These days it seems like most, if not all technology products are getting smaller and more powerful, smaller and faster, smaller and less expensive, smaller and smarter, smaller and better connected.
In business software we’re seeing the same trend, away from the large monolithic systems of old, towards smaller, more targeted “apps” with a specific purpose. These apps connect to other apps and work together to form a larger overall “integrated solution”.
I first noticed this “smaller and connected” trend a few years ago when I worked in the ERP industry. We started seeing smaller accounting systems being used by larger and larger businesses. How could this happen? The answer was and is that the smaller accounting system is plugged into add-on solutions that enable the combined solution to cater to the specific requirements of the industry or user.
In the case of my company’s Datagate Billing Solution, we’ve decided on a product strategy where we focus on the rating and billing piece of the solution for telecom and other utility resellers, and leave the accounting, CRM, and business management functions to other popular solutions dedicated to those purposes. This means each software company focuses on what it’s good at and the integrations between the software packages enable them all to work as a single “integrated” solution.
Being integrated with other popular software products also increases our appeal to prospective customers who already use those products. This in turn leads to partnerships with those software vendors, as per the topic of my previous blog article.
I see this as a very positive move that will benefit the customers and partners of Enprise Software, whilst enabling Enprise Group to consolidate its focus on its two remaining businesses, Enprise Solutions and Datagate Innovation.
ProjectLine has been a very active reseller of Enprise Software products in the Canadian market and their team has a high level of expertise in Enprise products as well as the North American SAP Business One market. Their branches across Canada put them in the right time zones to give superior support to Enprise Software partners and customers right across North America and beyond. All current Enprise Software staff members will be retained within the business and Enprise Software Inc. will be a separate entity within the ProjectLine group.
Most of Enprise Software’s partners and customers reside in North America, so will be better off by having more localised support. All of Enprise Software’s partners and customers will benefit from the bigger team now backing the Enprise products.
Derin Hildebrandt (pictured) and his team at ProjectLine are high quality professionals, with a lot of experience in the SAP Business One market. They have an excellent reputation and I’m certain that Enprise Software and its team, partners and customers are in good hands. I wish them all the best!
Enprise‘s development team has recently switched to using an SAP HANA development environment, hosted by I-BN.
We have been delighted with the quality of service that we’ve received from Gary Feldman and his team at I-BN. They are very responsive to our requests and have deep expertise in the software and technology they are working with.
Based in Georgia USA, I-BN are specialists in hosting business software in the Cloud. In particular they specialize and have many years of experience in hosting SAP Business One and the SAP HANA platform.
Enprise Software’s newest product, “Enprise Anywhere” has been well received by the North American SAP Business One channel, with several large orders received within days of the product’s release.
Enprise Anywhere is a mobile extension of our popular “Enprise Job” solution and allows mobile workers to look up and update job information from out in the field, using a tablet or smart phone.
Last week, Enprise Software GM Cathy Masters and I met with our North American partners at the SAP Business One Innovation Summit in Miami. Everyone there was upbeat about the many exciting new product innovations from SAP and from solution partners like Enprise.
Of particular interest was SAP’s demonstration of the new HTML5 version of SAP Business One, which looks just like the Windows version, has similar capabilities and runs in a web browser. This will be an ideal companion to Enprise Anywhere, where the emphasis of the Business One suite is moving towards the browser.
Contractors that supply goods and services to the United States Department of Defense must adhere to regulations governing the way they configure and operate their accounting systems. The DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) is the government agency that audits and assesses their compliance with these regulations based on the type of contract they have with the government.
A contractor is said to be “DCAA Compliant” when their accounting systems and processes comply with the regulations set out in the web site www.dcaa.mil
The following capabilities of SAP Business One and Enprise Job provide an ideal and powerful platform for configuring a DCAA compliant accounting and project costing solution;
Proper segregation of direct costs from indirect costs
The ability to identify and accumulate direct costs by contract
A logical and consistent method for the allocation of indirect costs to intermediate and final cost objectives
Accumulation of costs under general ledger control
A timekeeping system that identifies employee’s labor by intermediate or final cost objectives
A labor distribution system that charges direct and indirect labor to the appropriate cost objectives
Interim determination of costs charged to a contract through routine posting to books of account.
Exclusion from costs charged to Government contracts of amounts that are not allowable pursuant to FAR Part 31, Contract Cost Principles and Procedures, or other contract provisions
Identification of costs by contract line item and units (as if each unit or lines was a separate contract) if required by the proposed contract
Segregation of pre-production costs from production costs
For more specific information on Enprise Job, SAP Business One and DCAA compliance, please refer to our white paper, Enprise Job and DCAA Compliance.
ASUG Business One Summit 2013 was held at the Anaheim Convention Center, near Disneyland.
Each year Enprise attends the ASUG Business One Summit in the United States, where we meet with our reseller partners, customers, sales prospects, SAP executives and other SAP Solution Partners. This year the event was held at the Anaheim Convention Center, in Anaheim, California. The event has grown in numbers significantly each year and this time was no exception.
Cathy Masters of Enprise demonstrates Enprise Job to customers and partners at ASUG Business One Summit 2013
The hottest topic of interest with our partners and customers this year, was our new integration between Enprise Job and coresuite time. This enables users to remotely enter time and materials information against jobs in Enprise Job, in a an on-line or off-line mode, using an iPhone or iPad.
Also popular with visitors to the Enprise table were the exclusive-to-New Zealand lemon flavoured L&P chocolates…
SAP has a powerful new platform for business software called HANA. HANA stands for “High Performance Analytical Appliance” and it utilizes new “In-Memory” database technology, made possible by the new generation of computer servers that can have massive amounts of very fast Random Access Memory (RAM). The HANA database is column-based instead of row-based like conventional SQL servers, so the way it accesses data internally is completely different. HANA can handle massive workloads such as performing complex analytical queries at the same time as processing heavy transactional throughput – all on the same HANA appliance.
So what does all this mean for business customers? In short it means that business software running on HANA can run more concurrent users on larger databases more quickly than conventional database servers and at the same time produce complex real-time data warehousing-type analytics without having to run a separate server. Real time analytics is able to run at the same time as heavy transactional throughput on the same database. Wow.
At Enprise, we are excited about the new capabilities that HANA will give to our customers. Enprise Job customers on HANA will be able to run more concurrent users more quickly on larger databases and we will be able to produce more sophisticated reports and analysis of job and transaction data.
We expect that our largest Enprise Job customer – Nashua Communications of Midrand, South Africa (who run 300+ SAP Business One users and 60+ Enprise Job users) will be one of our first customers to fully switch their Business One system to HANA. At present they are running Business One HANA Analytics and are very pleased with the powerful search and analytical capabilities that is giving them. The next step for Nashua is to move all of their transactional processing on to HANA.
James Brading and I caught up with Nashua’s CIO, Darren de Vries at the SAP HANA TechSummit event in Bratislava during April this year.
Mark Loveys, Darren de Vries (CIO of Nashua Communications) and James Brading at the SAP HANA TechSummit in Bratislava
Next week, April 17-19, around 270 SAP partners and personnel from around the world will meet in Bratislava, Slovakia for the SAP Business One HANA Tech-Summit. During this event, SAP Business One consultants and developers will gain knowledge and experience on SAP Business One running on SAP HANA.
James, Lita and I will be there from Enprise. We are in the process of adapting all of our solutions, (including Enprise Job and Enprise Rent) for SAP Business One to run on HANA.
HANA extends the reach of SAP Business One and partner solutions up-market to larger business with more users, data and analytical requirements.
We are excited to be part of this major market opportunity and are convinced that SAP Business One and solutions such as Enprise Job will benefit greatly from the industry-leading, game-changing analytical horsepower of SAP HANA.
Next week James Brading, Lita Teng and I will travel from New Zealand to Bratislava, to attend the SAP Business One Tech-Summit. This is a global event where we will learn directly from SAP about their latest technologies, including HANA – SAP’s new High Performance Analytical Appliance.
HANA is of particular significance to Enprise, because we are presently developing the capability for all of our products to run on HANA. Similarly, SAP is also releasing all of its software to run on HANA – including SAP Business One.
HANA gives SAP Business One and solutions such as Enprise Job a lot more processing power and analytic capability, enabling the solutions to be suitable for larger customers with larger volumes of data and more sophisticated data analysis requirements.
Following the Tech-Summit, James and I will continue up to London for the SAP Business One UK & Nordics Partner Day.
We look forward to meeting many of ours and SAP’s reseller partners from around the world at both of these events.
Last week, on Friday 21st September at DSQ Holdings Ltd’s Annual General Meeting, shareholders voted to approve the acquisition of Enprise. This is the beginning of a major new chapter in the evolution of both Enprise and DSQ (formerly Datasquirt), which will now become one and the same.
The new combined business will be named Enprise Group Limited, which will be a public New Zealand company, listed in Australia with over 350 shareholders.
This is a very positive development for all stakeholders (customers, partners, staff and shareholders) of both Enprise and DSQ.
The new Enprise Group will retain its focus on all aspects of delivering high-quality business software, solutions and services to small and medium sized enterprises. It will have offices throughout New Zealand and Australia (Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington and Hamilton) in addition to its international channel of around 100 reseller partners throughout the USA, Canada, UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Enprise Software is an SAP Gold Software Solution Partner that develops solutions for SAP Business One which is sold through an international partner channel.
Enprise Solutions is a top MYOB Platinum Partner in both New Zealand and Australia, which sells and supports the market leading MYOB EXO suite of business software.
2Cloud.biz is a joint venture, offering Cloud delivery of popular ERP solutions through established reseller channels. Presently, the business is focused exclusively on Cloud delivery of MYOB EXO and associated solutions to the Australasian market.
The new Enprise Group will exploit a range of growth-driving opportunities for its customers and for itself; including the shift to Cloud Computing, Mobile Solutions, Regional Expansion and new “Big Data” processing technologies.
I will be discussing various aspects of the new Enprise Group and its growth opportunities on this blog, over the coming weeks.
Mark Loveys 