Manoj Ranaweera's Blog

29-Jan-07: Moving on...new website for this blog

2007-01-29T08:50:00.000Z

The blog has been moved again, this time to http://www.manojranaweera.com

Please reset your links

My Blog is now at http://manojranaweera.wordpress.com

2006-07-25T22:02:00.000Z

My Blog is now at http://manojranaweera.wordpress.com.

The old articles will remain in this blog and will no longer be updated. Please reset your RSS Feeds etc to my wordpress blog.

Standards - American or British

2006-07-10T14:02:00.000Z

Sri Lanka was a British Colony for over 200 years before gaining independence in 1945. As such, institutions large and small followed and continue to follow British standards. But adaptation of these standards in Sri Lanka are continually been influenced by American standards, as more and more people are trained in US universities than in British universities.

As an example, I was educated at Royal College in Colombo, the most prominent and the largest school in Sri Lanka with a history of over 150 years. After completing my GCSE Advance Level examinations in 1987, I moved to UK to undertake an undergraduate degree at University of Brighton in 1988. At Royal College, I was one of the 40 students in my class. We had 14 classes in the same grade/form, i.e. 560 students undertook the same exam at the same time. As far as I know, I was the only one to come to UK to further my education straight after receiving the results (some migrated much later). However, at least 3 from the same class of 40 went to US for further education.

This trend continues to date, i.e. more and more students join American universities than British. Now, there are many affiliations of foreign universities in Sri Lanka, these being British, American and others. It has become a lucrative industry for western universities. Sri Lankans have a thirst for knowledge which comes from undertaking further studies and fighting for the few university places in Sri Lanka. It is much easier for Sri Lankans to travel (still need visas) now than it used to be.

This has created a dynamic economy with ever increasing trading relationships with foreign banks and companies. Sri Lankans who run companies abroad do not abandon their country of birth. They somehow tries to give something back. Good example (other than ebdex) is Virtusa, which has a large development centre in Sri Lanka. Virtusa is run by Kris Canekeratne, who started the company with his wife, both Sri Lankans, and now one of the biggest employers of IT staff in Sri Lanka.

Basel 2 - Why is it a hot topic in Sri Lanka

2006-07-10T14:01:00.000Z

Why is Basel 2 important to Sri Lankan companies?

Sri Lanka has set 1 January 2008 as the target date to implement "Basel 2". The key reason for adaptation seems to be the "credit ratings". Like all companies around the globe, Sri Lankan companies do need to borrow for growth (and other reasons) and would like to avoid paying high premium interest rates. Sri Lanka does not seems to have a decent credit scoring system and instead credit officers seem to rely on assessments made with their minds. The state of the mind of the individual at the time of application assessment having significant influence in the decision making! What happens if s/he got out from the wrong side of the bed that morning!. OK! We are all professionals and this is bit of a dramatisation of the thinking process, or is it?

According to Joan de Zilva, Director of Bank Supervision of Central Bank (as reported on The Sunday Business Leader):

Credit officers in banks are lazy!! There is nothing to say that the loan will be repaid. Banks must veer off from collateral lending to cash flow lending.

According to Ranjith Samaranayake, of Commercial Bank (as reported on The Sunday Business Leader):

Basel 1 was too simple and was confined to the accounts department, with the rest of the business not included. Basel 2 is much more than an accounting exercise. The credit and risk managers must now be involved.

As far as ebdex is concerned, we are doing all we can to ensure there is a full audit trail on all transactions. In terms of presentation, a simple icon is provided against each transaction, which displays full audit trail associated with that particular transaction. In addition, we are discussing about providing an event log at System Administrator level that will show every action taken from System Administrator to every User of the ebdex Document Exchange.

I welcome any thoughts you have on provision of compliance within an document exchange environment, as well as any comments you may have on Basel 2 and Sarbanes Oxley.

Distracted by MBA Jokes

2006-07-10T05:21:00.000Z

Outlook just delivered a comment from Pankaj Shukla about blogging editors and Karan Bilimoria. I had a quick looked at Pankaj's website, and I find myself another guy who has completed a MBA. I quite like the following he has written:

When most of the following is true (see his article for the full list) then you know that you have completed your MBA:

You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core competencies are.

You do not believe in any problems in your life, just issues and improvement opportunities.

You can actually use the term value-added without falling down laughing.

You can easily understand the rational behind traffic jams - market inefficiencies indeed!!

Share your MBA jokes!

Cost of Imminent War on Economy and Business

2006-07-07T18:40:00.000Z

Sri Lanka is currently going through a bad period. Smell of a forthcoming war with LTTE (Tamil Tigers, most ruthless terrorist group in the world) is in the air. Tourism is down. The hotel I am staying in, Trans Asia, is nearly empty. People are keeping a low profile and keeping away from busy crowded locations. But life and business continues. People in here are used to worst conditions than this. Government is taking all it can to avoid repeat of another war.

However, this is having a profound impact on ebdex, which I am trying to address. We have lost some of our development team. Most of the Tamil staff has either left the country or in the process of leaving. So, I got more or less a brand new team to deal with. Always a problem, when you outsource! But I am putting a framework to stop this repeating. We will come out trumps! As Karan Bilimoria said, one should never ever give up!

Lord Karan Bilimoria - Key messages from his "talk"

2006-07-07T18:06:00.000Z

I promised to report after attending the excellent and inspiring "talk" given by Lord Karan Bilimoria at Manchester Business School. Karan has gone through similar "pain" that I am going through 15 years or so ago. When Karan started he knew nothing about brewing beer. He had to learn fast. He constantly received "NO" as an answer. It motivated him further to be successfull. Here are the key messages I took home:

1. Make it a global brand - it's all about brand equity. ebdex was set-up with this in mind.
2. Against all odds - Karen had a partner. I don't. My closest partner is Affno (tied to ebdex in many ways - vice versa). I am now seeking two partners (a Sales and Marketing expert and Operations and Customer Service expert). These guys/gals will get significant equity. Visit our website for further details
3. Overcoming credibility gap - faith andconfidence on the idea - your total commitment can overcome this - What I also have in abundance is "commitment" which comes with a price tag (no need to go in to details here!!!). In addition, I have teamed up with some excellent partners, some of these being: Affno, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Access Accounting, Pegasus, etc.
4. Accept the word NO: This happens less and less as we mature as an organisation. Yet this is a crucial part of the learning process. The word "No" increases my determination to succeed further. Why does an organisation say "no" to you? I believe, in most cases, the fault lies at our end, i.e. we fail to explain the compelling benefits it (whatever it is) will bring to that particular party.
5. Always carry out SWOT analysis - I got a MBA, which comes with a variety of tools I can use. SWOT is a valuable tool.
6. Away day - with actions - Bit too early for ebdex.
7. Convert threats to opportunities - This is exactly what we continue to do. ebdex will work with our competitors for the benefit of our clients. I will blog on this separately later.
8. Advertise on trade magazines - if not available, launch one! - Yes we would do this when the time is right. Launching a magazine is not in our five year plan. However, we can either sponsor a regular column/page or provide articles for the column/page.
9. Never ever give up - This has also been my trade mark!
10. Address the problem. Here I am in Sri Lanka doing exactly that!
11. Keep an open mind. Very vital! But you also need to stay focus, otherwise you will not achieve your objectives.
12. Proof the concept. We are almost ready to do this.
13. Hold on to the equity - be innovative. We need equity and debt finance to meet our strategic goals. Equity cannot be seen as a constraint. Instead it should help achieve the overall objective.
14. Whole team must be passionate. Goes without saying. Our team includes both ebdex and Affno staff.
15. Building the team - find the best. Refer to item 2.
16. Culture - can never be copied - give people trust. I fully accept an organisational culture cannot be imposed. We promote a client-centric organisational culture..
17. Trademark must be protectable. Another task to do. We also need to buy the rights to .com.
18. Doing things differently and better. This is all about ebdex.
19. Product - no cutting corners - price - place -promotion - finance - people - passion. Should not be under estimated, built in to our strategic business plan.
20. PR - POS - promotions/sponsorships- advertising. Equity funding will allow us to achive this.
21. Get expensive adverisers - PR + accountants. I wish!
22. Constant innovations - don't stand still. R&D is very important to our business. We are constantly improving our domain knowledge.
23. Mission can be measured - not the vision. vision is more important than mission. We need to rethink about our vision and mission.
24. Aspire and achieve against all odds with integrity - sky is the limit. Certainly
25. Never go without testing with customer - ask everytime major change is introduced. Current objective is to trial ebdex Document Exchange with number of customers first before roll out. We need to get the testing and debugging completed. It has taken lot longer than planned due to number of reasons.

Bit longer than I thought. But all vital points. Share your thoughts!

Blogging Platforms

2006-07-06T12:20:00.000Z

I have been chatting to Dennis Howlett regarding blogging platforms, as I recently decided to use wordpress as my blogging platform, moving away from Blogger due to less functionality. Dennis has recently written an excellent article about blogging platforms. He summarises the article by saying......

Geekiness is pretty much a requirement once you get past the no-brainer freebies. Instructions for add-ins like Technorati, FeedBurner and so on are not as clear to end users as they are to geeks. But then it is important to remember that despite the ‘age’ of blog technology (it’s been around for 5 years), it is still evolving and end user assistance hasn’t caught up yet. Using an experienced person will save hours of frustration and, hopefully, a pleasant and useful presence.
As I am not a geek (at least not yet! Not sure whether one can be a geek at the tender age of 38!), I still need to spend time getting my blog to give the right look and feel. In the meantime, Dennis, do expect more requests for help from me.

Tags: Blogging, Blogging Platforms

My Trip to Sri Lanka - Diary of Events - 3rd July

2006-07-04T01:54:00.000Z

I arrived in Sri Lanka on Monday the 3rd for a fortnight to discuss testing and debugging with our strategic technology partner, Affno.

The Etihad flight from Manchester to Abu Dhabi was almost empty, but the flight from Abu Dhabi to Colombo had only 7 spare seats. It was jam packed with Sri Lankans returning home from employment in Abu Dhabi - mainly due to start of the summer holiday season! The heat in the Middle East during summer is unbearably over 40 degrees Celsius. Many families escape the summer all together. Specially the families of expats - I used to be an expat living in Abu Dhabi from 1996 to 2000, when I worked for Parsons Brinckerhoff and Parsons Corporation.

One of the mistakes I did when I returned from Abu Dhabi in 2000 was to sell my 2 year old Dodge Intrepid in the month of August. There were hardly any expats left in Abu Dhabi that month. A local Arab bought if for one third of the price I paid. Day light robbery! It was a car we all enjoyed. Very spacious and fast for long Arabic tarmacs. Only thing I did not like was the automatic speed controller which kicked in at 180 kmph, which was linked to the warranty. I still regret not shipping the car to UK.

The Abu Dhabi airport continues to be a less attractive transit hub! It was certainly not designed to offer comfort to transit passengers. Other than Costa Cafe and another small cafe, there are no other restaurants, given that it is the commercial hub for Etihad Airlines. They ought to learn from their neighbours, Abu Dhabi.

Tags: Airlines, Cars, airports, partners

Software Support - From Dogbert's Tech Support Team

2006-06-20T07:19:00.000Z

Could not resist not sharing such an interesting cartoon with you.

An Evening with Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra Beer

2006-06-19T16:06:00.000Z

Karan Bilimoria, Founder of Cobra Beer and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) UK Board Member is expected to deliver an inspiring lecture at Manchester Business School on 21 June 2006.

It was scarcely 15 years ago that Karan Bilimoria made a choice that would change his life forever. Spotting a gap in the beer market between the fizzy lagers and heavy ales that clogged the shelves – and paired poorly with food – Karan came up with an entirely new idea: Cobra. Specially brewed to be smoother and less gassy than regular lagers, Cobra is the perfect accompaniment to all foods and just as good on its own. From the days of the student dream, Cobra has become one of the fastest growing beer brands in the UK, with a retail value turnover of over £80m and exports to over 40 countries.
Karan is expected to share the story of his remarkable journey in business: from taking £20,000 of student debt and no experience into a market full of giants, to achieving rapid growth and wide acclaim.

I will report after the lecture / speech to state my own thoughts on the man!

Tags: entrepreneurship, branding

Why I have not blogged recently?

2006-06-19T15:40:00.000Z

Having blogged for two months at http://manojranaweera.blogspot.com, I got to the point where I found the presentation of my blogging pages no longer acceptable. This was as a result of looking at blogs written in Wordpress. My first blog was written in and hosted by Blogger.com.

At the same time, I felt that there need to be more focus on marketing of ebdex. I also want to continue to speak about the industry and the pain and joy I am experiencing whilst getting ebdex off the ground to deliver our strategic plans.

So on one crazy night I ended up creating multiple blogs on Blogger and Wordpress, to address different themes. Obviously, I cannot maintain multiple blogs without having to spend significant amount of time. Then David Terrar introduced me to Qumana, a writer and publisher for multiple blogs. The plan is to maintain three blogs:

General blog, known as ManojRanaweera's Blog, which will have a copy of all articles written by me.
Blog for issues related to ebdex Ltd
Blog dedicated to EIPP and Document Exchanges, perhaps with guest bloggers

I still have to spend some time sorting out the look and feel of each of these blogs. In the meantime, I will continue at http://manojranaweera.blogspot.com as usual.

Tags: Blogging, Qumana, ebdex, EIPP, Document Exchange

Another SaaS EIPP - InoviumPay Central

2006-06-03T21:54:00.000Z

In May 2006, Inovium Corp. announced the launch of InoviumPay Central, an electronic billing and payment system designed for businesses that currently accept credit cards payments.

Built-in functionality includes payment scheduler, electronic submission of all invoices, integration and batch uploading to any major accounting system, and full management control and reporting, allowing the company to streamline operations and free up labor.

The solution is offered free to any company or organization worldwide utilizing their existing merchant card provider for a limited period.

Tags: EIPP

ICAEW Survey 2006 - Use of e-Invoicing within the surveyed businesses

2006-06-02T23:09:00.000Z

Based on a survey sample of 1012 businesses in UK, 69% have said that their invoicing systems are not integrated with their own accounting systems. Among those who have integrated, only 10% achieved seamless data exchange between their own systems. It seems that the survey has not collected data on exchange of invoices electronically between organisations (suppliers and buyers). One can assume this might be close to 0%.

Another figure from the report shows 14% of the businesses using e-invoicing at present, with another 9% planning to implement such solutions within the next 2 years. Once again there is no reference to use of many-to-many Value Added Networks (VANs) such as ebdex Document Exchange for document exchange seamlessly between suppliers and purchasers.

Reference: IT in Business - a review of the market for financial and business software - Research Report Apr 2006 (ICAEW Survey 2006)

Tags: ebdex Document Exchange, ICAEW, e-invoicing, Survey 2006, VAN, EIPP

Dennis Howlett - The master Blogger on accountancy, enterprise and integration software

2006-05-31T05:45:00.000Z

Dennis Howlett is one of the few individuals who influenced me to start this blog in early April 06. I have been a keen reader of Accman Pro since start of my blog. It seems Den also runs two other blogs, these being Enterprisey and Integration Monitor (perhaps there is more..). Den speaks about anything and everything in Accman Pro, whilst Enterprisey as the name suggests is more geared towards enterprise software, and Den was kind enough to mention ebdex recently.

Some of the other subjects Den covers in Den's Enterprisey Foghorn include Business integration, Business intelligence, Compliance, Enterprise Web 2.0, IBM/SAP/MSFT/ORCL, Infrastructure, New business models, Outsourcing, Results analysis, Saas/On-demand, Sprend management, Startup players and Strategy.

On the other hand, Den speaks about SOA, webservices and similar technologies on Integration Monitor.

For me, Den's Enterprisey Foghorn is the most relevant, yet I am still drawn to Accman Pro. Perhaps its "speak about everything that comes to my mind...I am not scared to offend you" unstructured free writing is the best, rather than more strategic and structured content on Enterprisey.

Dennis, keep up the good work. You got a fan for life!

Have you thought of collecting all the articles you have ever written and will write? This could be "archives of Den". I am not aware of any other blogger capturing all their work before. You could be the first!

Tags: Enterprise Software, System Integration, Blogging

Another Introduction to ebdex Document Exchange

2006-05-26T00:30:00.000Z

ebdex Document Exchange is a Business-to-Business (B2B) solution that sits between various accounting and enterprise software systems used by companies, automatically allowing these disparate systems to 'talk' to each other and transmit all manner of structured documents, without manual handling.

It requires no capital spend by users in order to adopt it into use, requires no user set-up or annual contract charges, but relies simply on a range of 'pay-as-you-go' pricing plans, with each transaction costing less than a 1st class stamp. (Disclaimer: ebdex reserves the right to charge for integration costs, and trading partner recruitment and enrolment costs).

It is suitable for users large and small, linking all trading partners regardless of size or industry sector. As such, it is suitable for complementing existing EDI, enterprise and accountancy systems, thereby generating extra benefits to the user organisation.

It is important to recognise that it does not seek to displace or compete with such systems, rather to enhance them and extend their reach. Its modus operandi, technology platform and pricing model offers a unique product offering.

Tags: ebdex, EIPP, e-invoicing, Documents, Exchange, B2B, EDI

Zansibar - The Technology relationship

2006-05-25T17:10:00.000Z

What an awful picture? Surely, the UK Government can afford a better image than this to describe the complex arrangements between public sector buyers and suppliers of products and solutions through its multi million £ web based hosted and management e-Commerce platform (I know there is a slighly better image elsewhere)!

I assume you have heard about Zansibar Project. I did some research today to find out the technology house behind this public sector solution and thought of sharing it with you. Basically, OGCbuying.solutions (on behalf of Executive Agency of the Office of Government Commerce in the Treasury) has signed up a contract with PA Consulting Group to provide the UK Government with an e-Commerce platform for procurement. For this project, PA Consulting Group set-up PA Shared Services Ltd, as a wholly-owned subsidiary with technology partners Elcom Systems Ltd, Impaq Business Solutions Ltd and @UK Plc. In addition, Serco Group plc also provides various strategic services.

Zansibar handles 14 XML business documents. These are being considered by OASIS for incorporation in to UBL 2.0 standard. Currently, UBL has released V1.0. ebdex Document Exchange is built using eBis-XML, and can easily accommodate UBL and ebXML promoted by OASIS and others.

Elcom provides the hosted eProcurement and e-Commerce platform. PA Shared Services provides system integration and implementation services. Impaq's supplier portal also plays a role. Further research is necessary to understand these relationship, and what role ebdex Document Exchange could play in future to extend the coverage.

Please do share your knowledge, as I am always fascinated by the way consortiums are set-up.

In the past, I was part of number of consortiums who bid for Light Rail Transit (LRT) projects. I started with South Leeds Supertram and lost, but then went on to win Croydon Tramlink. We then lost Manchester Metrolink Phase II, but the winning consortium's bank hired us to do due-dilligence on the proposed systems. One of the best projects was developing the Croydon Tramlink proposal from a thought to conceptual design, and then negotiate with London Regional Transport and then re-negotiate with suppliers for better terms after winning the concession to build and operate the Tramlink for 30 years. Basically, I had 10 systems to play with and a budget of £10 million. I and the rest of the team had to go through a steep learning curve after loosing South Leeds Supertram. Basically, we found out that some of us did not know much about the relevant solutions and technology...We would have been in bigger trouble had we won Leeds. But the consortium stayed on (with few changes), learned the lessons and won the next bid. At that point I took an assignment to Middle East - the end of my role in LRT systems. No regrets though!

Tags: Light Rail Transit , LRT, Document Exchange, eMarket Place, eProcurement,

Great debate about Supply Chain Management vs. Spend Mangement

2006-05-24T01:16:00.000Z

There is a great debate taking place within number of prominent North American blogs about supply chain management vs. spend management. These being, Tim Minahan's Supply Excellence, Jason Busch's Spend Matters. Dave Stephens’ Procurement Central and Dave Bush's eSourcing Forum. There may well be others..

In UK, procurement and supply chain management are the terms most commonly used. Spend Management is used by Ariba and Marrakech.

Obviously, if we consider US terminalogy, Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) forms part of the "spend management" solutions (as far as Ariba and perhaps others are concerned).

What about "financial supply chain management"? Could this be the next corporate paradigm after Spend Management, ERP, etc? SAP already has a module addressing this area. Debate ought to be extended to cover financial supply chain management. Currently Wikipedia does not seem to have a terminalogy for fiancial supply chain management.

Are there any other buzz words that address similar space? Please share your view points.

Tags: supply chain management, EIPP, spend management, financial supply chain management

What business are we in? Document Exchange or EIPP

2006-05-24T00:42:00.000Z

Very interesting question! The competitive landscape changes according to the response given.

What is the primary business of ebdex? We are in the business of allowing organisations to exchange structured documents with their trading partners (suppliers, customers, partners, resellers, etc) utilising investments already made in technology (no need for new hardware or software licenses). This is achieved by integrating with accounting/ERP/CRM/other systems at both ends of a transaction through ebdex Document Exchange. Another way to put this is: if system A has structured documents and these documents are required by System B, then ebdex is interested in reading from System A and writing in to System B.

For purchasing, the documents exchanged could be purchase orders, delivery notes, goods received notifications, etc. For accounts, this could be invoices, payment instructions and remittance notes. For medical industry, this could be clinical reports, surgery records, etc. The list goes on!

So why does our website go on and on about EIPP and e-invoicing? The financial documents associated with purchase-to-payment (P2P) and supply-to-cash (S2C) falls into Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) market. The second "P" stands for on line payment solutions. Presentment being presenting to recipient and on-line for access, storage and retrieval.

So, have we confused our audience with a mixed message? Let us know! Your feedback is important to us to get a clearer message out.

Tags: ebdex, EIPP, e-invoicing, Document, Exchange, P2P, S2C, ERP, CRM, accounts, software

Open Source Software vs. Sun Microsystems

2006-05-17T20:25:00.000Z

Is Open Source software really free? My limited knowledge suggests you still have to pay for support. Same can be said for record beating Solaris 10 from Sun Microsystems (in fact all Sun Software is free and you just pay for support). So now you have a real choice.

Sun offers an alternative to Windows with the Solaris Enterprise System, a unified platform of Solaris 10, Java Enterprise System, developer tools, desktop infrastructure and N1 management software.

Sun claims "Solaris 10 includes more than 600 features that make it the most efficient, secure, and reliable operating system ever built". Sun has spent $500 million to produce Solaris 10. What's more interesting is that its bundled with 188 Open Source software products from:

Apache, Tomcat and Zebra software for network and Web services
Bison, GCC, Perl and Python tools for software development
IP Filter, TCP Wrappers and Secure Shell utilities for security
GNOME, Mozilla, and Evolution for desktop usability

Performance of Sun Java System Web Server against Apache 2.0, Tomcat, and OpenSSL shows Sun is faster.

Do share your thoughts!

Tags: Sun, Java, Solaris, OpenSource, Apache, Tomcat

External Sales Consultants on Revenue Share - We need you?

2006-05-16T17:24:00.000Z

With the imminent launch of ebdex Document Exchange, we are currently recruiting External Sales Consultants on revenue share basis. You have the opportunity to earn well over £100,000 per annum. If interested, please get in touch through http://www.ebdex.co.uk/jobs.html. Please state three reasons why we ought to consider you for this role.

We are looking for motivated individuals that have demonstrable track record in closing deals. Your role include pre-sales, sales and post-sales activities and may also lead into customer relationship management (CRM). We are especially interested in those who have worked for accounts and ERP software vendors. Sector specialists are encouraged to apply.

The possibility also exists for joining ebdex at a later date.

Tags: ebdex, Sales, Consultants, Revenue Share

How famous have I become since start of this blog?

2006-05-16T11:26:00.000Z

I just spent few minutes trying to understand the power of blogging in making “Manoj Ranaweera” famous. Here are the results to my astonishment:

Search word: Manoj

On Google - Not within Top 10
Google UK - 5 (ecademy) and 7 (ebdex)

Search word: Ranaweera

On Google: 2 (blog), 4 (deal architect) and 6 (ecademy)
On Google UK: 1 (ecademy) and 3 (ebdex)

Search word: Manoj Ranaweera

Google: All top 10 positions - 1 (blog), 2 (deal architect), 3 (ecademy), 4 (blogger.com), 5 (business two zero), so on ...

For Manoj, unfortunately not in the Top 10 globally due to many Manojs from India. Without a doubt, my blog has played a major role.

Search your name and see how it performs.

Infor to acquire SSA Global - Threat to SAP and Oracle?

2006-05-15T22:23:00.000Z

SSA Global announced signing of a definitive agreement which allows the company to be acquired by Infor, creating third largest ERP vendor. The combined entity will have over £1.6bn sales revenues. Infor has recently acquired number of companies, causing concern within customer base for product continuation.

Tags: SSA Global, ERP, Infor, acquisitions

EIPP is hotting up - Sprinter from Bottomline Technologies

2006-05-12T05:40:00.000Z

Recently, Bottomline Technologies announced an Integrated Solution for End-to-End Purchase-to-Pay Automation. Bottomline has been in the Electronic Invoicing Presentment and Payment (EIPP) (also called e-invoicing) market for number of years, have supplied solutions to many organisations across Europe and North America. What is so special about, Sprinter? Its claimed to be a modular solution that streamlines Purchase-to-Pay processes through a combination of integrated invoice data capture services and innovative software for purchasing and requisition management, invoice workflow and supplier collaboration. Lot of keywords, but what does this mean to the layman?

Ok, my analysis as follows:

It integrates seamlessly with existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems - A must, but what about accounting systems? This suggests that the solution is aimed at larger companies as usual.
It integrates with Bottomline’s market-leading payments platforms - a positive, given that HSBC and other promotes Bottomlines BACSTEL-IP solutions - there is also possibility that even ebdex can integrates this solution into our ebdex Document Exchange - from my point of view, ebdex is very happy to work with our competitors. We tend to look at them as partners! More to come on this point later.
Is it as flexible and cost-effective as they claim? - I do not have figures to comment on this?
Pay-as-you-go transaction pricing model - Positive move. Need to further obtain information on validity of this statement - need to understand hidden costs.
An alternative to inefficient paper-based invoice management processes - certainly true
Bottomline Transaction Centers enables businesses to transform paper invoices into clean electronic data files - Version One and number of others can do this. Use of Centres make the operation very cost effective. I have also been thinking about this, hence my discussions with Version One.

A positive move! Wouldn't it be nice to see some comments from Bottomline Technologies?

Tags: ebdex, Bottomline Technologies, EIPP

Customer Profiling

2006-05-11T00:08:00.000Z

So, you are a start-up bringing your first product to market and potentially every business on the planet is a target. How do you decide which companies to target initially? This is when customer profiling become important. Customer profiling focuses you to identify the type of company you believe you have a higher chance of converting to a revenue generating client. How do you go about accomplishing this given UK alone has more than 2.1 million registered companies?

You need to apply number of criteria to reduce this number to about 50 companies to initially target. Once you got your initial 50, then you can analyse them to identify any patterns, and then decide whether to further focus on these patterns - perhaps add further companies that fit into this pattern to the initial 50. Next step is to review the responses your receive and refine the criteria to increase 50 to 100 and beyond!

How did you identify your first 50?

Tags: customers, profiling