Yorkshire Dales January Image by Tim Hill from PixabayVendors woke up to the new year, and the usual cadence of news emerged. Forterro announced a double acquisition. IFS partner Cooper Software acquired a German subsidiary, and Ellucian acquired CampusLogic. NetSuite announced the acquisition of Verenia, and many more are listed below.

The first product announcements emerged with Wrike, Salesforce and Ephesoft adding features. BigPanda raised $190 million for its AIOps platform in the sole funding announcement covered this week.

Enterprise Times also published an interview with Icertis EMEA leader Simon Patteson

Pick of the week

The long-running legal spat between Oracle and Rimini Street continues with both sides claiming victory. Oracle noted that Rimini Street was held in contempt of the Court for repeatedly violating the Court’s 2018 Permanent Injunction to stop violating Oracle’s intellectual property rights. It fined Rimini Street $630,000, and more importantly, Rimini Street will need to pay “reasonable” Oracle attorney fees.

Dorian Daley, Oracle Executive Vice President and General Counsel, commented: “We are grateful that our rights have been vindicated once again, and the court recognizes Rimini as a bad actor that violates federal law.”

However, Rimini Street claimed a draw, with the court ruling favouring Rimini Street in five out of ten of the claims. Though it disagreed with them, it acknowledges the findings but is considering launching an appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There are still other, unresolved lawsuits in the pipeline as well.

Acquisitions

Aptean acquired JET ERP Betriebsgesellschaft mbH, a leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider in Austria.

Bullhorn acquired Able, a longstanding Bullhorn Marketplace partner and the provider of market-leading candidate engagement and onboarding solutions.

Jitterbit, the API transformation company, acquired PrimeApps, a Turkey-based innovator in low-code application development.

mParticle completed the acquisition of Indicative, a customer journey analytics platform.

Nextworld has acquired Cloud Inventory (formerly DSI), an industry leader in Mobile-First Inventory Solutions.

Onit, the market leader in enterprise legal management, enterprise CLM, and business process automation solutions, has acquired ContractWorks owning company SecureDocs. ContractWorks will integrate with Onit subsidiary SimpleLegal.

Upland Software acquired Objectif Lune Inc., an enterprise software leader in document composition and business communication automation.

Visma made three acquisitions last week. Danish e-commerce agency Smartpage, a Swedish provider of online booking software BokaMera, and ActuIT, a Dutch software vendor that simplifies communication about pensions or other financial products.

Appointments

Brillio has appointed Jennifer N. Harris to their Board of Directors effective immediately.

Datto has appointed Brooke Cunningham as its new Chief Marketing Officer.

Fivetran, the global leader in modern data integration, has appointed Guro Bakkeng Bergan, VP GM EMEA, and Ciarán McGoldrick, Head of Alliances, EMEA and APAC.

IFS appointed Kate Bishop as Chief Human Resources Officer. Bishop joins from global wealth management platform FNZ, where she was Group CHRO, HR and Marketing.

NTT Ltd has appointed Miriam Murphy as CEO, Europe NTT Ltd, effective from 3 February.

Pipedrive has appointed Heidrun Luyt as Chief Marketing Officer.

DeLisa Alexander has joined the company’s Board of Directors as Qlik’s first outside director.

SD Worx appointed Kelly Lespinoy Chief Legal & Compliance Officer.

ServiceNow has appointed Karen Pavlin as its new chief equity and inclusion officer.

Talend appointed Dustin Grosse as chief marketing and strategy officer.

TalentQuest has made several changes to its C-Suite. Kevin Sessions will succeed Dr Merritt as CEO of TalentQuest. Dr Merritt will become executive chairman. Rachel Finglass will become President and Chief Operating Officer. Mahim Mishra will assume the role of Chief Revenue Officer.

Tier1 Financial Solutions has appointed Megan Howe as Managing Director, North America Sales.

Business

Anthology has partnered with Togetherall, a leading online mental health service. The partnership will make Togetherall’s peer-to-peer mental health community available to all Anthology North America clients, including Blackboard Learn customers.

Experian announced a $675,000 contribution to six nonprofit organizations that directly support diverse communities as they emerge from challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenger credit card provider, Keebo, has joined forces with leading global information services company Experian in a move to improve access to credit for millions of underserved consumers greatly.

Sustainability platform provider Sustaira has joined the Mendix independent software vendor (ISV) program.

Priority Software Limited has extended its partner network. It signed an agreement with Magma Group, a company specializing in integrated engineering projects and ConWize, an Israeli provider of an advanced, cloud-based platform for the construction industry.

QAD has added MothersonSumi Infotech & Designs Limited (MIND) to its growing global partner ecosystem.

Teradata has created a new Global Customer Services organization designed to drive optimal customer experiences, maximize customer value and achieve greater synergies to accelerate growth. It also appointed Michael Hutchinson as Chief Customer Officer to lead the new organisation.

Customer

Doncasters Group, a leading international manufacturer of high-precision alloy components, has signed a five year deal for Infor ERP. It will deploy the solution across its global, multi-site, multi-disciplinary manufacturing organisation. Pentland Brands Limited, owners of the Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury of New Zealand, Endura, ellesse, SeaVees and Mitre brands, has adopted the Infor Nexus supply chain platform.

Leading accounting practice Moore Australia announced a deepening of its strategic partnership with MYOB.

Qatar Airways has implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) as it embarks on a major global expansion. Helbiz, a global leader in micro-mobility, is to use Oracle MICROS Simphony Point of Sale to help run one of the world’s largest ghost kitchens. The Kuwait Gulf Oil Company (KGOC) became the first Kuwaiti oil company to implement Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite and fully automate core business processes across Finance, HR and ERP.

Rambase celebrated the go-lives at three customers. Kolos Lifting & Inspection AS replaced a Dynamics AX 2009 with Rambase cloud ERP assisted by BDO, a Rambase partner. Another partner, Mazeppa Group, implemented the cloud ERP solution at Halodi Robotics and UMOE Advanced Composites; the latter replaced IFS. It also published a case study about the deployment at Aarbakke, a leader in CNC machining for the oil industry.

Yarra Valley Water switched to Rimini Street support for its entire Oracle software portfolio, including Oracle Database, Oracle Middleware and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing applications.

Amadeus, a travel technology leader, has selected the Now Platform to accelerate and secure the migration of its operations to the public cloud.

Plateau GRP, a growing and successful GovCon serving a variety of federal and state agencies, including the Dept. of Defense, the EPA, and OSHA, has chosen Unanet ERP GovCon.

Accenture has helped international insurerTokio Marine Kiln transform its HR and Finance operation with Workday.

Financial Reports

Fenergo published a momentum update boasting a 17% revenue increase to €91.3 million for the financial year ending March 2021. It also saw a gross profit increase of 20% to €52.1 million and software licence growth of 22.3% to €41.1 million. It is also growing its employee base for further growth.

Kaseya reviewed 2021, citing that it was a transformative year for the leading IT and security management solutions vendor provider. The company grew 25%, boosted by acquisitions such as RocketCyber and TruMethods.

SAP announced its preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year ended December 31, 2021. Cloud revenue is up 28% in the fourth quarter, with the cloud backlog up 32% to €9.45 billion and S/4HANA backlog up 84%. In the fourth quarter. The full-year figures included cloud & software revenue up 4% with cloud revenue up 17%, at the top end of expectation.

Product

ADP has added APIs to integrate its HCM with benefit carriers. The APIs will provide an end to end data exchange from plan setup and enrollment to EOI (evidence of insurability), changes automatically sync between ADP and the carrier. They will help employers better manage employee plans and give employees instant visibility to updates and changes.

The BigTime software January release includes several UI improvements across the core application, the ability to manually ad tax rates and updates to BigTime Wallet.

bob announced the Hibob Connector for ADP Workforce Now. It is available on ADP Marketplace.

Cezanne HR revealed the latest update to its solutions, improving performance reviews and the compliance options available to firms in the financial services sector.

Experian gave a Q3 trading update with Brian Cassin, CEO saying: “Performance in Q3 was at the upper end of our expectations. Total revenue growth was 14% at actual exchange rates and 15% at constant exchange rates. Organic revenue growth was 11%. We now expect organic revenue growth for the full year to be in the range of 12-13%, with total revenue growth now expected in the range of 16-17%, at constant exchange rates.”

Pipedrive announced the general availability of Smart Docs add-on. Helping customers streamline and automate how their teams create, send, manage, and sign sales-related documents and contracts, Pipedrive’s Smart Docs centralizes the entire documentation process.

Teamwork announced three new features for 2022: 2 new and improved Reports, Dark mode for Android, and Archive Agents in Desk.

Research

betterworks published a report from Hanover, the research firm based on a survey of 215 industry leaders. It looked at the alignment of people, strategy and results. It found the use of strategic alignment models is increasing.

  • 38% of respondents began using a strategic alignment model to enable performance three to five years ago
  • 35% started in the past three years.

Of those that started to use them in the past year, 77% were directly influenced by the pandemic. Importantly, 86% of surveyed senior leaders reported a 5% or greater increase in employee satisfaction when employees felt that their work was aligned with strategic goals and initiatives. The report draws in comments from betterworks customers to demonstrate the advantages a strategic alignment can deliver across OKRs and initiatives such as DEI.

Outreach

Outreach has published a study by Forrester entitled “B2B Leaders Usher In A New Era of Sales”. It surveyed 212 sales leaders from more than 20 industries at companies headquartered in the UK and North America.

Key findings included:

  • 67% of respondents say that it’s important for their teams to represent the world around them or risk losing revenue and talent.
  • 69% of respondents report that buyers ask about their stance on social justice.
  • Sales leaders plan to invest with respondents having invested or plan to invest in internal sales training for their managers (85%) and sales reps (89%).
  • Sales forecasting is still inefficient. 73% of respondents say members of their sales teams spend over 10 hours a week on forecasting. Only 43% of respondents are forecasting within 10% accuracy.

SD Worx

According to a survey by SD Worx, more than 60% of European employees are happy in their job every week. The UK has the lowest level of happiness. In order, the country responses were:

  • Netherlands – 79%
  • Belgium – 66%
  • Germany – 64%
  • France – 60%
  • UK – 43%

The majority also find their jobs meaningful. Netherland again topping the responses with 80% and the UK bottom with 58%. Of concern, however, is how many find their jobs mentally stressful. Belgium tops the response here (41%), with the rest only slightly lower. Nearly a quarter also find jobs physically stressful, though it is as high as 30% in France. However, without understanding the job types, this analysis may be flawed.

Cathy Geerts, Chief HR Officer at SD Worx, concludes, “Although most of the survey results are reasons for cautious optimism about European employee job satisfaction, we should not lose sight of the fact that many people are also finding their work hard and stressful. In the current context in particular, employee well-being should be high on the agenda. A previous survey has shown that this will be one of the biggest challenges faced by HR managers in the years ahead.”

ThoughtSpot

A Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report in partnership with ThoughtSpot explores the self-service analytics tools businesses need to empower frontline decision-makers. It highlights three learnings:

  • What defines modern self-service analytics from both a technical and end-user perspective.
  • How data-driven insights result in better decision-making and, ultimately, better business performance.
  • How leaders are using self-service analytics to build truly data-driven cultures, not just pockets of data-driven innovation.

The report follows up from earlier HBR reports and highlights that a lack of effective change management is still a barrier for 44%.

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