forrester

The bottom line -SaaS gives software vendors and system integrators an opportunity to take market share.

Instead of playing defense, vendors should look at the opportunity to take market share through SaaS.  SaaS vendors and their investors have realized they can target any install base and win by providing compelling functionality.  Why shouldn’t on-premise vendors bite the bullet and go on the offense?  To make this work software vendors would want to take advantage of their partner ecosystems and customers to extend capabilities beyond what’s being delivered in on-premise.  Vendors must make an initial investment in a SaaS/PaaS platform, agile development methodologies, and integration technologies to support hybrid deployment options.  From there, white spaces in the product road map will provide direction into the future opportunities such as vertical and other pivot points that have not been well served.  SAP’s acquisition of Clear Standards for carbon compliance, NetSuite’s acquisition of OpenAir for project based solutions, and Intuit’s acquistion of Entellium for CRM highlights examples of going on the offensive with SaaS.  Of equal importance, system integrators can shift the balance of power and deliver new IP via SaaS solutions while reducing their dependency on the mega vendors.

Recommendations: 7 best practices for crafting a SaaS strategy at an on-premise vendor

Imagine you could start from scratch and build a new software company.  That’s the question I posed to 61 software executives this year.  Most stated they would start with a SaaS deployment option for the scale and the business model.  Now what to do if you are an on-premise vendor?  Answer – build a separate SaaS software division within an on-premise software company.  This could be the next trend among the on-premise vendors for both investment and revenue recognition reasons.  What would be a good strategy:

  1. Reuse similar business process parts as the on-premise product
  2. Harmonize the data model and common objects
  3. Build a brand new RIA based UI and UX
  4. Assume that all data sources will be heterogenous
  5. Design the product to run stand alone
  6. Attack white spaces of new growth in a competitor’s install base
  7. Keep a PaaS platform in mind to attract partners and customers to extend the solution

Your POV.

Totally turned off by SaaS? In the midst of a SaaS strategy? Ready to embark on a SaaS strategy?  If you need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out?  Please post your point of view here or send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com.

Note 1: The large enterprise (LE) SaaS platform will not come from NetWeaver or SAP’s SME Business by Design (ByD) technology, but come from the acquired Frictionless platform.  While this may leave some SAP customers concerned, Wookey and product super stars Kevin Nix and Peter Lim (of Siebel fame) counter by highlighting where SAP components will be reused and highlighting the home base integration advantage.

As also seen in the July 14th, 2009 SandHill.com”Moving to a SaaS Offensive”

Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

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Speaking Engagement: Tenrox Webinar – Capacity Planning for Project-Based Organizations

Published on March 16, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

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Exclusive Webinar Invitation EARN 1 PDU Register Now Forrester Research

Guest Speaker : R “Ray” Wang, Forrester Research, Vice President & Principal Analyst Current economic conditions drive enterprises to shift their workforce to both a more decentralized and a free agent model. Meanwhile, economic forces are leading to the creation of more agile work models. As this pool of skilled workers increasingly becomes independent of specific corporations, real time workforce planning is now a strategic necessity especially for organizations that have increasingly collaborative project work. Today, location and availability are not the only primary drivers for capacity planning; matching skill-sets, areas of interest, past experience, and real-time staffing has emerged as important workforce planning factors to consider. Join us on March 25, 2009 to learn how these trends are playing out and how project based solutions can play a role in addressing these real-time workforce planning challenges.

We will discuss:

  • The challenges involved in managing a decentralized project-driven workforce
  • New work methods and resource-types such as project-centric, divided, and independent resources.
  • The “shared project workforce”
  • Brief introduction to Tenrox Workforce Management & Planning Software module

Register Now

Who Should Attend: Senior executives at VP, CIO, and Director levels interested in project management applications or in charge of optimizing resource deployment and sourcing.

 Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Time: 10 am Pacific/ 1 pm Eastern

Duration: 1 hour

Register now

Sponsored by:

Ray Wang

About the Speaker: Ray serves Business Process & Applications professionals. He analyzes trends in enterprise resource planning (ERP) for the enterprise and midmarket. He also delivers strategic guidance in software licensing and pricing, researches business processes such as the order management cycle and continuous customer management, and assesses functional areas such as customer data integration and the impact of service-oriented architecture (SOA) on packaged applications. With this understanding of the overall ecosystem of solutions, technology, and system integrators, Ray provides strategy and guidance for many clients navigating through the vendor selection process. In 2008 Ray was recognized by the Institute Of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) as Analyst of the Year.

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Speaking Engagement: Investing in Project-Based Solutions to Weather the Current Economic Climate

Published on December 9, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

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Forrester Research

Guest Speaker :

R “Ray” Wang, Forrester Research, Vice President & Principal Analyst

Project-based solutions (PBS) adoption continues to be driven by specific microverticals in professional services, construction, real estate, and the public sector. A worsening economic climate ups the ante on features that enforce compliance and efficiency. The preference for comprehensive solutions will drive demand for tools that apply program management techniques, deliver on integration and collaboration, and provide new deployment options.

Enterprises considering solutions along the project life cycle should seek industry-specific solutions from vendors who embrace the vision of a world built around projects.

Join us on December 10, 2008 to learn how project-based solutions can help weather the current economic climate.

We will discuss:

  • Business drivers to focus on compliance and efficiency
  • Solutions to address broader project-based requirements
  • PBS to complement program discipline
  • Clients seeking deeper integration and collaboration
  • Hybrid deployment options emerging to reduce costs
  • And a brief demo of how the Tenrox Project Workforce Management solution addresses these issues and concerns

Register Now

Who Should Attend:

Senior executives at VP, CIO, and Director levels interested in project management applications or in charge of implementing and maintaining processes, recognizing revenue, compliance with global labor laws, optimizing business processes and their speed, and optimizing resource deployment and sourcing.

 Date:

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Time:

9 am Pacific/ 12 pm Eastern

Duration: 1 hour

Register now

Sponsored by:

Ray Wang

About the Speaker:

Ray serves Business Process & Applications professionals. He analyzes trends in enterprise resource planning (ERP) for the enterprise and midmarket. He also delivers strategic guidance in software licensing and pricing, researches business processes such as the order management cycle and continuous customer management, and assesses functional areas such as customer data integration and the impact of service-oriented architecture (SOA) on packaged applications. With this understanding of the overall ecosystem of solutions, technology, and system integrators, Ray provides strategy and guidance for many clients navigating through the vendor selection process. In 2008 Ray was recognized by the Institute Of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) as Analyst of the Year.

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