Posts Tagged ‘SaaS’

New Report: An elegant solution to keep your books INTACCT

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Jeffrey L. Williams (Jeff), good friend and colleague, and I took a fairly good look at Intacct recently.

If you don’t know Intacct, they’ve got a solid SaaS (software-as-a-service) Accounting solution that integrates with many best of breed solutions to round out an entire suite. We’ve interviewed top management, participated in product demonstrations, and more to develop this report.

 Intacct Report Cover May 2010

Here’s an excerpt from our Market Prognosis section of the report:

We particularly like the following about Intacct and its products:

  • The company is very focused on its product line focus (financials) and its sales strategies.
  • The company’s distribution channel is quite enviable. Moreover, the solution very elegantly solves a number of business needs that accounting firms (and their clients) have.
  • We also liked the team at Intacct and believe them to be motivated, sharp and focused on the right priorities for the company

     

    We believe additional focus may be required in these areas:

    • Intacct does not currently offer a PaaS. We believe this could be a limiting factor in its attractiveness to other software firms, systems integrators and other potential partners. Clients would benefit from a PaaS as well.
    • Supporting multi-nationals may force Intacct to develop more skills, more product capabilities and more local sales/support personnel. Rolling this out will need to be carefully metered if the company is to maintain growth rates cost effectively. Multi-lingual support is just one need here.
    • We believe the products could go even further up-market. The functionality may already adequate to do so for many prospective customers. However, Intacct will need more applications/application coverage to improve its penetration in larger accounts. This may also require an upgrading of Intacct’s service partner ecosystem, too.

     

    Overall, Intacct should exhibit better than average growth in the SaaS financial software space. As long as the company continues to serve customers well (e.g., no material system outages) and develops more product and architectural capabilities in a timely manner, they should do quite well.”

    SaaS – Large Enterprise Adoption – Definitely an Early Majority play now

    Sunday, May 30th, 2010

    We recently completed a report about large enterprises and their adoption of SaaS applications. When this kicked off, we thought we’d find a lot of firms telling us they’re still worried about data security in the cloud. We thought we’d hear a lot of hemming and hawing.

    Instead, we found big, really big firms, adopting SaaS applications. These firms told us about their plans to implement more and more SaaS applications. More amazing were the numbers they shared with us regarding how much less these applications cost than on-premise products. 2010 Vital Analysis report

    This is a big report with a lot of surprises. And, more than anything, it showed us that SaaS is no longer the domain of early adopters and innovators. It’s now well within the realm of Geoffrey Moore’s Early Majority.

    Want to be more relevant? Quit chasing, fixing and passing around paper docs!

    Sunday, May 30th, 2010

    Jeff Williams, an old colleague of mine at Accenture, and I will be guests on a webinar on June 3, 2010. The webinar will be run by CFO magazine and sponsored by SpringCM. SpringCM is a cloud-based content management solution headquartered here in Chicago.

    Jeff and I will get quizzed regarding our views on the content management space.  This area remains of great interest to Jeff and I as we both drove a lot of work in back office processes in our careers. We’re still seeing a lot of bad processes in businesses. Some of this is due to rushed mergers, over-reliance on spreadsheets, etc. to solve problems. But, sadly, we’re still seeing a lot of talented individuals in all manner of companies struggling with error correction activities, fighting fraud and other fire-fighting activities when they should be doing something far more strategic for their employers and their careers.

    Last week, in preparation for this, Jeff and I did a conference call. We’ll likely discuss:

    – how prevalent document and process problems still are in many businesses

    – how expensive these problems can be

    – what the range of solutions are in the marketplace

    – the upside some companies reap with better content solutions

    – how the cloud (i.e., software as a service) brings better economics to this space

    – and whatever else the folks at CFO want us to discuss

    If you’d like to listen, there’s no fee but you’ll need to register on CFO magazine’s site:
    http://www.cfo.com/webcast.cfm?webcast=14499018&pcode=SPR060310_Vital_Analysis

    I hope a few of you can make it

    Brian

    Cytiva – Initiating Coverage & New Report

    Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

    We recently began coverage of Cytiva, the makers of Sonic Recruit and other HR applications. We’ve developed a research report on the company and its products. The report is available for $395 and can be ordered via our request form on this website.

    2008 Cytiva report cover

    Here’s an excerpt from the Solutions section of the report:

    The breadth of Cytiva’s product line has grown over the years. Essentially, the solution set began in 2001 as an applicant tracking solution that morphed into a recruiting solution (aka SonicRecruit). The product line now contains modules for:

    – hiring manager

    – staffing firm portal

    – hourly employee solution (aka SonicEntrée)

    – on-boarding – released in 2006 (aka SonicLaunch)

    One observation we made is that Cytiva’s solutions cover both professional and hourly workers. Many talent management solutions have a distinct bias for one class or the other while professing coverage for both worker groups. The amount of energy and functionality Cytiva has placed into the hourly worker space is refreshing.

    The company has recently announced a new module called SonicPerform Enterprise. This module provides Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) functionality. This product features “Jump Start Text” – a capability that expedites the completion of performance reviews for managers by translating numeric, Likert scale values into suggested textual commentary.

    Cytiva offers SaaS (software as a service) solutions.

    Coda 2go – A Force to Reckon With

    Sunday, June 15th, 2008

    Coda 2go Cover

    New Research Report – Coda’s New Force.com Based Product Line

    We recently prepared a research report on the Coda 2go product line. Coda 2go is an all-new product line built off the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, Force.com. Force.com is the salesforce.com development platform being featured to much fanfare by salesforce.com in events worldwide.

    We liked the speed with which Coda developed this offering and this speaks well of the Force.com platform. Both salesforce.com and Coda will benefit from this effort. We particularly like the combination of Coda’s strong financial functionality and saleforce.com’s SFA, CRM and platform.

    The report can be ordered from Vital Analysis for $395. Please complete an online request form or email us at contact@vitalanalysis.com .

    NetSuite’s NS-BOS – Part of a Bigger Story

    Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

    Last week, NetSuite announced its NS-BOS business operating system. Along with this announcement, NetSuite also announced the availability of a new debugging tool.

    There is a bigger picture angle to this and its one that escapes other SaaS application vendors. NetSuite’s approach to the mid-market maybe superior to that of over SaaS vendors. It’s a lower integration cost strategy that should receive a very warm welcome with mid-market software buyers and the vertical industry application developers who ally with NetSuite.

     NS -BOS Report Cover

    This report is available for sale @ $495 per copy. To order, please use our online info request form or email us at contact@vitalanalysis.com

    NetSuite Earnings

    Thursday, February 14th, 2008

    New Report on NetSuite’s 2007 Earnings

    Today, 2/14/2008, NetSuite management briefed analysts on the company’s financial performance for the year 2007. Executives also discussed NetSuite’s competition, capital deployment, hiring plans and a recent 1000 user CRM win. earnings report cover

    All of these items are discussed in the a special Vital Analysis report. For a limited time, this report is available for free to those persons submitting a report request on our website and using a valid business email address. Alternatively, you can request a copy via email from: contact@vitalanalysis.com

    SuiteBundler to Propel Innovation Within NetSuite

    Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

    NetSuite SuiteBuilder cover

    NetSuite Adds Powerful Tools to its Product Line

    Late 2007, NetSuite announced powerful new product line capabilities to its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application product line. We were particularly impressed with the intense new vertical extensions that have been developed by NetSuite resellers using the new SuiteBundler tools.

    In the Prognosis section of our report, we wrote that:

    For NetSuite customers, SuiteBundler is a very positive, albeit indirect, step forward. SuiteBundler should trigger a landslide of new vertical functionality within the NetSuite ecosystem.  For NetSuite’s target market, the small to midsized business, this additional breadth and depth in industry functionality is a welcome sight.  While high-end ERP solution providers possess some of this needed industry expertise in their products, their price points are cost prohibitive for SMB buyers.  Traditional SMB solutions often contain stripped down or skeletal vertical capabilities.  These traditional SMB solutions may create perplexing or undesirable workarounds for their customers and often require excessively high-cost implementation fees to make workable. SuiteBundler should help usher in a more cost-effective and robust set of vertical solutions for the SMB space.”

     

    This report is available to Vital Analysis clients. Inquiries regarding it can be directed to contact@vitalanalysis.com .