- E-Commerce (5)
- NetSuite and NetSuite Consulting (23)
- SaaS (28)
- Technology for the Small to Medium Enterprise (38)
- Uncategorized (6)
Well, we were able to replace A/P, G/L and the whole Human Resource Management System, including Payroll. However, when it came to the Order Management, Billing and A/R systems Oracle fell on its face, frankly. And when it came to running the parent’s many overseas subsidiaries it was a ‘one and never again’ proposition. After the Netherlands office of 25 users went live after almost a year of effort, the parent pulled back, and with good reason.
Just to put the whole experience into some perspective, about half way through the project, Oracle released the first klugy version of the 10.7 three tier architecture in which the application rendered in a sort of browser window. This eliminated the need for patches to be installed at the client and the server. We thought it was cool. But Oracle’s main marketing strategy at that time was the integrated suite on the universal database. The goal was to run a global company on a single database with a single instance of the integrated applications. Your entire business management software from a single company. Not many people thought it was possible. Fewer thought it was wise.
So now here we are in 2011 and the software landscape has changed tremendously. SAP and Oracle are now the legacy apps. Most of the on-premise application vendors have been consolidated under a few large corporate flags because consolidation is what happens when growth come to a screeching halt. The real growth is in software as a service, SaaS. We hear a lot about the cloud, social and mobile as well.
Yet, there are still a lot of voices talking about the integrated suite. That this is still a topic of discussion is interesting. You would have thought that the point had been settled a while ago. Who wants to manage several different applications and try to marry them together into a coherent picture of the company. Well, apparently a lot of people do, because there are a lot of new SaaS vendors in the world and many of them offer applications for a very narrow market.
As an example, there are a couple of companies that offer subscription billing services to companies that sell a monthly service. NetSuite offers it’s own subscription billing module, but the fact that there are two major, and several minor, players in this market tells us that best of breed is not going away any time soon. In fact, BoB seems to be making a resurgence. But why?
There are a lot of reasons for this. One important one is that business models are diverse and are probably becoming more so in today’s marketplace. Companies look everywhere for competitive advantage, and they only find the depth of functionality they need to manage their advantages in best of breed.
Another important reason is that SaaS has opened up the software market in amazing new ways. Developing in the cloud means that there are recognized standards that developers follow, like web services for integration, and there are also now web native software integration services.
But perhaps the most important development in software is that companies are starting to realize that they need to be more agile and more flexible in their business models than ever, and their mission critical software also needs to reflect the same values. When, not if, you combine social and mobile with your agile business model in selling, procuring, marketing and operations, you have to have applications that reach further than the accounting centric applications of today. You have to be able to add new functionality quickly. You can’t wait for mobile selling, or mobile warehouse management, or mobile A/P.
In a recent post on www.softwareadvice.com, several voices reiterated their support for the integrated suite. We continue to take their point. There is value in the suite, undoubtedly. Michael Fauscette opines that best of breed might yet have a life:
“The things that are next to your customer, that are integral to your business model or that bring you closer to partners, those applications should be best of breed,” says Michael Fauscette, Group Vice President at IDC. “I think those are types of applications that companies are willing to invest in more.”
We also take this point. Like the subscription billing systems we mentioned above, there are some applications where you must have a depth of functionality that only a best of breed offers. But the question then becomes where can you afford to have generic functionality? A/P is often mentioned as one of those systems where you don’t need a lot of specialized functionality. However, there are a number of SaaS offerings for all manner of A/P, from simple employee and contractor expenses to more complex procure to pay systems. Evidently, there are companies out there that need very specialized functionality.
Even NetSuite, for all of their allegiance to the integrated suite in both word and deed, has validated the best of breed approach in some of their moves. They purchased best of breed professional services management software from OpenAir and hooked it with their financials; they also offer an integration with salesforce.com.
When Oracle was making the case for the integrated apps one of its main arguments was that you could not manage by real metrics if the company’s data was spread across a wide range of applications. Who can argue with that? But the question today is not whether managers have all the data they need to make decisions but whether they have the time to sit back and reflect on the past in order to take the next step forward. Is this a luxury that today’s company can afford?
Microsoft is a company that manages growth quite well. Revenue, earnings are pretty predictable, and boring. MS has fallen off the scales when it comes to innovation. Apple on the other hand creates growth and moves forward by leaps and bounds. I’m sure that Apple has plenty of data metrics, too. But innovation in any market means moving into unknown territory where there are no metrics. This is what all true growth companies must do, and you have to wonder how much value an integrated view of the company really offers them.
NetSuite, I maintain, has an excellent opportunity with the Newly Born and the Reincarnated, and I believe this shows in the client list, both ours and the larger NetSuite customer base. So is there any chance to talk to the Buried, to get them excited about NetSuite, to bring them on board? And who do we talk to over there? The owner, the office manager, the IT guy?
One way to tackle the problem is to take a look at how the competition does it. Want a great example of business system marketing, read this article about Microsoft’s latest edition of Great Plains, from Mary-jo Foley of ZDNet :
(A quick PowerPivot refresher: Codenamed “Gemini,” PowerPivot is integrated with SharePoint Server 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2. Microsoft is touting PowerPivot’s benefits as integrating “massive amounts of data on the desktop from virtually any source”: and the performance fast calculations and analysis on large data volumes.)
Like previous GP releases, the 2010 version will include a built-in connector allowing two-way information sharing between GP 2010 and Microsoft’s on-premises Dynamics CRM and its cloud-based and/or partner-hosted CRM Online offerings. In addition, by taking advantage of the presence functionality in Office Communications Server 2007 and its Office Communicator client, GP 2010 gives users the ability to right-click on a contact to send that person information with fewer steps.
Now, these two paragraphs may not seem interesting to you, and that would make you normal; however, if you are an IT guy at an SME, these are marketing gems. They are subtle and press all the right buttons. They don’t blare “look, long term job security!” but they make the point very well, indeed. In just those two little paragraphs there are 7 different products mentioned: PowerPivot, Sharepoint, SQL Server, GP, CRM Online, Office Communicator Server and Client. If you could get your boss to invest in this, you could buy that little cabin on the lake. May not have a lot of time to hang there, but you could own it.
The upshot is that it is useless to talk to the IT guy. He has no interest in hearing about a single, integrated system with no infrastructure. And the office manager, well that’s also probably a waste of time. They hate learning new systems, unless the current system starts creating unwanted overtime. That really leaves the owner. In some cases whenever the ownership hands over to a new person, son or daughter or buyer, there is an opportunity to talk to someone with some energy for the business who can see the difficulty of running an organization with a 100 data silos. The message?
The message has to be that NetSuite gets you out from under the thumb of your staff. Everyone who has ever been the new manager at an existing business knows what I mean. The current employees try to run you. They attempt, with all their wits, to box you in, to make you accept the current state of affairs as the only, the necessary state of affairs. “We don’t do it that way because it can’t be done that way.” They despise change. NetSuite generates change, and not just for the sake of change, but for the sake of better business practices, more measurable input and output, greater visibility and better decisions, including which employees to keep.
Every year, there are tens of thousands of SME’s that change hands. This is the secret passage into the market of the buried. There is a narrow window of hope for these companies. With some subtle marketing NetSuite ought to be able to talk directly to the new managers and let them know that there is a system that, together with their iron will, enables them to take back their business, get it on better footing, and grow it like they know it can grow.
Finding customers among the Buried is not easy. It requires the right message to the right audience. It also requires acknowledgement that a lot of the Buried are really lamp posts. But when they change hands, it’s a whole new opportunity.
I have attended several of these in the past and I always find it interesting to hear how a particular company uses NetSuite for their business. Every company is different and NetSuite has the flexibility to accomodate a great deal of complexity. So if you are thinking that the cloud might be the right place for you, then this might be the right webinar to attend.
The most important question facing the company considering an ERP system, whether it is a replacement or a first time purchase, is ‘Does this system fit my business?’ It is a daunting question to answer, and most companies realize over time that the better question is ‘Is this system flexible enough to meet my business needs, not just today but in the future as well?’ It is impossible to meet all of a company’s needs out of the box, so flexibility is key. I’m sure that in this webinar you will hear a lot about flexibility. I hope you find it an hour well spent.
Thinking about the Enterprise Software market recently it dawned on me that we have entered our own Octoberfest Harvest celebration, almost universally. Harvest refers to the last phase of a product’s life when the marketing department comes to the conclusion that there isn’t much left to exploit, so cut all inputs and just harvest whatever value is left in the product. In enterprise software this phase appears to have happened across many vendors and products at roughly the same time. Let’s take a look:
Vinnie Mirchandani, the deal architect, spent several days at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm and complains that the event was severly tilted toward consumer technologies. And when the attention does turn to enterprise matters, the topics are usually around other technologies that may use the enterprise transaction processing systems as a platform, but are rarely focused on business process innovation.
As someone who has spent, and continues to spend, a good deal of time on enterprise business process questions, problems and solutions, I wonder why the marketplace has turned as it has? Do most organizations have the business processes that they need, creating the value that they want? Is it a case, then, of been there, done that and we’re good?
Or have organizations simply lost their enthusiasm for business process design and innovation? And if they have, then why have they? I meet very few enterprise application users who have mastered their processes, yet it appears from the evidence that no one seems too concerned about just moving on to whatever’s next. My question is have enterprise software applications simple sapped the strength of enterprise users? Has the bloatware complexity of products like SAP, Oracle, Sage and Microsoft simply exhausted organizations? And at this point do they just accept the fact they have an expensive business system that has ceased creating value but which it too difficult to move out of the way?
Oktoberfest can be a good time, but the day after can also be a a helluva hangover. Is this the way enterprise software buyers are feeling about their business applications?
Recent Comments