Punching Soup - Tag: business

Minimizing the Cost of SaaS Operations

Bob Warfield — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:59:42 -0700

SaaS software is much more dependent on being run by the numbers than conventional on-premises software because the expenses are front loaded and the costs are back loaded. SAP learned this the hard way with its Business By Design product, for example. If you run the numbers, there is a high degree of correlation between [...]

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Friday’s Feature: Workday Release 10 Moves Users One Step Closer To ERP Replacement

R "Ray" Wang — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:49:47 -0700

Workday Continues To Pioneer SaaS Success In The Enterprise Founded by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri in March 2005, Workday has grown the company to over 135 customers with 80+ companies in production, 17 enterprise payroll companies, and over 400 employees in 50 countries worldwide. Key industries include services, technology, financial [...]

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Expand Accredited Investor Class, Not Shrink It.

Jeff Nolan — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:06:32 -0700

There is a banking reform bill working through Congress… in case you hadn’t noticed. Fred Wilson points out, rightly so, that the banking reform does a lot more than just reform banking rules, it goes to the very heart of who can invest in non-banking activities and how. 1) Changing the definition of a “qualified investor” [...]

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Friday Rant: Should Finance Own P2P?

Jason Busch — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:37:00 -0700

In this rant, I'll purposely be contrarian. In 99% of organizations today, procurement owns the P2P technology platform, perhaps in collaboration with IT (or at least the first "P" in it). The second "P," if it exists in a technology-automated manner...

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Jesse Stay — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:08:35 -0700

Up until now I’ve been preparing a raving review about how much I love the recurring payment service, Recurly. Previously, at simply a fraction of the price of each payment on the service, it was very simple for any entrepreneur to get set up with the service and have an out-of-the-box solution for recurring payments [...]

PL’s Forum Chicago Dispatch 2: Harley Davidson Revs Up Supplier Management and Procurement Skills

Jason Busch — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:53:00 -0700

Earlier this week, Procurement Leaders' Chicago Forum managed to attract a panel of high-profile CPOs: Dr. Volker Pyrtek, CPO, Deutsche Telecom; Tim McBride, CPO, MSFT; Michelle Kumbier, VP and GM, Materials Management and Corporate Quality, Harley D...

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Freemiums for SaaS

Bob Warfield — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:41:48 -0700

Time for my first Learnings post about my Helpstream Experience. Freemiums are a fascinating subject. Whole books have been written about the concept of extracting value from something that’s free. The FOS (Free Open Source) movement is all about free, and we benefited tremendously from it at Helpstream. Not one single software license fee was paid [...]

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Did Toyota’s Lean Supply Chain Go Bad?

Jason Busch — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:44:00 -0700

There's been a lot of finger pointing in the press recently when it comes to Toyota?s suddenly accelerating escapades, which seemed to downshift into third gear with the accelerator floored (even to the point of a made-for-media car chase and forensi...

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ICG Commerce’s 2009 Results Suggest Procurement BPO Growth

Jason Busch — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:38:00 -0700

ICG Commerce, which sell-side analysts at Crag Hallum (an investment bank) suggest is a prime IPO candidate in the coming years, had a strong 2009, according to a recent company press release, adding further fuel to the public offering fire. In thei...

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The new normal in telecom

Vinnie Mirchandani — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:30:00 -0700

I led a lively session at the Cognizant Community in Phoenix with Deb Lucas of Comcast and Thomas Knight of AT&T. I used 2 slides (extract below) to summarize all the innovation and challenges around telecomms showcased in my upcoming book The New Polymath. Deb described the automation and efficiencies Comcast is building into its OSS/BSS [...]

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Announcing FAILfaire in New York City

Michael Krigsman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:10:43 -0700

Attend this free event to share and understand IT and communication technology failures.

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Ada Lovelace day. Two academics.

Thomas Otter — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:11:38 -0700

I’m featuring two academics for this year’s Ada Lovelace day. It is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Firstly: Dr Sue Black. I’ve not met Sue, except on twitter, but I have admired her efforts to support Bletchley Park for some time now. She blogs about them here. I [...]

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Healthcare Cost Reduction: What Can Group Purchasing Organizations Learn From BPOs? (Part 1)

Jason Busch — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:58:00 -0700

Group purchasing organizations (GPOs) are extremely well engrained in the healthcare supply chain. GPOs are intermediaries that sit between hospitals and other buyers and suppliers, typically taking a percentage of the value of each transaction (whic...

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User Group Event: SAP Australian User Group (SAUG) Summit 2010

R "Ray" Wang — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:53:43 -0700

Title: SAUG Summit 2010 Location: Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre Darling Harbour, Sydney Link out: Click here Start Date: 2010-08-03 End Date: 2010-08-05 Description: Learn: Collaborate: Innovate The SAUG Summit is the largest SAP event in the Asia-Pacific region and 2010 promises to be no different. This gathering for SAP professionals attracts a wide range of attendees from all levels within [...]

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The Future of HR May Get Written By Northgate Arinso

Brian Sommer — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:38:54 -0700

HR technologies, especially HR outsourcing solutions, appear to be changing a lot lately. Northgate Arinso is growing organically and inorganically to become a major player domestically and abroad.

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Helpstream CEO Gone. Or is it the Company? Either Way, We Gain a Great Blogger.

Zoli Erdos — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:30:55 -0700

You heard the good news here first, so it’s only appropriate to be the first to follow up: Bob Warfield is likely out as CEO of Helpstream, a Social CRM SaaS provider. The company website still lists Bob as CEO, but his blog post this morning implies news not yet officially announced: My Startup Track Record Success. [...]

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How to Use Twitter to Poach Customers

tdomf_2ae17 — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:59:48 -0700

Many companies like Dell or Moonfruit have discovered Twitter as a separate sales channel. Both use rather similar strategies: They either offer special discounts or work with giveaways to attract followers, drive traffic to their sites and boost sales. In 2008 (when Dell was one of the first companies to use Twitter as a direct [...]

How to Use Twitter to Poach Customers

Rolling out a Supplier Performance Management Program ? Key Process Steps (Part 2)

Jason Busch — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:39:00 -0700

In this second post in the series on key process steps for supplier performance management (SPM), we?ll turn our attention primarily to monitoring and administering a program once it's up and running. As a reminder to those who may have missed the fi...

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Palm must build great accessories to survive

Dennis Moore — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:21:00 -0700

Palm is in a tough situation. As reported widely, Palm’s operating results are beginning to cast doubt about the viability of the company. There is no easy solution for the company, but a series of tough measures and creative development efforts can turn things around. Palm makes a number of smart phones, notably the [...]

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Aberdeen Loses Another Procurement Analyst: Andrew Bartolini

Jason Busch — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:14:00 -0700

When Tim Minahan left Aberdeen to head to Procuri five years ago, the average tenure of procurement analysts at the firm dropped from years to quarters -- and in some cases, mere months. As some predicted at the time, Aberdeen would never be able to ...

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Software Insider Index™ (SII): 2009 SII Top 35 Enterprise Business Apps Vendors™

R "Ray" Wang — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:27:09 -0700

2009 Results In Major Revenue Declines For On Premise And Officially The Year Of SaaS A review of last year’s financial performance should erase any doubts about the viability of SaaS as a deployment option and a business model. Traditional on-premise business apps vendors took the brunt of the beating earlier in the year but [...]

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oDesk and the inadvertent freelancer

Brian Sommer — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:37:02 -0700

oDesk's Brian Goler called to discuss the Inadvertent Freelancer concept. The discussion covered much more than oDesk's abilities to help the modern freelancer.

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Gist Acquires Startup Weekend Project Learn that Name

Brad Feld — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:25:43 -0700

Gist just announced that they have acquired Learn that Name and incorporated it in the Gist iPhone app. There are a lot of fun connections here for me. For starters, as many of you know, I’m an investor in Gist. If you haven’t tried it – or haven’t played with it for a while – give [...]

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Earthquakes Show Supply Chain Risk Extends Beyond Supplier Financial Viability

Jason Busch — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:17:00 -0700

Inside many companies, the recession has caused supply risk to move from a secondary issue to a primary concern. Despite this interest, many companies are approaching the topic from a narrow scope, considering only supplier financial viability as a r...

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We Are Pleased to Present… Trada!

Niel Robertson — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:14:14 -0700

After almost 18 months, the whole team here is extremely pleased to present Trada to the world. As you learn about what Trada is doing, we hope you get as excited as we are. We fundamentally think we’ve invented, developed and continue to perfect a totally new way of doing paid search. It’s a way [...]

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Coupa Heads for the Clouds — eProcurement, T&E and Beyond (Part 2)

Jason Busch — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:16:00 -0700

The most important functional announcement in Coupa's latest release (you can read the first post in this series here) is a new expense reporting capability designed to provide organizations with an integrated system to help capture, in Coupa's words...

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Hacker Disables Cars via the Web – Our Remote Controlled Life

Zoli Erdos — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:06:51 -0700

This is what remote controlled toy cars looked like when I was a kid. Yes, the control box was connected to the car with a 3-4feet cable… not exactly the level of freedom you get with today’s wireless models. But it was fun, nevertheless. I wonder if 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez had a toy car when [...]

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Google: A One-Click Pony?

Niel Robertson — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:38:58 -0700

While there are countless daily articles about impending threats to Google’s hegemony (many of which are partially fair), what most people overlook is that Google has an immense amount of options in which to continue to grow its core business. But “Google’s just a one-click pony,” you say. They make 90% of their revenue from search, [...]

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The Sleek and the Geek @ SAP

Zoli Erdos — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:56:00 -0700

Need more proof that being co-CEOS is an awkward situation? Watch this SiliconAngle video between 0:20 and 0:35 Of course you can watch the whole thing… and read these reports of the press event: Oracle Who? SAP Co-CEOs Slam Oracle – They Are The Old Way SAP State of The Union: The CEOs Talk Oracle, SaaS [...]

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Sanyo solar panel parking lots open for business

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:49:00 -0700

Sanyo has completed installation of parking lots in Tokyo for 100 of its eneloop electric bicycles. The lots will use solar power to recharge the bikes.

Travel Tuesday: The End of Business Class and Other Tales — Is Corporate Travel Changing for Good?

Jason Busch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:26:00 -0700

A fundamental challenge of indirect and services procurement is that we?re often asked to make sourcing decisions -- not to mention negotiating with and managing suppliers -- based on historic data that may or may not reflect future demands and requi...

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One Name or Two? Let’s Find Out

Nathan Hangen — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:32:45 -0700

I was asked recently about the task of managing multiple Twitter accounts and if it’s better to use your own name or an “imaginary name.” It’s not the first time I’ve had the question asked, so I thought what better way to answer it than by sharing it with everyone here on Twitip. Absolutes Don’t Exist I’ll first [...]

One Name or Two? Let’s Find Out

The Fallacy of the Head of the Tail

Niel Robertson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:02:18 -0700

A lot of companies that have tried paid search simply don’t have the time to explore and manage the middle and long tail of keywords. Matt Hessler wrote a great blog post about the value of the long tail and how Trada is designed very well to do this for you. But what about the [...]

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RightNow: Analyzing the ‘Cloud Services Agreement’

Michael Krigsman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:44:32 -0700

Cloud-based CRM vendor, RightNow, recently released new service that are not revolutionary but do challenge other vendors to simplify pricing / licensing terms and conditions.

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TechStars Data from 2007 to 2009

Brad Feld — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:29:13 -0700

One of our internal mantras at TechStars is to “publish your data.” We encourage ever team to do this starting very early in their life. To this day, I still get daily performance reports (I refer to them as TPS reports) from many of the companies that have gone through the program. Last week, David Cohen [...]

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A thousand curses on Google!

Vinnie Mirchandani — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:44:35 -0700

So, I have roughly a week to go through the copy-edit of my book and slip in any updates since I filed the manuscript in January. And I find I have to mention Google’s broadband plans in the chapter on...

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The Business Climate in China

Jeff Nolan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:10:51 -0700

I just spent a week and a half in southern China visiting a range of manufacturing facilities and meeting with senior executives, and the learnings were significant, some of which I want to share with you today. This is the kind of information that is really challenging to get from analysts and journalists simply because [...]

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Friday Rant: Are Acquisitions Good For Spend Management Users?

Jason Busch — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:03:00 -0700

There's been a lot of chatter in the market these past few weeks about acquisitions. Some larger players are clearly headed to Costco to look for warehouse bargains (smaller formats and Ma and Pop shops aren't worth the time for these larger players,...

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Will Apple?s Supply Chain Let it Down with the New iPad?

Jason Busch — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:03:00 -0700

There's been much buzz in the Apple community about whether Apple will be able to meet initial demand for its new iPad. Many Apple enthusiasts would agree with the statement that Apple's new product supply chains usually take time to flex to keep up ...

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First Index Shuts Down: History and Context

Jason Busch — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:23:00 -0700

Yesterday, we reported that First Index, a sourcing marketplace for industrial parts and former consulting firm, had closed its doors earlier this week. My tip on the situation came from AJ Sweatt, a colleague and friend who serves as community and b...

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Report: Time for next stage of sustainable business

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:05:00 -0700

Activist investor group urges companies to track their use of energy and resources as closely as it does its hiring and cash flow.

Oracle Promoting Microsoft Bing? Microsoft Paying Oracle and Subsidizing Java? Cats and Dogs Living Together???

Dennis Moore — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:29:36 -0700

Today, I got an alert from Java that an update was available, so I clicked “OK” to install. Imagine my surprise when I got the following prompt during the installation procedure: Is Larry Ellison aware that Oracle (which now owns Sun and its Java products) is promoting Microsoft Bing? By the way, a colleague told me [...]

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Reading is Writing: Illuminating The Digital Manuscript

James Governor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:58:55 -0700

Back in 2004 I wrote post called The Death of Consumer Electronics. Wishful thinking of course. My central, hopeful, argument is that we’re actually content creators, not consumers. What exactly do you consume when you take a digital photograph and post it on Flickr? Sure you can sit and watch a TV show or DVD, [...]

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Google widens assault on Microsoft's dominance of business softwear

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:50:20 -0700

Google is to broaden its assault on Microsoft's dominance of the market for business software by launching on online marketplace for other companies' enterprise products.

First Index: A Consultancy and Marketplace Closes Its Doors

Jason Busch — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:19:00 -0700

On Tuesday, March 9th, First Index, a supplier-pays marketplace and former direct materials sourcing and supply chain consultancy, closed its doors. First Index had received significant funding from LMS Capital, a UK-based firm, and Bessemer ventures...

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Google announces business app store for Google Apps

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:15:00 -0700

Software developers can cater to Google Apps customers through a new application store announced at Google's Campfire One event in Mountain View.

More Fun with Co-CEOs: The Economist Responds (And Still Doesn’t Dissuade Me)

Josh Greenbaum — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:31:33 -0700

The author of the column in the Economist that I cited in my last post has written a kind response, defending his position against my slings and arrows. On one account he is firmly correct: the article he cited is findable, especially after the correct name of the business journal was published on the Economist’s [...]

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Foursquare gets down to business

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:27:00 -0700

Location-aware social site Foursquare is introducing tools that make it easier for businesses to target users. This is a smart business move.

Even Lawyers Agree: Put Procurement “Firmly at the Core” of Outsourcing Strategy

Jason Busch — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:21:00 -0700

I read the summary of a new report from down under earlier today that was not remarkable for its findings, but for its authors -- a group of lawyers (at Norton Rose) who came to the same conclusion as any reasonable group of procurement or operations...

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Coupa and Ariba — Analyzing Competitive Claims (Part 3)

Jason Busch — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:09:00 -0700

In this third post in the series analyzing Coupa's competitive claims against Ariba (click here for Part 1 and Part 2), I'll turn my attention to the remaining claims Coupa makes against its Sunnyvale P2P neighbor (in case you're curious, Coupa's off...

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