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Software Business
Executive Report
August 13, 2007
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Features
- Publicity Sharing: How to Keep Your Company in the Limelight When a Big-Name Customer Gets All the Credit
- Creating the Voice of Your Company: Strategies for Maximizing Customer Satisfaction
- Dos and Don’ts in Software Pricing
Company News
- Rapid Growth for Business Process Management Software Market
- Visionary Keynotes Announced for Software Business 2007 Conference
- Metastorm Acquires Proforma Corporation
- SeaTab Software Announces Version 4.0 of PivotLink OnDemand
- NaviSite Acquires Alabanza and Jupiter Hosting
- Wipro to Acquire Infocrossing
White Paper Posting
- Why Cross-Selling Fails -- By Matt McDarby, Senior Client Executive and Team Leader, Huthwaite
Job Posting
- Find your dream job at CareerBuilder.com
Event Listing
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Click Here to Download The Software Business 2007 Program Brochure
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Visionary Keynotes Announced for Software Business 2007 Conference
Software Business 2007 – the leading strategy and training conference for software companies – have announced the dynamic lineup of keynote speakers.
- Theodore Forbath, Chief Strategist Software Development, Wipro Technologies
- Thomas Lindeman, Group Product Manager Software Licensing & Protection Services, Microsoft
- Grant Bodley, VP, High Tech Sector, SAP
- Reza Sadeghian, VP, Strategic Operations, SAP
- Colleen Smith, VP of Software as a Service Programs, Progress Software
- Anshu Sharma, Senior Manager, Oracle SaaS Program Office
View the full conference program at: www.softwarebusinessonline.com/sb_conf07_conpro.htm
Pricing for the conference is $995 per attendee. There is a discount of $200 for registration before August 31. Team discounts are available. Before August 31 teams of three or more pay only $595 per registration. Register for Software Business 2007 at www.softwarebusinessonline.com/sb_conf07_reg.php.
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| FEATURES |
Publicity Sharing: How to Keep Your Company in the Limelight When a Big-Name Customer Gets All the Credit By Laura Grimmer, President and CEO, Articulate Communications Inc.
Nearly everyone has heard of Goldman Sachs’ forward-thinking technology strategy. Many people know about Wachovia’s growing success in the financial services industry. But far fewer know about the technology vendors behind those success stories.
Vendors of all kinds help some of the world’s largest companies to increase efficiency and save money with innovative technology, products and services. But often, it’s solely the customer that gets the valuable publicity. The challenge for any vendor — not to mention the marketing and public relations firms they work with — is to get the recognition they deserve for their customers’ successes.
To share that limelight and recognition, vendors can leverage customer successes to highlight their own success. First, companies should strengthen customer relationships and determine those customers who are not only a great asset, but those that are excited to be a part of their vendor’s success. A healthy customer relationship will bring more success and recognition to all parties involved. These relationships have the potential to increase recognition, revenue and reputation.
Here’s how Articulate Communications helped two clients solve this problem.
DataSynapse Inc., headquartered in New York, is a global provider of application virtualization software. DataSynapse drives business agility through shared services, helping clients reduce the cost and complexity of their information technology infrastructure. DataSynapse works with some of the largest companies in the financial services industry and sought recognition for what its products have done to help those companies succeed.
With the help of its longtime PR firm, Articulate Communications, DataSynapse assessed its customer landscape to find a strong relationship to leverage. It found it with Wachovia, the fourth-largest bank in the United States, which had implemented DataSynapse’s technology and saved $3.5 million annually in avoided development, support and hardware costs. DataSynapse leveraged its close relationship with Wachovia and Wachovia’s famous name to garner some limelight for its product’s money- and time-saving capabilities.
The relationship paid off in PR buzz, with eight customer-focused feature articles and four industry award wins in only five months. DataSynapse made the most of this great relationship by leveraging the Wachovia success story to highlight its own products, while helping a happy customer get some positive publicity of its own.
From a business perspective, DataSynapse has experienced exponential year-over-year growth, with a significant increase in market share and the leadership position in the financial services sector.
Another example of leveraging strong customer relationships can be found with CDC Software, a provider of enterprise software applications designed to help organizations deliver a superior customer experience while increasing efficiencies and profitability. CDC Software has a strong hold in the enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software markets, with thousands of customers in the United States, Europe and China.
CDC Software has executives that are dedicated to building and maintaining strong customer relationships and turning those satisfied customers into dependable sales and marketing references. Additionally, company leaders understand the importance of being able to leverage these customer relationships for successful PR efforts.
One of CDC Software’s most prominent vertical markets is the food industry, with more than 1,200 customers in the United States and United Kingdom alone. With customers in all aspects of food manufacturing, such as produce, meat, dairy and candies, CDC Software has been able to leverage many different customers across the market for recognition and product validation. In turn, the PR team has been able to drive 45 articles and secure four award wins in 2006 for that one market segment.
For CDC Software, the customer-driven PR program has resulted in its standalone position atop the food industry as the leading provider of enterprise software for mid-sized food manufacturers, and market dominance in its top markets globally.
The benefits for leveraging strong customers are there in the numbers, both the PR results and the impact on the overall business. For vendors who have difficulty keeping the spotlight on themselves for various reasons, utilizing successful customers is critical to stay competitive and top of mind with prospective customers.
Sales collateral, advertisements and direct-marketing initiatives can all help to provide visibility. The validation to be gained through enthusiastic customer references is the key to building credibility for a company’s positive reputation among its target audiences.
Laura Grimmer is a communication strategist with more than 18 years of experience. President, founder and CEO of Articulate Communications Inc., Laura leverages her experience for clients as a journalist, including positions as a reporter and senior editor with The Associated Press, the world’s largest news organization. Articulate Communications Inc., a technology public relations firm, helps business-to-business and technology companies achieve their corporate objectives through results-oriented, message-based communications.
Creating the Voice of Your Company: Strategies for Maximizing Customer Satisfaction
By John Joseph, Envox Worldwide
Delivering stand out customer service is a unique challenge in the software industry. In fact, the cost of agent-handled calls is greater in the high tech industry than in any other. A research study published by Perdue University revealed that in high tech support centers the cost of calls handled by agents averages $18 per call compared with just $8 per call for other industries such as financial services and retail. The reasons: the interactions are inherently more complex and time-consuming and they require handling by highly skilled (i.e., expensive) personnel.
If you evaluate your customer service organization primarily from the cost angle, however, you could be making a big mistake. In a software company, technical support doesn’t just impact costs – it represents your relationship with your customers. Providing timely customer responses is imperative and the key to gaining happy, long-term customers. Support organizations that subject customers to extended hold-times and multiple transfers risk alienating their customers and developing a poor corporate image.
Whether your support organization is a large contact center fielding a wide range of “consumer-oriented” requests, a small group serving busy and demanding IT professionals or a specialty software company with corporate clients experiencing complex issues, today’s VoIP-based interactive voice response (IVR) and contact center solutions can help. These solutions offer innovative ways to increase self-service usage, leverage in-house experts and optimize contact center operations to ensure that customers get the information and service they need the first time.
The Self-Service Connection
In general, technical support organizations would love to move more customers to self-service channels. The cost savings is undeniable. Perdue University reports that the average automated speech transaction costs $.25 per call. Some of the most successful examples include automated PIN reset, ticket status reporting, and warranty coverage lines. Self-service solutions for these simple tasks have saved millions of dollars for organizations.
Today’s VoIP-based IVR solutions (also known as IP IVR) go beyond these basic applications to put a wide range of support services at your customers’ fingertips. First, they simplify the integration of multiple systems including CRM, knowledge bases, video services, Web applications, and more. Many offer built-in speech and video capabilities enabling endless possibilities. For example, a natural language interface to a knowledge base or help file allows a caller to pose their question in his or her own words and receive a quick answer without needing to engage a support engineer. The user could also request a video clip demonstrating complex installation instructions. This solution allows the caller to complete the task at his or her own pace and also ensures that the support engineers valuable time is not spent waiting on the line while the caller completes each individual step.
Unfortunately, many organizations fail to exploit the power of self-service technologies believing that people do not like automated systems. The truth is that people dislike poorly designed solutions in which they become trapped with no escape. The “Get Human” initiative, which publishes the steps needed to reach an agent for many high tech companies, clearly underscores this problem. The key to maximizing call automation rates is creating a voice user interface that provides fast access to relevant information and services and gives callers an easy way to reach a live agent at any time. Customers will appreciate instantly obtaining the answers they are seeking and will opt to use self-service more frequently if they find it helpful. Higher automation rates can significantly reduce costs and allow your highly skilled staff to concentrate on those callers that need their expertise.
Another way to offload calls from your technical support team is to answer customer questions before they are posed. Informing customers that you have received their product for repair keeps them from wondering and calling to check.
Outbound notifications are increasingly being used to proactively communicate with customers about a wide range of issues including warranty expiration dates, order confirmations, shipment dates, product updates and fixes. Many organizations rely on e-mail but often times these messages are overlooked. Phone communications will receive more of your customer’s attention and you can completely personalize messages for select customers ensuring that they only receive the “high priority” communications that are relevant. Customers will appreciate straight forward communication that keeps them from experiencing an issue or having to call you for an update.
Planning For Multiple Touch Points
Customers today want to be able to contact an organization via whatever method is most convenient at the time. Therefore, it is imperative that organizations quickly implement a multi-channel solution capable of handling many media types including voice, Web, e-mail, chat and more. This is the only way to centrally collect, evaluate, and manage all requests efficiently and to expedite those requests that hold the most value for your organization.
Plotting the Route to Higher Caller Satisfaction
Even the most sophisticated self-service solution will never handle all of your calls. However, with today’s call routing solutions, getting customers the expert advice they require has never been easier. The solutions can be quite complex with business rules that span multiple systems including skills tables with employee expertise data, presence engines for detecting employee availability, and CRM systems with customer data. You can use a speech-driven front-end (the same used for your self-service solutions) to have the caller describe their needs and gain the intelligence you need to ensure the best agent-customer match.
The flexible nature of IP-based communications allows you to expand outside the traditional on-site contact center model to easily incorporate home-based specialists to significantly lower overhead expenses. It also enables you to tap corporate experts which can be located anywhere in the world. Some organizations opt to send calls directly to any employee with specialized knowledge. Others may reserve them to assist designated support agents. Without ever leaving the customer, applications that check on the availability of knowledge workers can provide agents with a quick IM method for gaining the information needed to complete a call. If a transfer is required, all the call or chat information can be provided along with the call, eliminating the need for the customer to repeat themselves.
Intelligent call routing is a proven method for eliminating the frustration customers experience when they can’t get the information or service they need. Resolving issues on the first call builds tremendous loyalty for the customer whose “high priority” problem was quickly solved.
Equipping Agents for Success
One of the best solutions for increasing contact center productivity and customer satisfaction is the agent screen pop. It uses computer telephony integration (CTI) technology to coordinate data and voice systems and send customer details and relevant information to the agent’s desktop with a call.
With a CTI screen pop, agents can personally greet callers and immediately begin resolving issues. Providing historical CRM data and product-specific information from a knowledge base rather than forcing an agent to search for it makes for a faster, more positive interaction. Increased productivity and shorter call times reduce caller wait time and enable you to handle more calls with existing staff. CTI also provides important call statistics such as agent name and call duration that can be used with customer and issue data to help management better understand overall contact center performance, training shortfalls, and individual agent performance.
Providing technical support is one of the most difficult jobs around. Everyone you talk with has an urgent issue that they believe borders on life-threatening. The way in which you meet this challenge directly impacts how your customers feel about you. By leveraging today’s IP IVR, contact center solutions and your experts together, your customers will get the information and self-service they need the first time. They will thank you now and in the future.
John Joseph is vice president of corporate marketing for Envox Worldwide. Contact him at john.joseph@envox.com. He will be speaking at Software Business 2007 on Building a Successful Network of Global Partners
Dos and Don’ts in Software Pricing
By Per Sjofors, Founder and Managing Partner, Atenga
Every day, in boardrooms all across America, executives gather to discuss and set prices on their products or services. The CFO comes in with cost information and price assumptions from the business plan. The VP of Marketing announces the price they believe “the market will accept.” They then turn to the VP of Sales, or if he is not available, to one of the field sales people, to verify “the market price.” All of this is then followed by hours of discussions and arguments over different prices and price strategies. In the end, consensus is reached, the CEO slams his fist down, declares what the price will be, and everybody feels good.
So what is wrong with this picture? These executives are smart, successful people who have been in business for years, many times with 20 or 30 years experience in the market they are in. so what could they possibly be doing wrong? Well, the problem is that these executives are making the biggest and most common mistake in pricing: they’re not basing their discussion and price decisions on hard, factual, accurate and unbiased data. Instead, they are setting prices based on erroneous market data, or no data at all, and using advanced guesswork and gut-feel to set the price.
Surprisingly, this is a very common occurrence in business. The majority of U.S. businesses use overly simplistic pricing methods like cost-plus or competitive-based pricing to set their prices, yet this just leaves money on the table. In order to achieve better business results, companies need to employ more effective pricing strategies.
Here are some of the basic dos and don’ts in pricing:
Do: Base Pricing Decisions on Hard Data.
Companies need to know and understand the factors that drive their customers’ purchase decisions. Many companies know reasonably well why customers buy their products, but rarely do they know why customers choose not to buy their products, which is much more important. They do not know what drives customers to buy a competitor’s product, or not buy at all, and “knowledge” based on anecdotes from the marketplace will not provide the true answers.
Only rarely can a company trust what their customers, lost customers and prospects tell them directly. The customers have no incentives for telling the truth. In fact, it’s rather the opposite. The customers have an incentive to influence their suppliers into perceiving their products as a commodity because a commodity product is sold at price alone. In a commodity, features or benefits are negligible so it does not command price premium.
When companies ask “lost customers” why they chose a competitor, most customers will give them the easiest, but rarely truthful, answer - “You are too expensive so I bought the other instead.”
Do: Develop a data model for making rational price decisions.
Rigorously collect and analyze that data and use it to set price levels and to build price realization strategies.
Companies need to use hard data from an objective 3rd party market research for their price decisions. They need to understand from this data what price drivers are important for their customers, what is their customer’s willingness to pay, and what bundling and different pricing schemes will enable them to capture the maximum of that willingness to pay. They need to also understand why they are losing business and what they can do to un-commoditize their product, add more value and realize higher profits.
Don’t rely on whimsy, “gut feelings” and anecdotes from the salespeople for pricing decisions.
Companies should not trust and exclusively use internally-generated market data to set its prices. Fed into this are rumors picked up at conventions, trade shows, and from general industry wide reports and studies. Their conclusions are also influenced by discussions, and documented market and positioning documents. By relying on this supposedly accurate, but tainted data, companies are then basing their most important business decisions on rumors, whispers, hearsay and instinct.
Paul Minor, the chief executive of DigiContractor, a CA-based company that develops photo measuring software, recently realized the error in doing so.
“We didn’t know our price points prior to the launch because as an entrepreneur, we trusted our own gut feelings,” explained Minor. “We felt like we were on target, but I honestly wasn’t sure.”
One of DigiContractor’s investors then convinced the company to conduct an independent price study “to validate their instincts.”
DigiContractor sells its software to two markets; a market of do-it-yourself consumers and a professional market of architects and engineers, but because the product itself is identical, the company did not market or price their software differently for these two groups.
To no surprise at all, the unbiased market data they collected on their markets willingness to pay was very different from the price their management team decided on prior to the launch. The data revealed that the maximum price the do-it-yourself consumer was willing to pay was actually much lower then the company’s listed price, so for them, the product was too expensive. The professional market, on the other hand, thought the listed price was too low so the product must be “cheap and can’t be any good.” Thus, the initially set price would have excluded DigiContractor from both its target markets – for those two different reasons.
“The pricing study completely validated my initial beliefs,” said Minor. “These comprehensive market studies made us change our direction. Otherwise, we never would have known.”
Do: Leverage the Iron Law of Pricing: Different customers will value your products and services differently.
Savvy companies look at their marketplace and identify their most profitable customer segments. They do cost-to-sell and cost-to-serve analysis, and they have processes and a single customer database with data tags that identify their marketplace’s purchase and price drivers.
A company in the distribution chain recently needed to figure out what value both their customers and suppliers attributed to their distribution services. They approached a price consultancy firm for help and their research conclusively showed that the company would actually be able to double its prices.
However, the CEO with more than 30 years in the business was skeptical about these findings. He said that he “knew” the market and knew what his customers would be willing to pay, so he decided to increase the price by only 25%.
Nevertheless, the results were overwhelming. The company’s sales volume went up 30% and the average sales cycle time went down 30% - a result of a non-linear price elasticity curve. When the prices were increased, the customers attributed a higher value to the company’s product, which made it easier for them to make purchase decisions. Whereas, with the old price, customers thought it was “too cheap and cannot be any good,” which led to more convincing, longer sales cycles and many customer prospects who simply never engaged with the company.
Do: Find a segmentation scheme that works and apply it rigorously.
Companies should tag every customer and every prospect with Market Segment tags, so all of their analyses can look at the costs, revenues, and rates of change and profits by market segment. They should be wary of shortcuts like SIC code, which are generally available, but rarely sufficient.
Once a company has a segmentation system in place, they should perform cost-to-sell and cost-to-serve analysis so they can identify which segments to grow. They should also build bundles of products and services that tailor their products to the precise needs of their targeted market segment. The bundles allow them to raise or lower prices in a given marketplace without changing their overall price list. They also allow companies to deliver targeted products and services.
Don’t aggregate your data at too high a level.
The important differences between groups of customers are the basis for substantially improving a company’s profits. Companies should be sure their marketplace segmentation scheme is sufficiently detailed to allow them to uncover, understand and leverage the important differences in buying motivations, patterns and policies.
For example, a manufacturer of business-to-business products utilized five unconnected customer databases for their marketing, sales, customer support, shipping and finance departments. The company had anecdotal information on why they were successful, but their databases had no basis for building profitable market segments so they could only do general marketing and they had to set their prices to an “average.”
However, competitors with better targeting capabilities began to pick-off the most profitable segments. The competitor had substantially lower costs because they served only a few segments, but they had higher profits. This competitor constituted a serious threat to the company’s customer market leadership.
All too many companies use simplistic pricing schemes and processes. They cannot identify their most profitable customers or customer segments. They do not know why customers buy or don’t buy, and what they are willing to pay. So instead, like many, they rely on stories, anecdotes and guesses.
This lack of hard information, or the guesswork that is the alternative, means that all too many management teams have their sales staff “shooting in the dark”. Their marketing and sales efforts are inefficient and costly. Some companies even embrace policies and pricing strategies that drive away their best customers, and then their CEO wonders why their profits are not growing!
The truth is, there is no one solution to increased profitability, but by following these basic do’s and don’ts in pricing, companies can easily improve their business results.
Per Sjofors is Founder and Managing Partner of Calif.-based Atenga, Inc. More information is available by calling (818) 887- 4970 or visiting www.atenga.com.
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| COMPANY NEWS |
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Rapid Growth for Business Process Management Software Market
A new IDC study reveals that the market for business process management suite (BPMS) software is one of the fastest-growing software markets, and is establishing itself as the front end to next-generation deployment platforms used to build custom applications. According to IDC’s research, the BPMS market grew nearly 80% in 2006 to $890 million. IDC predicts that rapid growth will continue throughout the five-year forecast period to reach $5.5 billion in 2011, a 44% five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
"This year and next are critical years for BPMS vendors,” said Maureen Fleming, program director for Business Process Integration and Deployment Software. "The market has had failures and consolidation, and this will continue over the forecast period. Most of the vendors have invested in their next generation capabilities. For those who aren't already, the focus should be on investing time, effort, energy, and cash building market share.”
Growth in this market will be fueled by the following factors:
- BPMS software penetration is miniscule and governs only a tiny percentage of the total addressable market. As more enterprises invest in BPM, a significant percentage of those buyers will purchase a BPMS.
- Because many BPMS installations have been purchased on a project basis rather than as enterprise infrastructure, IDC expects growth to result from the expansion of initial deployments to additional processes and locations within existing accounts.
- As the platform vendors mature their BPM software and go to market with suites or BPM bundles, purchasing among their huge installed bases will be strong over the forecast period. IBM, Oracle, BEA, and Tibco are all experiencing strong growth within their BPM portfolios. Microsoft, through its Business Process Alliance (BPA), has signaled an interest in this market. BPA members, including Ascentn, K2, and Metastorm, will benefit from this attention and investment.
- Vendors in adjacent markets have also moved into BPMS. EMC, Autonomy, and Adobe are leaders in their respective markets that will contribute to strong growth in BPMS.
- Software as a service (SaaS) is only beginning to emerge as a business model in this market. However, IDC believes the SaaS model will help fuel growth in the midmarket, small business, and business-to-business arenas during the latter half of the forecast period.
Over the next several years, the many BPMS pure-play vendors will be fighting against the larger vendors for market share. This will be a challenge when a small portion of a large project involves the implementation of workflow to solve a process automation problem. However, enterprises planning to invest in process excellence will be assessing BPMS based on the level of knowledge the vendor has about business process management in addition to the degree of sophistication of the product offering.
From that perspective, the pure-play vendors’ ability to innovate by continually responding to customer needs will help them battle the larger vendors and will continue to push the larger vendors to improve their own offerings. Over the next several years, innovations coming from the pure plays -- Lombardi, Global 360, Ascentn, Appian, Savvion, Bluespring, Ultimus, and others -- will continue to drive advances in this market.
This IDC study, Worldwide Business Process Management Suite 2007-2011 Forecast and 2006 Vendor Shares (IDC #207954) examines the business process management suite software market for the period from 2004 to 2011, with vendor revenue trends and market growth forecasts. Worldwide market sizing is provided for 2006, along with trends and vertical and customer size segmentations. A five-year growth forecast for this market is shown for 2007–2011. Revenue and market share of the leading vendors is provided for 2006. This study also provides profiles of many of the vendors and identifies the characteristics that vendors will need to be successful in the future.
Contact www.idc.com
Metastorm Acquires Proforma Corporation
Metastorm, a leading provider of Business Process Management (BPM) software for organizational agility, innovation, and governance, has aquired Proforma Corporation, the leading provider of enterprise modeling solutions for Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Analysis (BPA). The combined company will deliver an integrated enterprise software platform that unifies business strategy and architecture, process analysis and optimization, and managed human- and system-centric process execution. Metastorm will address the complete spectrum of activities required to achieve enterprise alignment, optimize execution across the business process value chain and help organizations gain a sustainable strategic advantage through true enterprise visibility and continuous improvement.
“Metastorm is proud to be joining forces with Proforma to move beyond today’s Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) definition and chart a new course for enterprise effectiveness through increased collaboration, agility, and understanding. Organizations today are striving to improve performance through EA, BPA and BPM initiatives. The synergies, interdependencies, and potential value of these three disciplines are immense, and now is the right time for Proforma and Metastorm to join forces and deliver an integrated software platform,” stated Bob Farrell, president and CEO of Metastorm. “Metastorm has always focused on delivering innovative solutions that allow organizations to achieve strategic and competitive advantage across key business activities and processes. With the convergence of these disciplines, Metastorm sets the stage for the next generation enterprise software platform.”
Metastorm Enterprise – the new software platform – allows customers to establish a unified enterprise model which can be leveraged to inspire collaboration, guide improvement and innovation, and enable the alignment of strategy, analysis and execution for optimal business performance throughout the enterprise. The result is never before achieved visibility into the impact of decisions at all levels, the opportunities available to the organization as a whole, and the ability to accelerate the execution of decisions and actions with less risk and increased confidence of success. Metastorm Enterprise will uniquely address the three critical challenges facing organizations today:
- Understanding the underlying dynamics of the organization, collaborating to ensure the pieces fit together, and creating agility within the context of overall enterprise strategy and architecture;
- Mapping out an end state that maximizes the effectiveness of key business processes, intertwined with other enterprise assets, to achieve strategic objectives;
- Executing optimized, effective business processes with cross-functional transparency and the flexibility to adapt and implement new ideas quickly.
“Linkage to the workflow assembly and orchestration engines and business activity monitoring (BAM) tools is driving BPA into the mainstream for BP improvement initiatives. Understanding complex business processes is a significant challenge. The assistance of a tool with visualization and other features — such as simulation and activity-based costing (ABC) — helps to optimize business processes and realize BPM cost and time savings,” states Michael Blechar, vice president at Gartner, Inc. in his June 2007 report titled Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools, 2H07-1H08. In addition, “BPA tools help define the business architecture portion of the enterprise architecture. Many BPA tools can also be used by technical, application and data architects to define the technical and information architectures. And, because most BPA tools have a shared repository for these models, it is possible to do change impact analysis across organizations and roles based on the inter-relationships of their models.”
Proforma is known for delivering a balanced solution that meets the needs of multiple modeling roles within an organization. It delivers a robust knowledgebase of reference models based on published standards, industry expertise and practical experience. Proforma has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the EA and BPA markets because it is easy to use, bridges the gap between IT architects and business users, and provides a proven set of repeatable best practice frameworks.
Contact Metastorm at www.metastorm.com
Metastorm CEO Bob Farrell will discuss Business Strategies: Acquiring to Become an Industry Leader at Software Business 2007
SeaTab Software Announces Version 4.0 of PivotLink OnDemand
SeaTab Software, Inc., a provider of enterprise-grade, on-demand business intelligence solutions, has launched PivotLink OnDemand 4.0, the latest version of its BI offering. This marks a significant milestone in the company’s long-standing focus on putting the full power and value of business intelligence in the hands of every business user, providing solutions that deliver unsurpassed end-user access and control of powerful BI functionality.
The new version offers a new user interface that represents a significant advancement in usability and visual appeal. It includes such features as intuitive drag-and-drop report configuration, easy-to-use conditional alerts and fully interactive, rich data visualizations. The release also supports the company’s growing business in embedded BI by enabling rapid creation of user-interface “skins”, enabling customers and OEM partners to quickly and easily customize and brand PivotLink OnDemand in their own environments.
“Our customers achieve stellar results by deploying our business intelligence solutions broadly and deeply among their employees,” said Aaron Burnett, vice president of marketing for SeaTab Software. “We remain dedicated to making BI as powerful, intuitive and easy-to-use for a non-technical business user as it is for an experienced business analyst. PivotLink 4.0 is another major step in that direction.”
SeaTab’s PivotLink OnDemand puts the full power of business intelligence in the hands of people who need it, with tailored environments for each user – from CEOs to rank-and-file employees, from vendors to customers. SeaTab’s unique, self-directed analytics capabilities provide these users with complete analytical freedom without requiring IT involvement.
Contact www.seatab.com
NaviSite Acquires Alabanza and Jupiter Hosting
NaviSite, Inc, a leading provider of application management, internet infrastructure and hosting solutions for the mid-market, has acquired two privately-held providers of hosting services – Alabanza and Jupiter Hosting – for total cash consideration of approximately $15.5 million.
Baltimore, MD based Alabanza offers a comprehensive suite of dedicated and shared web hosting services, as well as a highly automated proprietary software platform for provisioning and managing high volume hosting solutions. Santa Clara, CA based Jupiter Hosting offers dedicated and complex managed hosting and infrastructure services that include high quality and high bandwidth applications such as IPTV, Video on Demand and Progressive Video Delivery; the company also has a data center located in Santa Clara, CA.
"Alabanza and Jupiter fit neatly into our managed hosting offerings and were acquired at less than four times expected synergistic EBITDA," said Arthur Becker, Chief Executive Officer of NaviSite. "These transactions add new customers with average revenue per square foot densities of approximately $4,700 per year and create significant opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell our entire suite of managed services."
The acquisitions were financed predominately through cash on hand. The acquisitions are expected to be accretive to adjusted EBITDA immediately and fully integrated by NaviSite’s second quarter. The company plans to update fiscal 2008 guidance for these acquisitions in its next quarterly earnings call tentatively scheduled for the end of September, 2007.
Contact www.navisite.com
Wipro to Acquire Infocrossing
Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT), and Infocrossing, Inc. (NASDAQ:IFOX), a US-based provider of IT infrastructure management, enterprise application and business process outsourcing services, recently announced that the companies have signed a definitive agreement for Wipro to acquire Infocrossing for $18.70 per share in an all cash deal that will create one of the world leaders in end-to-end IT infrastructure management solutions. The acquisition will be conducted by means of a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Infocrossing, followed by a merger of Infocrossing with a Wipro subsidiary. The tender offer is subject to a number of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close by the fourth quarter of 2007.
“Wipro Technologies has identified global infrastructure services as an important driver of growth for the company and is pleased to add Infocrossing, which provides integrated managed infrastructure services to premier global clients,” said Suresh Vaswani, President, Global IT Service-lines, of Wipro. “Total Outsourcing Services, which include our IT infrastructure services, grew 75% in the past year proving global clients are increasingly realizing the value of these services. This acquisition of an acknowledged industry leader broadens the data center and mainframe capabilities of Wipro Technologies to uniquely position us in the remote infrastructure management space. Through Infocrossing we are deepening our presence in the United States with the addition of five data center locations and approximately nine hundred employees.” Sudip Banerjee, President Enterprise Solutions of Wipro Technologies added, “With its unique Platform based solutions, Infocrossing also brings in significant expertise in Health plan & Payer Management segments. With its proven track record of processing over 175 million claims annually and providing contracted services to over 90 managed care organizations, Infocrossing will considerably enhance Wipro’s ADM & BPO offerings to our Healthcare customers.”
The global IT infrastructure market has been projected to be $150 billion and the global market opportunity for remote infrastructure management services has been predicted to reach $70 billion, according to industry association NASSCOM. Infocrossing’s expertise in hosted and managed IT infrastructure services will enhance Wipro’s current service offerings. The Company operates five state-of-the art data centers in the United States and provides a full portfolio of infrastructure management solutions, including server management, mainframe outsourcing, network management and security services. For the twelve months ended March 31, 2007, Infocrossing had revenues of $232.4 million and net income of $9.3 million.
“Infocrossing is pleased to be joining such a strong global organization such as Wipro Technologies,” said Zach Lonstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Infocrossing. “We selected Wipro after conducting a full process and believe that by coupling our strong services and U.S.-based operations with the global delivery model of Wipro Technologies, we will be able to drive additional value for the shareholders and clients of both our companies.”
Wipro was advised on the transaction by Citigroup and represented by the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, and Infocrossing was advised by Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and represented by the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
Contact www.wipro.com
Theodore Forbath, Chief Strategist Software Development, Wipro Technolo gies will deliver the Keynote Software-As-A-Service: Challenges and Solutions at Software Business 2007 |
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Why Cross-Selling Fails -- By Matt McDarby, Senior Client Executive and Team Leader, Huthwaite
If cross-selling initiatives can benefit buyers and sellers alike, why do they rarely succeed? This white paper explores the market forces driving the necessity for cross-selling, the typical reasons cross-selling initiatives fail and how companies can position and sell their expanded offerings more effectively.
Matt McDary of Huthwaite will speak on How to Escape the Price-Driven Sale at Software Business 2007.
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Software Business 2007
October 2-3
Santa Clara, Calif.
You are invited to join leading companies SAP, Socialtext, Kineticsware, Cincom, Progress Software, Brainshark, LucidEra, Metastorm, Formotus, Parlano, SolidWorks, Softrax and International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute, along with many other companies and consultants at the software industry's leading executive and manager training event. The event will run Oct. 2-3 with workshops on Oct. 1 and Bootcamps on Oct. 4. Software Business 2007 registration is now open, so reserve your spot today. Space is limited for many of the sessions.
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August 13-17 -- Agile 2007 Conference, Washington, DC. Contact www.agile2007.com
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October 2-3 – Software Business 2007, Santa Clara, Calif. Contact www.softwarebusinessonline.com Software Business Will Have an Editor At This Show
Software Business 2007
October 2-3
Santa Clara, Calif.
Software Business 2007 will be held October 2-3 at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara , Calif. The annual conference focuses on current strategic business, financial and technology issues and growth opportunities facing top executives of software companies. It is a two-day conference serving owners, chief executives, presidents, vice presidents and division or department directors of leading and fast-growing software companies located throughout North America who are conducting business domestically and worldwide.
The sixth annual conference returns to Silicon Valley for the first time in four years. It will offer speakers from leading software companies and deliver the industry's most informative sessions through four tracks of sessions. Additionally, the conference will offer full- and half-day workshops on Monday, October 1.
Interop 2007 New York
October 22 – 26, 2007
The Javits Center
Don’t miss the leading business technology event. Interop brings together IT and business leaders to see all of the latest technologies in action. Visit more than 125 exhibitors, attend 100+ sessions, and check out live demos of practical business solutions. Whether you need to evaluate a product, solve a challenge, or just stay ahead of the curve, Interop will help you move your business forward. www.interop.com
CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2007
October 23-25, 2007
San Francisco, CA USA
CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment focuses on integrating wireless data technologies into the enterprise and vertical business markets such as healthcare, government, automotive, retail etc. Additionally, the show reflects the explosive growth in wireless entertainment-encompassing everything from music downloads to digital cameras to interactive games. One Show. Two Personalities. This is wireless redefined. Register now at www.ctia.org/wirelessIT
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