Trends & Concepts in the Software Industry II

360° Fact Finding

Contact Subject Matter experts

• What is the business process?

• Are there colleagues/people in your network that have worked in the solution space previously?

Gather Competitive Info

• What are software and service competitors providing in this solution space?

Consider Analysts & Thought Leaders

• What have industry and subject matter analysts written about the solution?

• What is the press writing about the solution space?

Research User and Customer Needs

• What are the needs of the true end users of the solution?

• What are the needs of others such as IT, implementation teams, partners in the solution space?

360° View – Exploring the Solution Space

Present and discuss key points such as:

• Market revenue trends

• Changing customer needs

• Competitive offering

• Emerging technologies

• Market readiness

Use this information to:

• Understand the business process

• Constraints and opportunities

• Plan further research

Share your Research

Resources for Competitive Research

Salesforce.com: Vendor of SaaS CRM applications, scales to various company sizes www.salesforce.com

Quickbooks: Very common accounting software for small and midsize companies http://quickbooks.intuit.com/

Example of invoice creation and tracking of accounts receivables in Quickbooks Online Edition: http://oe.quickbooks.com/money_in.cfm

Peachtree (owned by Sage): http://www.peachtree.com/peachtreeaccountingline/

Netsuite: Integrated system to manage accounting/enterprise resource planning, CRM, and e-commerce.

Payment and dunning part of the financials module http://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/netsuite/main.shtml

Resources for Competitive Research

Workday: On demand enterprise business services, founded a spin-off of PeopleSoft. http://www.workday.com/who_we_are/

Includes Human Capital Management, Financials, Revenue Management and Resources Management.

SAP Business One: Includes amongst others Accounting and Financials – for handling of financial transactions – including general ledger, journal entries, budgeting, and account setup and maintenance – in one system.http://www.sap.com/smallbusiness/solutions/overview/index.epx

http://www.business-one-beratung.de/

Microsoft Dynamics AX: One of Microsoft’s enterprise resource planning software products. It is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family.

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/ax/product/overview.mspx

Resources for Competitive Research

Collmex Pro: as the most powerful solution in the market

Product: Collmex Pro – ERP on demand for freelancer and small businesses up to 20 employees, including Payments and Dunning: http://www.collmex.de/

Online-Demo: http://www.collmex.de/tour_p.html#zahlung

Sesam: Accounting software for German speaking counties. Das Buchhaltungspaket enthält mehrstufiges Mahnwesen mit Enterprise Service Repository und Mahngebühren: http://www.sesam.ch/formulare/form_CDversion2008sesam.asp

Overview of accounting software for the German market: http://www.buchhaltungssoftware.in-research.info/index.php

http://www.heise.de/software/download/o0g0s3l4k301?stq=30

Free business software demos sorted by topic, or according to size or needs companies: https://www.2020software.com/

What to do now?

Do your competitive research during the following working session.

Capture the most important findings

Be ready to present to the group on Tuesday morning:

• Insights/surprises from your research

• Potential unmet needs (not covered by ByDesign)

• Local uniqueness