
A Tale of Five Conferences: InfusionCon 2013, Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is one of five conferences I’ve been to in April and its was incredibly revealing. There is no question that Infusionsoft is the player to beat in the small business customer facing technology world. There are things they have to do yet, b…

Cost Management Failures: 10 Reasons SMBs Stink at Procurement
Last week, we began a blog series exploring the state of procurement in the small and middle market sectors. See 2013: The Year of Source-To-Pay Adoption for SMB Procurement and 3 Essential Procurement Services For Small and Middle Market Businesses. As we continue our analysis of SMB procurement practices, it makes sense to do a […]

2011 ERP survey: New IT failure research and statistics
A new survey of small business ERP projects sheds light on project success and failure.

Zoho Rounds Out Small Business Suite with Accounting App–Zoho Books
This morning Zoho, known for SMB focused SaaS offerings in the areas of productivity, collaboration, business processes launched an Accounting app: Zoho Books. I typically don’t do detailed product reviews, when I see the first good ones, will link to them – just a few points here and then let’s discuss how it rounds out […]

SAP Goes On-demand
While the reigning crown prince of on-demand held court at Dreamforce last week, a pretender to the throne threw down the gauntlet and made its first full-court, concerted press into the future perfect of the enterprise software market. Day two of SAP’s analyst summit was an all-day marathon of product roadmaps, demos, and discussions that […]

NetSuite Fights Hairball Epidemic with New Release and Edgy Marketing Campaign
NetSuite’s marketing team has been known for their edginess, starting from pranks like the SAP for the Rest of Us Party during SAP’s annual conference to staging a shootout at the anti-SAP Conference or releasing edgy videos a’la Mac vs. Windows. Today they are doing it again, by establishing the Hairball Institute for Business: (The […]

Ariba StartSourcing/StartContracts — Commendable SMB Effort, But not as Cheap as It Seems (Part 1)
I recently dug into Ariba’s new down-market SmartSourcing and SmartContracts offerings that represent simplified yet decent products for the mid-market in their own right. Information Week — which ironically published an article …

IBM, Partners Launch Supplier Connection — Small Business Plus or Diversity Lip Service? (Part 1)
Earlier this month, IBM and a number of partners (Bank of America, Citigroup, Pfizer and UPS) announced plans to collectively launch Supplier Connection, a small business registration site. According to Supplier Connection’s websi…

Business All-In-One Goes Buyside — SAP Brings SRM 7.0-Like Capability to the SMB Market (Part 1)
The middle market remains without a definitive eProcurement solution. Ariba, despite aggressive price points and leading overall market-share in the broader eProcurement market by our analysis, has failed to distance itself from Coupa and others within the middle market. In this environment, SAP has opted to toss its hat into the middle market eProcurement fray […]

SAP Business ByDesign Video – Plain and Simple, Making Fun of …Wow, ERP!
We’re just having an intense internal debate in the Enterprise Irregulars group whether SAP’s Business ByDesign (ByD) is late to the market and what it all means, when hot off the press here’s a promotional video, that’s not so much ByD advertising but a SMB / SME SaaS 101, and a very good one at […]