 Today, everyone is asking the same questions: how long will this economic situation last and how should we respond to it? While most experts agree that we're bumping along the bottom of the economic trough right now, there's little agreement on how long this will last. The reality is that we're in uncharted territory and no-one knows if we're bumping along the bottom, about to hit an uptick or stuck in this pattern for another 18-24 months. Regardless of when the economy becomes more stable and predictable, you can't just hunker down and wait, you need to respond now in order to survive and thrive in the present turmoil and future economy.
To help our customers implement this survive and thrive strategy, DSG has developed some options for our customers:
- First, as we announced in the last "Straight Up" newsletter, we have partnered with Adaptive Planning and PivotLink to help with your planning and analytic needs, processes that we believe are key to the success of all companies in the present situation.
- Second, we have taken many of the most common application use-cases that we’ve seen over the years and developed a catalog of DSG Powered solutions that quickly and cost-effectively implement best-practice based solutions to help you optimize your business processes.
- Third, our Value Gap Minimizer service can analyze your existing SaaS solutions; identify where you have lost efficiency, and suggest how you can close the value gap between your optimal solution and where you are right now.
- Finally, starting in April, we will be running a series of free webinars for our customers that will discuss topics that you have suggested we address, ranging from new product functionality to best-practice based topics. Our first webinar will be focused on KPIs and the NetSuite 2009.1 Release and is scheduled to be held on April 29th. Please visit our website for registration details.
As always, enjoy this edition of Straight Up: we hope that it will encourage you to think about how some of DSG's new partnerships, add-ons and ideas can help you to survive - and thrive - in 2009. But, whatever you decide to do, do something, because, there's no more dangerous place to be sitting than on the sidelines.
Thanks for your business and interest, and as always, please enjoy.
Todd Fitzwater, Principal and Co-founder |
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What's New from Salesforce.com
As always, the latest Salesforce release introduces a lot of useful new functionality for Salesforce.com users, highlights of the release include:
Email-to-Case as a Service - customers no longer need to install an email handling client behind their servers. For customers who postponed installing email to case because of this approach, the new on-demand email to case should encourage you to use this feature. Customers who already use email to case should only consider changing if they are unhappy with their present service.
Opportunity Genius - taking a leaf out of Apple iTunes' playbook, the Opportunity Genius allows a rep to look for similar deals to the one that they are working on (e.g. same industry or same mix of products) and then to learn from deals that have already closed on best-sales practices, contributors, etc.
New Page Layout Editor - Salesforce has embraced WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) and, with the new page layout editor, you can add and remove fields, buttons, and sections from a sample page, and immediately see (without previewing) what the new page will look like.
Campaigns - new Campaign functionality allows you to view a convenient list of all Contacts associated to a Campaign. With the new release Contacts are listed right on the Campaign page, just like Contacts for an Account.
Other New Features - in addition, minor functional enhancements include: Cross-Object Workflow for Custom Objects; Opportunity Save; Case Team Reports, New Portal Administrator and Super User Permission Levels; new features in Salesforce Mobile and more Salesforce Content features e.g. personal workspaces and simplified tabs.
What's New from NetSuite
NetSuite's 2009.1 Release introduces an extensive range of very useful functionality to its customers, including:
Price Book Export - NetSuite provides extensive Price Book capabilities, and in 2009.1 the entire price book can be exported. The new capabilities include quantity discount levels, price levels, and multi-currency pricing.
Global Search - these capabilities have been improved to allow the specification of what is returned from a global search, including custom fields. Additional features have also been added to allow the global search results to be edited in the returned list. Most custom fields can now become a part of the search criteria in global search.
Workflow - has been enhanced to allow the definition of custom reminders. Prior to the 2009.1 release all reminders in NetSuite were pre-defined, and could not be enhanced.
Outlook Synchronization - NetSuite has made significant improvements that allow users to add emails to Customer/Contact/Case information, and synchronize contact, activity information between NetSuite and Outlook. The new application also supports direct synchronization with the Blackberry.
Saved Searches - these searches, which provide an excellent way of reporting and displaying information, have been enhanced to allow the calculation of totals. Search results can now also be exported and emailed in PDF format.
Sandbox Accounts for Enterprise Customers - NetSuite now offers multiple sandbox accounts that allow enterprise customers to have a development, QA, and production environment.
Mass Updates - mass updates are now allowed for Sales Orders and Estimates for specific body fields and all custom body fields, this eliminates the need to perform data entry on each record when a large amount of data needs updating.
Direct List - this functionality has been enhanced to include some body fields on SalesOrders and Estimates, allowing quick updates to a start date, partner, sales rep or include in forecast.
One World Enhances Budgeting - for One World customers, NetSuite now provides multi-subsidiary budgeting in multi-currency.
What's New from Intacct
The highlights of Intacct's Winter 2009 release include a new look and feel based on Adobe's Flex® product. This new interface is designed to increase user productivity by enabling "single click" access any part of the Intacct system and powerful information retrieval using a new, Google-like, search capability. Functional highlights of this release include:
Global Consolidation - simplifies, automates and speeds the financial consolidation reporting and analysis process enabling customers to manage financial and operational information across complex global organizations, regardless of location or currency, in real time.
Intacct MAX™ for QuickArrow - improves the productivity and financial performance of businesses with professional services organizations by providing integration with QuickArrow that helps bridge the gap between sales, the service delivery team and the finance organization.
Adaptive Planning Announces Collaboration with NetSuite and Launches Version 5.5
On March 19th, Adaptive Planning has announced that they have become a charter member of NetSuite's SuiteCloud Developer Network and that they will work with NetSuite to develop enhanced integration between their respective applications. This collaboration is targeted to produce a real-time financial management and planning capability that is ideal for the current economy.
Earlier this year, Adaptive Planning announced the availability of their 5.5 release with support for the following important new features:
Cell Notes - a new interface allows users to add notes to individual cells on sheets. Cell Notes can be searched on, viewed on sheets, accessed in the Cell Explorer view, and automatically included as footnotes in reports.
Enhanced Data Integration - this extends the existing data import and export capabilities with several new features including: Adaptive Planning Connectors that enable automated imports of data from a variety of different general ledgers, databases, and files; Mapping Enhancements that simplifies the management of data import and a Web Services API that supports the automated import of actual and plan version data via a secure web service interface.
Internationalization and Localization - this provides fully localized support for the major business languages (French, German, Spanish, and Japanese) as well as locale-specific number and date formats.
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DSG Powered
Demand Solutions Group's team has been building tools and solutions to enable us to optimize our customers' businesses for many years. Recently, we analyzed the most common application use-cases that we have seen over the years and developed a number of pre-configured solutions to address these needs. This approach enables our existing and future customers to take advantage of proven, best-practice based solutions at pre-built rather than custom prices. Many of these solutions address value gaps in the functionality of the NetSuite and Salesforce.com product suites; others are tool and knowledge based solutions that are applicable to anyone developing solutions around the NetSuite and Salesforce.com core systems.
Here are examples of some of these solutions (the full list is available on our web site) - think of them as DSG's contribution to help get the economy moving again!
DSG Powered Installed Base
Your installed customer base is a highly valuable asset, however, many companies do not have access to the information that they need in order to effectively manage their installed customer base. To provide this capability, DSG has developed a detailed tracking system that records which products a customer has bought and implemented and all the key supporting details of serial numbers, warranty expiration date, service contract dates and terms, etc. This provides our customers with the platform for more efficient and profitable renewals, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities within their customer base.
DSG Powered Technology Appliance Company
The industry trend towards appliance based solutions is well-established but, until now, there have been few solutions available that address the complex, tightly integrated needs of high-growth appliance companies. DSG has developed a set of best-practices and pre-built configurations that address such complex issues as managing outsourced manufacturing and field support operations and a partner based sales model in a way that scales as the company moves from prototype through low volume to mass market adoption.
DSG Powered Resource Plan and Monitor
NetSuite's Advanced Project module is, as its name suggests, aimed at providing sophisticated project management functionally but many companies simply don't need this level of sophistication and complexity to manage the estimation, planning and monitoring of resources used and hours worked on service jobs. To address this need, the DSG Powered Resource Plan and Monitor solution provides an easy to use and easy to maintain solution for companies who need a less sophisticated and time consuming approach to optimizing this critical aspect of their business.
DSG Powered Rules Engine
Our NetSuite customers consistently ask for workflow functionality that allows the development of rules to drive the creation of emails, tasks and updates across all objects in the NetSuite database. The DSG Powered Rules Engine takes over where NetSuite's limited internal capability ends and allows the creation of rules that operate across the entire NetSuite database to evaluate the attributes of any object to drive the creation of emails, activities and updates based on changes in these attributes.
DSG Powered Connections
Although most On Demand vendor solutions have some built-in integration capabilities, these capabilities are typically limited and do not, for example, allow customers to configure integration processes that run on the vendors platforms. Recognizing this problem, DSG has created DSG Powered Connections, a hosted solution that enables integration processes to be configured, run, managed and supported as part of your overall subscription based agreement with DSG.
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DSG Powered Rules Engine: A DSG Success Snapshot
DSG recently completed the successful implementation of a full suite NetSuite Mid-market customer. This client is the global leader in student internships, and as often happens with successful companies, our client's growth outstripped the ability of their internal systems to scale and meet their business needs.
To provide a streamlined, web-based placement system supported by scalable back-office operations, DSG implemented a highly configured NetSuite system. One of the keys to the success of the project was DSG's ability to use the DSG Powered Rules Engine. The Rules Engine along with other modifications provided a very easy to use, rules-driven process that guides students through the entire internship application process from initial inquiry to finalizing their placement, and supports the management of this process by the client's reps.
DSG Powered Installed Base: Another DSG Success Snapshot
Typical of many of our customers, this Utah based storage manufacturer used QuickBooks for their accounting, backed up by many, very complex, spreadsheets to manage their other business and reporting needs. DSG engaged with this company and implemented a NetSuite based solution which, as well as providing the benefits of robust accounting, inventory and assembly functionality, also enabled this company to replace 90% of the Excel spreadsheets.
In addition, the company implemented DSG's Installed Base application to track serial numbers and warranty information to enable them to manage their existing customer base more effectively. Before this implementation, tracking for support and warranty claims was all done in multiple spreadsheets. This was very time consuming and often contained inaccurate or incomplete data due to the complexity of the task. Lastly, the client is currently implementing one of our partner applications (Celigo) to integrate Sales Force and NetSuite.
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Demand Solutions Group is a privately owned consulting
firm that sells and tailors on-demand ERP, CRM, and eBusiness
solutions to deliver maximum business value for clients.
The company provides a range of road-mapping, launch,
revitalization, and optimization services for leading
on-demand software packages. Demand Solutions Group serves
businesses that range from start-up companies to members
of the Fortune 100, and is based in Silicon Valley, California.
For more information, please visit www.demandsolutionsgroup.com.
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