Tag Archives: Software News

Qlik Debuts Qlik Sense Business, Latest Cloud Analytics Offering from its 3rd Generation BI Platform

Qlik has announced Qlik Sense® Business, the latest offering supporting its cloud-first, SaaS strategy. Qlik Sense Business is a new version of Qlik Sense that provides a simple and fast path for customers of any size to access the world-class analytics of Qlik’s patented Associative Indexing technology. The new product is the first and only pure SaaS offering that brings the power of the 3rd generation of data and analytics to small business and groups, accelerating their journey to modern analytics more quickly and with greater ROI than any other offering in the market.

“Qlik is driving the third generation of business intelligence software with our cloud-first, enterprise SaaS analytics platform,” said Mike Potter, Qlik CTO.

“Qlik Sense Business extends the opportunity to lead with data to any organisation that wants to get started quickly with enterprise-grade analytics. With the core benefits of Qlik Sense and our cloud-native architecture, Qlik Sense Business helps any organisation rapidly improve data literacy and data-driven decision making with a built-in upgrade path that grows their analytics alongside their business.”

Qlik Sense Business leverages the latest technology to provide a richer analytical experience than the prior Qlik Sense Cloud Business offering, the solution this new offering replaces. For existing customers, migrating from Qlik Sense Cloud Business to Qlik Sense Business gives them the same outstanding speed, performance and availability as Qlik Sense, with a clear path to easily upgrade and continue their analytics journey with Qlik in the cloud. It will also be offered as a 30-day trial for all potential Qlik customers to evaluate the power of Qlik analytics. Some of the many benefits of Qlik Sense Business include:

• Qlik’s Associative Engine, self-service app creation, visual data preparation, interactive dashboards, and smart search,
• Automated AI-generated insight suggestions,
• Direct connectivity to over 40+ data sources,
• A personal space, where individual users can create and share their own content,
• Five shared spaces, where users can co-develop and control access to apps,
• The same redesigned hub as Qlik Sense Enterprise that enables easy content management and sharing for end users, and
• A new management console and MyQlik portal for self-service management and administration.

“Organisations of all sizes are increasingly considering vendor-managed, cloud-based services for BI and analytics, but many also want options for hybrid- and multi-cloud deployment,” said Doug Henschen, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“Constellation Research added Qlik to its Q3 2019 Shortlist™ for Cloud-Based Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms on the strength of advances in both its SaaS offerings and underlying software support for the preferred cloud standards of Linux and Kubernetes.”

Qlik Sense September 2019: Natural Language and Deeper Data Connectors Further Democratise Data

The company also delivered updates to its core platform with the release of Qlik Sense September 2019, building on Qlik’s continuous delivery of innovation for the 3rd generation of data and analytics. Included in Qlik Sense September 2019 is a new NLP (natural language processing) capability in the Qlik Cognitive Engine that supports natural language search and interaction in Qlik Sense. As users engage with Insight Advisor, they are now able to enter search criteria using full natural language. The Qlik Cognitive Engine parses the search string to understand the user’s intent and provide the right data and insights based on search criteria. Qlik Sense September 2019 also delivered updated connectors for Salesforce and Snowflake to expand users’ access to key data sources. Both are now available on all Qlik Sense editions and deployment options, including Qlik Sense Business, Qlik Sense Enterprise on Cloud Services and Qlik Sense Enterprise on Kubernetes.

Qlik’s approach to democratising data and providing flexible cloud-first and multi-cloud options for all customers is more important than ever, given the key trends that customers are looking to address through analytics: leveraging data in the cloud, managing all data (not just big data), benefiting from a single view into all their data, and leveraging augmented intelligence to the edges of the organisation.

Alfresco launches new Platform as a Service (PaaS) to provide customers with more cloud deployment choice

Alfresco Software, a commercial, open source software company, today announced it plans to significantly broaden cloud deployment choice with the introduction of Alfresco Cloud, which brings the Alfresco Digital Business Platform to enterprises in an easy to consume fully managed environment. Alfresco Cloud comprises:

– A number of on-demand services including Content as a Service, Process as a Service, Governance as a Service, and AI as a Service
– A content app for organisations to use immediately with minimal configuration for enterprise content management consumed as a service
– A cloud-based, development platform enabling organisations to build and run their process and content intensive apps in a fully managed and hosted environment.

These cloud services enable enterprises to build process and content intensive apps without the cost and complexity of deploying, managing, and updating the platform themselves. It is a combination of infrastructure, operational capabilities, security monitoring and governance, and the industry leading enterprise content and business process management solutions.

Alfresco Cloud will allow enterprises to focus on delivering true business value, while leaving the upgrade, maintenance, and performance tuning to Alfresco – resulting in faster time to value and reduced costs when compared to running their infrastructure on premises.

Bernadette Nixon, Chief Executive Officer, Alfresco said:

“We wanted to bring the power of the Digital Business Platform to enterprises that want to simplify the development and deployment of their own apps. In a nutshell, we removed the IT infrastructure headache. With our managed PaaS, enterprises can access the full power of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform, gain total independence from the underlying infrastructure, and run their apps anywhere.”

Alfresco’s Digital Business Platform as a Service, which is hosted in Amazon Web Services, is extremely reliable with a high-availability architecture that is fully redundant and brings forward state-of-the-art security features. It provides all the capabilities of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform via the Cloud, provides customers access to the latest innovations, and always offers the latest version of the platform comprising all updates, patches and third-party services.

Nixon added:

“Our customers want to focus on delivering exceptional digital experiences for their customers and employees. In the end, it is all about delivering business value as quickly and efficiently as possible and our managed PaaS delivers on that promise.”

Alfresco PaaS is initially available in preview mode with general availability in early 2020. To learn more, visit https://wwwtest.alfresco.com/alfresco-cloud

Wrike Launches Next Generation of Work Management Tools

Wrike this week unveiled Wrike Analyse, Wrike for Professional Services and Wrike for Professional Services Performance designed to address the growing demand for end-to-end work management solutions that measure the impact of effort and cater to specific use cases.

“Organisations are drowning in an ever increasing amount of digital work, and need new ways to gain visibility into their operations, focus on the most important work, and increase their business velocity,” said Wrike Founder and CEO Andrew Filev.

“Wrike Analyse now makes it possible to connect projects and workflows to business KPIs, so leadership and individual contributors alike can derive insights in real-time and allocate resources to activities with the highest ROI. These new capabilities fuel the next generation of work management solutions that we are launching for high performance marketing and professional services organisations, enabling them to drive more growth for their businesses.”

Today’s announcements include:

  • Wrike Analyse is an advanced analytics and reporting add-on that improves visibility into and management of portfolios, projects, and unique business KPIs. The tool is both powerful and easy-to-use for business users. It comes with pre-built dashboard templates, including project portfolio and project status overviews for quick report creation, as well as a wide-range of widgets, filters, and options to enable organisations to visualise data in the way that works best for individual use cases. Once created, custom dashboards and reports can be easily shared with internal and external stakeholders.
  • Wrike for Professional Services helps organisations increase on-time project delivery, profit margin, and client satisfaction by providing visibility into all stages of a project life cycle, empowering them to optimise resource utilisation and automate repeatable processes. This solution enables organisations to meet increasing demands, while simultaneously scaling the business.

This announcement underscores the company’s commitment to developing a platform and a suite of tools that help organisations work more effectively, become more agile, and not only achieve desired outcomes, but analyse efforts against results to calculate return on initiatives in real-time.

“We’ve spent more than a decade building the most versatile collaborative work management platform available and today’s announcements not only illustrate that versatility but also mark a big step forward in the depth and variety of use cases that the Wrike platform supports,” added Filev.

Wrike for Professional Services is available today. Wrike Analyze will be available for Business, Enterprise, Wrike for Marketers, and Wrike for Professional Services customers as an add-on feature in Q4 2019. Wrike for Professional Services Performance will also be available in Q4 2019.

Influencer Marketing Platform CreatorIQ Appoints EMEA Managing Director to Spearhead Growth

CreatorIQ, the leading influencer marketing platform for global brands and agencies including Disney, Airbnb, and Ralph Lauren, has announced the appointment of Kam Zulawski as its new Managing Director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

At CreatorIQ, Zulawski will be responsible for EMEA growth and go-to-market efforts, including building on the recent $12 million investment from TVC Capital and Unilever Ventures in the company’s Enterprise Creator Cloud.

Zulawski joins the company with over 13 years’ global experience across the consulting, influencer marketing, social media, and PR space where he focused on building and scaling teams whilst supporting large enterprises and agencies in digital transformation. Prior to joining CreatorIQ, Zulawski worked for Onalytica, Hootsuite, Cision, and Gartner in executive managerial and business development roles across North America and EMEA.

Dan Murray, President, CreatorIQ, said:

“Kam is a proven performer and his record speaks for itself, making him the ideal candidate to lead our growth strategy in EMEA. Having worked extensively on SaaS business models, and with leading influencer marketing platforms, Kam’s wealth of knowledge and experience will be instrumental in accelerating CreatorIQ’s expansion across the region.”

Kam Zulawski, Managing Director EMEA, CreatorIQ, said:

“Influencer Marketing is emerging as one of the most exciting and disruptive marketing channels for companies to take advantage of. CreatorIQ has the perfect combination of cutting-edge technology and a forward-thinking team, all of which play an important part in our mission to become the global leader in this field. I’m thrilled to be joining the leadership team to help CreatorIQ in its next phase of growth.”

CreatorIQ is the leading cloud solution for global enterprises to manage and optimize influencer campaigns at scale. With a technology-first focus, the company is developing AI-backed solutions for influencer marketing workflow, measurement insights, fraud detection, and industry benchmarking to meet the needs of Fortune 500 brands and their agencies.

For more information, visit https://creatoriq.com/

Prodigy Finance works with SureCloud to consolidate and streamline risk management

International postgraduate student loan provider, Prodigy Finance, has selected IRM software solutions provider SureCloud to consolidate, streamline and automate its risk, compliance, policy and incident management processes.

After a 5-month selection process that considered various vendors and platforms, Prodigy Finance selected four SureCloud products to provide a single centralised source of information and controls and automate a wide range of functions.

The four products chosen from SureCloud’s IT risk management and cybersecurity portfolio were:

  • Risk Management – to give a streamlined, structured approach to risk management, a central view of risk across the entire organisation, and automated identification, assessment and tracking of different types of risk.
  • Policy Management – delivering a central repository of all policies, a single point for policy revisions to be managed from, and a way to track end-user attestation.
  • Compliance Management – to enable an out-of-the-box control framework for complying with relevant laws, standards, frameworks and regulations across all the jurisdictions in which Prodigy operates.
  • Incident Management – to centralise, automate and simplify the management of incidents of any type, including security, privacy, health and safety.

Speaking on the partnership, Michael Light, Risk Analyst and GRC project sponsor at Prodigy Finance, commented:

“We were using a wide range of different single-purpose platforms and processes to manage our governance, risk and compliance (GRC) processes. We had everything from specialist vendor software applications to manual Excel spreadsheets.

“We needed to find a way of linking these various modules and ideas together, both to streamline internal management and costs, but also to improve our GRC posture. All of the information we needed was sitting in multiple places, with no consolidation or unification.

“We have approaching 100,000 unique data subjects, many of whom have made more than one application for finance, so there are some significant data management challenges.”
Light also stated that SureCloud has also helped Prodigy Finance to uncover new sources of management information.

“All the data is live, and the reports are extremely easy to read, so it’s incredibly accessible for our management teams,” said Michael.

“SureCloud’s tools are enabling us to access and make use of data that we simply couldn’t capitalise on before, which is very promising for our future innovation and growth.”

Software specialist helps Network Rail keep track of rolling stock

Skelmersdale-based CoreRFID is rolling out a system of tags and readers for Network Rail, which owns and runs Britain’s railway network.

The RFID based system automatically assists in identifying rolling stock as it passes over monitoring sites across the rail network. The tags, which can be read over long distances whilst the rolling stock is moving, are coded to Network Rail’s precise specifications and this enables assets to be matched to corresponding records in Network Rail’s asset management systems.

The solution also helps Network Rail distinguish between its own assets and a those of other operators’ rolling stock using the same rail infrastructure. The readers and tags are able to fully function in all weather conditions and cope with vibration and contamination caused by dirt and grease.

CoreRFID and Network Rail will continue working together as new rolling stock comes into operation.

The contract follows a recent project with Serco for the Caledonian Sleeper rail service it operates between London and a number of Scottish cities. CoreRFID supplied 100,000 RFID access cards for the passenger cabins, which improves the customer experience and security.

Network Rail operates and develops Britain’s railway infrastructure, covering 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and aqueducts and thousands of signals, level crossings and stations, including the UK’s largest 20 stations.

CoreRFID’s director Richard Harrison comments:

‘Our work with Network Rail shows the versatility and robustness of RFID technology in the most challenging circumstances.

‘It also demonstrates our ability to undertake asset management projects on a large scale and to design and deliver a reliable solution tailored to client’s specific needs.’

Cezanne HR continues to scale with strong first-half results and international demand for its Cloud-first HR system

Cezanne HR, the Cloud-first HR software platform for mid-sized UK and international organisations, today announced a +40% increase in its 2019 month-on-month subscription revenue compared with the same period in 2018.

This significant growth has been driven by the combination of a rapidly-expanding customer base and existing customers extending their use of the Cezanne HR system.

The platform’s onboarding and performance management modules have seen particularly high uptake throughout this period, and other new features designed to ensure customers can easily configure the product to reflect their company’s culture and ways of working are also proving very popular. Cezanne HR continues to appeal to organisations across a wide range of geographies and sectors, from technology and finance to distribution and not-for profits. New customers signed in H1 2019 include Age UK Oxfordshire, Smiffys, CreamFinance, DisplayLink, Solevo, Message Media and Emplas Windows.

To further support the company’s growth trajectory and strong customer acquisition, Cezanne HR has grown headcount at both its London and Glasgow offices, and relocated its London team into new office space in Southwark.

Investment in product development continues to be a major focus for the company, with a significant list of new features added in the first half of the year. Cezanne HR’s new GDPR capabilities, for example, empower HR teams to set policies within their system so that data can be automatically deleted or anonymised in line with legislative requirements. This not only reduces HR admin, but also ensures GDPR compliance. In addition, the Cezanne HR team continues to extend the configuration options in its system to give the HR department more control, allowing them to map the system to their culture and requirements.

H1 2019 has also seen notable industry recognition for Cezanne HR as the company was shortlisted in three prestigious award programmes. Specifically, as a finalist in:
• The CIPD’s People Management Awards for ‘Best HR Supplier’ for the digital HR project with ASL Aviation Group;
• The Southwark Business Excellence Awards for Best Business for Customer Service and Best Business for Tech & Innovation; and, most recently,
• Cezanne HR’s customer OpenGi was shortlisted 2019 Personnel Today Awards in its ‘Excellence in HR through Technology’ category.

Cezanne HR has also seen an expansion of its partnership and integrations, with new integrations including international payroll system iiPay, and Earnie and Star, and a partnership with Perkbox – the UK’s leading employee experience platform that supports employee’s financial, physical and emotional wellbeing – in the pipeline.

Zoho expands applications suite, Zoho One, to improve value for Business Clients

Business platform Zoho has announced it is expanding it’s all-in-one suite of applications, Zoho One, to offer more value to customers with new process automation, telephony, single sign-on and blockchain capabilities.

Zoho now introduces the next generation of Zoho One, the operating system for businesses that is designed to run an entire organization—from sales and marketing, finance and HR, operations and business intelligence, and more—all on a unified technology platform.

Zoho One now boasts a new business workflow management application, Orchestly, that lets customers effortlessly create, manage, and optimize their business processes through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. In the two years since its launch, Zoho One has seen considerable growth and now serves more than 20,000 customers who make Zoho One the operating system for their business.

Around a quarter of Zoho One customers use more than 25 applications on the platform and more than 50 percent utilize beyond 16 applications showing that businesses are embracing an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution to run their businesses.

In the past two years since launch, Zoho One has evolved into a powerful operating system for businesses with over 45 applications, along with several built-in services including AI, Business Intelligence, Messaging, Search, and more. Zoho One is today a customizable, extendable, and integratable platform all at the same cost to customers.

“Technology is supposed to help businesses. Instead, it has evolved into a complex beast customers have to tame—from juggling apps from multiple vendors to trying to solve the multi-app integration puzzle to dealing with vendors forcing customers into expensive, lengthy contracts. The technology industry has gone too far down this path and this has to change,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s Chief Evangelist. “With Zoho One, we want to change all of that. It’s a technology platform to run your entire business with a vendor that is easy to do business with and you can trust. With Zoho One, you are not just licensing technology. You are licensing peace of mind.”

Zoho is introducing bold new operating-system services:

Communications:

– PhoneBridge, Zoho’s telephony platform, which integrates over 50 telephony vendors on one side and several Zoho applications on the other side, is now available within Zoho One. PhoneBridge integration enables telephony in Zoho apps like CRM and Recruit. It allows customers to make calls from Zoho apps, and provides contextual information on incoming calls. Enabling PhoneBridge will give users context for all incoming calls from Zoho CRM, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Mail, and 20+ other apps.

– Single Sign-on: This allows customers to integrate any third-party applications onto their Zoho account and currently supports around 50 third-party applications. Single Sign-On works with third-party systems like active directory, which makes it scalable for mid-to-large sized businesses.

– Zoho One admins can now enforce YubiKey authentication as an added factor for increased security, on top of existing multi-factor authentications already supported.

App Management and Provisioning:

– Zoho One currently enables provisioning for all 45+ Zoho apps. This is now being extended to custom apps created through Zoho Creator as well as external apps available through Zoho Marketplace. Zoho, third-party, custom, and SSO apps can be provisioned either individually to users or as groups conditionally provisioned with custom criteria. Zoho One’s new Admin Panel with dashboards and reports allows admins to monitor user activity and app usage, enabling them to find and manage underutilized resources. Admins also get extensive reports on user management, sign-in activity, app usage, and account security.

Business Workflow Management:

– Orchestly has a drag-and-drop interface to enable managers with no coding skills to define processes with little effort. Managers and administrators can automate and run their regular workflows, including cross-departmental workflows such as purchase approvals, content publishing, asset management, and onboarding. In the case of onboarding a new employee, the recruitment, interview, offer submission, and onboarding is handled across the recruiting department, HR department, legal department, and whatever team the applicant is joining. Because so many departments and applications are involved in this process, Orchestly is able to cut across these various teams and applications to create comprehensive workflows and automate complex processes.

Products and Services Innovations:

– The enhanced Zoho Sign now provides an additional level of verification for customers by adopting blockchain-based timestamping through Ethereum, the globally accepted, open-source platform.

All Levels of Support:

– Zoho One offers free Concierge service, where potential customers can consult with the Zoho team to better understand how Zoho One can help their business.
– Zoho is introducing Jumpstart for Zoho One, helping customers through their initial implementation. All Zoho One customers are provided support, out-of-the-box, but now enterprise customers can request premium support.

Pricing for Zoho One, including all the new enhancements is £30 per employee or £70 per user.

In a world where vendors are frittering away customer budgets, every new feature, service, and product mentioned here is included in Zoho One for free.

Precursive growth shows global demand for OpsTech with rapid global customer acquisition

Precursive, the fast-growth UK SaaS company that is helping forward thinking companies to create an agile workforce by improving and automating resource management, today announced significant growth in revenues in the USA for the first half of 2019 as well as further market development into the US due to scaling demand.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in London, Precursive helps companies to scale and grow by improving and automating resource management and workforce planning. The company’s innovative Salesforce-hosted technology platform is frequently chosen over that of larger and longer established competitors such as Netsuite and Microsoft to enable and empower business leaders to deliver better outcomes for people and projects. Precursive is the preferred solution for agencies, consulting and high tech companies with recent customer wins including Atlantic Technologies, East Park Consulting and Polsource.

Mike Dohrmann, Managing Director of Atlantic Technologies commented:

“We have enjoyed working with Precursive to help us improve resource scheduling and capacity planning. It’s a great product and team who have invested in our partnership to help us scale and accelerate growth.”

Precursive’s CEO, Jonathan Corrie, commented:

“Our platform is resonating with operations leaders and project team heads because, for the first time, they have a real-time view of the skills and bandwidth that they have in their business at any point in time. Historically companies have had to manage their workforce using disparate Excel spreadsheets and siloed data, so our solution provides executives with the data they need to run their business as well as reducing the time that front-line staff spend spend on admin. We’re delighted to help our clients be more productive with a tangible impact on their bottom line”.

Precursive has appointed Walter Elly as Head of Delivery and strategic partner for the USA. Corrie continued:

“We are delighted to be working with Walter and have someone of his calibre leading our delivery based out of Boston. With many new customers across the US, we’re excited to grow out the team in the coming year.”

To date, 2019 has also been a year of notable industry recognition for Precursive after the tech disruptor was named as a ‘One to Watch’ by Digiworkz, the Future of Work Digital Disruptor. In addition, the company was recently recognised by peer-to-peer software review site, G2 Crowd, in its ‘High Performer’ and ‘High User Adoption’ categories.

Corrie concluded:

“Precursive plugs a vital gap in the field of business technology. We’ve seen great focus on, and adoption of, FinTech, HRTech and MarTech in recent years, but until more recently, the operations department was overlooked. Our solution fixes this and we’re thrilled to be supporting our customers not only in driving improved business results but importantly, in improving employee experiences and wellbeing via optimized workforce management.”

As a Salesforce partner, Precursive works across the Salesforce ecosystem to drive additional value for customers via a strategic partnership with Taskfeed, the leading customer onboarding app for Salesforce. The two companies’ combined offering helps companies to mobilize and resource customer success and project teams faster. Andy Mahood, Founder and CEO, of Taskfeed commented:

“We’re delighted to be in a strategic partnership with Precursive, we have shared customers and this is the next step in this relationship. Customer Success happens in the first 90 days and with Taskfeed and Precursive, our clients can automate customer onboarding and resource management seamlessly on Salesforce. Our mission is to ensure that our customers See Success Faster.”

For more information, please visit: http://www.precursive.com

Canto launches in UK with big brand signings

Canto, a leading provider of Digital Asset Management (DAM) software, has announced the launch of its new cloud-based service into the UK market.

Early adoption of its content organisation solution among UK brands includes the Scouts, packaging giant DS Smith, and rail infrastructure specialists Pandrol.

An established provider of DAM software in the US, Canto posted record results in 2018. It is named a DAM software leader and a top 100 global software company by G2, the software user reviews site. Last year, the company expanded its sales and marketing operations in Europe and is now delivering its software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to UK customers.

“Leading brands and organisations are increasingly choosing dedicated software to overcome one of today’s greatest business management challenges – organising, finding and sharing assets. The strong uptake of our cloud offering by customers in the US and European markets means we’re in a perfect position to support UK-based organisations,”

said Mike Paxton, Head of UK Business Development at Canto.

“More companies are looking for better ways of managing vast amounts of content, finding shared internal servers and simple file sharing services are no longer enough. Canto is entering the British market at just the right time with a proven, powerful offering.

“We’re delighted to offer a new generation of DAM features that will give UK marketing, creative and commercial teams a competitive edge through a very user-friendly approach to managing high-volume, fast-growing files.”

Canto’s SaaS solution offers features such as automated tagging, image recognition, facial recognition, metadata management and smart albums to allow media files to be organised efficiently. Secure sharing of digital assets is improved either using links with expiration dates (to avoid sending bulky email attachments) or through self-service portals which can be used for sales materials, event photography, press kits and brand centres.

The software is also easily integrated with marketing tools and messaging services including InDesign, Mailchimp, Slack and WordPress and it provides protection against copyright infringement through built-in Digital Rights Management capabilities.

Canto’s DAM solution has wide applicability to a variety of industry verticals including: retail, manufacturing, education, transportation, hospitality, non-profit, healthcare, local government, food and beverage, technology and more.

Owner of the Rab and Lowe Alpine brands, Equip Outdoor Technologies UK, is a new Canto customer. Giles Polito, Commercial Director said:

“We have thousands of saved files that we’re adding to every year. These are contributed and accessed by multiple teams meaning we needed a consistent method of storage and access from any location. Canto was very quick to implement, is intuitive to use and everyone is now saving time and effort by easily finding and sharing the files they need. We are saving time in the office as our customers do not need the support to show them how to use the platform!”

Interested parties can sign up for a free trial and find more information on Canto features and customer use case studies at canto.com.