On Demand. Straight Up. The Demand Solutions Group Newsletter

< Back to DSG Library, Newsletters	2009 Q3

Whether you knew it or not, when you implemented your SaaS based business solution you became part of a trend that is standing the software industry on its head. Analysts are now confirming what DSG has known for some time – SaaS is becoming the dominant deployment model for applications solutions not just in small and medium businesses but in all businesses.

In January 2009, IDC raised its forecast for 2009 growth in SaaS adoption from 36% to 40.5% and projected that, by the end of 2009, 76% of U.S. organizations will use at least one SaaS application¹. Last month, Gartner estimated that the rate of SaaS adoption will grow by 22% from 2008 to 2009 and that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. In Gartner's opinion, this trend is driven by "the benefits of rapid deployment and rapid ROI, less up front capital investment, and a decreased reliance on limited implementation resources".²

This statement is backed up by data that Gartner gathered in a late 2008 survey on the SaaS adoption plans of over 250 mid to large scale organizations. The results of this survey were published in late 2008 in a paper entitled User Survey Analysis: Software as a Service, Enterprise Application Markets, Worldwide. The key trends among the surveyed organizations were:

88% expect their SaaS adoption rate to be maintained or increase in 2009 and 2010
66% have increased their 2010 SaaS budget
61% consider SaaS to be more cost-effective than on-premise solutions
57% consider SaaS to be faster and easier to deploy than on-premise solutions
56% of SaaS solutions replaced existing on-premise solutions

Looking more deeply into the reasons why organizations are migrating towards SaaS from on-premise shows:

50% said on-premise solution TCO had become too high
48% said on-premise integration requirements has become too significant
44% said on-premise solutions did not scale well

As the fashion analogy in the title implies, SaaS is rapidly becoming the standard deployment vehicle for all types of applications in all sizes of companies. So, whether you knew it or not, you're quite the trendsetter!

1 IDC Press Release, Software as a Service Market Will Expand, January 2009.
2 Gartner, Market Trends: Software as a Service, Worldwide, 2009-2013, May 2009.

Todd Fitzwater, Principal and Co-founder

Continuing the DSG Value Maximizer Webinar Series
DSG introduced the Value Maximizer webinar series in May and we are happy to continue the series with two new webinars:

Webinar #4 — SFDC and NetSuite Connected
Salesforce.com is the most commonly used On Demand CRM solution and is recognized as being one of the industry leaders. NetSuite is recognized as the industry leading, On Demand financial and ERP solution. Many of our customers and prospects are interested in marrying these two industry leaders together. In this webinar, we will examine how you can make these solutions work together and demo the leading connector for NetSuite/Salesforce.com. This webinar will be held on Wednesday Sept 2nd at 10:00am PDT.

Webinar #5 — NetSuite Release 2009.2
NetSuite is preparing to roll out their latest release, 2009.2. In this webinar, we will examine and demo many of the key changes that are part of this release. The webinar will be held on Sept 16th at 10am PDT.

Webinars are available exclusively to DSG customers. If you are currently not a DSG customer and are interested in attending please contact us.

NetSuite Launches SuiteApp.com
NetSuite recently launched SuiteApp.com, a website that helps you identify innovative third-party solutions that extend the value of your NetSuite investment. DSG is proud to be one of the first featured SuiteApp partners and you can find many of our DSG Powered add-ons listed on the website. SuiteApp.com features search by industry, business need or keyword capability and allows customers to post reviews of SuiteApp products. If you are using a DSG Powered application, please share your review of the product with your NetSuite peers and help spread the word on DSG's services and add-on products.

Salesforce.com Summer 09 Highlights
Salesforce.com's most recent release has some useful new features ranging from developer level additions, for example, the introduction of batch processing capabilities to the Apex environment, through to some very useful functional enhancements, for example:

Organization-Wide "From" Email Addresses – you can now create a single "from" email address, like support@mycompany.com, and allow all emails from groups within your company to be sent from this style of alias rather than from individual users.
Recurring Tasks – tasks can now be created that automatically recur on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis.
Process Visualizer – for users that have approval processes in Salesforce, the new (presently, beta) Process Visualizer allows management to quickly examine an approval process to ensure that it is complete and free of redundant or unnecessary steps.

As always, to learn more about how these new features can add-value to your Salesforce.com investment, please give us a call.

Important Information about your NetSuite Custom Financial Reports
Last Fall, NetSuite introduced enhanced Financial Reporting capabilities that have proved very popular with their customers. When these new capabilities were first introduced, they co-existed with older style custom reports but NetSuite have recently announced that, after October 10th 2009, reports that were built off of the old standard NetSuite reports will no longer be accessible and this means that you will need to recreate these reports using the new reporting capabilities. The keys to successfully using this new capability are to understand how to best use two new features:

Layouts — this function allows you to develop and save the report styles, content and organization. This enables you to re-use report layouts and combine these layouts with different content to produce different analytic views into your data. For example, you can use the same layout to develop an income statement and then re-use this to produce a budget report using the same headings and accounts but budget information rather than actuals.

Row Types — NetSuite now supports four row types that enable you to

Text – add formatting text to your report
Header and Summary – create logical groupings of accounts categorized under headings and sub-heading rows
Financial Section – specify the account type or combination of account types that you want to include under a report heading
Formula Row – calculation based reporting rows

We've taken many of our NetSuite customers through this migration process and have developed some best practices that will save you significant amounts of migration time and enable you to develop more targeted and meaningful financial reporting. Please contact DSG if you would like to discuss how we can help you migrate your existing custom reports to take advantage of this new and powerful reporting capability.

DSG Customer Success
Snapshot — eMeter

eMeter is an innovator in the 'Smart Grid' utilities arena providing software and services to utility companies to enable their business and residential customers to track their power usage. From their beginnings in San Carlos, CA, eMeter has grown rapidly and has operations in the US, Australia, India, and throughout Europe. As they have grown, they outstripped the capabilities of their existing financial system and needed a new financial system capable of supporting their multi-national, multi-currency business environment. DSG worked with eMeter to migrate them from their old on-premise solution to NetSuite in less than 8 weeks. Not only does NetSuite meet eMeter's international accounting requirements but its powerful reporting capability allows eMeter to produce their consolidated financials from a single system without use of spreadsheets and in a fraction of the time of their old system.

DSG Customer Success
Snapshot — Slingshot Sports

As a young company growing up in the age of SaaS applications, when leading sports kite and board manufacturer, Slingshot Sports, needed an eCommerce and ERP system, they selected the basic NetSuite edition to meet this need. However, this system imposed limitations on the look and feel and functionality of their website and didn't make the needs of their evolving business. Slingshot turned to DSG to help them update their website to provide, for example, a link to their blog, a key tool to communicate with their social networking savvy customers. Additionally, DSG worked with Slingshot to deploy the innovative Sling-a-Tron dealer portal (by the way, we'll feature this in a longer case-study next month) and to replace their spreadsheet based reporting with a time-saving budget vs actuals based monthly reporting system using Adaptive Planning, one of the DSG Value Maximizer Partner tools.

For further information please see the Slingshot Customer Success Story.

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.