At the Sage Transform conference, several announcements were made to mark the growth and advancement of Sage. First, Sage announced the acquisition of carbon accounting solution Spherics to help SMBs measure and cut their emissions. Sage also announced new product integration with Microsoft to continue simplifying workflows for SMBs by allowing the submission and approval of certain processes directly through Teams, rather than in the Sage Intacct or Sage People application. Then Sage released the expansion of Sage Intacct’s capabilities and market reach which will enable customers to automate processes, boost productivity, and free up time to focus on running their businesses. This solution will also be expanding to continental Europe with the first launch in France, into new verticals, while also scaling existing capabilities to simplify the management of business complexities with greater insights and efficiencies. Finally, Sage announced an exciting new partnership with Major League Baseball with Sage being connected to pitching decisions and manager insights content across the league, starting from the 2023 regular season. This partnership will also include the introduction of the ‘Pitcher Power Rankings presented by Sage’ and support of the MLB’s Diverse Partners Program, supporting minority and female-owned businesses across America. In preparation for Ignite, Microsoft announced several infrastructure enhancements to its tools that will benefit ERP applications and users. Some of the new capabilities announced include the general availability of managed environments, built-in application lifecycle management in Microsoft Power Platform, interactive Power BI charts shared directly from OneDrive and SharePoint, cross-tenant dataset sharing, and advancements in AI builder. From an AI perspective, Microsoft also announced a collaboration with Haleon, a multinational consumer healthcare company, to make everyday health more accessible for people who are blind, have low vision, or have difficulty reading product labels due to low literacy. This collaboration will expand the functionality in the Microsoft Seeing AI app to provide consumers with more detailed labeling information for over 1,500 Haleon products across the U.S. and U.K. IFS announced features from the IFS Cloud October 2022 release, including enhancements to help customers meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, new capabilities that will help global companies connect operations across sites, functions, people, and assets, and intelligent insight and accelerating automation efforts. Salesforce announced Automotive Cloud, a new product built specifically for automakers, dealers, automotive finance groups, and their customers through industry-specific automation, intelligence, and real-time analytics. QAD released its latest enhancements to QAD Adaptive ERP, along with other QAD Adaptive Applications. Qlik achieved the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP) Authorized designation at the Moderate Impact Level (IL) and Department of Defense IL2, making Qlik Cloud Government one of the first SaaS platforms to achieve FedRAMP designation. Aptean announced its acquisition of Frontix BV, a provider of cloud-based Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and energy management solutions to process manufacturers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and over a dozen other countries across the globe.
Hi and welcome to episode 60 of The ERP Minute. I am your host, Rebekah McCabe.
Fall is the season for Software Vendor Conferences:
Last week at the Sage Transform conference, several announcements were made to mark the growth and advancement of Sage. First, Sage announced the acquisition of carbon accounting solution Spherics to help SMBs measure and cut their emissions. Sage also announced new product integration with Microsoft to continue simplifying workflows for SMBs by allowing the submission and approval of certain processes directly through Teams, rather than in the Sage Intacct or Sage People application. Then Sage released the expansion of Sage Intacct’s capabilities and market reach which will enable customers to automate processes, boost productivity, and free up time to focus on running their businesses. This solution will also be expanding to continental Europe with the first launch in France, into new verticals, while also scaling existing capabilities to simplify the management of business complexities with greater insights and efficiencies. Finally, Sage announced an exciting new partnership with Major League Baseball with Sage being connected to pitching decisions and manager insights content across the league, starting from the 2023 regular season. This partnership will also include the introduction of the ‘Pitcher Power Rankings presented by Sage’ and support of the MLB’s Diverse Partners Program, supporting minority and female-owned businesses across America. These are all major announcements from Sage that demonstrate its continued commitment to the delivery of value to clients.
In other conference news, in preparation for Ignite, Microsoft announced several infrastructure enhancements to its tools that will benefit ERP applications and users. Some of the new capabilities announced include the general availability of managed environments, built-in application lifecycle management in Microsoft Power Platform, interactive Power BI charts shared directly from OneDrive and SharePoint, cross-tenant dataset sharing, and advancements in AI builder. From an AI perspective, Microsoft also announced a collaboration with Haleon, a multinational consumer healthcare company, to make everyday health more accessible for people who are blind, have low vision, or have difficulty reading product labels due to low literacy. This collaboration will expand the functionality in the Microsoft Seeing AI app to provide consumers with more detailed labeling information for over 1,500 Haleon products across the U.S. and U.K.
Final point on software conferences, we’re attending Oracle’s CloudWorld conference this week and will provide a summary in subsequent ERP Minutes.
Switching to enterprise software releases, updates, and acquisitions news, a number of announcements were made by IFS, Salesforce, QAD, Qlik, and Aptean.
- IFS announced features from the IFS Cloud October 2022 release, including enhancements to help customers meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, new capabilities that will help global companies connect operations across sites, functions, people, and assets, and intelligent insight and accelerating automation efforts.
- Then, Salesforce announced Automotive Cloud, a new product built specifically for automakers, dealers, automotive finance groups, and their customers through industry-specific automation, intelligence, and real-time analytics.
- QAD released its latest enhancements to QAD Adaptive ERP, along with other QAD Adaptive Applications.
- Next, Qlik achieved the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP) Authorized designation at the Moderate Impact Level (IL) and Department of Defense IL2, making Qlik Cloud Government one of the first SaaS platforms to achieve FedRAMP designation.
- Finally, Aptean announced its acquisition of Frontix BV, a provider of cloud-based Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and energy management solutions to process manufacturers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and over a dozen other countries across the globe.
It has been a busy week in the world of ERP, with many companies putting significant focus on the advancement and expansion of their products. This is a great time for users looking to enhance the capabilities of their ERP solution.
Thanks for tuning into The ERP Minute. We are always looking for newsworthy material to share with our listeners, so send us breaking ERP news! Be sure to subscribe to our Apple Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube channels so you never miss an episode. We’ll see you next week.
