FinancialForce.com blog

Social Accountants – an oxymoron?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:59:44 +0000

I’m slow to pick up on this but I felt it worth highlighting in any case. In December, <a href="http://www.accountingweb.com/topic/community-news/results-socialcpas-2011-social-media-survey" target="_blank">AccountingWEB reported</a> on this <a href="http://www.socialcpas.com/socialcpas-2010-survey.html" target="_blank">survey of social media adoption</a> within CPA firms. This is a topic of great interest to us at FinancialForce.com given how our customers are receiving Chatter and embracing the collaboration opportunities it delivers. What I did find surprising was that in this survey, the focus is on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – in other words external, public social networks – and the potential risks those tools present when sensitive information is at hand. There’s no discussion about the benefits of collaboration, which is driving the rapid adoption of enterprise social tools in other corporate functions. But what’s very encouraging is that the survey attracted responses from accountants in 18 countries and a 25% higher response rate than the 2010 survey. That accountants are paying more attention to “social” speaks volumes in itself. In an <a href="http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/Social-Media-Accounting-Facebook-Finance-61120-1.html" target="_blank">article I wrote recently </a>for Accounting Today called ‘Why do I need a Facebook for Finance’, I said:
“Teamwork and collaboration are no longer goals, but requirements. On top of that, controllers and CFOs want to be more integral to the business: a trusted advisor to the lines of business rather than an isolated department. Today’s lean and agile companies need new ways to break down the walls between siloed departments and leverage the finance department’s skill sets. 
…the espousal of cloud computing has set the technology groundwork for social accounting to succeed. Cloud-based applications, like those built on the proven Force.com platform, create a cost-effective, efficient way to centralize and share data, increase visibility into accounts and improve collaboration.”
The article provides some examples of what accounting and finance teams can do with social media tools. It’s tapped into a clear demand as I’ve been asked to write a follow-up piece giving tips for implementing social accounting. So stay tuned...
I think we will see collaboration and social apps become even more mainstream inside companies in the coming years. For a few years, business people had a hard time grasping why they would need Facebook or Twitter-like functions inside their companies, and I fault the industry for selling it that way. Social inside the enterprise is much more than how many “friends” you have. Tools like Chatter are encouraging collaboration inside companies in ways we haven’t seen before, and it is paying off in a big way. 
FinancialForce.com customers are breaking down the barriers between sales and accounting, for instance, to help collect cash and reduce bad debt as a team, and essentially providing a better service to their customers. You can find some examples of this in the case studies of <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/assets/ffdc/customer/case-study/BlueShieldofCaliforniaFoundation_Case-Study.pdf" target="_blank">Blue Shield of California Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/assets/ffdc/customer/case-study/Centerstance-High.pdf" target="_blank">Centerstance</a> and <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/assets/ffdc/customer/case-study/denmat.pdf" target="_blank">Denmat</a> that are on our site.

The promise of the ‘millennial’ generation

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:05:28 +0000

Technology has completely <a href="http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/Social-Media-Accounting-Facebook-Finance-61120-1.html" target="_blank">changed the way we socialize </a>and the way we socialize and interact is influencing the way we develop and make use of technology.
It's clear that the way we communicate, socialize and manage our lives at home and in the office has changed unrecognizably from a decade ago. That makes it really exciting to look forward to the next decade. It's difficult for us to even conceive how we will live in 10 years' time? ‘Millennials’, a term I'll use for the new generation of technology savvy youngsters posied to join and affect the global workforce, have been born into this new digital world, and as such, their minds are digitally attuned. They just get it because they’ve grown up with it, and in 10 years’ time, they will make up a significant proportion (around 50%) of the population. The pace of cloud, social and mobile technology development will accelerate and innovation will proliferate.
Millennials only started joining the workforce in earnest over the last few years and have not yet had time to make their mark. What’s clear is that as they do, change will be rapid.
One of the most significant changes, driven by cloud and mobile technology innovation, our generation has seen is to the way we find, try and buy technology or apps, via app marketplaces. Salesforce reports almost 100 thousand AppExchange customers. With at least 1300 listed apps, it is clear that customers are already building out broad portfolios of apps on Salesforce.com’s cloud computing platform, Force.com (approximately 10 on average). We call this ‘free market ERP’ and it’s a complete departure from the ERP of the past. And salesforce.com just launched <a href="http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2011/11/salesforcecom-launches-appexchange-mobile-a-marketplace-for-the-mobile-enterprise.html" target="_blank">AppExchange Mobile</a> to expand those apps onto the millions of mobile devices in the hands of business users.
In six years, the AppExchange has upset the closed world of on-premises based ERP and created a transparent marketplace where competition and collaboration drive innovation. Now, using Force.com-native apps available on the AppExchange, organizations can build a comprehensive, on-demand portfolio of applications that work together seamlessly. It means that organizations can better serve customers, differentiate themselves from competitors, and run a leaner, faster, more effective business. A no-brainer, but the pace of technological innovation has made it a reality only recently.
To millennials, who are used to instantly downloading an app to an iPhone, it’s become an expectation that innovative apps deploy easily and help people move their businesses forward. As the pace of technological change quickens and digitally-attuned millennials start to take the helm, imagine what will be possible in 10 years …

Paul Greenberg's CRM Watchlist

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:15:11 +0000

FinancialForce.com has been included in <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/crm/crm-watchlist-2012-the-winners-list/3966" target="_blank">Paul's 2012 CRM Watchlist</a> as 'broad brush' winner. We are mentioned as out of category winners (we do not deal directly in CRM, although we add essential stuff for CRM) that will have an impact on CRM in 2012. Paul says:
"Financialforce - There is no doubt about this one. Financialforce has been a, if not the leader for back office financial applications for a long time. This year, which is why they are Broad Brush winners is their addition of a Professional Services Automation (PSA) services offering that puts them in the in between area between CRM and the back office. They have had a clear perspective from day one that they need to be tightly integrated with CRM, particularly, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, salesforce.com. These guys have nailed a position as a Broad Brush winner because they provide the contemporary ancillary services that CRM practitioners need to make their offering stronger. Never forget that."
A lot of time and research has gone into this listing and it's fascinating to see how the industry is changing. Congratulations to all the winners!

PSA, The Killer Social Application

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:30:00 +0000

Today, social users exceed email users and that trend is growing. As a new generation moves into today's businesses, they will expect to be using the best social collaboration tools - that's their world and this is the group that will shape the future of business. 
Projects are social by nature making professional services a perfect fit for social networking tools like Chatter. Professional Services organizations are more virtual than ever with vast extended teams including contracters and other third parties. Although we are already working socially, we're doing it the hard way - messaging, Skype and email for example are all disconnected from core business systems, with no audit trail and conversations only visible to a select few. It is difficult to run a successful and competitive services company in this context.
The industry is more competitive than ever, making it vital for firms to find areas of differentiation, where they can offer value over competitors. One of the biggest challenges firms face is managing virtual project teams in a way that makes them as effective as possible and delivers differentiation. The way to do this is through intellectual property development which will help PSOs to productize services, routinize services and help develop new competencies. 
In today's environment, how do firms know where their experts are and where their intellectual property resides? The firms that are leveraging social media and integrated CRM, PSA and Accounting applications are successfully creating <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/events/webinar-recordings/#achieve-higher-bill-rates-and-increased-utilization" target="_blank">differentiation and higher bill rates</a>.
<img class="center" src="assets/_resampled/resizedimage395348-slide-for-psa-social-blog2.png" width="395" height="348" alt="" title=""/>
Chatter is an internal collaboration tool very much like Facebook that enables teams to collaborate in reference to any object on the Force.com platform, so it could be a Chatter stream related to a competitor, project, bid or invoice for example. Users can follow the status of a project or account and ensuing conversations enabling them to easily engage with the experts in the business. By connecting the experts in this way firms can build intelligence to help win projects and differentiate. Projects can be managed more effectively and consultants can help each other to learn.
<img class="center" src="assets/_resampled/resizedimage437328-slide-for-psa-social-blog_2.png" width="437" height="328" alt="" title=""/>
This topic is covered more extensively in a <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/events/webinar-recordings/#advantages-of-social-media-in-professional-services" target="_blank">recent webinar</a>, which provides more specific everyday use cases, clearly demonstrating the value of social media in professional services organizations. For those firms already benefiting, it’s no longer a question of the purpose of social collaboration tools, but how they can deliver even more differentiation.

Backstage at Business Cloud Summit 2011

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Adrian Ivanov, VP Sales at FinancialForce.com. Speaking backstage at Business Cloud Summit 2011 about;
<ul><li>FinancialForce.com.</li>
<li>The changes FinancialForce.com is seeing in cloud computing markets.</li>
<li>How the mobile workforce is driving the uptake in cloud computing.</li>
<li>The use of social media in cloud computing applications. </li>
</ul><a id="typography_player" href="/home/backstage-at-business-cloud-summit-2011/"><img src="/assets/ffdc/asset/video/frame/cloud-summit-2011.png" alt="" title=""/></a>

Why is pricing important?

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:00:00 +0000

In a labor-based business like professional services, profit comes from the right balance of revenue and costs. PSOs have a very high fixed labor cost so the two primary profitability levers are either lowering cost (sourcing strategies, limiting benefits and overhead, virtual business models, limiting discretionary spending on IT, travel, training and recruiting) or increasing revenue (higher bill rates, higher revenue per person, higher billable utilization). During three recessionary years most PSOs have focused intently on the cost side of the equation and are running very lean. Now with a glimmer of economic improvement it is time to focus on growing revenue through a combination of rate, market expansion and productivity enhancements. 
<h2>Pricing Strategies</h2>
The percentage of time and materials priced contracts across all markets and geographies was reported to be 58.8%. Each year a greater proportion of contracts across all verticals and geographies are fixed price reflecting client interest in shifting more risk and accountability to service providers. A comparison of pricing strategies across PS vertical markets reveals IT Consultancies and PSOs within software companies depend heavily on time and materials based pricing strategies. Hardware and Networking providers and SaaS PSOs have shifted the majority of their work to service packages and fixed price contracts while Management Consultancies favor time and materials based contracts but may include performance guarantees.
Interestingly, the percentage of fixed price contracts increases corresponding to the size of the organization. Presumably this is because larger organizations have more mature estimating and change management processes or because their larger enterprise clients demand this pricing structure. The smallest organizations offer the highest levels of shared risk or performance-based contracts which can be disastrous if they do not have adequate change provisions or tight scope control. For many professional service engagements, establishing a shared risk or performance-based model may be very difficult. From the PS Maturity™ Benchmark, shared risk projects are still in the minority with this pricing strategy deployed on less than 3% of all contracts. 
Service Performance Insight Founder and Managing Director, R. David Hofferberth, P.E., has over 25 years experience in information technology (IT) serving as an industry analyst, product director and consultant. Hofferberth’s research is focused on the services economy, and in particular, on white-collar productivity issues and the technologies that help people perform at their highest capacity.

Are your bill rates competitive?

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Professional services organization (PSO) executives continue to ask about bill rates. They need this information to understand how their organization is positioned from a pricing perspective relative to the market, and to make decisions on how much more or less they should charge, depending on their own and their clients' perception of the business value they provide. They need bill rate information to push back on their sales and finance counterparts when asked for price concessions or PS margin improvement. 
Pricing information also provides insight into the health of the overall service market and a gauge for market expansion or contraction. And finally, pricing is one of the most visible and controllable levers service organizations have when seeking to improve profitability. 
In the past three years, as the market suffered from global economic doldrums, PSOs experienced significant bill rate pressure causing many firms to discount heavily and make price concessions to win business. In 2010 and through the first half of 2011 the economy appears to be growing again; although slowly, and bill rates have begun to rise. 
Until the recent debt crisis caused a new round of recessionary fears, the greatest challenge reported from 30 client phone interviews has been managing growth. After two years of layoffs, headcount cuts and salary freezes, many firms are hiring again but are finding few qualified resources. Firms are reinvigorating their recruiting pipelines and reinvesting in new-hire training and ramping programs. 
Increasingly, firms are expanding their recruiting horizons to include recent college graduates, home-based consultants, subcontractors and offshore and near-shore resources. The war for talent is driving increased resource management and pricing complexity, which means firms must constantly re-evaluate their pricing and staffing strategies. 
SPI Research recently published a new report the “2011 Professional Services Global Pricing Report” <a href="http://www.spiresearch.com/reports/rpt11PSPS.htm" target="_blank">(http://www.spiresearch.com/reports/rpt11PSPS.htm)</a>, which surveyed over 200 firms from around the world representing nearly 12,000 consultants. The report analyzes bill rates by job title, geography and PS vertical to show published and realized rates around the globe. The following sections highlight some of the key findings of the report. 
<h2>Published versus realized rates</h2>
This study compares PSOs' published bill rates versus realized bill rates. In other words, the actual hourly bill rate firms receive. In general, realized rates are approximately 80 to 90 percent of published list rates. The difference between published and realized rates reflects both discounts and written-off consulting hours. 
The report examines four primary job categories (management, project management, business consulting, and technical consulting), with three corresponding experience levels per job family. For the 12 job titles SPI Research analyzed in this report, technical consultants achieved the highest percentage of realized rates with a realized rate of 90 percent of the published rate. Interestingly, SPI Research found the greatest disparity between published and realized rates was associated with the most senior level positions in each job category. In other words, the most senior resources in any job category commanded the highest list rates but also reported the highest levels of discounting. Key questions around lower price realization are: Is the high level of discounting due to an excessively high target bill rate? Or is there more room for discounting because of a higher list rate? Or is it hard to establish incremental value for more senior resources? SPI Research suspects the answer is based on a combination of these factors. 
Service Performance Insight Founder and Managing Director, R. David Hofferberth, P.E., has over 25 years experience in information technology (IT) serving as an industry analyst, product director and consultant. Hofferberth’s research is focused on the services economy, and in particular, on white-collar productivity issues and the technologies that help people perform at their highest capacity.

The cause and effect of higher bill rates

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:02:59 +0000

Price realization based on realized bill rates in combination with billable utilization is a leading indicator of the overall quality and differentiation of the professional services (PS) organization. The fact that PS organizations with the highest bill rates and price realization tend to reinvest profit into their employees leads to a continuing improvement cycle.
Highly skilled, well-trained, motivated and loyal consultants undoubtedly produce the best client results. In turn, satisfied clients provide referrals and buy additional services resulting in improved sales effectiveness.
The correlation between high bill rates and employee investment resulting in superior project delivery metrics and overall financial profit is one of the consistent themes we have seen through five years of benchmarking over 800 service organizations. But bill rates only tell a small part of the story. Rates are primarily governed by the market, the types of services provided, and the reputation of the firm. SPI Research has seen management consulting senior partner daily rates as high as $8,000, but the top strategic management consultancies do not publish their rates, nor are they visible to their clients. These rates are justified based on the significant “bet your business” types of projects these firms deliver; high rates are indicative of the strategic business value provided.
At the other end of the spectrum, the lowest bill rates are shown in the hardware and networking sector, where providers are still primarily focused on implementation and have not yet moved to more strategic consulting services. Staff augmentation garners low rates because the client assumes almost all of the responsibility for successful business outcomes – clients are buying a “body” with a specific skillset as opposed to a project based on a defined business outcome.
Service Performance Insight Founder and Managing Director, R. David Hofferberth, P.E., has over 25 years experience in information technology (IT) serving as an industry analyst, product director and consultant. Hofferberth’s research is focused on the services economy, and in particular, on white-collar productivity issues and the technologies that help people perform at their highest capacity.

PSOs - improve billable utilization substantially

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Research and consulting firm Service Performance
Insight (SPI) recently released findings from a <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/resources/research/professional-services-automation/crm-psa-integration-spi/">survey</a> of more than <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/resources/research/professional-services-automation/crm-psa-integration-spi/">200 Professional Services Organizations</a> (PSOs)
that showed the lack of integration between professional services automation
(PSA) and CRM, backed by Financials is limiting their growth and success.
<img class="left" src="assets/Uploads/blog/_resampled/resizedimage670537-graph-margin-vs-utilization_2.png" alt="Professional Services Economics - Margin vs Utilization" width="670" height="537" title=""/>
Aside from showing that by integrating these systems PSOs gain improved executive visibility, superior bid-to-win ratios and more projects delivered on-time, one of the most important findings from the SPI report is that PSOs that have integrated CRM and PSA have seen a 4% increase in utilization of billable staff, a potential source of pure
profit.
It may
not seem an awful lot, but let’s just look at how big a 4% increase is. Let’s
take a hypothetical 200 person services organization in the chart below, again
from the SPI study. This PSO generates around $50 million in annual revenues;
each services team member bills out at $170/hour; they bill an average of 8
hours a day; and they carry a fully loaded cost to the PS organization of
$250,000/year. By increasing its billable team utilization by 4%, this PS team
can generate an additional $2–4 million in profit without spending (or
cutting!) one dime – simply by integrating CRM and PSA. 
<table class="standard data" style="width: 670px;" border="0"><tbody><tr><th>FTE</th>
<th>Cal hrs</th>
<th>UTE</th>
<th>Cost</th>
<th>Bill rate</th>
<th>Total Cost</th>
<th>Total Rev</th>
<th>Margin</th>

</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CF7A78">66.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$46,675,200.00</td>
<td>-$3,324,800.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CF7A78">68.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$48,089,600.00</td>
<td>-$1,910,400.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CF7A78">70.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$49,504,000.00</td>
<td>-$496,000.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CCFFCC">72.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$50,918,400.00</td>
<td>$918,400.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CCFFCC">74.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$52,332,800.00</td>
<td>$2,332,800.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CCFFCC">76.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$53,747,200.00</td>
<td>$3,747,200.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CCFFCC">78.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$55,161,600.00</td>
<td>$5,161,600.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CCFFCC">80.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$56,576,000.00</td>
<td>$6,576,000.00</td>
<td> </td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="9"> </td>
</tr><tr><th>FTE</th>
<th>Cal hrs</th>
<th>UTE</th>
<th>Cost</th>
<th>Bill rate</th>
<th>Total Cost</th>
<th>Total Rev</th>
<th>Margin</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Notes</th>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CF7A78">70.0%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$49,504,000.00</td>
<td>-$496,000.00</td>
<td style="whitespace:no-wrap; text-align: left; font-weight: bold;">This is the baseline</td>
</tr><tr><td>200</td>
<td>2080</td>
<td style="background: #CCFFCC">72.8%</td>
<td>$250,000.00</td>
<td>$170.00</td>
<td>$50,000,000.00</td>
<td>$51,484,160.00</td>
<td>$1,484,160.00</td>
<td style="whitespace:no-wrap; text-align: left; font-weight: bold;">72.8% is a 4% increase from 70%. $2M swing</td>
</tr></tbody></table>

How sociable do we have the capacity to be?

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:27:04 +0000

Many cloud apps vendors are starting to talk about building new social tools. Marketo CEO said last week that marketing automation should move beyond the prospect funnel and help manage engagement throughout the customer lifecycle by <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/saas/marketo-looks-to-buy-into-social/1448?tag=search-results-rivers;item8" target="_blank">moving into social</a>. Of course he would say that, but it raises a more fundamental question about how organizations are going to manage such an array of social tools in the future.
If all apps are going to be social, then there will be so many places to be social, how will users know what to use when and where to go for what?
It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon but as always, vendors need to think about the business value of such tools. Perhaps ‘social’ is the domain of the cloud platform rather than cloud apps vendors – so users have a single social stream like Chatter running across all their applications on a single cloud platform like Force.com?
Only time will tell, but already we’re seeing the beginnings of social fatigue in the wider marketplace – Google+ a case in point.

Down about Uptime

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:22:14 +0000

Quickbooks users (whether on prem or online) will have some tough questions for the vendor following downtime on Monday and early Tuesday morning last week. It wasn’t widely reported but must have created a significant problem for users. <a href="http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/59662-quickbooks-goes-down-but-no-one-cares" target="_blank">TG Daily correctly points out</a> that downtime can have a serious impact on accountants, especially when it hits on a payroll day. (Ed: we don’t subscribe to TG Daily’s thinking that accountants are stuffy with a difficult disposition. Well, not many anyway ;-) 
As the cloud takes hold, security and downtime are being talked about a lot. Although the former seems to be less of an issue as end users, including the largest financial institutions in the world, realize they have been using cloud services for years without incident. 
Uptime (forgive me, I want to be more positive about this), on the other hand, is one area where cloud platforms like Force.com really distinguish themselves. Imagine having the visibility and transparency of <a href="http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/security/">http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/security/</a> across all your business applications. If there is planned downtime you’ll know well in advance. If it’s unplanned, which rarely happens, it’s remedied fast. 
Surely that removes much of the headache for the IT department. And it should make the business users feel even better, since as TG Daily summarizes, “financial sites going down are a real drag and can affect the everyday lives of ordinary people like you, me and the person sitting next to you in that ugly cubicle.”
It has to be a serious consideration when considering your cloud application strategy.

App Stacks and the Beauty of Platform

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:23:22 +0000

If you watch any big technology company presentation, they will inevitably show you a slide that is their stack of products, some built in house over many years and some acquired. The bigger the company, the bigger the stack and the more of an eye test the diagram turns into. 
Miraculously, the presenter tells you this ‘stack” is entirely integrated. Never mind that the products might be built using different technologies and UI’s and require the users to install and administer every one of these apps and technologies separately. 
On the other hand, cloud platforms like Force.com approach this problem entirely differently. The basic technologies provided on the platform are all embedded into one application environment, such as workflow, reporting, social media for example. The user does not have to do anything. They just start using these technology components. These technologies are all part and parcel of the cloud and are helping to empower users and reduce the dependency on IT. 
To my way of thinking, that’s what it’s all about. The cloud is really about providing the platform as a service in a way that users are empowered and can easily adopt the technologies. It is not merely a collection of stack technologies that can be accessed over the internet (the false cloud). 
There is a big difference.

The business of online advertising

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:08:47 +0000

The media industry is competitive and has had to reinvent itself more than a few times over in modern times. Despite the business of online advertising being one of their most important revenue streams, many companies are struggling to manage a mismatch of back office systems used to manage the advertising billing process. Systems are relatively undeveloped, labor intensive and disconnected. In fact, what we're finding is that the systems used to manage the entire opportunity to cash process usually consist of a collection of disparate technologies, home grown systems, spreadsheets and a large dose of human effort. 
Compared to the print world, online advertising is a relatively new and more dynamic business discipline. Systems designed for the former just aren't mature enough for the latter. It is not unusual for companies to deploy 3-6 disconnected applications to manage the entire opportunity to cash process. Fragmented data prevents teams from seeing the complete customer relationship, thereby complicating customer service and impeding cross selling and upselling opportunities. 
In <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/resources/product/demo-center/customer-testimonials/" target="_blank">this video</a>, Karen Chevalier, Senior VP of Operations at US News and World Report talks about some of the problems they faced and the benefits they are seeing from connecting Salesforce CRM, their ad server and FinancialForce Billing. Karen notes that the organization has reduced it's billing cycle from 2-3 weeks to just 2-3 days, and that the large team of staff that were tied up in it, can now focus on more value add activity. They have a truly integrated online and print advertising booking and billing system in the cloud.

The AppExchange – supporting a new world of business

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:44:19 +0100

Salesforce.com is celebrating six<a title="AppExchange" href="http://blogs.salesforce.com/.a/6a00e54ee3905b88330162fbcce058970d-pi" target="_blank"> years of the AppExchange</a> citing one million installs and 20,000 apps. That’s some achievement. Force.com is backed by more than 92,000 salesforce.com customers representing 3,000,000 users. That is 15 times more companies using the Force.com platform as the next largest cloud platform. The AppExchange has helped change the course of business software, changing the way it is consumed forever – the corporate equivalent of downloading a book from Amazon or an app for your iPhone.
It has also given partners like us the opportunity to deliver leading best of class applications to Salesforce CRM cloud pioneers that have helped establish the platform. Entrepreneurs and small businesses now have opportunities for growth that didn’t exist before. Accessible and affordable technology, on a single platform, that is helping them develop their own business and service models at a rapid rate while supporting the venture as it grows. It’s exciting to watch and for most, would have been prohibitive with on-premise software. As the Facebook generation become our business leaders, they will bring new ideas and operational strategies to the fore that have never been considered before but that cloud technology has enabled. 
FinancialForce.com customer <a title="All Traffic case study" href="http://www.financialforce.com/company/customers/case-studies/" target="_blank">All Traffic Solutions</a> is a case in point and Scott Johnson, co-founder has some interesting views. All traffic has not only moved all of its core business systems to the cloud, but rebuilt its entire product line to take advantage of cloud and Force.com. He makes some interesting observations: “...the cost efficiencies will drive the initial wave of transition to cloud, but these adopters will learn how to internalize the speed, efficiency and visibility possible with this model and most importantly begin to apply it to their broader business strategy. Exposure to this model will change our expectations for how we should be interacting with our customers, products, services and staff. The phase I think we're in right now, where more organizations are simply gaining exposure, is the prerequisite for igniting the burst of innovation we've been told to expect.”
Force.com and the AppExchange can take a lot of the credit, and we’re proud to be a part of it.

More Services Firms have CRM than PSA. Why isn’t CRM Enough?

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:46:30 +0100

CRM systems, particularly Salesforce CRM, with almost 35% market share are prevalent among professional services firms. They must be able to consistently target the best clients and be able to quickly and efficiently assign the best available resources to solve their complex business problems. In <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/spi-salesforce/" target="_blank">new research</a> commissioned by FinancialForce.com and conducted by SPI Research the case is made that too often both the sales function and its supporting CRM applications are disconnected from service delivery and finance, which means vital client conversations and information are lost.
Dennis Howlett posts a <a href="http://www.accmanpro.com/2011/09/08/the-intersection-of-value-between-crm-and-professional-services/" target="_blank">video of Jeanne Urich</a> from SPI Research discussing the results of the survey. Some key findings are illustrated in this chart below:
<img class="left" src="assets/Uploads/blog/_resampled/resizedimage660234-DH-surveyresults.jpg" width="660" height="234" alt="" title=""/>Dennis writes: “What should be obvious is that Salesforce.com, with the largest market share among professional services businesses also generates the second highest level of billings per person BUT has one of the lowest levels of integration with professional services automation solutions. It should also be clear that in this sample, Salesforce customers are, on average, among the largest of organisations. What is also interesting is that NetSuite customers have the highest levels of integration but are among the lowest earners. Does that mean PSA has no impact? Does it mean Salesforce alone can carry organisations through? Is earnings potential a function of scale?”
It’s an interesting thought, but one that SPI disproves later. Indeed, average revenue per project for Salesforce.com customers is 53% higher than those who do not use Salesforce.com while projected margin for time and materials projects is 7% higher. So, the combination of revenue and margin edge mean that overall, Salesforce.com users are more profitable.
The key findings, however show that in addition <a href="http://www.accmanpro.com/2011/09/12/integration-increases-performance/" target="_blank">integration between CRM, PSA and Financials</a> helps improve every important KPI and ensures sales, project and finance teams have shared visibility into project status, pipeline, cost, budget, and billing information.

Cloud and Professional Services – A Match Made in Heaven

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:14:56 +0100

We recently launched some <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/spi-salesforce/" target="_blank">new research</a>, conducted by SPI Research, a specialist consulting firm dedicated to helping professional services organizations (PSOs) make quantum improvements in productivity and profit. The findings are fascinating in themselves and I’ll talk more about them in a subsequent post, but a key point made by Jeanne Urich from SPI when presenting the results at Dreamforce was that even the smallest PSOs today are global, mobile and virtual. It’s interesting to look at just how much this industry has changed in a very short period of time.
Dennis Howlett provides a <a href="http://www.accmanpro.com/2011/09/07/reviewing-the-professional-services-market/" target="_blank">video of Jeanne</a> making this point and picks up on it in his blog post.
Jeanne asserts that service providers are taking on more risk than they did in the past. Other industries are increasingly outsourcing their business problems to professional service providers and asking more of them than they might have done a few years ago. More SLA’s, more fixed price contracts etc, so that they are increasingly productizing services to make them more tangible and in turn, easier to sell and easier to buy. Clients want more for less while PSO finance teams want them to be more efficient and take more margin. And all of this with less people, often working remotely on projects in virtual teams. It’s an exciting time of change for the industry. Those that retained valuable workforce when the economy took a dive are in much better shape than their competitors.
It’s this type of evolved organization that cloud computing perfectly complements. After all, improving both client acquisition and service delivery is essential. What we know is that the Professional Services market has been relatively quick to adopt CRM technologies, with Salesforce the clear market leader. The point SPI is making in its research is that CRM only focuses on the front-end of the client lifecycle but does little to improve the service delivery lifecycle which focuses on resource and project management and is where service revenue and profit are made. While Salesforce.com users are generally the most productive PSOs, there is a significant opportunity for them to make improvements.

Building our credentials in Media

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:57:27 +0100

We launched <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/press-releases/financialforce-com-delivers-new-application-for-publishers-to-dramatically-simplify-the-business-of-online-advertising/" target="_blank">FinancialForce for Media </a>in June. In developing the cloud solution, we were struck by the progressive nature of <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/press-releases/media-leader-emap-selects-financialforce-accounting/" target="_blank">firms in this industry</a> but also by the complicated nature of the business and how many of their problems can be solved through cloud computing. This is particularly true as many media organizations are still struggling to transition from the world of print advertising to the new digital world in terms of connecting inventory, traffic and billing systems based on old technology.
At this year's Dreamforce event, two FinancialForce.com customers in media, Pandora (Internet Radio) and <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/press-releases/financialforce-com-customer-u-s-news-and-world-report-to-present-at-dreamforce-11/" target="_blank">US News and World Report</a>, presented their success stories. Quite an endorsement from both of them, and what we're really proud of is that our solution for Media has been built working very closely with US News in particular, to combat the specific problems they are facing so they can maximise advertising income and attract and retain customers.
Mark Brennan, Senior Director of Information Services at Pandora talks about the company's rapid growth and how FinancialForce.com supported it when it went Public in June this year. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1AIle3HROs" target="_blank">Mark starts presenting at 12:22</a>. He says that he used to see the Salesforce AppExchange as an "itty bitty" thing, but says that it's a "different thing today". The company needed to upgrade its systems to support a rapidly growing organization about to go public, so they searched for ERP, but as Mark says, they were looking for "quick ERP, not necessarily big ERP" which discounted the large traditional vendors. Pandora is very proud of the fact its systems are developed on and operate from the same cloud platform. It has meant that they were up and running very quickly, with all systems working together, which meant that during their first ever earnings call a few weeks back, Pandora could take all the numbers from the FinancialForce.com application without hesitation. Take a look at the recording to hear Mark's comments for yourself. In his own words, he "could talk for hours about their FinancialForce.com implementation, but the short story is we're delighted with it." That's what we like to hear.
In working with a number of media organizations over the months, we've found that they have very specific systems requirements related to managing unique online campaigns on behalf of clients. FinancialForce for Media was developed based around these, and US News and World Report was instrumental in this.
US News also spoke at Dreamforce in a session called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWp7j58L0CM" target="_blank">Inventory, Traffic and Billing Integration Success Stories, recorded here.</a> (See 20:35 then the Q&A at 43:45). The move to online advertising, booking and billing has caused the industry problems for a number of years and it took some time for US News to decide that its old print booking system was not going to make the grade. The move to digital among other things increased demand for reporting in new ways, including vertical ad analysis. As a user of Salesforce CRM and Google DoubleClick, the company looked for a cloud solution. By integrating the FinancialForce application, they have:
<ul><li>Combined print and online advertising booking and billing</li>
<li>Integrated Salesforce, FinancialForce and Doubleclick</li>
<li>Streamlined reporting and billing processes </li>
<li>Made it possible to operate from one set of numbers on Force.com</li>
</ul>More benefits are highlighted by the customer including the fact they have reduced the billing cycle from two to three weeks, to two to three days,
It has been a pleasure working with these organizations and learning more about the industry. Cloud computing is demonstrably providing a contemporary solution to contemporary business problems.

Cloud is Out, Mobile and Social are in

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:48:56 +0100

Discussions are already moving away from cloud computing and technology and towards the business value each application can deliver. Tablets and mobile applications are changing the way people see their personal and professional lives and also the way they view applications. The point is that this new breed of application, made possible by ‘the cloud’, offers genuine business value and is enabling people and departments to innovate in business in a way that has not previously been possible.
While we’ve seen some growth in the economy, it is still not as certain as many companies would like. Rather than choosing to rip and replace, companies are enhancing what they’ve got and extending their cloud applications, because it’s a fast return, has a low cost of entry, and the subscription model means they can easily budget for it. The additional value add inherent in these applications means people are getting the right information to the right people at the right time as quickly as possible no matter what device they are working from. Plus, new social capabilities like Chatter provide the intuitive user experience that business people have become used to in their personal lives.
It's no surprise, given the fact that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are taking the world by storm, that this year's main Salesforce run events Cloudforce and Dreamforce have focused on the subject of the social enterprise. What Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, talked about in his keynotes (which could only be accessed via Facebook incidentally) wasn't the standard definition of a social enterprise - an organization that applies capitalistic strategies to achieving philanthropic goals. Rather the fact that customers have moved to a world that’s entirely mobile, social and open and that in order to keep up with this trend, businesses need to become social enterprises.
Employees at <a href="http://www.financialforce.com/company/customers/case-studies/" target="_blank">FinancialForce.com customer Mantala </a>have timely access to information that impacts them despite it being held by another department, through Chatter. The powerful social networking tool from Salesforce.com helps Finance professionals, for example, move from the back office to the heart of the business, enabling them to serve as effective leaders on matters such as sales opportunities and customer service problems. Before this kind of collaborative technology, some information would likely never be passed on or uncovered by the people that needed to know or not until it was too late. This way, Mantala says problems are averted, staff are always up to date and customer issues are resolved without issue, leading to better customer service and a better working environment. Sales can better manage opportunities thanks to relevant information provided by finance, without bottlenecks or time-consuming manual activities. This is quite a change from a few years ago when IT departments saw cloud as a threat.
If you look at us (FinancialForce.com) as a consumer of cloud technology, it’s an interesting departure from the business structures companies used to work to. We have around 85 people working from the UK and US and others working remotely and we're growing and recruiting rapidly. Go back 10 years and the amount of technology we would have had to deploy so the teams could collaborate effectively would have been prohibitive. We live, eat and breathe the cloud in producing applications but also in consuming them for our business. Everything is online. When somebody joins the company, they are immediately immersed in our online community, where people in different time zones, that have never actually met, feel part of the same team. This is the power of cloud computing – providing the ability for companies to develop and prosper in a way they couldn’t before.
On September 27th, FinancialForce.com is running a webinar titled <a href="https://www.financialforce.com/news-events/events/live/how-finance-can-get-social-with-salesforce-chatter/27-sep-2011-1800-bst/" target="_blank">"How Finance can 'get social' with Salesforce Chatter"</a>
Also, see a recent <a href="http://www.mgiresearch.com/20-Questions/20-questions-with-financialforcecom-ceo-jeremy-roche.html" target="_blank">thought leader interview </a>with me conducted by Andrew Dailey of MGI Research (subscription required)

FinancialForce.com powers power Perfector

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:00 +0100

Integrating finance and CRM

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:00 +0100