Concur Aims To Be Single Point Of (Purchasing) Access

Concur Technologies, Inc. was incorporated in 1993 as Portable Software, and soon offered as its first product a shrink-wrapped retail application to automate travel and expense (T&E) reporting for individuals. It expanded its product line in 1996 by offering a client-server travel and expense package called Xpense Management Solution(XMS), and again in 1998 by bringing XMS to the Intranet. The Intranet version of XMS - recently renamed Concur Expense- now accounts for the majority of Concur's travel and expense-related revenues, which in turn are the bulk of the company's overall revenues.

Concur has recently been expanding its capabilities through acquisition. The ten-person 7Software was acquired in 1998 - two years after 7Software was incorporated. 7Software had a product called CompanyStorethat was to be used to automate the procurement of routine items such as office supplies, furniture, computers and expendables; these are generally referred to as MRO goods (for "Maintenance, Repair and Operations"). It was at this time that Portable Software changed its name to Concur and announced its EmployeeDesktoptm (now called Concur eWorkplace) strategy of moving past the T&E market. The new strategy is to offer a single desktop platform for all in-house functions, including T&E, procurement, Self-Service Human Relations (SSHR), time and attendance, and facilities management.

In June 1999 Concur acquired Seeker Software, a provider of Web-based human resource self-service applications, in order to incorporate The Seeker Workplace(now called Concur Human Resources), Seeker's suite of HR employee and managerial self-service Web-based applications, into EmployeeDesktop(now called Concur eWorkplace, see below).

In October of 1999 the company renamed its product line to Concur eWorkplace. This product promises workplace access to T&E management, travel booking, Web-based purchasing, HR processing, and other functions yet to be named. Its announcement was marred by a simultaneous release of preliminary fourth-quarter financial results significantly below analyst expectations - the difference was approximately $3 million out of an expected $12 million. Chairman/CEO S. Steven Singh, a co-founder with Michael Hilton, attributed the shortfall to unexpected delays in closing business, due in part to a lengthening of the sales cycle brought on by their introduction of three new products during that quarter. Concur has had some concerns about its sales force as the company has transitioned from a single product to a corporate portal positioning, and has addressed these with new hires at all levels.

Concur has attempted to paint itself as the challenger to Ariba, the acknowledged leader in E-procurement applications, although Concur is not the clear number two in that market. However, Concur's wider strategy of being a single solution for all of what it calls the "workplace eCommerce solutions" certainly calls for it to go head-to-head with the E-procurement leader. This is because E-procurement is widely seen as the most significant business-to-business application area. It is the one that most significantly impacts a corporation's profitability.

Product Definition and Market Impact

Despite competition from both major CRM/ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendors and marketing analytics providers, pure-player marketing solutions like Aprimo, and Unica continue to serve the enterprise market place with new and updated EMM offerings. Recently Aprimo announced its new release Aprimo Marketing 6.0. The Indianapolis based firm, caters to big accounts like Merrill Lynch, America Online, Pfizer, and Autodesk. Its fully web-based solution encompasses functional areas such as marketing planning, financial management, production management, customer dialogue, and lead management applications. According to Mike MacNulty, a product marketing manager at Aprimo, "the product emphasize on application modularity contributes to deployment flexibility over time and quicker time-to-value". Production Management and Planning and Financial Management are two functional components geared towards the marketing resource management (MRM). The more traditional features such as campaign and lead manager are covered by the Demand Creation suite.

The Production Management modules deliver the necessary features to initiate and design through a scripted web template a marketing project from scratch. Features include internal or external resource assignments and management of cost by means of real time cost tracking. The pre-defined templates help marketers to follow the steps specified by best practices. The teamwork is fully auditable through online approvals for deliverables and creative. A rule based workflow manager, enables users to control quality standards like Six Sigma or financial regulatory rules like Sarbanes-Oxley.

The Planning and Financial Management modules confer to marketers financial visibility into their planned, committed and actual investments and provides the solution its expected MRM qualification. Using the budgeting and forecasting tool, defined users can be granted access to budget assignment, allocation, and transfer of funds. Links to a number of back-office applications, such as PO and AP systems, facilitate the exchange of financial data. Automated notifications for over- or under-plan conditions can be used by managers to control their marketing activities financials at different stages.

Customer Dialogue Management and Lead Management are the two major components of the Demand Creation suite. Users can leverage various demand creation modules to divide their customer list by segment and start targeting them using a multistep and multichannel marketing campaign. As a result they can automatically assign generated leads to specific sales groups or persons to conclude the sale.

Aprimo Marketing 6.0 .NET architecture takes full advantage of web services facilitating the interoperability of the application in a disparate system environment.

Can the Market Sustain a Stand-Alone EMM

The new millennium has completely redrawn the IT industry map especially in the enterprise marketing management (EMM) sector. Since year 2000, the number of independent marketing automation vendors has significantly shrunk due to frequent acquisitions and takeovers. Names such as Xchange, MarketFirst, Annuncio, and Prime Response no longer exist. Larger application providers like Amdocs, PeopleSoft, and Chordiant have assimilated all. Amongst the few still operating is Aprimo. Their strategy primarily targets large customers from the financial services, technology, media and entertainment, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing industries, and it pays. Aprimo just released its version 6.0 posed to help the vendor sustain the ongoing IT turmoil.

Building a better understanding of customer preferences to better serve their needs and increase their loyalty is certainly the motto for the new generation of marketing automation systems. Many customer relationship management (CRM) software vendors focused their first marketing modules in generating and conveying leads to the sales force.

Campaign management and e-mail marketing functions were amongst the first modules for CRM vendors to include in their product offerings. Siebel, E.piphany, Pivotal, DoubleClick, and Aprimo are some of the providers of such functionality. Marketers can design multilayered marketing campaigns filtering by customer segments and using the contact center capability to reach their target through multiple channels such as phone, portals, email, direct mail, and PDA.

The second functional category widely provided is electronic marketing. Such a solution offers a web-accessible, enterprise resource that manages and delivers essential information to marketing's customers, both internal (sales, customer support, etc.) and external (prospects, media, partners, etc.). Integrated content management and customization have added value to the basic features of e-mail marketing by avoiding the pitfalls of mass marketing.

Overall, basic campaign management modules provide the following capabilities:

* Planning campaigns targeted at segmented audiences

* Keeping a history of all the campaigns that have been run

* Tracking and analyzing the response to various products and target segments

* Executing and tracking responses, which help in generating leads for sales

Marketing analytics is the third component adding a new dimension to the basic campaign management modules. The analytics functionality enables marketers to conduct customer behavioral analysis and understand key issues such as propensity to buy. CRM vendors such as Pivotal, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are now offering marketing analytics through acquisitions beside other pure marketing players such as Chordiant, E.piphany, SAS, and Unica.

The most recent tool in the world of marketing automation is the emergence of the marketing resource management (MRM) pioneered by Aprimo. Facing shrinking budgets, marketing departments are more and more accountable for the cost of their activities. MRM helps marketing professionals to plan ahead for the following:

* Time for human resources

* Time for financial resources

* Responsibilities for different team members at different steps

MRM combines workflow capabilities for assigning tasks and triggering alerts and knowledge management to accede into marketing best practices. A tighter control over the projected budget, the planning, and the execution combined with a myriad of functions from campaign and lead management modules have pushed the limits of marketing automation and that is the reason vendors such as Aprimo and Unica are now referring to their products as enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions.

Expense Submittal System Services

Adisoft provides corporations of all sizes with software and services to manage the processing of expense reports for corporate travel and entertainment. Adisoft offers a full range of support and customization services in addition to its software solutions. Adisoft was founded in 1991 and is located in California (US).

Adisoft offers web-based expense reporting software, standalone expense reporting software, web-based expense audit software, feeds from the expense database to your corporate system, payment software, hosted solutions and a complete range of support and customization agreements. Adisoft's software and services help companies increase control and reduce costs.

Top 10 Reasons to Automate Operating Expense Controls

If you’re like most small to midsized business executives, your primary focus is on growing revenue and controlling company spending. However, you probably use paper-based processes to deal with company expenses. Without an automated system, you have limited ability to actively manage spending—and can only hope that spending decisions remain within budget and in compliance with company policies.

Related Topics: Accounting and Financial Management, Time and Expense Reporting

Related Industries: Information, Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Related Keywords: ExpenseWatch, expense controls, automated expense controls, T&E reports, SaaS solutions, operating expense, company expenses, expense management, financial management, software as a service

frontpath Announces Mobile Internet Appliance

ProGear supports all rich media formats and offers a high quality 10.4" TFT display, X 86 compatibility and a touch screen that will enable quick access to applications or the Internet. A soft keyboard or handwriting recognition gives users the choice of input modes. The three- pound product comes with a Soundblastercompatible audio and microphone/headphone support. ProGear comes standard with a three cell, three-hour battery. As upgrades, ProGear has a six cell, six-hour battery and also offers a cradle with integrated charging station. Both batteries are lithium ion with smart battery technology.

Initially available to frontpath partners in the US, the company anticipates that the most popular configuration will be in the $1,500 range with the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade features such as batteries, memory, cradle, access points, keyboard and mouse. Beta units are scheduled to be generally available in Q4, 2000 with quantity shipments scheduled to be available in Q1, 2001.
frontpath's approach differs from the rest of the market in a few ways:

1. Wireless vs. cabled
2. Primarily business/vertical users, as opposed to home users
3. "Web pad" design
4. Relatively high price

The wireless approach is intriguing. We can envision a mobile user connecting to a "gortal", (groupware portal) such as salesforce.com, to upload or download important information from that latest hot sales call, etc. The major competition in the wireless space is likely to come from Symbian-based and the other wireless gear such as Palm/Motorola devices.

Going for the business crowd, especially vertical markets such as medical, is a big change from the current "let's sell appliances to people who can't afford a real PC" mindset. We can see some vertical markets having a need for wireless connectedness - being able to download a patient's records instantly to an appliance would probably make a doctor's life easier. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles provides Palm devices to allow their physicians to do just that.

The idea of a Web pad has been discussed often in recent months, and Transmeta showed a model at PC Expo in June. The functionality and portability of the ProGear look good, but we question whether it isn't a little too big and heavy. Three pounds is light compared to most notebooks, but by the end of the day, even three pounds gets to be a bit much.

We question the wisdom of such a (relatively) high price. The ProGear certainly has lots of high-end features: lots of RAM (64 or 128MB), optional hard drive, high-resolution display. But will people really pay the extra $1000 (over portable devices such as a Palm VII or Psion's revo Plus ) for a portable Web surfer? frontpath's targeted applications will help it make a case for the extra cost, but they will need to provide a significant number of targeted apps to get broader market appeal.

Similar Infor Focus

It is interesting to note that the Infor supply chain planning (SCP) group is acting in a similar manner, selling to several of its ERP install bases within all geographic regions. The group currently has estimated annual revenues of $35 million (USD), more than 135 employees, and over 450 customers—more than 75 percent of these customers have come from a competitive customer base (meaning that only one quarter of these have come from an Infor ERP product instance). SCP modules featuring industry focus and deep domain expertise include inventory planning and replenishment (including strategic inventory planning and inventory optimization), demand planning (including demand forecasting and scenario analysis), supply planning (including manufacturing planning and supply optimization), production scheduling (including process and discrete manufacturing scheduling), distribution planning (including deployment and distribution optimization), and sales and operations planning (S&OP) (including S&OP reporting and supply chain optimization).

Somewhat differing from SSA Global's comprehensive convergence of products, Infor's "assembler" strategy for its major business units (discrete manufacturing [automotive, industrial equipment and machinery, high-tech and electronics, metal fabrication, and so on]; process manufacturing [food and beverage, specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and the like]; and wholesale distribution for durable goods [paper, plumbing and heating, industrial supply, building materials, electrical supply, and so forth]) is to acquire solutions and to skim off the potential "superbreed" modules, which it can then sell to users of its own ERP solutions as well as of other ERP solutions, while not losing sight of the vertical focus. Also, the collective domain knowledge and some acquired best-of-breed products will be (or already have been) transformed into evolutionary superbreed products for use across multiple divisions.

The best example, in addition to the aforementioned newly formed Infor SCP division (which stems from the SCT Process and Mercia acquisitions), is the SupplyWEB supply replenishment product for automotive suppliers, which has already incorporated the best functionality from former Future Three and Brain (see The Pain and Gain of Integrated EDI Part Two: Automotive Suppliers Gain), and which has meanwhile been rewritten in Java and is available for all ERP products. Further examples include the Infor eCommerce (formerly bizLinx), eStorefront, and eCatalog products from the Infor distribution division, and VISUAL WMS, from former Lilly VISUAL.

As a result, Infor has been able to integrate the collective industry-specific functionality and savvy of the products and people it assembles, as exemplified by Infor .NET's upcoming Center of Excellence which will join the forces of the former Lilly VISUAL and MAPICS SyteLine product development teams in the discrete manufacturing unit. Consequently, VISUAL WMS is being offered to Infor SyteLine customers, initially as a service offering, whereas the VISUAL Quality Management module is to be offered to both Infor SyteLine and Infor XPPS (formerly Brain XPPS) customers. As an independent entity, MAPICS had already linked the SSyteLine CRM product to Infor XA (formerly MAPICS XA), well before its acquisition by Infor; this product will soon be sold to the original Infor COM users and later to Infor VISUAL users. The forthcoming accounting and trading management product ACmanager is anticipated as a new global superbreed product, together with eStorefront (from the distribution group) for SyteLine and COM, and the enhanced demand planning product Mercia Links for XA, SyteLine, and COM. The vendor is also currently analyzing the possible product candidates for superbreeds in performance management, PLM, and CRM.

SSA Global Warehouse Management System and Transportation Management System Focus

This benefit might be particularly apposite for customers that increasingly are feeling the pressure of doing business in a complex global supply chain where rising transportation costs have a major impact on business performance and profits. To that end, since the EXE acquisition in 2004, the vendor has delivered a swath of warehousing enhancements dealing with regulatory compliance, integration with ERP counterpart products, event management, radio frequency identification (RFID), voice interface, and so on. Thus, SSA WMS (Warehouse Management System) 2000 5.5 and SSA WMS 4000 3.10, both from former EXE, provide a better user interface (UI), as well as compliance and warehouse operations facilities, with some industry-specific capabilities. Meanwhile, SSA TMS (Transportation Management System) 6.2, bolstered by new development since the Arzoon acquisition, provides more functionality for international air cargo transactions.

The array of enhancements slated for 2006 (for example, wave planning, agent-based network fulfillment execution, labor and task management, event management, and a multiwarehouse visibility platform) is no less impressive (see SSA Global finds Little Known SCM Gems in Filling Out its Solution Portfolio and Who Needs Warehousing Management and How Much Thereof?). All these enhancements come with the concept that users obtain deeper insight into their customers' demands to better match supply with available product, based on flawless demand-driven supply chain and production operations ideas.

SSA has recently had strong momentum and organic growth, especially in the WMS arena: sales of WMS Solutions grew in 2005 from 2004 levels, to now reach EXE's peak revenue levels of 2001. Acting as a stand-alone, best-of-breed SCE supplier rather than an ERP supplier, globally SSA Global has been regaining significant customer share. Basically, by closing well over 100 significant customer transactions with WMS solutions in 2005 (with more than half involving brand new accounts), the vendor may be dispelling any lingering perceptions that it is a mere ERP scavenger. In fact, compared to the pure-play WMS leaders, Manhattan Associates and RedPrairie (including recently acquired MARC Global), SSA Global is more global, since most of its SCE customers come from outside North America. As for industry segments, retail and wholesale distribution was the largest vertical for SSA Global's high-volume WMS transactions, with transportation and logistics being the second-largest vertical.

Building Ecosystems of Extended ERP

Both SSA Global and Infor have also been building ecosystems of extended ERP, consisting of complementary products that they can peddle (up-sell or cross-sell) to their installed base (and even to new customers in a stand-alone manner), to keep clients on maintenance and sustain them as a source of revenue for many years. Such a strategy has been particularly successful for SSA Global, since in the maturing market for ERP systems, new license sales have long become more difficult to achieve, and increasing revenue from existing customers is thus becoming more important.

On the other hand, although user companies want new functionality, they are quite reluctant to undergo a wholesale "rip and replacement" of functioning legacy ERP systems, if extended functionality from the incumbent vendor is likely to be "good enough" (or even better). These factors have led to the philosophy that a vendor's revenue model might depend less on constantly finding new customers, and more on sustaining a large installed base of existing customers, including sales of complementary products and services for integration with the user's installed system.

Shifting from an initial focus on "portfolio collection," SSA Global has recently been focusing instead on a product convergence strategy, which means developing interfaces between its main applications and its acquired products. The vendor tends to offer an upgrade path to either the iSeries or the UNIX code bases via their respective SSA ERPLX and SSA ERPLN products. Recently, especially on the supply chain execution (SCE) side, it has acquired add-on best-of-breed point supply chain management (SCM) solutions such as CAPS Logistics (from former Baan), Arzoon, and EXE Technologies (and very recently, Epiphany for CRM and Boniva for HCM capabilities, which will be discussed later). SSA Global has been selling these ERP extensions (which in the SCM and SCE applications case are for all ERP products from the separate strategic SCM unit) primarily, but not necessarily to its existing ERP customer base (see SSA Global Forms a Strategic Unit with an Extended-ERP Savvy). The Epiphany acquisition has resulted in a new strategic CRM unit too. The integration of SSA Global's acquired products in areas such as SCM, supplier relationship management (SRM), and CRM should benefit SSA Global customers seeking suite-level integration.

So Similar, Yet So Different (and Vice Versa)

However, there are certainly somewhat different philosophies underlying the current state of affairs for SSA Global and Infor. Being the first to start the acquisition streak, SSA Global had initially shown (at least to lesser-informed outsiders) something of a scavenger nature, by acquiring struggling peer companies that typically had products written off by many as technologically outdated has-beens. But in hindsight, there was at least some underlying method and consistency to these acquisitions: all the products were technologically similar (based either on Unix or IBM iSeries [AS/400]); they were mostly aimed at related discrete and process manufacturing sectors; and they quickly became cash-generating businesses within SSA Global.

On the other hand, with every acquisition, Infor has attempted to solve essential, industry-specific challenges faced by its (by now) more than 17,500 customers (26,700 after the impending acquisition) and implementations in 70 countries. Also, each acquisition has had the role of helping to develop deep vertical expertise within the targeted supply chain management (SCM) and ERP solutions, and within certain regions (for example, Infor has succeeded in becoming the mid-market automotive supplier leader in Germany). The addition of Datastream, a prominent enterprise asset management (EAM) provider, reveals a lot about Infor's strategy to acquire leading brands that round out the entire solution footprint, and that provide compelling combinations to compete against the larger horizontal players like SAP and Oracle.

Certainly, SSA Global has been less focused so far on capturing certain industries with its acquisitions per se, than on acquiring ERP and SCM vendors to grow market share and share of wallet (SOW) by broadening its product footprint. Consequently, nowadays SSA Global develops, sells, and services enterprise applications software, which encompasses ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), SCM, financial management, procurement, project management, human capital management (HCM), business intelligence (BI), and product lifecycle management (PLM).

Even without an initially deliberate focus, SSA Global offers its applications to companies in a number of vertical markets, with a concentration on manufacturing industries (which represent about 80 percent of revenues, at least prior to the Epiphany acquisition; but this acquisition has shifted the revenue balance to about 64 percent, with the remainder coming from the service industries). The company offers its applications to companies in various industries: aerospace and defense (A&D); automotive; chemicals; consumer packaged goods (CPG); industrial machinery and equipment; general process manufacturing; high-tech and electronics; medical products, devices, and equipment; and pharmaceutical. To that end, its SSA ERPLN product is targeted at companies in the A&D, high-tech and electronics, and industrial machinery and equipment sectors, and includes specific functionality for companies in those sectors. SSA ERPLX has a similar focus on batch process companies, in sectors such as pharmaceutical, and food and beverage. Prior to the addition of Epiphany (via eclectic acquisitions such as Infinium or Computer Associates' Masterpiece), SSA Global had widened market penetration by adding business services, financial services, government and education, health care, hospitality and gaming, and retail vertical markets to its traditional manufacturing stronghold. Its strategy has been to add strategic solutions that allow customers in targeted industries to support end-to-end business processes with integrated applications from a single vendor.

What the two vendors have since been doing with their acquired portfolios highlights additional similarities and differences. As for similarities, the bedrock policy for both vendors is that no product will be sunset (i.e., "killed," "stabilized," or discontinued) for as long as the customers want to use the products and pay for maintenance and support (which, incidentally, Infor has not increased, contrary to the customary actions taken by other acquisitive peers).

Also, for new and more avant-garde customers wanting to migrate to more contemporary technologies and the broadest and deepest contemporary functionality, both vendors have embarked on the development and delivery of next-generation products. In the case of SSA Global, this means converging several technologically close legacy products into the SSA ERPLN or SSA ERPLX next-generation ERP offerings (see SSA Global—The Right Product Strategy). In theory, these offerings will draw on the best functional characteristics of all individual acquired products, in addition to new, internally developed (on an ongoing basis) functional capabilities.

The Enterprise Applications 'Arms Race' To Be Number Three

Even those who still believe that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) will be found in Iraq (or in North Korea or Iran) should by now have realized that the number one position in the enterprise applications space will ultimately be decided in the inevitable showdown between SAP and Oracle (and their accompanying platform and partner ecosystems). Certainly, this does not imply that either of those will ultimately dominate the tier two or high end of the tier three market segments per se. Thus, the "arms race" for the number three spot is no less exciting (and is maybe even breathtaking), given that the revenue rankings snapshot for SSA Global, Lawson Software (soon to merge with Intentia), and Infor may change at any time, depending on which vendor has most recently announced yet another acquisition. One should also note that Infor, Lawson, and SSA Global have no illusions of dominance in the tier one segment, since that battle will already have been decided between the two aforementioned giants.

One should also not ignore Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) or Sage Group, in light of their total applications revenues, but these two archrivals are still fighting in the lower end of the market. Their respective significance remains, however, especially given Sage's recent acquisition of Adonix (which certainly has many larger midsized customers), and the fit of Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Microsoft Axapta) to like-sized enterprises, although this product is impeded by its nascence. Also significant are Epicor Software (with its recent acquisition of CRS Retail Solutions), and China-based CDC Software (with its ongoing digestion of the globally renowned Ross Systems, IMI, and Pivotal brands; its recent acquisition of JRG Software; and vacillating plans to nab Onyx Software), but they are still at a safe distance, revenue-wise, from the tier two echelon.

Recently, we have given due attention to the Lawson-Intentia combination, and to the rivalry between MBS and Sage (see The Market Impact of Two Powerhouses), so the time has come for a comparative analysis of the remaining two foes: SSA Global and Infor. Executives of these two vendors would be genuinely (or not so genuinely) insulted at any mention of similarities between the two entities, and although the two do have mutually distinct characteristics (which will be tackled further on), the two vendors do indeed have many similarities.