Enterprise Software Archives - Page 6 of 12

Koral – Collaborative Content Management without the Hassle of "Management"

Posted on January 29, 2007 ·

My regular readers know I’m a big fan of wikis. There is just no better way for collaborative group work. If I started a company today, we’d have a wiki from Day 1. Gartner predicts 50% penetration to business by the end of 2009 – that’s Gartner, that’s only 50% and that’s 3 years away. That leaves a large number of businesses unserved, and a huge opportunity to enable them to collaborate without changing the way they work.

Today the #1 productivity platform in business is still Microsoft Office. A typical “knowledge worker” creates documents, spreadsheets, presentations on her/his desktop, tries to maintain order by diligently filing them under an ever-growing directory-structure and shares the information by emailing the files around. When several co-workers need to contribute to a document, version chaos ensues. Document management systems are supposed to ease the pain, but they are big, expensive, and surprisingly (?) only 5% of office workers actually use them.

Koral, a content collaboration startup debuted a few months ago has a strong change to change it all. It pursues a very simple idea: allow users to share information, give them access to the most recent version of all documents, whether the latest update is on their desktop or someone elses, and guide them with several popularity/ usage indicators, i.e. most accessed documents, most active contributors, best rated experts ..etc – do it all without forcing users to change how they work today.

They can continue individually working on their desktops, and all they have to do is drag the documents to be stored into Koral’s drop-box on their desktop. The document is instantly uploaded, fully indexed, auto-tagged based on content, and for certain document types (for now PPT) flash previews are generated. The user does not have to be logged on to the web-based system, although doing so allows for additional categorization, tagging, permissioning:

All this information becomes the foundation of easy document retrieval. Gone is the directory jungle where files are replicated and lost: it’s all about tagging and powerful search. Search, which can based on simple keywords, boolean expressions, or multi-step, clustered search where a friendly interface helps the user create further filters based on content, file formats, tags, categories, author ..etc until the number of matching documents comes down to a handful – at which point the online previews come handy.

Once you found what you’re looking for, you can download your document, or subscribe to it, giving you alerts any time the document is updated. The subscription mechanism goes beyond just notification: it’s the foundation of document synchronization. Koral places a tracker the local (desktop) document, so it will know who has what version at any time. When you access a local document – open it, or even attach it to an email – Koral will warn you if you don’t have the most recent version (i.e. someone else has updated it online) and of course offers to replace your old copy.

Sync goes a step further: how often do a few “core slides” get replicated in dozens of corporate presentations? Or a key spreadsheet embedded in various other documents and slides? Koral can refresh all these second-generation documents when the core slide/spreadsheet changes – i.e. your numbers are magically updated.

Stepping beyond traditional document management there are a number of social networking / bookmarking features: documents can be rated, commented on.

The document summary page above shows the average rating, number of users who rated the document, number of downloads and subscribers, and comments, on top of the standard document attributes like creation date, author, version number.

Koral is currently piloting a version with select customers where they can provide ranking statistics based on some of the above information: most frequently read, downloaded, subscribed document, most discussed document, most popular post or author, most popular tags ..etc. Needless to say you can subscribe to authors, tags, categories, not just individual documents. All this essentially supports better information discovery rather than just explicit search for information you already know exists.

Finally, some of the best applications are when you don’t even notice you’re working with Koral: users of Salesforce.com can discover related documents and attach them to the lead / opportunity record without ever leaving the salesforce.com environment.

Talk about mashups …Koral itself is a “bridge” product, enhancing the productivity of largely offline users (working in MS Office) by offering an online service. I would love to see them move further on the offline/online continuum by offering online tools to not only preview but actually edit documents online – the recent Zoho-Omnidrive mashup is a good precedent to follow.

For additional information, check out the demo video by Tim Barker, VP Products, and Robert Scoble’s interview with CEO Mark Suster.

Tags: koral, microsoft office, ms office, ecm, content management, document management, content collaboration, collaboration, saaS, search, content discovery, salesforce.com, zoho, office 2.0

Filed Under: Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Startups ·

SAP’s Zesty A1S(auce)

Posted on January 26, 2007 ·

SAP held major internal announcements and demos of its A1S product, tailored for the mid-market, the future growth sector now that the top end of the ERP market is saturated.

The demos were top-secret, attendees had to sign an NDA – and since I am not one of them, I’m left wondering whether they’ve seen the original flavor or the Zesty one

Filed Under: Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Humor · Tagged: A1S, Enterprise Software, erp, Humor, mid-market, On-Demand, SaaS, sap, sap a1s

Group Collaboration is NOT Dead

Posted on January 23, 2007 ·

(Updated)
It’s become fashionable to beat up large corporations. I understand the feeling; having done my time in the corporate world I know I’m not going back … but that said, not everyone is a freelancer, startup entrepreneur or just “old-fashioned” small business employee. Most of today’s workforce are still corporate employees, and large companies produce most of our GDP, like it or not.

Which is why I don’t understand Stowe Boyd’s rant against group-oriented collaboration tools:

“The basic model of 90’s era collaboration, a la Lotus Notes, is all about the group. Information was managed in group-based repositories, then passed around for review, or published to intranet portals via customized apps. Information era workflows where people are first and foremost occupiers of roles, not individuals, and the materials being created are more closely aligned with groups than individuals.

Web 2.0 social tools — largely — work around a different model. Social networks — explicit ones like MySpace and Facebook, or implicit ones in social media — are really organized around individuals and their networked self-expression. I am writing this blog post, and publishing it, personally. It is not the product of some workgroup. It is not an anonymous chunk of text on a corporate portal. My Facebook profile pulls traffic from my network of contacts, sources I find interesting, and the chance presence updates of my friends.

I don’t need to participate in groups to exist or to share — or to matter — in this world.

On the other hand, Notes and Sharepoint, and even their webby second cousins, like Basecamp, are principally organized around groups. I have argued in the past about the work federation design flaw in Basecamp (see here: Basecamp and The Federation Of Work), but the basic problem is the wrong emphasis on belonging to groups instead of being connected to individuals. “

Well, Stowe may not need to participate in a group, being a successful freelancer, but the average corporate employee does, and they are IBM’s target market. Group-thinking, collaboration is as important as ever, not only to enable individuals co-create better, but also, as a secondary effect to preserve knowledge – should the individual leave, business does not come to screeching halt.

Quickr or Slowr, Lotus Connections and Sharepoint will make a killing this year. Personally, I’m quite happy I don’t have to touch them – but then again, like Stowe, I’m not a corporate employee. I just don’t forget about the majority of the world, who are.

Update (1/23): Stowe’s post stirred up a bit of conversation:

Social enterprise: Oxymoron or business logic? (Donna Bogatin @ZDNet)
Donna Bogatin on Social Enterprise: Group-First or Me-First? (Stowe Boyd)

Tags: ibm, lotus connections, lotus notes, ibm quickr, social software, collaboration, groupware, freelance, stowe boyd

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Social Networking ·

24SevenOffice Acquisition Rumors

Posted on January 19, 2007 ·

24SevenOffice, the European SaaS provider of an integrated, All-In-One system for small businesses may be in acquisition talks with a major US vendor. The news went almost unnoticed, partly because it leaked just before Christmas, partly because the company is largely unknown outside a few European countries – not for long if a deal comes through.

I covered 24SevenOffice, a very promising SaaS provider for the SMB (SME) market several times. Their system is modular but integrated with a breath of functionality I simply haven’t seen elsewhere: Accounting, CRM (Contacts, Lead Mgt, SFA), ERP (Supply Chain, Orders, Products, Inventory), Communication, Group Scheduling, HR, Project Management, Publishing, Intranet. Essentially a NetSuite+Communication and Collaboration.

About the only thing I did not like was the lack of availability for US customers – this might change soon. The news release and blog post mentions three names: Salesforce.com, WebEx and Google, but adds a somewhat cloudy remark: “the companies here are only examples of what the rumors have outlined.” It does not explicitly confirm one of these specific companies as the potential buyer. I should also add that while I had in the past been in touch with Management, at this time I have no information whatsoever from the company, so the ideas below are purely my speculation.

Salesforce.com as suitor: A well-integrated All-In-One product would come handy to Salesforce.com which could dramatically expand their customer base this way. However, they’ve gone a long way in the other direction, trying to become a platform and extending their reach via the ecosystem built around the AppExchange. Acquiring 24SevenOffice would be a huge about-face for Marc Benioff, and essentially would mean admitting that archrival Zach Nelson of NetSuite was right all this time about the superiority of the integrated All-In-One approach.

WebEx: Their original market, the web conferencing space is being commoditized, they clearly are looking for more lucrative markets, as evidenced by the recently launched WebEx Connect (their “AppExchange”). I haven’t heard about much activity since the announcement – certainly owning a product like 24SevenOffice (btw., it really should be called 24SevenBusiness) would allow WebEx a powerful entry into the SMB applications market.

Google: No way, you might say. Google and business process / transaction oriented software are lightyears apart – at least today.

Yet unlikely as it sounds the deal would make perfect sense. Google clearly aspires to be a significant player in the enterprise space, and the SMB market is a good stepping stone, in fact more than that, a lucrative market in itself. Bits and pieces in Google’s growing arsenal: Apps for Your Domain, JotSpot, Docs and Sheets …recently there was some speculation that Google might jump into another acquisition (Thinkfree? Zoho?) to be able to offer a more tightly integrated Office. Well, why stop at “Office”, why not go for a complete business solution, offering both the business/transactional system as well as an online office, complemented by a wiki? Such an offering combined with Google’s robust infrastructure could very well be the killer package for the SMB space catapulting Google to the position of dominant small business system provider. Who’d benefit from such a deal? Google, millions of small businesses, and of course 24SevenOffice.

I admit I would feel somewhat sorry for 24SevenOfice though, as I clearly think they could have a shot of becoming a billion-dollar business on their own – the next NetSuite. Either way, if they make it to the US market this year, they’ll likely see explosive growth. When they are a well -known brand, remember, you discovered them here.

Filed Under: ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: 24sevenoffice, all-in-one, crm, Enterprise Software, erp, Google, netsuite, office 2.0, On-Demand, SaaS, salesforce.com, small Business, smb, sme, thinkfree, webex, zoho

Wikis are Not Knowledge Management Tools

Posted on January 18, 2007 ·

No, this is not an anti-wiki pitch, that would be highly unlikely coming from me. But I am continually amazed how we tend to focus on features while missing the people factor. Knowledge Management is a prime example. KM projects typically do not fail due to software issues, but for human reasons: lack of input, or GIGO. Yet here’s an excerpt from a white paper by enterprise wiki vendor MindTouch::

“Wikis provide a flexible alternative to the rigidity of conventional

knowledge management software.

Why wikis work for knowledge management

Based on the features described above, wikis are a powerful replacement for conventional

knowledge management software, because they make knowledge easier to

capture, find and consume:

a. Capturing information: The information is there. Somewhere. Maybe on

a PC, maybe in a file attached to an email, maybe in someone’s head

undocumented. With a wiki, all documents are stored in one central

repository, and files are uploaded rather than attached to emails. Therefore

information is more likely to be captured, stored and made available for reuse.

b. Finding information: When a user has to search a network file server,

he or she must know exactly where to look. A wiki lets a user search

contextually. In addition, because the structure is not required to be linear—

as with KM software—cross-linking of pages helps users not only find

information, but find relevant information.

c. Consuming information: In addition to finding information more easily with

a wiki, a user finds that information in context, meaning the information

is in a location that gives the user some background and perspective relative

to the data. That enables the user to more quickly comprehend the meaning,

significance and relevance of that piece of information. “

All of the above is true – yet it misses the Big Picture. The real story is not about a better tool, but being able to work differently. When wikis are truly embraced in the enterprise, they don’t just make KM easier; they put it out of it’s misery. Yes, that’s right, the wiki is the end of Knowledge Management as we know it: the after-the-fact collection, organization and redistribution of knowledge objects.

The wiki becomes the primary platform to conduct work, the fabric of everyday business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture information. While not a Knowledge Management tool, the wiki resolves the KM-problem as a by-product.

Update (6/15/08): Now we have pretty good terms to describe the above, instead of my clumsy explanation. See the discussion on In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow wikis by Michael Idinopulos and Ross Mayfield.

Ross Mayfield talks about similar ideas in Manage Knowledgement (MK):

“Turns out, users resisted and the algorithms didn’t match reality. With MK, through blogs and wikis, the principle activity is sharing, driven by social incentives. Contribution is simple and unstructured, isn’t a side activity and there is permission to participate. Intelligence is provided by participants, both through the act of sharing and simply leaving behind breadcrumbs of attention.”

Update (5/1): What Happened to Knowledge Management? – by Stewart Mader

Filed Under: Collaboration, Enterprise Software · Tagged: atlassian, brainkeeper, Collaboration, confluence, Enterprise Software, enterprise wiki, Jotspot, KM, Knowledge Management, Manage Knowledgement, mindtouch, socialtext, wiki, wikis

The "Hidden" Business Model in SaaS: Benchmarking

Posted on December 14, 2006 ·

(Updated)

While we saw a lot of exciting products at the Office 2.0 Conference, the biggest “surprise” was not a product announcement, but FreshBooks CEO Mike McDerment letting the cat out of the bag:

“He basically announced the hidden value proposition enabled by SaaS: competitive benchmarking. All previous benchmarking efforts were hampered by the quality of source data, which, with all systems behind firewalls was at least questionable. SaaS providers will have access to the most authentic data ever, aggregation if which leads to the most reliable industry metrics and benchmarking. “

Two months later FreshBooks published the first set of raw data. It includes stats on payment methods, invoicing by email vs. regular mail, browser an operating system usage. It’s a rather limited set, and only covers two months, but it’s a start, certainly to be followed with more business-critical data. CEO Mike McDerment also takes a first cut at analyzing the data, for example:

“Browser Usage

– Internet Explorer 7 – October 5.02%, November 9.68%

– IE 6 – October 37.64%, November 36.77%

– Firefox 2.0 – October 6.61%, November 24.51%

– Firefox 1.5 – October 44.26%, November 22.07%

Analysis

Both IE and Firefox have new versions out. Clearly the Firefox community is quicker to switch to new versions. Remarkably quick in fact.”

I’m not sure I’d agree with the analysis: certainly Mike is right, the Firefox community appears to be quicker in switching to new versions, but aren’t we missing a bigger picture? I’ve dropped the data into Zoho Sheet, the web-base spreadsheet app which generated this chart:

The “bigger picture” is that IE gained market share vs. Firefox (something that as a FFox user I’m not happy with ). Clearly, the majority of new IE7 users are not IE6 upgraders, they came from the Firefox camp.

But I’m not here to discuss browser use, nor do I intend to ridicule Mike’s analysis. I picked this example to make a point: the same data set may carry different meaning to you and me. The art isn’t so much in the accumulation of data, but the proper aggregation and analysis allowing customers to benchmark themselves against industry peers – that’s where the real value is, not in raw data. So much so, that I probably wouldn’t entirely give it away; rather market it as a for-fee premium service.

SaaS providers may become the benchmark specialists themselves, but think about it: businesses will likely end up using a few systems from different providers, and if your purchasing, sales, invoicing, service ..etc data are all in different systems (and consequently aggregated by the different providers), wouldn’t you have a better competitive picture benchmarking yourself based on all those aspects? Does this mean we’ll have independent benchmarking consultants in the SaaS world? If so, will there be a secondary market for raw aggregate data?

But wait … whose data is it anyway? Trust in your data being secure, not lost, published, traded with is the cornerstone of the SaaS model’s viability. But we’re not talking about original customer data, rather its derivative – does that change the picture? There’s a potentially huge market opportunity here, yet SaaS veterans like Salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow …etc haven’t explored it yet. Why? I suspect for this very trust/ownership issue, which can be a potential mine-field. In the early days of SaaS it simply would not have been appropriate to address it, but now with mainstream SaaS acceptance (MicKinsey predicts 61% of $1B+ corporations will adopt one or more SaaS applications over the next year) it’s high time the industry starts addressing these issues.

Kudos to FreshBooks for being a pioneer in building the service as well as bringing a major industry dilemma to the forefront.

Update (01/04): Jeremiah is thinking along the same lines, discussing how storage companies will (?) eventually pay for your data. Yes, he talks about storage while I talk about applications, he talks about advertising while I talk about benchmarking, but in the end it’s the same: user data being processed to deliever business services.

Update (9/28/2008): Here’s another showcase of benchmarking turned into action messages on CloudAve.

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Technology · Tagged: accounting, benchmarking, crm, data aggregation, data mining, data security, Enterprise Software, erp, freshbooks, netsuite, Office20con, On-Demand, RightNow, SaaS, salesforce.com, small Business, smb, sme, zoho

Betting on the NetSuite IPO

Posted on December 6, 2006 ·

(Updated)

Phil Wainewright at ZDNet is running a poll on whether NetSuite will have a chance to go ahead with the long-awaited IPO or it will get folded back into the Empire.

I’m somewhat surprised by the above results, but since this is an early snapshot, please check the live poll for the current vote count.

Surprise or not, acquisition by Oracle is a realistic scenario, considering Larry Ellison’s close to 60% stake in NetSuite. This is certainly fellow Enterprise Irregular Jason Wood’s take.

I tend to believe that NetSuite is better off being an independent business; there are just too many differences for a merger to work well, and I don’t mean only technical, product-related differences. NetSuite is still largely a small business (SMB) player, and that’s a market that requires an entirely different Sales and Marketing approach, amongst others, and Oracle with it’s current “legacy” salesforce just can’t reach this market profitably. If your products are different, your target market is different, your organization, corporate culture are different, where’s the synergy? Big behemoth Oracle would kill NetSuite – Larry is better off with a portfolio approach, cashing in a 10-digit return

Talk about the SMB market – there really is no such thing. “SMB” was sufficient to describe the market to avoid, but now that the software industry is getting ready to actually address the needs of this segment, it’s too heterogeneous to be lumped together.A $100M business is just as different from a ten-person startup as it is from a Fortune 1000 company. When analysts talk about SMB, they really have the mid-market in mind; when SAP is announcing new SMB initiatives, it targets $100-$200M companies.

The forgotten “long tail” represents a huge untapped opportunity: millions of (very) small businesses that can now directly be reached, sold to, serviced inexpensively over the Net – classic SaaS style. Different markets require different organizations – NetSuite serves this segment much better than Oracle (or SAP, for that matter) ever could. In fact SAP would be wise to copy this chapter from Ellison’s book: it should get it’s own “NetSuite” by investing in (not acquiring) an up-and-coming small-business focused All-in-One SaaS provider, like European 24SevenOffice. The next NetSuite.

Update (12/11): NetSuite Gets Ready For Its Close-Up by BusinessWeek.
Update (12/19): TechCrunch is running a story titled NetSuite’s Going Public, Looking for $1 Billion Valuation. I don’t know if it’s based on new information or …. (?)

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Technology · Tagged: 24sevenoffice, acquisitions, all-in-one, crm, erp, ipo, ipo market, irregulars, m&a, mergers, netsuite, On-Demand, oracle, SaaS, sap, smb, sme, vsb

Atlassian Founders Become Australian Entrepreneur of the Year

Posted on December 3, 2006 ·

My first thought was deja vu… I myself reported on Mike and Scott winning the E&Y Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award a few months ago. Then it hit me; this is not the *young* category; Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar won the real thing, Ernst & Young’s Australian Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Now, if you first win the *young* category, then a few months later the *adult* one (not *that* way… ) does it mean you grew up quickly and are no longer young?

Joke apart, congrat’s to Mike and Scott, in fact the entire Atlassian team. They’ve built a remarkable company… when I first met them in the spring, they had about 50 employees, now it’s 70+, serving 5,000 customers in 65 countries. Their first hit was Jira, an issue management system, the second product, Confluence became the market leading enterprise wiki. Of course there are a number of ways to measure leadership, one being a feature-by-feature comparison, but at the end of the day, customers vote with their dollars, and Atlassian outsells their competition lumped together (including pre-Google JotSpot, amongst others).

Here’s a short video from the award ceremony.

Successful millionaires or not (Atlassian is self-funded), these guys remain humble and likeable; just read Mike’s post here. Oh, as for the likeable part, they hosted the Enterprise Irregulars, a few analysts and their own competitors to dinner, and did NOT use the opportunity to pitch us

All that said, I have to warn anyone thinking of joining them … they are a dangerous bunch.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Software, Startups · Tagged: atlassian, australian entrepreneurs, confluence, e&y, entrepreneur of the year, entrepreneurship, ernst & young, irregulars, wiki, wikis

SupportMagic: Running Out of Support, Waiting for Magic

Posted on November 30, 2006 ·

OK, I admit, that’s a tacky title… I just couldn’t resist

Seriously though, here’s a weird post on VentureBeat:

CRM company, Support Magic, for sale on VentureBoard

“Support Magic, out of Bangalore, is the latest company to put up a for-sale sign at VentureBoard.”

OK, let’s check out the VentureBoard listing:

“Launched on 09-November-2006, SupportMagic (www.supportmagic.com) is an on-demand customer interaction management solution that enables companies to deliver an exceptional customer experience online.”

Launched 3 weeks ago and already for sale? Wow! Let’s clarify it on the company’s site:

Public BETA launch on 09-November-2006.

Gotcha. Let’s check out the blog:

“Some are asking “Where can I download SupportMagic?”
Well, you can’t.
SupportMagic is an on-demand (remotely hosted) solution that runs on our server. There is nothing to download OR install. Register with us, follow the instructions we send you & simply map your “Support URL” to our application IP and you are ready”

Hm .. why would anyone want to sign up for a hosted application by a company already up for sale? Oh, well, let’s now go back to the for sale ad:

“Competitors: RightNow, LivePerson & Talisma.”

Wow…wow…wow… 3 weeks into beta and competing with RightNow, a $100M company? Give
me a break

But hey, that’s the ad, put up by the company itself. They may be full of it, but probably learned from #1 that in the CRM space you need a big mouth. However, VentureBeat repeats the same statement in the front page story:

“Support Magic, out of Bangalore, is the latest company to put up a for-sale sign at VentureBoard. It is an on-demand customer interaction management software company that competes against RightNow, LivePerson & Talisma…”

Matt, I really like VentureBeat – this kind of fluff does not belong there… it dilutes your brand.

Tags: venturebeat, ventureboard, matt marshall, crm, supportmagic, rightnow, liveperson, startups

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, ERP / CRM, Marketing / PR, SaaS, Startups ·