FinancialForce.com news

FinancialForce.com Achieves Record Quarter; Announces Office Expansion Plans

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, reported a record Q1 2013 in both bookings and run rate, with total revenue increasing in the first quarter by more than 90%. With an extremely strong sales pipeline and increasingly larger customers, the company continues its ambitious growth, signing several enterprise customers over the last 12 months.

FinancialForce.com also reported that its global headcount has doubled year-on-year and has grown from 150 employees at the end of FY 2012 to more than 200 today. The company plans to continue its aggressive hiring pace throughout the year. As a result, FinancialForce.com is expanding its downtown San Francisco and U.K. headquarters to accommodate the rapid growth. Office expansion plans are currently in development and employees are expected to move into the enlarged spaces in Q2 2013.

The company’s rapid growth coincides with several industry honors. FinancialForce.com is named by San Francisco Business Times as one of the Best Places to Work in San Francisco. The award is based solely on employee satisfaction surveys, with honors given to the most outstanding companies. Additionally, FinancialForce.com recently won the British Finance Award’s Software Product of the Year honor and was listed by AlwaysOn as a 2013 OnDemand 100 Top Private Company.

“Our explosive growth year-over-year is a testament to the quality of our people and products,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “We are not simply a company that builds cloud apps – our goal is to help customers realize their goals by delivering connected and trusted solutions that help differentiate their business. Our presence is making an impact in the industry-- people are talking about us and liking what they see.”

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We build the #1 Accounting, Professional Services Automation and Billing applications on the Salesforce Platform. We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Sandra Lo
Director of Public Relations
(415) 796-8414
slo@financialforce.com

Professional Services Surge Continues in 2013 According to New SPI Research; Organizations Contemplate Technology Readiness for Market Growth

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that the professional services market is set to have a strong 2013, according to this year’s Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark report from Service Performance Insight (SPI Research). Additionally, the corresponding 2013 Professional Services Maturity™ Best of Best report rated two FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) customers, NTT Centerstance and Perceptive Software, among the top five percent best-of-the-best performing Professional Services (PS) organizations benchmarked against more than 230 leading firms.

Professional services as an industry in 2012 grew across all leading indicators – annual revenue growth (11.5%), headcount increases, size of the deal pipeline (193% of forecast), and percentage of revenue in backlog (43%) — its strongest results in five years. SPI Research found there is significant pent-up demand for professional services and consequently, PS organizations are experiencing shorter sales cycles. SPI Research also projects that 2013 will be another strong year for Professional Services, setting the stage for key growth trends that will shape the industry over the next five years. PS firms planning to capitalize from this expected surge require technology that allows for integration, mobility, ease of use and complete visibility.

“The bottom-line is that the PS market is very much alive and growing with no let-up in sight,” said Jeanne Urich, managing director, SPI Research. ”The greatest challenge going forward for PS providers will be finding the skilled talent they need for growth, which means both large and small firms will have to develop innovative new talent management techniques, as well as technology, to support increased demand and productivity to stay ahead of the curve.”

According to the report, the best performing firms focus intently on aligning sales and service delivery, and have initiated efforts to productize their service portfolio. Productized services enable the entire organization to more efficiently sell and execute very profitable services at higher levels of quality. A key underpinning of effective sales and delivery alignment are integrated CRM and PSA applications, which gave them a 360-degree view of clients; ensuring prospects fluidly become projects. They also are focused on providing visibility for both sales and delivery to the pipeline to ensure they are selling what they can deliver and delivering what was sold.

Average growth:

“Based on these numbers, the Best of the Best winners are taking a larger share of the growth in the industry at the expense of their competitors and are achieving higher profitability,” continued Urich. “Going forward, these companies will be more competitive because they are growing faster than the market.”

FinancialForce.com customers NTT Centerstance and Perceptive Software have illustrated exemplary performance across leadership, finance, operations, human capital alignment, service execution and client relationship categories in 2012, as evaluated by SPI Research. NTT Centerstance, a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies identify and move key business processes to the cloud, has a single system to manage sales and service and is enabling their services teams to base their decisions on the same data, in real time, so decision-making is efficient and effective. Perceptive Software is a stand-alone business unit within Lexmark International, which builds enterprise content management software to help organizations effortlessly manage the entire lifecycle of their documents and information. The company relies on Salesforce CRM integrated with FinancialForce Accounting and FinancialForce PSA to deliver competitive advantage.

Both companies were among the top organizations that showed significantly higher revenue growth, as well as a high percentage of billable employees. They achieved productivity enhancements by reducing data entry, making resource assignments faster and providing more flexibility to adapt to changing project needs on the fly.

“Centerstance and Perceptive are stellar examples of companies that have the powerful combination of maturity and connected applications,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “Their inclusion in SPI’s best-of-the-best validates why our PSA customer base continues to expand exponentially year after year.”

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact
Maria Bradley
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

Concur, FinancialForce.com and Xactly Present Financial Cloud Power Series

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

– Concur, FinancialForce.com, and Xactly jointly announced today the launch of the Financial Cloud Power Series, an event series for CFOs and COOs interested in learning more about financial management solutions in the cloud. This series of events – held in major cities across the U.S. – will showcase C-level customer speakers sharing their financial cloud use cases. As part of each event, salesforce.com executives will also be on hand to discuss how the cloud can be used to solve financial problems.

Concur, FinancialForce.com and Xactly, all active solution providers on the Salesforce Platform, are launching this event series to educate CFOs and COOs in regards to the security, effectiveness, and reliability of financial applications in the cloud. Designed to demonstrate use cases with ROI and best practices, this event series also provides a powerful networking venue for CFO and COOs, in which they can learn and evangelize the efficiency and aptitude of deploying financial applications built on the Salesforce Platform.

The Financial Cloud Power Series will take place in the following cities:

To register or learn more about the Financial Cloud Power Series, please visit: http://www.financialforce.com/CloudPowerSeries2013

About Concur

Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions. Concur’s easy-to-use Web-based and mobile solutions help companies and their employees control costs and save time. Concur Connect is the platform that enables the entire travel and expense ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and developers to access and extend Concur’s T&E cloud. Concur’s systems adapt to individual employee preferences and scale to meet the needs of companies from small to large. Learn more at www.concur.com or the Concur blog.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We build the #1 Accounting, Billing and Professional Services Automation applications on the Salesforce cloud platform. We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

About Xactly

Xactly Corporation is the market leader in on-demand sales compensation and sales performance management. The company’s suite of sales compensation and related sales performance management products, enables sales and finance executives to design, implement, manage, audit and optimize sales commission management programs easily and affordably. Xactly’s solutions automate the process of aggregating data from disparate systems into a secure, hosted repository, and enable companies to leverage this business data, which is the lifeblood of sales performance management. Xactly helps companies improve operational performance, optimize sales effectiveness, proactively manage risk and compliance, and maximize profits. The Xactly family of products is used by sales and finance executives, compensation analysts, sales operations and sales professionals across a variety of industries, ranging from SMBs to large enterprises. For more information, visit www.xactlycorp.com, call 1-866-GO-XACTLY (469-2285) or follow Xactly on Twitter, Facebook and the Xactly Blog.

FinancialForce.com wins Software Product of the Year in Business Finance Awards 2013

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, has won its second major award in just three months. FinancialForce Accounting was named Software Product of the Year at this year’s Business Finance Awards; an achievement that comes hot on the heels of earlier success at the British Accountancy Awards where it was also named Software Product of the Year.

The Business Finance Awards 2013, run in partnership with ACCA, are designed to recognise excellence in business finance. In this fiercely contended category, the judges were looking for a product that provides its users with a new way of working and with demonstrable benefits. The finalists were judged on their ability to deliver exemplary customer care, superior design quality and functionality and technical innovation.

Jeremy Roche, President and CEO for FinancialForce.com, said: “We are thrilled to have been chosen to win an award of this calibre. It is a great accolade and recognition that business processes can be streamlined successfully by bringing together finance, sales and service onto a single platform. Cloud spending continues to be a top priority for CFOs and CIOs and FinancialForce.com is making the cloud a reality for users in forty five countries that seek not just to grow, but to do so efficiently and profitably.”

FinancialForce.com Raises Bar for Mobility and Consulting Productivity with Professional Services Automation (PSA) Winter ’13

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Winter '13 Release Overview

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the Winter ’13 release of FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA), a cloud-based solution that transforms how professional services (PS) organizations sell, resource, and deliver professional services projects. FinancialForce PSA Winter ’13 reinforces FinancialForce.com’s commitment to making PS teams more effective, mobile and social.

Built on the Salesforce Platform and natively embedded with Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA is one of the industry’s fastest growing PSA solutions. Winter ’13 is based on enhancement ideas submitted online by the company’s growing community of users via the FinancialForce Community. FinancialForce.com has delivered new capabilities in PSA Winter ’13 to dramatically simplify expense entry and receipt capture via mobile devices. FinancialForce PSA Winter ’13 also features a host of new innovations based on customer feedback to boost productivity and ease of use for services teams.

More Efficient, Mobile and Social

FinancialForce PSA Winter ’13 features a new mobile expense entry application which complements the existing FinancialForce PSA timecard entry application. The new app gives highly mobile PS workforces the tools they need to focus on customer service and satisfaction and minimize the time spent on administrative responsibilities.

Mobile expense entry enables users to submit and track their expenses on their Android device, iPhone or iPad, taking photos of receipts and attaching them to expenses. Once submitted, expenses are immediately available for client billing and/or accounting for employee reimbursement. With everything centralized, PS professionals can access all the information they need to collaborate on the road, including via Salesforce Chatter, while getting their timecards and expenses entered anywhere, anytime.

PSA Winter ’13 also introduces many time-saving features, based directly on users’ evolving needs. For example:

The FinancialForce Output Builder now offers automatic, scheduled project status reports. Output Builder can create project status updates directly from the data in the system, which can be automatically emailed to customers and stakeholders. In addition to keeping external and internal teams up-to-date, this capability also saves PS teams significant time and resources from the laborious process of gathering data manually, and assimilating the information into attractive and informative project reports based on the customers’ needs.
ClickLink, a FinancialForce Platform “click to integrate” tool now features Import/Export functionality to transfer integration rules and configurations between organizations. This allows integration rules to be shared between sandbox and live environments as well as sharing amongst the FinancialForce user community.
Bulk Timecard and Expense Approval allows professionals to breeze through an often arduous process in bulk rather than manually manage approvals one by one.

“For professional services teams, maximizing their business value for customers remains the top priority,” said Christine Dover, Research Director at IDC. “Mobile expense entry, bulk approval and customized real-time reporting capabilities allow consultants and services professionals more time to focus on what’s essential – customer service and satisfaction.”

In addition, PSA Winter ’13 includes dozens of productivity enhancements to reduce data entry, make resource assignments easier and allow more flexibility to adapt to changing project needs on the fly.

“Manual and time-intensive administrative duties consume too much of a consultant’s time, both personal and potentially billable time,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO at FinancialForce.com. “This new release not only gives them an edge in mobile and social capabilities but it gives them back time to do what they do best – delighting customers.”

FinancialForce PSA Winter ’13 is available immediately to FinancialForce PSA users as part of their subscription fee. The Mobile Expenses Application will be available in the Apple App Store and Google Play within three weeks. To learn more, visit www.financialforce.com.

About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Sandra Lo
Director of Public Relations
FinancialForce.com
Phone: 415.796.8414

FinancialForce.com Introduces trust.financialforce.com

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the availability of trust.financialforce.com, a resource for customers that describes the control processes, security, application quality and platform monitoring environment that underpin all FinancialForce.com cloud business applications. Anchored by FinancialForce.com’s recent completion of Service Organization Control One (SOC 1), Type II audit, trust.financialforce.com gives answers to the toughest questions from businesses about cloud application reliability and control.

“Customers trust us to help them manage their most sensitive financial information. They should not only know that we provide high quality and secure applications, they should know how. The SOC 1 Type II report provides an independent opinion on the controls we’ve put in place,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com. “trust.financialforce.com is a symbol of our unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction and assurance. We leave no stones unturned in our quest to build the highest quality cloud applications.”

Built on the Salesforce Platform, FinancialForce.com applications inherit all the benefits of the investments made by salesforce.com in infrastructure, data management, controls, security and certifications including SysTrust, Truste, VeriSign Secured, Safe Harbor, SAS70 and ISO 27001. Offering an even higher level of assurance as a financial applications provider for publicly traded organizations, FinancialForce.com now provides customers a SOC 1 Type II report prepared by an internationally recognized Big 4 auditing firm and in accordance with Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16, Reporting on Controls at a Service Organization. The audit indicated that FinancialForce.com’s Description of Services is fairly presented, that controls put in place by FinancialForce.com are suitably designed to meet any control objectives and that those controls were tested and operated effectively during the audit period.

“Business leaders using cloud service providers need assurances that security, availability and the control environment are being taken seriously by the service providers,” said Christine Dover, Research Director at IDC. “Completion of a SOC 1 report and the review by an independent auditing firm are not only highly recommended but an indication of vendors’ commitment to trust and security, especially for cloud based services that can impact financial reporting.”

trust.financialforce.com also details FinancialForce.com’s methodical approach to ensuring highest standards in financial application controls and quality. Useful links are also provided to help customers monitor system statistics and statuses, learn about scheduled maintenance windows and how to spot potential threats. The webpage is immediately available.

About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact

Sandra Lo
slo@financialforce.com
415.796.8414

FinancialForce.com shortlisted for British Finance awards 2013 – Software Product of the Year

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it is a finalist in the Software Product of the Year category of the British Finance awards 2013. This announcement comes just weeks after FinancialForce Accounting was named Software Product of the year in the British Accountancy Awards.

The awards, which are in their first year, have been designed to recognise excellence across the accounting and finance profession. They are judged by a panel of experts drawn from across the industry. In the Software Product of the Year category, the entries needed to demonstrate evidence of customer care, design quality, functionality and technical innovation. The judges will measure each product against these criteria looking to see how it has facilitated new ways of working that have substantially benefitted the customer organisation, while also demonstrating a high level of customer satisfaction and commercial success.

Jeremy Roche, President and CEO for FinancialForce.com, commented: “It is really fantastic to be a finalist in yet another prestigious award programme. 2012 has been a stellar year for us in terms of industry endorsement and we are heading into 2013 with significant momentum and confidence. As pioneers in cloud finance and accounting, it is particularly gratifying to see that our solutions are increasingly recognised for the quantifiable benefits they are delivering to customers around the world. We are pleased that awards like this one validate the innovation and progress we are making with FinancialForce Accounting."

The winners will be announced at a glittering awards ceremony in London, UK, on the 3rd March 2013

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

FinancialForce.com Wins Software Product of the Year

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that FinancialForce Accounting was named Software Product of the Year at this year’s British Accountancy Awards. The awards, which were presented on 21st November at a ceremony in London, recognise excellence across the accounting and finance profession and are judged by a panel of experts drawn from across the industry.

Contenders for the software award were judged on three key criteria - Innovation, Measurable Success and Customer Satisfaction. The judges stated that they were particularly impressed with FinancialForce's drive to successfully bring cloud computing to finance professionals.

Jeremy Roche, President and CEO for FinancialForce.com, commented: “FinancialForce Accounting continues to make strong progress and we are seeing real momentum in cloud adoption among a diverse range of industries and sectors. The cloud is making change happen for a growing number of customers, industries and sectors and we are thrilled to have received this kind of recognition. It is especially pleasing as we understand the judging for this year’s awards has been tougher than ever.”

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

FinancialForce.com Customer Named 2012 Ventana Research Business Leadership Award Winner

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that FinancialForce.com customer Scott Travasos, CFO at Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF), was recognized by Ventana Research with the Chief Financial Officer Leadership Award in the 2012 Ventana Research Leadership Awards. Scott received this award as a result of his innovative and unique work with FinancialForce Accounting at BSCF.

"Scott’s work with FinancialForce Accounting is helping to shape the future role of a CFO, as evidenced by his CFO Magazine cover story earlier this year,” said Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer, Ventana Research. “Scott’s adoption of the social collaboration and finance mentality represents the kind of innovative thinking that should inspire finance leaders to examine new methods to manage and operate finance.”

BSCF uses FinancialForce Accounting along with Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Chatter to improve business operations and financial reporting. BSCF used to have to wait for monthly financial reports, but now BSCF’s financial department has the ability to view financials real-time utilizing FinancialForce Accounting. Dashboards built into FinancialForce Accounting give a real-time view of financial data whenever it is needed, which has had a positive impact on both reporting and planning. The ability to share financial data easily and quickly with senior management has allowed the executives to make better decisions for the company. Additionally, the benefit of having Chatter tied to all of BSCF’s projects allows the finance department to archive and locate historical data easily because the background on a project or departmental topic is already archived via Chatter.

“Scott is breaking the mold of the traditional CFO role and doing some amazing work in his organization to improve financial operations, incorporate more social media tools into the business to increase productivity and ultimately to positively impact business operations,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “We congratulate Scott on his innovative work at Blue Shield of California Foundation with FinancialForce Accounting.”

The Leadership Awards have become an industry tradition, with leaders and innovators identified annually by the Ventana Research team. The annual leadership awards are delivered by the Ventana Research team, which through its benchmark research, on-demand advisory and education continues to pioneer new methods for organizations to become efficient and effective in their business. As part of the scoring process and methodology, Ventana Research examined the submissions to evaluate the nominated organization's use of people, processes, information and technology, the best practices it developed, the degree of team involvement and the project's business impact and value. The Leadership Awards will present participants with an award at the Ventana Research Business Technology Innovation Summit on November 8th at The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA during the Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com shortlisted for prestigious British Accountancy Awards 2012

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it is a finalist in the Software Product of the Year - Client / Business – category at this year’s British Accountancy Awards.

The annual awards, which recognise excellence across the accounting and finance profession, are judged by a panel of experts drawn from across the industry.

Jeremy Roche, President and CEO for FinancialForce.com, commented: “From what we understand the judging for this year’s awards has been tougher than ever so we are proud to be among the finalists. FinancialForce Accounting continues to make strong progress, delivering significant benefits to customers around the world. The cloud is making change happen for a growing number of customers, industries and sectors and we are pleased to receive this kind of recognition.”

The winners will be announced at a glittering awards ceremony on the 21st November in London.

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About FinancialForce.com

Media contact:
Hilary Pike
UK PR manager
hilary.pike@unit4.com
+44 (0)7810 657 778

FinancialForce.com Announces PSA Summer ’12, Extends Lead in Providing Visibility to Professional Services Managers

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the availability of FinancialForce PSA Summer ‘12, continuing the company’s mission to help professional service (PS) organizations gain visibility of their operations to increase revenue and profits. PSA Summer ’12 includes a number of utilization visibility and productivity enhancements and introduces the FinancialForce Community, a social and learning destination for FinancialForce.com’s growing user and partner community.

Advanced Utilization Variance Analysis: Providing the “Why” Behind Performance

With PSA Summer ’12, FinancialForce.com has further improved executive visibility into the factors that affect resource management and utilization performance. PSA Summer ‘12 provides the ability to compare target, scheduled and actual utilization back through time, including the ability to analyze the root causes impacting performance. Users can create variance analysis dashboards to compare a variety of scheduled vs. actual metrics, including billable hours, non-billable hours, credited hours and excluded hours for a particular resource, project, location, region, group or across an entire services organization.

“Everyone compares actual utilization to target or planned utilization, but do they have visibility into why they missed or beat the target?” said Tom Brennan, Vice President of Marketing at FinancialForce.com. “Comparing scheduled hours to actual hours can be far more enlightening. These metrics give you a better feel for how you are performing with the work you have. It helps explain operational realities and why variances have occurred. For instance, did you give away more credited hours than scheduled? Did people fail to complete scheduled commitments? Or did they simply not get assigned enough work? Were some resources over allocated? Is a particular location taking too much time to complete certain types of projects? This new variance analysis give professional services managers the visibility to make course corrections and improve profitability.”

Utilization is known as the “Master Metric” for PS organizations because it is used as a key indicator to determine billings, profitability, team goals and employee compensation. FinancialForce PSA excels at providing the deepest and most accurate insight into past, present and future utilization performance.

FinancialForce Community

FinancialForce Community is a social and online learning destination designed to serve as a central meeting place for FinancialForce.com users and partners. It is embedded in all FinancialForce applications, allowing users to log cases, find answers and offer product enhancement ideas directly from within the application. Customers and partners will also be able to easily navigate to FinancialForce Xtra to find documentation, release notes and the growing catalog of training videos.

“Our vision is to create a single destination where customers and partners not only can find what they need, but also enable them to easily interact with both our support team and other customers,” said Brennan. “This will allow everyone in the FinancialForce.com ecosystem to form more collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships.”

PSA Summer ‘12 provides additional functionality to help services teams be more productive, including:

Project Creation: enhancements to make it faster and easier to create projects and project tasks from Salesforce CRM opportunities.
Timecard Entry Improvements: speed up the time entry process, capture more data, and improve accuracy with more copy, paste, sorting and project location defaults.
Context-Sensitive Help: one-click access to relevant content without having to search through a list of help topics or indexes.
Billing Event Control: select and control billing events by region, practice or group, making it easier to manage billing by management responsibility.
Revenue Recognition Automation: improvements to more easily accommodate a combination of percentage-complete, fixed-fee and/or milestone-based contracts.

“Services businesses thrive or die based on their ability to see and manage what is happening with their people, projects and customers,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com. “When you combine the visibility enhancements from PSA Summer ’12 with the advanced utilization capabilities we announced in our PSA Spring ’12 release, professional service organizations can now gain more insights from the past, but also better predict how they will perform in the future with far greater accuracy.”

FinancialForce Accounting Summer ‘12 Bridges Salesforce Service Cloud and Accounting

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the availability of FinancialForce Accounting Summer ’12. The newest edition expands on the collaborative interaction between Salesforce CRM and FinancialForce Accounting to eliminate gaps between service and finance functions and to improve customer service center profitability. FinancialForce Accounting Summer ’12 also includes several multicurrency enhancements and FinancialForce Community, a social and online learning destination for FinancialForce.com’s growing user and partner community.

Transforming Support from Cost Center to Profit Center

Companies are placing increased emphasis on the role of customer service operations, and their mission is evolving from a customer support line to an enablement organization providing a range of remote expert services. In response, service center operators have been introducing fee-based services that better address customer needs in a 24x7, multi-channel world.

This shift has created the need to automate workflow across service and finance functions to maximize profitability. FinancialForce.com has enhanced the salesforce.com Service Cloud experience with these needs in mind, providing service operations the ability to address different scenarios in a customizable way, including:

Case-to-invoice: charge for a logged case based on a fixed fee or based on hours recorded against a case.
Case-to-credit: enables a customer service rep to initiate a credit memo directly from Service Cloud to immediately address and resolve customer complaints.
Case-to-project: allows a service rep to initiate a new consulting engagement or project in FinancialForce PSA when the scope of a case goes beyond standard support

By embedding FinancialForce Accounting into the Salesforce Service Cloud, companies can automate the billing of support and service charges, empowering customer service reps to bill and sell add-on products and services on the spot.

“Customer service and finance teams have not been on the same page,” said Tom Brennan, VP Product Marketing at FinancialForce.com. “This is caused by having separate systems on separate technology platforms. We have removed the technical barrier by putting sales, service and finance on one cloud platform. FinancialForce.com has already enabled seamless connectivity between the Salesforce Sales Cloud, the finance department and professional services organizations. We saw the same need for Service Cloud users, and in doing so, the opportunity to provide an unprecedented view into the financial aspect of the customer relationship. This will enable contact centers to deliver high levels of customer service and profitable new revenue streams.”

CRM Meets FRM

The increase in service activity is creating the need for a broader, deeper view of customers including insights on the financial relationship with the customer. Customer service reps need to understand the total relationship, including the customer’s credit and payment status before extending special support. Similarly, sales reps need to have a real time view into cases and the resulting financial transactions from service activities to help upsell more comprehensive service contracts. Both groups need to be aware of collections activities and conversations with collections personnel before selling the customer any new products or services.

With Accounting Summer ’12, companies using Salesforce Sales and Service Clouds can go beyond the traditional 360-degree “CRM view” of customers to also get a Financial Relationship Management (FRM) view. Sales and service personnel can get see the complete financial picture of the customer on Force.com, including the ability to see outstanding invoices, payments and credits on the account, regardless of where the transactions originated. When this FRM perspective is joined up with the sales, service and social capabilities of the Force.com platform, companies benefit from the most holistic perspective of their customers available on any system today.

“Achieving the 360-degree customer view has always been the gold standard objective for organizations, but until now that was primarily focused on the front office,” said Christine Dover, Research Director, Enterprise Applications and Digital Commerce at IDC. “FinancialForce.com has brought together the combination of FRM and CRM to provide the ultimate 360-degree view of every customer interaction across an organization and from the front to the back office.”

FinancialForce Community

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About FinancialForce.com

Media Contact:

Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Adds AccountAbility and Jobscience to Expanding Partner Ecosystem

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced alliances with Jobscience, a native Force.com Social Relationship Management solution for hiring, and AccountAbility Solutions, Inc., a native Force.com fixed asset and remote asset tracking application provider. Jobscience and AccountAbility both offer best-of-breed, FinancialForce.com-ready solutions that take advantage of the power and accessibility of the Cloud to offer industry-specific and specialized business applications. These alliances extend FinancialForce.com’s growing ecosystem of application and implementation partners, continuing the momentum the company has created in the first half of the calendar year.

In addition to the new partnerships, the company also announced that Eric Moreau, formerly with SAP, has joined the company in the newly created position of partner success manager. The role was created to nurture FinancialForce.com’s growing partner ecosystem, which also includes implementation partners such as Baker Tilly, Centerstance, CLD Partners and IconATG as well as a rapidly growing list of ISV partners including Docusign, Rootstock, Scribe, and Xactly.

Jobscience-FinancialForce.com Alliance to Optimize HR Processes

Staffing and professional services firms can now use the combination of FinancialForce.com and Jobscience to find the best people to staff projects, to capture time entered and to invoice customers for services delivered. Since both solutions are built on the Force.com platform, the apps are inherently integrated, sharing a common data model, security model, workflow engine and reporting tools. Jobscience’s agile Social Relationship Management solution brings a unique combination of social, mobile, and CRM processes to talent management, keeping corporations and staffing agencies connected with and attracting top talent. For the past four years, Jobscience has been voted the AppExchange Customer Choice Award in HR and Recruiting by salesforce.com customers.

“Many of our customers are staffing firms who are recruiting and placing personnel at a client’s location,” said Ted Elliott, CEO and Founder of Jobscience. “By coupling Jobscience and FinancialForce.com, they can seamlessly track hours and bill the client in an ‘order-to-invoice’ end-to-end solution that is highly flexible and scalable. Being a FinancialForce.com partner has greatly enhanced what we can offer our customers.”

AccountAbility-FinancialForce.com Alliance Enhances Asset Management, Integration of Depreciation Journals

By integrating with FinancialForce Accounting, AccountAbility’s growing customer base has an easy, Cloud-based way to manage and record the appropriate depreciation journal entries for assets. Fixed Asset Tracker from AccountAbility Solutions is a complete fixed and remote asset tracking application. It tracks assets assigned to or on loan to users, accounts, contacts or other locations. In addition to tracking assets on loan to employees, it tracks additional, business-critical information such as warranty expiration dates, warranty service organizations, insurance policy information, and more. For just a few cents a month per asset, AccountAbility allows companies to track the fixed assets they give to employees or contractors, saving thousands in missing fixed assets.
"We are excited to be a FinancialForce.com ready partner,” said Gordon Derk, President, AccountAbility Solutions Inc. “Through our association with FinancialForce.com we are able to offer completely integrated asset tracking to our joint customers with a 100% cloud based solution that is completely integrated with FinancialForce Accounting. Not only does Fixed Asset Tracker generate and post depreciation transactions, it tracks the location and supporting information for expensed or capitalized assets."

In addition to the inherent integration of a common platform, AccountAbility has been an early adopter of FinancialForce ClickLink™ to provide point-and-click configuration of posting rules used to push asset related transactions into the General Ledger. ClickLink provides a “clicks not code” approach to the definition of field mapping and document posting rules, dramatically reducing the effort required by Force.com ISVs to integrate with FinancialForce.com’s applications.

Expanded Internal Support for the Growing FinancialForce.com Ecosystem

To better serve and support this growing partner ecosystem, FinancialForce.com also added SAP veteran Eric Moreau in the new role of partner success manager, where he will help partners best take advantage of their FinancialForce.com relationship from both a technological and marketing perspective. Moreau’s appointment follows numerous new partnerships that have already been announced in the first half of calendar 2012, including partnering with Scribe, Zuora, Rootstock, and Baker Tilly. Moreau has 14 years working in the partnership space, including 9 years at SAP as a senior solution advisor.

“The rapid growth of our ecosystem is great validation for the power and potential of the Cloud,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “We have come a long way from the old ERP approach. Today, companies want to be a part of healthy, vibrant ecosystems with integrated and powerful solutions. We are pleased to welcome Jobscience and AccountAbility to the fold and to be able to offer all of our partners even better support with the addition of Eric Moreau to our team.”

To start the process of joining the FinancialForce.com partner ecosystem, please visit FinancialForce.com partner registration.

FinancialForce.com Doubles in First Half of 2012 as Demand for Cloud Accounting, PSA and Media Apps Increases

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced continued strong revenue growth in the first half of 2012. FinancialForce.com’s monthly revenue run rate in June 2012 grew more than 100% compared to June 2011. FinancialForce.com is increasing customer subscriptions strongly, and is seeing rapid growth in both the size of customers it is signing and in the average deal size, as reported by majority investor UNIT4 today.

The company has grown its headcount by more than 40% over last year and is looking to grow it by more than 50% in 2012. As demand for cloud applications continues to increase, FinancialForce.com is recruiting rapidly both in North America and Europe to expand its development, sales and marketing capacity and cope with growing demand.

Reflecting this growth, FinancialForce.com recently relocated its U.S. headquarters from San Mateo, Calif. to San Francisco, tripling its office space. It also appointed Steve Cakebread, EVP and CFO of Pandora, to the FinancialForce.com board as the first independent director.

“The shift to the Cloud is growing across departments, industries and company sizes, and FinancialForce.com has carved out an important role in the back office,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “We have aggressive goals to address the opportunities and needs of the market through the end of this year and into 2013. This is an exciting time to be part of the FinancialForce.com team.”

Within the last year, FinancialForce.com has received multiple industry awards, including being a two-time CODiE finalist, CRM Watchlist BroadBrush winner, THINK Strategies BoSS Showplace award, named a Red Herring 100 North America and Red Herring Global company, voted Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud UK awards, and shortlisted for best software package of the year in the British Accountancy awards.

To learn more about FinancialForce.com’s open positions, visit FinancialForce.com careers.

FinancialForce.com and Vital Analysis Announce Availability of PSA Evaluation Guide

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the availability of the 2012 Cloud PSA Evaluation Guide, authored by Brian Sommer, ZDNet blogger and IT research analyst from Vital Analysis. The Cloud PSA Evaluation Guide serves as a tool to help companies manage the process of selecting a cloud PSA solution.

Many professional services organizations still rely on spreadsheets, custom applications and legacy Enterprise Resources (ERP) systems to manage project-based work despite a host of shortfalls that exist. The need for robust PSA solutions has spread beyond traditional consulting firms to product oriented companies that have recently created or expanded professional service divisions as a means of increasing revenue and improving customer service. Unfortunately, these new service groups struggle with systems that were never designed for service organizations. This 2012 Cloud PSA Evaluation Guide was designed to meet the needs of this new underserved market and traditional consulting organizations alike.

Modern PSA solutions have made great advancements using cloud, social media and mobile technologies to help maximize service outcomes and profitability. This guide contains an evaluation framework designed for this next generation of systems and highlights how software evaluation processes need to change to reflect the impact of these new technologies.

The 2012 Cloud PSA Evaluation Guide provides a multi-step process to help organizations make an informed PSA system selection including tips on:

how to determine when it is time to replace your existing system
how to define and structure the PSA vendor short list
how to manage vendors and negotiate service level agreements
how new technologies such as cloud, social and mobile computing can make a significant impact on your services practices

"Service organizations may be the last groups to get automated solutions, but they're getting some of the newest and most innovative solutions in the software industry," said Brian Sommer, founder, Vital Analysis. “Most PSA products were designed to run on the Internet with cloud technology. Some of the newest are utilizing powerful platforms that have a rich ecosystem of complementary products that directly integrate with the PSA. The newest solutions support cloud-based collaboration, mobile technology and social media. Buying PSA software today is very different compared to the older on-premise or patchwork solutions people previously bought. It is because of these significant changes in the software industry and the way new PSA software should be bought that this guide was created."

“The professional services space is changing at a rapid pace and companies need to stay current with the latest technology to stay competitive,” said Tom Brennan, Vice President of Product Marketing at FinancialForce.com “Brian’s insights and advice as to how to navigate the PSA market are insightful and straightforward – the guide is a must read for companies considering a PSA solution.”

The eval guide is available for download here.

FSN whitepaper uncovers risks of aging accounting systems

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the availability of a whitepaper by financial systems ‘thought leader’, FSN Publishing Limited, “Is it time to replace your old accounting system?”, which argues that companies still using legacy systems in lieu of the cloud are being left behind.

“Businesses are littered with legacy financial management and ERP systems that were designed for a different era. Their design is inflexible to change and does not suit the way in which businesses work in practice,” said Gary Simon, Group Publisher of FSN Publishing Limited. “Their continued operation poses a risk and does not allow businesses to respond to today’s more volatile economy. They are largely incapable of being upgraded to take advantage of the strides that have been made in the Cloud.”

The whitepaper provides eight important reasons for moving to the Cloud and a step by step guide on migrating to a cloud accounting solution. The legacy accounting systems whitepaper can be downloaded free from FinancialForce.com.

“The FSN whitepaper addresses what we’ve been hearing from accounting and finance leaders – that moving to the cloud is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’,” said Tom Brennan, VP, Product Marketing, FinancialForce.com. “The cloud represents unchartered waters for many. This whitepaper clearly lays out how it offers enormous potential for improving productivity and organizational effectiveness in the accounting and finance departments. It’s a must read for companies considering making the switch.”

Gary Simon presents findings live at The Churchill War Rooms Tuesday 24th July.

Gary will present his findings during a half day briefing hosted by FinancialForce.com. Additional speakers include organizations that have already moved their back office systems to the cloud and salesforce.com, the undisputed leader in cloud platform technology. This event will give companies all the tools they need to navigate choosing a new accounting solution. Register for this free seminar.

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FinancialForce.com to Host Professional Services Executive Webinar Series with Featured Speakers from Top Research Firms IDC and Vital Analysis

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:30:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it will host two live, interactive events for professional services organizations with leading analysts this month. Both webinars aim to educate the market on emerging trends and how to effectively and practically apply them to their businesses.

On July 11, FinancialForce.com will host Top Six Professional Services Trends & How to Leverage Them for Success with featured speaker Mike Fauscette from IDC.
On July 18, Vital Analysis’s Brian Sommer and FinancialForce.com will host Choosing the Right Tools for Success in Professional Services.

In the July 11 webinar, FinancialForce.com will discuss how a new generation of professional services organizations has evolved using cloud based technology, social project execution and mobile enabled workforces to succeed. Featured speaker Mike Fauscette from IDC will review the top six trends that are helping professional services organizations maintain a strong competitive advantage and thrive.

In the July 18 webinar, Brian Sommer, ZDNet blogger and IT research analyst from Vital Analysis, will draw upon his experience as a former leadership partner with one of the world’s largest consulting partnerships to discuss how service firms can move from “functioning” to “excelling”. Participants in this webinar will learn how to become global market players; develop deep vertical solution orientation and global staffing pools; deliver consistent global service metrics; and receive best in class client satisfaction scores. All attendees of this webinar will receive a complimentary copy of the 2012 PSA Software Evaluation Guide.

“The rapid growth of the professional services sector, combined with changes in technology have brought both opportunities and challenges to professional services managers,” said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. “This event series is specifically designed to engage the professional services community on how to not only manage, but benefit from these changes.”

About FinancialForce.com

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

UNIT4 wins Financial Software Provider of the year 2012 Financial Director's Excellence Award

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:30:00 +0100

UNIT4, the global business software group and majority investor in FinancialForce.com, has been awarded Financial Software Provider of the Year for Large Firms in the 2012 UK FDs’ Excellence Awards. The award was presented for FinancialForce Accounting as well as UNIT4’s other finance apps, Agresso and Coda Financials. The awards were announced at a glittering ceremony in London on 24th May.

The awards recognise the UK's best Finance Directors and their service providers. UNIT4 (Agresso, Coda and FinancialForce.com) faced stiff competition from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Infor and Sage to secure the award for the best software provider category for large firms (£50 million+ turnover) as voted for by its clients. These awards are determined by votes cast by Financial Directors in an annual FDs' Satisfaction Survey, which was completed by 1,100 finance directors and finance decision-makers in 2011.

UNIT4, FinancialForce.com’s parent, is the world’s leading provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC)™. 6000 medium and large client organisations and more than two million users around the world benefit from the flexibility that its flagship ERP software, Agresso Business World, and best-of-class financial management software, Coda Financials, deliver to them. Its software is designed to help clients embrace business change independently, while minimising the cost and maximising the speed and efficiency of the change process. FinancialForce.com, a joint venture with salesforce.com, was launched in 2009 and delivers cloud-based financial management and professional services solutions to clients in 23 countries.

Anwen Robinson, UK Managing Director for UNIT4, commented: “These awards have great significance to us as they represent the opinions of real finance professionals who are using and benefiting from our solutions. Our objective as a business is to deliver quantifiable business benefits through the provision of first class financial and business management systems supported by excellent customer service. To be awarded Financial Services Provider of the Year to large firms demonstrates that we are meeting these objectives and we intend to build on this success and retain our position as solution provider of choice to an ever expanding customer base across the UK and Ireland.”

To read more about the awards from Real Business please click here.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit out Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FinancialForce or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

Zuora Partners with FinancialForce.com, Intacct and Sage to Bring Finance into the Subscription Economy

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:00 +0100

Enabling a Best of Breed Approach for the Subscription Economy

Zuora, the subscription billing and commerce leader for the Subscription Economy, today announced a new set of alliances with industry leading financial management and accounting applications to address the unique finance and accounting needs of subscription businesses. FinancialForce.com, Intacct and Sage have all joined with Zuora to standardize how subscription revenue is treated and shared with existing financial management and accounting applications.

Over the last four years, Zuora has built the de-facto billing and commerce backbone for the Subscription Economy with customers ranging from high-growth startups like Box, Branchout, Docusign, Marketo, Splunk, and Zendesk to global enterprises like AAA, Dell, News International, Pearson, Tata Communications, Reed Business, and Qualcomm.

These new alliances will further provide Zuora’s customers with the ability to extend the value of their existing systems – no matter which financial management and accounting applications they use -- and to seamlessly connect Zuora’s subscription billing and commerce solutions

The Subscription Economy is Changing the Way Companies Operate

Subscription business models are expanding rapidly beyond the realm of software-as-a-service or publishing to communications, automotive, media in both new and traditional companies. Today, subscriptions are everywhere as cloud, social and mobile technologies are creating entirely new ways for businesses to connect and serve their customers with “subscribe” to recurring services rather than “buy” products, giving rise to the Subscription Economy.

This shift to the Subscription Economy is rapidly forcing a fundamental change in the way companies run their businesses, as the subscription business model is fundamentally different than traditional product-centric businesses. For example:

Pricing is different (e.g. multiple price plans, bundles, tiers, pay-as-you-go, vs. one-time pricing);
Billing is different (e.g. monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual and even custom billing periods vs. one-time billing); and
Commerce is different (e.g. ongoing relationship with add-ons, upgrades and renewals vs. one-time purchase).

But more than that, finance is different, and today’s CFOs are struggling with how to manage the unique differences that the subscription business model brings to their business, specifically forecasting future revenues, separating one-time from recurring revenue, and calculating metrics like ARR, churn, and renewals rate.

As a result, finance departments and CFOs have discovered that they need a new subscription billing and commerce platform that handles finance in the Subscription Economy, and importantly, one that seamlessly integrates with their existing financial management and accounting applications.

Finance Leaders Team with Zuora to Bring Finance into the Subscription Economy

Intacct: “As one of the original SaaS financial applications companies, we understand the importance and complexity of managing a subscription business,” said Robert Reid, CEO, Intacct. “Our alliance and this new framework enable joint customers to realize the true value of Zuora and Intacct together. This is a perfect example of how cloud computing makes it easier for companies to select integrated best-of-breed systems like Intacct and Zuora, instead of being forced into a suite of average products from one vendor.”

Sage: “Sage serves millions of customers worldwide and in recent months we have seen a growing interest among these small and midsized businesses to offer their own products through subscription,” said Himanshu Palsule, EVP Strategy, Sage North America. “Partnering with Zuora will enable us to help our customers gain the benefit of offering subscription services to their own customers with integration to Sage accounting or ERP systems in the back office.”

FinancialForce.com: “Zuora’s cloud applications are ideal for companies with sophisticated subscription processing needs and are perfect complements to FinancialForce’s accounting, billing and media solutions,” said Tom Brennan, vice president of product marketing at FinancialForce.com. Our combined solution is ideal for subscription centric businesses, especially those using Salesforce CRM. As always, we are delighted to offer our customers multiple applications to choose from as opposed to the vendor lock-in approaches practiced by traditional ERP suppliers.”

Commentary on the News

Beagle Research: "With this announcement, Zuora is paving the way to define a common standard for industry leading financial applications to integrate with a world class subscription billing and commerce platform,” Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. “This ensures that any company can realize it's full potential in the Subscription Economy through a set of common standards, regardless of what financial application they use."

Zuora: "Zuora is working closely with some of the most innovative CFOs who recognize that the Subscription Economy represents a major shift in their business and how they measure success,” said Shawn Price, President at Zuora. “By partnering with leaders in finance and accounting, we are building a bridge between the 20th and 21st century business models that finance leaders need to succeed in this new reality.”

About Zuora, Inc.
Zuora is the global leader in subscription commerce and billing, helping companies in every industry transition to the Subscription Economy. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies alike use Zuora's multi-tenant cloud platform to launch, scale, and monetize their subscription services. Built from the ground up by SaaS industry veterans from salesforce.com, PayPal, and Webex, Zuora services innovative customers like Informatica, Tata Communications, Box.net, Ning, GigaOm, Xplornet, Ustream and Reed Business Information. To learn more about Zuora, please visit www.zuora.com.

Media Contact:
Eileen Conway
Reidy Communications for Zuora
eileen@reidycommunications.com
(650) 245-9015

Vital Analysis and FinancialForce.com Publish 2012 Cloud Accounting Evaluation Guide

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the availability of the “2012 Cloud Accounting Evaluation Guide” written by research firm Vital Analysis. The free guide helps companies become more aware of the new cloud accounting software marketplace, outlining the unique selection process and purchase criteria that should be used when buying an accounting solution today. FinancialForce.com is also making available an on-demand webinar titled “The Top 6 Things You Don’t Know About Cloud Accounting (but should)” featuring Brian Sommer, founder of Vital Analysis and Tom Brennan, VP of Product Marketing at FinancialForce.com.

“Every 10 to 15 years or so, the accounting software space undergoes a fairly radical change. These changes are often triggered by the introduction of all new technologies that enable accounting software to look, act and empower users differently,” said Brian Sommer, founder, Vital Analysis. “Today’s new solutions were built with mobile, social, platform and cloud capabilities in mind from the very beginning. The leader board is changing and so have the methods needed to choose a new accounting solution. This guide will give companies all the tools they need to navigate this new marketplace, where even ROI calculations require a completely fresh approach.”

Intended for companies of all sizes, the comprehensive guide:

collapses many of the best ideas in accounting software selection into one, easy-to-read, structured publication;
accelerates the selection team’s learning curve;
defines and structures the cloud accounting vendor selection process;
preemptively addresses many of the issues the selection team will encounter in choosing a cloud accounting solution; and
provides practical advice on how to choose the right system for your organization.

“As a leader in cloud accounting, we recognize just how much the market has changed in a few quick years,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “Our customers often need help determining how to choose the right system for them, especially with all the additional choices and power the cloud has brought. Brian Sommer has the right insight and experience to give the wider accounting community all the resources they have been looking for in one easy-to-read guide.”

The Evaluation Guide, the webinar recording and a Evaluating Cloud Accounting Software infographic can all be found on FinancialForce.com.

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About Vital Analysis
Vital Analysis is a very different kind of technology research organization. It is at the intersection set where exceptional technology market knowledge meets the executive suite. Where other ‘analysts’ replay vendor press releases, Vital Analysis gives you the:
• impact new technologies will or won’t have on your business
• reasons why you should or shouldn’t care about specific emerging solutions
• business justifications why you may or may not want specific solutions

Our reach is truly global. We’ve consulted with top technology executives in most global markets including North America, South America, Australia, Asia and Europe. We’ve served clients in these same markets, too.

For more information, see: www.vitalanalysis.com or email us at contact@vitalanalysis.com

Media Contact:
Eileen Conway
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: eileen@reidycommunications.com
(650) 245-9015

FinancialForce.com and Scribe Bridge Legacy ERP and Cloud Billing Systems

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, and Scribe, the leader in CRM data integration solutions, today announced a pre-configured solution for connecting FinancialForce.com’s Billing application with legacy, on-premises based ERP systems. The connector allows companies to transition applications such as billing into the cloud, while coexisting with a legacy ERP system. The first integration focuses on Microsoft Dynamics, with integrations to SAP, Oracle and other systems to follow.

Using Scribe’s Force.com connector, companies can pass accounting data from FinancialForce Billing in the form of invoices to Microsoft Dynamics. The integration generates transactions for posting to Dynamics A/R and General Ledger. In return, the connector passes back outstanding balances and the account’s payment status. This gives Salesforce CRM users a 360° view of opportunities, invoices and outstanding balances on the Force.com platform. The integration also synchronizes Force.com customer account objects with Dynamics customer account records ensuring that CRM, billing and accounts receivable are coordinated.

“There are a large number of organizations using legacy ERP systems that want to generate invoices directly from Salesforce CRM and post them back to their on-premises ERP packages,” said Tom Brennan, vice president of product marketing at FinancialForce.com. “Scribe’s Force.com connector is a strong solution for integrating on-premise based ERP systems with the world’s most popular cloud platform. When you combine FinancialForce Billing with Scribe’s connector, companies can streamline their billing processes, improve cash flow and greatly simplify the integration.”

Scribe’s pre-configured connector for Force.com (the backbone of FinancialForce Accounting, Billing and Professional Services Automation) will benefit a diverse range of businesses, ensuring their business processes are accurate, controlled and properly accounted for.

“FinancialForce.com delivers the most advanced accounting and billing applications built on the Force.com platform. As such, we see huge potential for our Force.com connector to help solve real-world problems,” said Roger Hodskins, vice president of strategic alliances at Scribe Software. “Our platform allows a growing number of Force.com ISVs to offer integration as a product capability – a capability that is key to them entering new markets.”

Scribe’s Force.com connector first launched in April 2011, while the on-premises version (Scribe Insight) has been available for use with Salesforce CRM since 2006.

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About Scribe
Scribe Software is the leader in CRM data integration solutions, helping businesses maximize their investments in CRM, ERP, industry applications, and other data assets. With over 12,000 customers and 1,000 partners worldwide, Scribe is a proven provider of cost-effective, reliable data solutions that give a competitive advantage to businesses large and small. With a range of offerings covering cloud, hybrid, and premise integration needs, Scribe has solutions that span a wide array of industries including Financial Services, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, and Media & Entertainment. For more information, please visit www.scribesoft.com, follow Scribe on Twitter, or subscribe to the Scribe Blog.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

Andrea Nieto
B3 Communications for Scribe
Email: anieto@b3communications.com
415-378-9562

Steve Cakebread Joins FinancialForce.com Board of Directors

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:31:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that Steve Cakebread has been elected to FinancialForce.com's Board of Directors.

Mr. Cakebread joins the current Board of Directors, including Chris Ouwinga, Chairman and CEO of UNIT4 NV, Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com, George Hu, COO of Salesforce.com and Edwin van Leeuwen, CFO of UNIT4 NV.

Mr. Cakebread currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer of Pandora, the leader in internet radio. Before Pandora, Mr. Cakebread served as the President, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Financial Officer of salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company and has served in executive roles at Xactly and Autodesk. He also serves on the Board of Directors of ServiceSource and SolarWinds.

“We are honored that Steve, in addition to being a FinancialForce.com customer, is the first independent member of the FinancialForce.com board of directors,” said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. “This is further validation of the company’s maturity and growth. With Pandora, Steve was one of the first CFOs to take a company public on an all-cloud-based infrastructure, and he has helped build some of the biggest B2B and B2C cloud companies. We are looking forward to adding Steve’s broad experience and his unique perspective as our customer to help guide FinancialForce.com’s growth as a cloud applications company.”

“I’ve been following FinancialForce.com since the very beginning and I’m thrilled to now join the board of directors,” said Steve Cakebread. “In a short period of time, FinancialForce.com has assembled a great team, robust solutions and a strong go-to-market position to address the massive shift from on-premise to cloud computing. I look forward to working closely with the FinancialForce.com team as they expand their footprint as a leading cloud applications company.”

This announcement coincides with today’s news that FinancialForce.com has relocated its US headquarters from San Mateo to San Francisco, tripling the space of its former headquarters.

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit out Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FinancialForce or visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Opens New San Francisco Headquarters, Capitalizing on Tremendous Growth

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:30:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that the company has relocated its U.S. headquarters from San Mateo, Calif. to 595 Market Street, San Francisco, tripling the space of its former headquarters. The new office is required to accommodate FinancialForce.com’s rapid growth. The company grew headcount by over 40% last year and is looking to grow it by more than 50% in 2012 with new positions open in product development, consulting, support, marketing and sales.

The last 12 months have been a breakout period for FinancialForce.com with the company being recognized for several industry awards, including:

CODiE finalist for the FinancialForce Professional Services Automation product
CODiE finalist for the FinancialForce Accounting product
CRM Watchlist BroadBrush winner
THINKstrategies Best of Software as a Service (BoSS) Showplace award
Red Herring 100 North America and Red Herring Global company
Voted Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud UK awards
Shortlisted for the best software package of the year from British Accountancy awards

“We are committed to our rapid growth and ability to deliver the highest quality solutions and service to our customers,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “In the face of this tremendous growth we continue to innovate across our product line. Recent examples include the announcement of FinancialForce Accounting Spring ‘12 and FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) Spring ‘12, which both harness the power of social media, mobile applications and the Force.com platform.”

To learn more about FinancialForce.com’s open positions, visit FinancialForce.com careers.

FinancialForce.com was founded in 2009 with investment from UNIT4, one of the world’s largest business software companies, and salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company. FinancialForce.com has customers in more than 23 countries and users in more than 45 countries.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building online business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading enterprise cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com, follow us on twitter @FinancialForce or visit our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FinancialForce

Media Contacts:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

Rootstock Software and FinancialForce.com Announce Partnership to Deliver Comprehensive Manufacturing and Accounting Solution on Force.com

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:00:00 +0100

Rootstock Software®, the leader in cloud manufacturing and supply chain applications, and FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced an agreement to deliver a native end-to end-supply chain and accounting solution for salesforce.com customers including Astrum Solar, a full-service residential solar provider headquartered in Annapolis Junction, Maryland.

Manufacturers need to be responsive in real time to changes in supply and demand, while maintaining operational efficiencies to remain competitive. This requires them to evolve their manufacturing planning and control solutions. The combined Rootstock/FinancialForce Accounting solution provides manufacturers with the ability to streamline their global supply chain operations using applications that work together seamlessly. This real-time visibility across systems can deliver significantly better management insights and operational efficiencies.

“Astrum Solar’s rapid expansion facilitated our requirement for a solution that could interweave the ever-changing environment of the solar industry with the rapid development in our company,” said Vadim Polikov, President and Chief Executive Officer of Astrum Solar. “We chose this team because together they had the tightest integration in the marketplace with our own proprietary Force.com enterprise platform and that will enable our organization to sustain our flexibility and commitment to the customer, as we continue to grow our business and spread solar power to roofs across the country.”

By uniting Rootstock manufacturing and supply chain applications with FinancialForce Accounting, Salesforce CRM customers like Astrum Solar can gain deeper operational insights and control while minimizing painful and costly IT infrastructure modifications. The power of a shared platform enabled Rootstock and FinancialForce.com to quickly build a seamless integration between the applications that couldn’t be achieved if they didn’t share the same data model.

“In today’s fast-paced economy, the ability to track and adapt to any number of variables in real time is not just advantageous – it’s critical,” said Patrick Garrehy, CEO and founder of Rootstock Software. “Manufacturers working to secure a competitive edge are now looking to their planning and control solutions to deliver this increased agility. When this planning evolution is paired with a complete accounting solution, the result is an unparalleled and holistic systems overview.”

“Manufacturers need trusted applications to manage their global operations and financial transactions,” said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. “By combining Rootstock with FinancialForce Accounting, customers can leverage the power of the Force.com platform for not only greater operational efficiencies but for significant competitive advantage.“

Rootstock and FinancialForce.com are sponsors of the salesforce.com Cloudforce Social Enterprise Tour in Chicago on May 3 and Toronto on June 6 where the joint solution will be demonstrated at the Cloudforce expo.

About Rootstock Software
Rootstock Software® is a proven provider of powerful manufacturing and supply chain solutions built on the Force.com cloud computing platform. The Rootstock solution enables real-time management of manufacturing and supply chain operations from front to back, anytime and anywhere. The company’s manufacturing and supply chain apps integrate “out of the box” with native sales and accounting apps by salesforce.com and FinancialForce.com. With unparalleled executive experience in manufacturing software and an established base of installed and implemented cloud customers, Rootstock offers a better and reliable way to plan and execute required activities, deliver essential information to all parts of the organization, and improve timely and informed business decision-making. The organization also provides the control and visibility to elevate the total performance of manufacturing and supply chain operations. Rootstock is now available on the AppExchange by salesforce.com, the world’s most popular marketplace for business apps. For more information, please visit www.rootstock.com

Media Contact
Christian Barbato
Garfield Group Public Relations for Rootstock Software
Email: cbarbato@garfieldgroup.com
(215) 867-8600 x227
Laura Horvath
Rootstock Software
Email: lhorvath@rootstocksoftware.com
(925) 785-2696

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world's leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit out Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/FinancialForce or visit www.FinancialForce.com

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

UNIT4 shortlisted for best software provider in prestigious UK FD Excellence Awards

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:15:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, and its parent company, UNIT4, have been shortlisted in the 2012 FDs Excellence Awards in association with the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales (ICAEW), and supported by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). (See full UNIT4 announcement).

The awards recognise the UK's best Finance Directors and their service providers. UNIT4 (Agresso, Coda and FinancialForce.com) is shortlisted in the best software provider categories for both large firms (£50 million+ turnover) and SMEs, as voted for by its clients. These awards are determined by votes cast by FDs in the annual FDs' Satisfaction Survey, which was completed by 1,100 finance directors and finance decision-makers in 2011.

Shortlisted candidates will be evaluated by a panel of judges on April 19, 2012, and winners will be announced at the FDs' Excellence Awards ceremony on May 24, 2012 at the London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square.

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Baker Tilly and FinancialForce.com announce partnering agreement

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0100

Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP (Baker Tilly), a full service accounting and advisory firm, and FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced an agreement to deliver FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) implementation best practices to Professional Services Organizations (PSOs) looking to improve service execution and resource effectiveness.

The partnership will initially focus on PSOs using Salesforce CRM (around 50 percent of the market) in North America. FinancialForce PSA systems experts will work alongside Baker Tilly’s management consultants to help services organizations maximize profitability and deliver larger projects with exceptional business results. Built on a leading cloud platform, FinancialForce PSA offers unrivalled connectivity to Salesforce CRM, the market leading CRM system among services firms. As such, the partnership will deliver a unique and focused offering for services organizations in the Force.com ecosystem.

A PS Maturity Benchmark Report published this month by SPI Research benchmarked more than 200 services firms and found that the top 10 percent performers all utilize a dedicated PSA application and report greater levels of integration between CRM and PSA. As a result they report 230 additional billable hours per employee per year, which can amount to over $50,000 annually of additional revenue per consultant. They also report overall profitability levels 84 per cent higher than firms without integrated CRM and PSA.

By working with FinancialForce.com, Baker Tilly gains access to an enterprise-strength PSA application on Force.com, and can leverage their proven knowledge and expertise through their partnership with salesforce.com. Baker Tilly plans to utilize experience gained in the salesforce.com ecosystem to help services organizations close the loop between their sales, customer services and project teams to improve profitability and service delivery.

“Our economy has a disproportionate number of service organizations, and for them a single cloud approach to sales and operations offers the speed, seamless integration and flexibility they need to scale their operations,” said Vinnie Mirchandani, CEO of Deal Architect and innovation author of the recently released The New Technology Elite. “The alliance between FinancialForce.com and Baker Tilly helps PSOs focus on their number one priority, making the best use of their teams to deliver outstanding customer results.”

"Baker Tilly is quickly building out one of the best cloud computing practices of the leading accounting and advisory firms and brings significant expertise to the market," said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. “There are strategic and immediately tangible benefits to utilizing a single cloud for both sales and professional services management. Baker Tilly will help service organizations leverage this single environment and the full capabilities of the Force.com platform to improve processes and maximize effectiveness.”

“We understand the power of bringing multiple solutions together within the salesforce.com ecosystem and have a shared vision with FinancialForce.com that we can improve services company operations demonstrably,” said Ethan Bach, Principal, Baker Tilly. “We help firms rethink the way they work and leverage new technologies, like FinancialForce.com, to improve their internal processes, communication and collaboration to drive a competitive advantage. We believe that FinancialForce PSA is one of the best solutions on the Force.com platform that complements the services industry CRM system of choice, Salesforce.”

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Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

About Baker Tilly
With staff totaling more than 1,400, Baker Tilly provides a wide range of accounting and consulting services. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and is an independent member of Baker Tilly International, a worldwide network of 150 high quality, independent accounting and business advisory firms in 120 countries, with more than 25,000 professionals. The combined worldwide revenue of independent member firms exceeds $3 billion. Baker Tilly is ranked as one of the top 20 largest accounting and advisory firms in the United States*. With 11 offices throughout the US, Baker Tilly has received numerous national and regional awards for its strong growth, solid financial position, and industry leadership.
For more information about Baker Tilly, please visit www.bakertilly.com.

*According to Accounting Today’s 2012 list of "Top 100 Firms."

SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR ALL MINNESOTA MEDIA OUTLETS ONLY:
All company references to Baker Tilly in this press release must be listed as Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP. No shortened version of the company name is permitted. All references to Baker Tilly International do not require modification.

Media Contact:
James Ang
Marketing Manager, Baker Tilly
Email: james.ang@bakertilly.com
(414) 777-5374

FinancialForce.com Professional Services Customers Rated Best-of-the-Best in SPI Research Report

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) customers Perceptive Software, Centerstance and Architech, have been rated in the top five percent best-of-the-best Professional Services organizations (PSOs) benchmarked against more than 200 leading firms in the 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark.

According to the Benchmark Report, most leading firms utilize a dedicated PSA application and report greater levels of integration between their core Customer Relationship Management (CRM), PSA and Accounting systems. As a result, they deliver more billable hours, and double the net profit and year over year revenue growth.

"We have a single cloud environment with Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA and Accounting all integrated which has helped us to sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively while leveraging the scalability, flexibility, and total cost of ownership advantages of the world's leading cloud platform," said Greg Lueck, managing partner, Centerstance. "Resources are managed more effectively across customer projects and access to past, current and future project information in one system allows us to make better short term and long term decisions. The addition of Chatter across all our business applications has improved collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization still further."

Service Performance Insight (SPI Research) is a research and consulting organization dedicated to helping PS organizations make quantum improvements in operational efficiency and effectiveness. Based on analysis of the 216 participating organizations, SPI Research found 10 firms (5%), including Perceptive Software (#6), Architech (#7) and Centerstance (#10), significantly outperformed the benchmark average. Established FinancialForce.com customers Centerstance and Perceptive Software scored highly in large part due to the process efficiencies and improved service they deliver as a result of tight integration between their Force.com developed FinancialForce applications and Salesforce CRM. FinancialForce users also reported high levels of user satisfaction in both standalone PSA and ERP solutions.

Best-of-the-Best PSO Comparison

Measurement	Top 10 Firms	All Others Average	Advantage
EBITDA	25.6%	12.7%	102%
Annual Revenue Growth	22.3%	13.3%	67%
Annual Revenue per consultant	$278K	$193K	44%
On-time project delivery	90%	75%	20%
Reference clients	83%	70%	19%

"Having one system for both sales and service is vital for our services teams to be successful," said Patrick Kearney, Vice President, Professional Services, Perceptive Software. "We can better assess our performance and tailor our services accordingly. By basing decisions on accurate data, in real time, we are managing resources more efficiently and effectively across customer projects. It has improved our effectiveness substantially as indicated by our advancement in the SPI benchmark."

"Architech is thrilled to be migrating to FinancialForce.com," said David Suydam, President, Architech. "We've recognized the benefits of a PSA solution and now look forward to using FinancialForce PSA and Accounting with our Salesforce CRM environment to further streamline and consistently manage the core activities of our services business. Since the entire solution is built on the Force.com platform, we will control our data, processes and user experience to drive higher efficiencies and improved decision making."

"FinancialForce.com customers rely on Salesforce CRM integrated with FinancialForce PSA to deliver competitive advantage," said Todd Bursey, General Manager, PSA at FinancialForce.com. "All leading firms show substantially higher levels of cloud application utilization in the areas of PSA and Accounting and report significant benefits, including more projects delivered on time, fewer projects cancelled, better referenceability, double the net profit and larger, more profitable projects. Despite this evidence, less than 15 percent of PSOs integrate their CRM and PSA directly. The advancement of cloud technology has significantly simplified this process, particularly where applications run on the same cloud platform as ours do. It's a no-brainer for ambitious firms that want to be the best-of-the-best."

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About Service Performance Insight

SPIresearch is a global research, consulting and training organization dedicated to helping professional service organizations (PSOs) make quantum improvements in productivity and profit. In 2007, SPI developed the PS Maturity Model™ as a strategic planning and management framework. It is now the industry-leading performance improvement tool used by over 5,000 service and project-oriented organizations to chart their course to service excellence.
To learn more please visit http://www.spiresearch.com

About Perceptive Software

Perceptive Software, a stand-alone business unit within Lexmark International, builds enterprise content management software to help organizations effortlessly manage the entire lifecycle of their documents and information, fueling greater operational efficiency. Organizations in more than 30 countries rely on Perceptive Software and its flagship product ImageNow® to simplify their business processes through cost-effective content management solutions that create immediate and lasting impact. To learn more please visit http://www.perceptivesoftware.com

About Centerstance

Centerstance is a consulting company specializing in business transformation through process improvement and application of cloud technologies. Unlike traditional system integrators or classic management consultants, our experts are firmly rooted in both worlds, enabling us to deliver optimal business solutions for our clients. Centerstance holds the unique designation of being one of only 11 U.S. Salesforce.com Cloud Alliance Platinum Partners and was named in Inc.'s Fastest Growing Private Companies three years running. For more information, please visit our website at www.centerstance.com.

About Architech

Architech is a custom software design and engineering company based in Toronto. We create great-looking web, mobile and business applications integrated with backend systems that drive organizations forward. We offer our clients the end-to-end services required to make applications successful including strategy, interface design, prototyping, systems integration, software engineering, product rollout and coaching. Since inception in 2004, our 100+ projects have been successful through small team deployments that follow an Agile process emphasizing collaboration, software engineering best practices, and incremental software delivery.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world's leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please follow us on Twitter @FinancialForce, visit out Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/FinancialForce or visit www.FinancialForce.com

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Selected as SIIA CODiE Awards Finalist for Second Consecutive Year

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has achieved finalist status for the second year running in the Software and Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) annual CODiE™ Awards.

The SIIA CODiE Awards recognize excellence in business software. FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) is among five finalists selected in the Best Project Management Solution category. This award recognizes the best business application that automates the management of project-based business activities. FinancialForce PSA underwent a thorough review by seasoned industry experts via live demonstration, trial product access, and analysis of product documentation.

Finalists will be reviewed further by SIIA members, who will vote on the winners for each category. The business software category winners will be announced on Thursday, May 10th at the SIIA All About the Cloud conference, where Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com, will participate in a session titled “The Power of the Customer.”

“This is the 27th annual CODiE awards and they continue to be highly regarded in the industry so we’re pleased to be recognized for a second year,” said Jeremy Roche. “FinancialForce PSA leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com so services companies can manage their people, customers, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. PSA, particularly when integrated with CRM is proven to offer services firms distinct advantages over competitors.”

The selection coincides with new research on the professional services industry that highlights the financial benefits of PSA. A PS Maturity Benchmark Report published this month by SPI Research benchmarked more than 200 services firms and found that the top 10 percent performers all utilize a dedicated PSA application and report greater levels of integration between CRM and PSA. As a result they report 230 additional billable hours per employee per year, which can amount to over $50,000 annually of additional revenue per consultant. They also report overall profitability levels 84 per cent higher. Salesforce CRM is the most used CRM system among services organizations (used by 50 percent of firms benchmarked).

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About the CODiE Awards
The CODiE Awards, originally called the Excellence in Software Awards, were established in 1986 by the Software Publishers Association (SPA), now SIIA, so that pioneers of the then-nascent software industry could evaluate and honor each other’s work. Since then, the CODiE Awards program has carried out the same purpose- to showcase the software and information industry’s finest products and services and to honor excellence in corporate achievement.

About SIIA
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to more than 500 leading software and information companies. For more information, visit www.siia.net

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com

# # #

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Delivers Professional Services Automation (PSA) Spring ’12 to Power Project Communities and Collaboration on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:25:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the Spring ’12 release of FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA), a cloud-based solution for services organizations that leverages Force.com and native integration with Salesforce CRM. FinancialForce PSA Spring ’12 extends FinancialForce.com’s lead in using social and mobile technologies to improve collaboration among distributed professional services (PS) teams and reduces the virtual distance between services teams and their customers. FinancialForce PSA now provides new methods for budgeting and calculating utilization metrics, providing multiple ways to gauge PS team performance using this master metric.

“FinancialForce.com is headed in the right direction with their Professional Services Automation Product. Project management is an excellent example of a business process that is inherently social and derives direct value when project communities collaborate,” said Michael Fauscette, IDC Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions Group. “FinancialForce.com is making it easy for virtual teams to collaborate from multiple locations.”

Social Project Management
PS teams are social by nature, relying on teamwork and engagement across departments and geographies to execute on successful projects as efficiently as possible. But most project management applications are anti-social – designed for internal consumption, holding subcontractors at arm’s length, and worse, leaving customers outside the confines of the project management system. FinancialForce.com is committed to breaking down this barrier and enabling virtual teams and their customers to collaborate on projects as a community by leveraging the cloud and social technologies.

FinancialForce PSA Spring ’12 combined with the power of the Force.com platform make social project management possible. FinancialForce PSA delivers an innovative and intuitive task management system that enables PS firms to securely extend project and task management capabilities to virtual teams and customers. With its simple user interface, FinancialForce.com has made project and task management easy to adopt and access for occasional users, such as customers and subcontractors. The project community can access and update task information from anywhere at any time via a community portal.

“This new capability blurs the line between service teams, subcontractors and customers working on a project,” said Todd Bursey, General Manager of Professional Service Automation at FinancialForce.com. “Our goal was to make task management simple, transparent and available online to engage customers more closely in the project management process.”

Advanced Utilization Metrics
Utilization is known as the “Master Metric” for PS organizations because it is used as a key indicator to determine billings, profitability, team goals and employee compensation. Despite its importance, most PSA applications provide backward looking and fixed utilization calculations, failing to provide managers the flexibility they need to plan, budget and make forward looking predictions of this important business driver. In PSA Spring ’12, FinancialForce.com has added new utilization methods and the ability for managers to tailor utilization calculations and budgets to better predict future utilization attainment. Multiple utilization methods can be stored simultaneously, to provide multidimensional insight into services operations beyond “canned” utilization metrics. Managers are able to create different utilization calculations to measure specific management criteria for various purposes such as compensation, resource management, productivity and financial forecasting.

Timecard App for Android
FinancialForce Spring ’12 includes a new mobile app, FinancialForce Timecards for Android. FinancialForce PSA leverages the form factor of Android based mobile devices to allow consultants to quickly enter their time cards and view assignments. Salesforce Chatter is embedded into the application, making it easy for project teams to post to a centralized project wall while on the road or on a client’s premises. Chatters replace emails, voicemails and conference calls, becoming part of a project’s audit trail. FinancialForce Timecards for Android will be available for download later this month on the Android Market and the Salesforce AppExchange Mobile.

In addition, FinancialForce PSA Spring ’12 delivers significant new capabilities including FinancialForce Reporting, which is designed to simplify financial reporting and add deeper analytical capabilities while harnessing the power of crowd sourcing to develop reports; and FinancialForce ClickLink™, a tool which allows users to quickly create tight integration with other applications that leverage the Force.com platform -- without coding. These new features are also available to FinancialForce Accounting users as part of the Spring ’12 release.

FinancialForce PSA Spring ‘12 also includes enhancements to its FinancialForce Services Resource Planning (SRP) application which combines the power of FinancialForce PSA, FinancialForce Accounting and Salesforce CRM. FinancialForce SRP enables PSOs to manage their opportunities, people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application.

FinancialForce PSA Spring ’12 is available immediately to FinancialForce PSA users as part of their monthly subscription fee. To learn more, visit www.financialforce.com.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building online business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading enterprise cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com. To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com, follow us on twitter @FinancialForce or visit our Facebook page.

Media Contacts:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com launches Accounting Spring ‘12

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced FinancialForce Accounting Spring ’12, the latest release of the company’s cloud accounting application built on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. This major release is designed to address key concerns of financial managers including financial reporting, implementation speed, and opportunity to cash efficiency.

The release includes two major enhancements:

FinancialForce Reporting, which is designed to simplify reporting and add deeper analytical capabilities while harnessing the power of crowd sourcing to develop reports.
FinancialForce ClickLink™, a tool which allows users to quickly create tight integration with other applications that leverage the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, without coding.

"FinancialForce.com has materially enhanced the accounting reporting capabilities of its product,” said Brian Sommer, President, Vital Analysis. “Users should experience a much easier time creating reports that adjust with changing financial periods, comparing different account balance types, e.g., actual vs. forecast/budget, and presenting complex multi-period financial results, e.g., a multi-year comparative balance sheet. Developing these more complex reports without a pre-supplied tool is quite difficult, and the inclusion of these enhanced reporting capabilities should make existing users ecstatic and open up more market opportunities for FinancialForce.com."

FinancialForce Reporting
Spring ’12 introduces FinancialForce Reporting. Unlike generic reporting tools, it is purpose built for financial reporting, eliminating the need for the many spreadsheets financial managers lean on today. FinancialForce Reporting includes:

Customizable financial report templates that can be quickly adopted by any organization.
Point and click report definition creation.
Attractive formatting options including motion graphics for board level presentations.
A richer data repository to leverage FinancialForce Accounting’s multidimensional chart of accounts to capture more budgets, forecasts, currencies and operational statistics.
A simplified reporting data structure making it easy to use any business intelligence tool, including Salesforce Analytics.
The ability to report on any Force.com object enabling users to combine financial and CRM operational metrics i.e. cost per lead.

ReportExchange
One of the most innovative features of FinancialForce Reporting is the ability to import, export and share report templates with other users. To facilitate this, FinancialForce.com is introducing a ReportExchange™ where templates can be shared among FinancialForce.com customers.

“As the primary suppliers of financial and analytical information to a company’s stakeholders, financial managers are increasingly asked for more sophisticated reports and analysis of their businesses,” said Tom Brennan, VP Product Marketing at FinancialForce.com. “We have enriched the underlying analytical data in the system as well as giving customers the ability to easily generate attractively formatted financial reports. Through crowd sourcing, the ReportExchange will harness the creativity and intellectual capacity of all our users. Our customers will be able to help each other create imaginative and insightful reports in a social environment. This will shorten implementation timeframes and improve the value users derive from their financial system.”

“Click – don’t code” integrations with ClickLink™
FinancialForce ClickLink™ allows savvy Force.com business users and Force.com administrators to quickly build integrations without any programming or involving the Force.com packaging processes. It is employed at the application level so it can be easily utilized by any Force.com administrator. Benefits include:

The ability for users to link Force.com objects by simply clicking source and target object fields
Automatically engages the FinancialForce.com API, ensuring data integrity.
Users can easily add integration logic and perform data transformations using native Force.com capabilities such as custom formula fields.
Users can link custom Force.com apps or packaged apps to FinancialForce.com apps.
“Buttonize” ClickLink™ rules to perform integrations one at a time or run them on a schedule.
Supports FinancialForce.com Accounting, Professional Services Automation (PSA), Billing and Media Billing applications.

"The majority of our customers build their own custom applications on the Force.com platform and want to connect data and processes to FinancialForce.com applications,” said Brennan. “There is also a proliferation of new ISVs on the AppExchange today that want to tie into our applications. ClickLink™ makes it simple to connect an ecosystem of custom and packaged apps on the Force.com platform. It will shorten implementation cycles, speed data conversions and lower our customers’ total cost of ownership.”

Compress the Opportunity to Cash cycle
FinancialForce Spring ’12 also includes a number of enhancements to increase processing efficiency and compress the opportunity to cash cycle, which has a direct effect on a company’s administrative costs, and cash flow. These include:

ClickLink™ makes it easy to create orders, invoices or import payments from any Force.com custom object or packaged application, eliminating rekeying and error prone spreadsheet workarounds.
New bulk posting capabilities to process large volumes of orders, invoices and cash payments.
Extended cash matching functions to speed the matching process, allowing users to define cash matching screen layouts for faster cash application.
Cash matching API, allows users to perform customizable, high volume cash matching routines for credit card processing, lockbox processing and other high volume matching situations.

In addition to these significant announcements, Spring ’12 includes the ability to easily create electronic bank payment formats and other user requested enhancements.

FinancialForce Accounting Spring ’12 is available immediately to FinancialForce Accounting users as part of their monthly subscription fee.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com, follow us on twitter @FinancialForce or visit our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FinancialForce

Media Contact:
Robyn Fernsworth
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: robyn@reidycommunications.com
(415) 412-0300

FinancialForce.com Expands International Sales Efforts as Cloud Computing Gains Traction

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has appointed former Netsuite Sales Director, Neil Harvey, as Regional Sales Director, EMEA and APAC, in response to growing demand for cloud applications in the UK and countries outside the US.

Neil is responsible for driving sales in the rapidly expanding professional services and financial application markets that FinancialForce.com serves.

“The cloud computing model is gaining major acceptance all over the world now and adoption outside the US is gaining momentum,” said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. “As such, we are expanding rapidly in all facets of our business. We have customers in over 20 countries and Neil will provide the sales team with the strong leadership it needs to capitalise on and further drive our momentum in these growing markets.”

Neil has more than 20 years of experience in sales, most recently as Regional Sales Director at Netsuite. He has also held sales leadership positions at PortWise, Magic Solutions and Veritas.

“It’s an exciting time of expansion for cloud computing as businesses have begun to realize its strategic value,” commented Neil Harvey. “FinancialForce Accounting and Professional Services Automation are the perfect complements to Salesforce CRM. With the growth in Services Resource Planning (SRP), FinancialForce.com is the only vendor to deliver a single platform solution to this business challenge. FinancialForce.com boasts an impressive team and reputation and I’m looking forward to working with them.”

Photography of Neil is available to download

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Emma Keates
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
ekeates@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

FinancialForce.com Named CRM Watchlist Winner

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced it has been named ‘Broad Brush Winner’ by CRM thought leader Paul Greenberg on the prestigious 2012 CRM Watchlist.

Greenberg is the author of the best-selling ‘CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers’ and is considered a thought leader in CRM. He says: “There is no doubt about this one. FinancialForce.com has been a, if not the leader for back office financial applications for a long time…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.”

The CRM Watchlist is highly regarded within the industry and is comprised of companies that Greenberg believes “we all should be paying serious attention to, regardless of size or revenue, because one way or the other they are going to make a difference in a customer-centric world - at least from the standpoint of technology and innovation in that area."

This prestigious industry award comes on the heels of several significant accolades for FinancialForce.com in the last year, including being named a Red Herring Global 100 winner; earning a place in the Red Herring Top 100 North America; receiving a THINKstrategies Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award; being recognized as the Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud Awards; and being selected as finalists in the SIIA CODiE Awards.

“This has been a break-out year for our organization, topped off by our being honored with several notable industry awards,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “We are excited about our growth and look forward to another successful year in 2012.”

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com, follow us on twitter @FinancialForce or visit our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FinancialForce

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Named Red Herring Global 100 Winner

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has been named a Red Herring Global 100 winner. The Red Herring Global 100 is an annual award that honors the year’s 100 most notable private technology companies and entrepreneurs from across the globe.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the top 100 global companies from a field of more than 1000 companies from more than 40 nations. The best companies from Asia, Europe and North America were judged on a range of qualitative and quantitative metrics, including but not limited to, technology innovation, financial performance, growth criterion, management's execution standards, potential globalization of the strategy and market share improvement.

“Choosing the best out of the previous two years was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, Chairman of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed down our list from 1,100 potential companies to 100 winners. It was an extremely difficult process. FinancialForce.com should be extremely proud of its achievement, the competition for the Top 100 was fierce. The Top 100 Global are truly the best of the best.”

This prestigious industry award comes on the heels of several significant accolades for FinancialForce.com this year, including earning a place in the Red Herring Top 100 North America; receiving a THINKstrategies Bestof SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award; being recognized as the Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud Awards; and being selected as finalists in the SIIA CODiE Awards.

Created in 2009 with investment from Salesforce.com and UNIT4 Business Software, FinancialForce.com focuses entirely on building business applications on Force.com, the cloud computing platform from salesforce.com, including accounting and professional services automation (PSA). Developed natively on the platform, its applications use the data already in Salesforce, eliminating the need to maintain several different systems of record. For accountants, this results in a highly efficient, error-free and cost effective solution. For professional services organizations, integration of a native PSA application with Salesforce CRM means they benefit from much better visibility into their pipeline, resources utilization, active projects, customer billing and risks. FinancialForce.com also leverages Chatter, the social networking tool available on Force.com, enabling companies to initiate real-time collaboration around customer issues and align finance, sales and services teams in ways not previously possible.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com

Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Launches Timecard App for the iPhone on Salesforce.com's AppExchange Mobile

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced it has launched a new mobile app on salesforce.com's AppExchange Mobile, extending the marketplace built for the social enterprise. FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is among the first apps to leverage AppExchange Mobile, tapping into the power of the proven Force.com platform, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for employee social apps. FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is currently available for test drive on AppExchange Mobile to all users of FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA), FinancialForce.com’s leading services management application based on Force.com

FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone leverages the form factor of the iPhone and unique capabilities of iOS allowing professional services organizations to stay connected while on the road or at a customer’s site. With FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone, consultants can quickly and easily enter their time, view the status of timecards, match time to each assignment and post to project walls enabled by Salesforce Chatter. Because timecards are collected more quickly, the downstream activities become more efficient including billing, project reporting and resource management. Additionally, consultants utilizing Chatter on the project replace emails, voice mails and conference calls with Chatter streams that become part of the audit trail for each project. This increases awareness of all the team members involved with the project, making the team more efficient and able to provide a higher level of service to clients.

FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is free to all FinancialForce PSA customers and requires the latest release, FinancialForce PSA Summer '11. Come see FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone in action at Cloudforce New York at FinancialForce’s booth #212.

Comments on the News

“By nature, professional services teams are mobile, geographically dispersed, and working in different time zones, but need to be in constant sync to collaborate on projects and meet customers’ needs successfully," said Todd Bursey, general manager of professional services automation at FinancialForce.com. “Collaborative businesses, such as professional services, must leverage the new mobile and social capabilities that the cloud enables in order to provide a high level of service, stay competitive and grow. FinancialForce.com is continuing to provide professional services organizations with solutions that overcome the problem of aligning far flung sales, service and finance teams to achieve their business goals.”

“Customers continue to look to our partners as they transform themselves into social enterprises, and partners like FinancialForce.com are helping them with that shift,” said Ron Huddleston, senior vice president, ISV Alliances, salesforce.com. “Apps like these exemplify the extraordinary reach of the AppExchange marketplace and continue to push the social, mobile, open and trusted capabilities customers expect from the salesforce.com ecosystem.”

Cloudforce New York Welcomes Attendees to the Social Enterprise

The number of social networking users has surpassed email users. And people access the Internet more from mobile devices than from desktops. Salesforce.com is helping companies meet the challenge of this social revolution with the social enterprise. Today, companies must change the way they collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees to stay competitive. By leveraging salesforce.com’s social, mobile and open cloud technologies, companies can transform themselves into social enterprises by developing social profiles of customers, creating employee social networks and building customer and product social networks. Cloudforce New York attendees will be able to learn firsthand how to join this transformation.

Additional Resources

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange

Force.com is the trusted social enterprise platform for building and running any employee app in the cloud. Force.com powers the Salesforce CRM apps, the more than 250,000 custom apps used by salesforce.com customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and Sprint Nextel and the more than 1,300 ISV apps built by partners such as BMC, FinancialForce.com and Fujitsu.

Enterprise apps built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed and marketed through the salesforce.com AppExchange.

The salesforce.com social enterprise platform delivers the most trusted and comprehensive cloud technologies for social, mobile and open apps. It includes Force.com, the cloud platform for employee apps, Heroku, the cloud platform for customer apps and Database.com, the cloud database to integrate the social enterprise.

Salesforce, Dreamforce, Force.com, Heroku, AppExchange, Database.com and others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Press Contacts:

Emma (Hoyle) Keates
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
Email: ekeates@financialforce.com
+44 (0) 1423 537977

Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Named 2011 Red Herring Global 100 Award Finalist

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 Red Herring Top 100 Global award, a prestigious recognition honoring the year’s most audacious and far reaching private technology companies and entrepreneurs from across the globe.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the companies demonstrating the most innovative technologies and business models originating from over 1000 companies from over 40 nations. These companies, representing past Red Herring Asia, Europe and North America awards, are judged on a range of qualitative and quantitative metrics, including but not limited to, technology innovation, financial performance, growth criterion, management's execution standards, potential globalization of the strategy and market share improvement.

“Technology companies are becoming the bright spot in the economic outlook based on their increasing role within macro-economic environments,” stated Alex Vieux, Chairman of Red Herring. “2011 has confirmed the sector's vibrant activity and its resilience to widespread economic problems. An unprecedented number of entrepreneurs are attempting to jump ahead of the competition and aspire to make a difference. Breakthroughs obsolete each other faster than ever before. FinancialForce.com has performed exceptionally in its field and strongly deserves to be singled out as one of the Red Herring Global Finalists. At this stage, we are left with the daunting task to select the best qualified companies for the 2011 Top 100 Global Award."

Created in 2009 with investments from Salesforce.com and UNIT4 Business Software, FinancialForce.com focuses entirely on building business applications on Force.com, the Cloud Computing platform from salesforce.com, including accounting and professional services automation (PSA). Developed natively on the platform, its applications use the data already in Salesforce, eliminating the need to maintain several different systems of record. For accountants, this results in a highly efficient, error-free and cost effective solution. By integrating a native PSA application with Salesforce CRM, professional services organizations benefit from much better visibility into their pipeline, resources utilization, active projects, customer billing and risks. FinancialForce.com also leverages Chatter, the social networking tool available on Force.com, enabling companies to initiate real-time collaboration around customer issues and align finance, sales and services teams in ways not previously possible.

This industry recognition comes on the back of some significant accolades for FinancialForce.com this year, notably being named in the Red Herring Top 100 North America; a THINKstrategies Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award; Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud Awards; and selected as finalists in the prestigious SIIA CODiE Awards.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

# # #

Media Contact:
Robyn Fernsworth
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: robyn@reidycommunications.com
(415) 412-0300

FinancialForce.com Launches iPhone App for Professional Services Teams on the Apple App Store

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:30:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced general availability of FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone on the Apple App Store. This mobile timecard entry application leverages the form factor of the Apple iPhone and unique capabilities of iOS, allowing dispersed professional services (PS) organizations to stay connected while on the road visiting customers.

FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone complements the FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) application and is fully integrated with Salesforce.com’s Chatter application on Force.com. It enables consultants to efficiently complete administrative tasks and communicate with PS teams so they can better focus on billable client efforts. With FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone, consultants can:

Quickly and easily enter their time and view the status of timecards
Receive alerts if timecards are due
Be notified as to how many timecards are past due
Match time easily to each assignment
Post to project walls enabled by Chatter, salesforce.com’s social application

The social capabilities in Salesforce Chatter enable PS teams to replace emails, voice mails and conference calls with Chatter streams, making the conversation part of the audit trail for each project. Additionally, because timecards are collected more quickly, the downstream activities become more efficient including billing, project reporting and resource management. Staying connected through the iPhone and socially via Chatter makes all team members involved with the project more efficient and able to focus more on billable client efforts while providing a higher level of service.

“Professional services teams are mobile and geographically dispersed, so when we first mentioned an app for the iPhone the feedback was overwhelmingly positive,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com. “We’re thrilled to announce the availability of FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone on the Apple App Store. Our customers can access the application from anywhere and be more responsive as a project team.”

"Entirely new software ecosystems are coming of age for businesses, and the best software companies are building applications for these platforms - platforms of the modern, not yesteryear's, software world,” said Brian Sommer, President, Vital Analysis. “FinancialForce.com was one of the first firms to develop a major application suite on the Force.com platform. Now, it has added another application, this time a time entry application for consultants, on the Apple ecosystem. That latest application should complement its growing PS functionality and help improve field consultant productivity."

The iPhone Timecards app is free to download for all FinancialForce PSA customers and requires the latest release of the cloud service, FinancialForce PSA Summer '11. It can be downloaded from the Apple App Store for U.S. and Canadian iPhone users running iOS version 4.0 and later.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

# # #

Media Contact:
Robyn Fernsworth
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: robyn@reidycommunications.com
415-412-0300

FinancialForce.com Shortlisted for Best Software Package of the Year at the British Accountancy Awards

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that FinancialForce Accounting has been shortlisted in the Software Package of the Year category at this year’s British Accountancy Awards.

These new awards succeed the long-standing Accountancy Age Awards and are run in partnership with ACCA, the global body for professional accountants. They promise a renewed focus on the profession, and a new panel of experts has helped to design more rigorous judging criteria to help recognise outstanding performance and innovation across the sector.

FinancialForce Accounting, delivered on Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com, was shortlisted based on criteria including innovation, measurable success and customer satisfaction. Winners will be announced at an awards evening in London on Wednesday 30th November.

FinancialForce.com launched in September 2009, backed with investment from UNIT4 and salesforce.com. This industry recognition comes on the back of a period of growth and success for FinancialForce.com, including being named in the Red Herring Top 100 North America in June, winning Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud UK awards and named a finalist at the coveted CODiE Awards in Business Software.

FinancialForce.com’s solutions, including FinancialForce Accounting and FinancialForce PSA, are used by organisations across 23 countries and continue to be particularly popular with those using Salesforce CRM, who want seamless connectivity between sales, billing, professional service and finance processes on a single cloud platform. In its third quarter results announcement, UNIT4 reported FinancialForce.com had increased its monthly run rate (September 2011 versus September 2010) by about 500%.

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Emma Keates
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
Email: ekeates@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977
Twitter: @FinancialForce

New Research Reveals the Missing Link for Professional Service Organisations Using Salesforce CRM

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, and research and consulting firm Service Performance Insight (SPI) today revealed findings of a joint benchmark study of Salesforce CRM customers in the professional services industry, Salesforce CRM and PSA Integration, at Cloudforce '11.

Previous SPI research showed that Salesforce CRM is the dominant front office solution in the professional services industry. The new research showed that by moving to the cloud, Salesforce CRM customers have achieved higher bid-to-win ratios, greater average revenue per project, and a better deal pipeline as compared to users of other third party and home grown CRM systems.

However, the study also highlighted areas where salesforce users lagged their peers, particularly in PSA integration. In a previous benchmarking study, SPI showed that the true power of CRM for service organisations can only be realised when it is integrated with PSA. Surprisingly, the new research showed that Salesforce CRM customers have low levels of integration with PSA among leading CRM apps used by PSOs.

Based on data from more than 200 professional services organisations (PSOs), the new research demonstrated that PSOs can significantly improve their performance by better integrating their CRM and PSA systems. Companies that integrated their CRM and PSA systems reported larger project backlogs, improved executive visibility, superior bid-to-win ratios, greater percentages of revenue from new clients, more projects delivered on-time, a higher percentage of billable employees, and higher billable utilisation. The full report is available for download on FinancialForce.com’s website at www.financialforce.com/spi-salesforce/

“Service Performance Insight’s research proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that integrated CRM and PSA provide the winning foundation for today’s service organisations,” said Jeanne Urich, managing director, SPI. “With FinancialForce PSA and FinancialForce Accounting both built on the Salesforce Force.com platform, relief is in sight to break-down traditional functional and application stove-pipes in favor of an integrated view from prospect to project.”

“SPI Research has demonstrated the bright future provided by integrating sales with service execution,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. “With the addition of FinancialForce PSA, companies can truly take advantage of the benefits of CRM and PSA integration.”

Earlier this year, FinancialForce.com enhanced its offerings for professional service organisations by launching FinancialForce Services Resource Planning (SRP), which enables PSOs to manage their people, projects, and financials in one integrated services management application. FinancialForce SRP is the first complete solution built entirely on Force.com. Combining Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA, and FinancialForce Accounting, the solution helps PSOs sell, deliver, and bill projects collaboratively and overcome the obstacles found in a siloed or fragmented systems approach. Because CRM, PSA, and Accounting teams share the same system and the same information, processes are far more efficient and customer visibility is dramatically improved. FinancialForce SRP also uniquely leverages Chatter, Salesforce.com’s leading social media application for business, to create collaborative and social ecosystems around each individual project. The result is complete alignment of sales, services, and finance teams working in one collaborative environment on Force.com.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organisations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

# # #

Media Contacts:

Emma (Hoyle) Keates
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
ekeates@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Delivers PSA Summer '11 to Extend Its Lead in Social Professional Services Automation

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced the Summer ’11 release of FinancialForce PSA, a cloud-based solution that leverages Salesforce CRM and Force.com for services organizations. Innovations in the release include a Salesforce Chatter enabled timecard entry app for the iPhone, the ability to add Chatter streams and increase visibility to tasks synchronized with MS Project, and an automated project status report configurator.

The update combines the power of social media, mobile applications and FinancialForce SRP – the first complete Services Resource Planning (SRP) solution built entirely on Force.com – to provide more visibility into projects, drive further collaboration and make professional services organizations (PSOs) more effective and competitive.

“Professional Services projects are social by nature,” said Todd Bursey, General Manager of Professional Services Automation at FinancialForce.com. “The work is done in teams, often virtually, in close collaboration with the customer, which makes Professional Services Automation a natural for social media, mobile and cloud-based applications. FinancialForce.com continues to extend our lead in social PSA with solutions that break down the silos of information between project data and other business systems.”

"The sharp economic shift over the last few years to project- and services-based work has presented organizations across the globe with additional visibility concerns that eclipse typical spend management," said Christopher J. Dwyer, research analyst at the Aberdeen Group. "Less than 15 percent of companies have high visibility into project-based expenses, milestones and delivery dates, presenting a significant concern within billing processes. Automated systems for streamlining and enhancing these procedures can vastly improve visibility into project-based / services spending and help companies accurately forecast completion of SOW-based tasks."

New social professional services automation features in the Summer ’11 release of FinancialForce PSA include:

Timecard entry app for iPhone – FinancialForce PSA leverages the form factor of the iPhone and unique capabilities of iOS to allow consultants to quickly enter their time cards and view assignments. Chatter is embedded into the application, making it easy for consultants to post to a centralized project wall while on the road or on a client’s premises. Chatters replace emails, voicemails and conference calls, becoming part of a project’s audit trail.

Ability to synchronize more efficiently and provide visibility to MS Project tasks – FinancialForce PSA provides wider visibility into project tasks, which are otherwise locked away on individual laptops in MS Project. Now, users can create Chatter streams triggered by changes to task statuses, enabling project managers to see tasks in context of the overall project, including resource allocation, skill set planning and other collaborative interactions.

Automated status report configurator – FinancialForce PSA automates the collection, collating, formatting and electronic delivery of customized project status reports to services customers on behalf of project managers. This saves time for project managers, conveys a more professional image and increases customer satisfaction by delivering customized project status information in a timely fashion. The configurator also ensures that status reports become part of project audit trail.

“The Summer ‘11 release builds on our vision of helping project teams collaborate more effectively, while reducing the distance between services professionals and their customers,” said Bursey. “We continue to innovate with social media and mobile apps to help PSOs collapse time from the data collection cycle. The new iPhone app, along with our creative uses of Chatter, increase the ambient awareness of all team members involved with a project and improves the efficiency of all downstream activities, including billing, project reporting and resource management.”

FinancialForce SRP enables PSOs to manage their people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. FinancialForce SRP combines Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA, and FinancialForce Accounting on the Force.com platform to help PSOs to sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively and overcome the obstacles found in a siloed systems approach.

FinancialForce PSA Summer ’11 also includes more flexibility to define project milestones, cost rollup structures and rates. It is available immediately. To learn more, visit www.financialforce.com

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building online business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading enterprise cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

Media Contacts:
Emma (Hoyle) Keates
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
Email: ekeates@financialforce.com
+44 (0) 1423 537977

Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

Media Leader EMAP Selects FinancialForce Accounting

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that EMAP Insight, a division of EMAP, has selected FinancialForce Accounting to improve the order to cash process, and serve as a complementary financial application to its Salesforce CRM system.

EMAP Insight delivers news and data intelligence to more than 12,500 subscribers. It was looking to streamline the process that supports customer interactions and subscription management with its digital products.

Following an end to end process review, from enquiry, to order or renewal and then into service delivery, EMAP Insight selected the the FinancialForce Accounting's billing toolset which is completely integrated with Salesforce CRM on the Force.com platform. "With the Force.com platform, we know we can develop a sound application infrastructure quickly at a reasonable cost that will scale," said Ajay Handa, Finance Director at EMAP Insight. "By using Salesforce CRM/FinancialForce Accounting the sales team will spend less time reporting and the finance team will benefit from real-time access to data. We have completed a pilot phase and we are already advocates of the improved processes. We are looking to roll out the pilot solution to the rest of the division."

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About EMAP Insight

EMAP Insight is a division of EMAP. We deliver accurate information, analysis and forecasting tools that enable our clients to build, strengthen and maintain their businesses. We provide intelligence on the Retail, Fashion, Automotive, Built Environment, Media and Political industries, helping more than 12,500 companies profit from making better, more timely, more informed decisions.

Insight's award winning intelligence reduces the time and effort our clients need to use to gather relevant information with our accurate and comprehensive reports, news, analysis and data. Our clients can access EMAP's Data and Insight products in the office and on the move via our innovative delivery channels.

About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact

Emma Hoyle
FinancialForce.com
emma.hoyle@unit4.com

FinancialForce PSA to be launched to the UK Market at Cloudforce '11; Offers Professional Services Organisations End-to-End cloud Solution

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it is launching FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) at Cloudforce '11 in London. FinancialForce PSA is the only native PSA solution built on the Force.com platform. The solution, which leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com, enables professional services organisations (PSOs) to manage their people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application.

The $1.4 trillion professional services market is one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy. To address the rapid industry growth, services firms are rapidly adopting cloud solutions to address different parts of their operations. Salesforce CRM is now the most dominant front office solution in the industry, currently in use at one third of PSOs according to Service Performance Insight Research.

"A high percentage of Salesforce CRM users are selling services," said Jeremy Roche, CEO and president of FinancialForce.com. "In launching FinancialForce PSA, we are offering PSOs the ability to integrate Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA, and FinancialForce Accounting on one platform, with one interface and using one data repository rather than the fragmented systems approach traditionally deployed."

Now, for the first time, PSOs can access sales, project, billing and receivables information from one system. The integrated approach enables users to get a single view of enterprise wide data, which saves time and money and allows business decision makers to spend time analysing, rather than generating, information about their business and its performance. More importantly, PSOs get a single view of their customer which improves customer service and account analysis.

"We recognise the value of running sales and services applications together on the Force.com cloud and FinancialForce PSA has delivered a range of tangible business benefits to our organisation already," said David Eagan, Director of Professional Services at Perceptive Software. "Most notably, improvements in the quality of information, better insight into our operational and financial performance, increased productivity, more informed decision making capabilities, and crucially, is our ability to deliver enhanced customer service through better project management and communication capabilities."

Learn more at Cloudforce '11

What: "Are You Selling Services? Learn How to Sell, Deliver and Bill More on Force.com"
Where: Cloudforce '11, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK - Breakout room 5 (St Paul's view, level 6)
When: Wednesday 14th 4:30-5:00pm (BST) and Thursday 15th September at 4:00-4:30pm (BST)
Stand details: P4

Jeremy Roche, CEO and President of FinancialForce.com will discuss findings from, SPI's in-depth benchmarking study of Salesforce CRM customers in the professional services industry. FinancialForce.com co-sponsored the research.

In addition, David Eagan from Perceptive Software will discuss how they improved a variety of business processes to improve their professional services practice. Perceptive Software has been rated in the top 5% best-of-the-best Professional Services (PS) organisations benchmarked against more than 200 leading firms in this year's PS Maturity Benchmark Report from SPI Research.

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact

Hilary Goodband
FinancialForce.com
Hilary.Goodband@unit4.com

SnapLogic Intuitively Connects FinancialForce with Other Business Applications in the Cloud and on the Ground

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

SnapLogic, the cloud connection company, announced today it will demonstrate one of its latest SnapStore additions, the FinancialForce Snap, at the Dreamforce 2011 Conference this week. Featured in SnapLogic’s Solutions Gallery at Dreamforce, the FinancialForce Snap is a connector that enables businesses to easily integrate FinancialForce.com’s innovative finance, sales and service applications with other on-premise and cloud-based business applications.

“SnapLogic and FinancialForce.com share a vision of how businesses will operate and thrive in the cloud by exploiting tools that enable greater flexibility and adaptability,” said Clark Newby, senior vice president of marketing and alliances at SnapLogic. “FinancialForce.com is a recognized leader in the world of the Business Internet, and SnapLogic is the perfect enabler to connect its applications to any collection of data sources its customers can dream up.”

SnapLogic’s Snaps are reusable application-specific connectors that shield users from the complexity of integration. Because the Snaps are standardized and contain wizards that automatically inspect target applications, they can be joined together effortlessly for whatever data connections a business needs. SnapLogic’s open development environment and SnapStore make it easy for partners like FinancialForce.com and its customers to create, buy, or modify Snaps for any data source.

FinancialForce Snap Highlights

Intuitively connects FinancialForce applications with many different CRM, ERP, billing, procurement, analytics and collaboration systems, ensuring data integrity and consistency across all mission-critical enterprise applications.
Allows other relevant business applications to write to FinancialForce objects – such as Invoice, Credit Notes, Purchase Invoices, etc. – minimizing data entry work for users.
Automatically creates FinancialForce invoices for orders pulled from order management systems and synchronizes inventory statistics.

“We’re seeing significant interest in the FinancialForce Snap because it makes it easy for our customers to support complex and rapidly-expanding business operations without painful and costly custom-coding,” said Tom Brennan, vice president of product marketing at FinancialForce.com. “SnapLogic brings a whole new world of integration possibilities to the FinancialForce.com community so companies can truly get the most out of their entire ecosystem of applications.”

The partnership between SnapLogic and FinancialForce.com has already paid dividends for popular Internet radio service Pandora, which successfully implemented the FinancialForce Snap recently. Pandora’s senior director of information services will be sharing thoughts on creating change-ready connection infrastructures at an IT executive dinner in San Francisco this evening, along with thought leaders from FinancialForce.com and other SnapLogic customers and partners.

Online Resources

Download the FinancialForce Snap from the SnapStore.
Visit the SnapLogic Blog for more on cloud integration from FinancialForce.
Download a free trial of SnapLogic.

About FinancialForce
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. It focuses 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). It serves fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. FinancialForce.com is backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

About SnapLogic

SnapLogic is the cloud connection company, intuitively snapping together any business application or Web service. SnapLogic’s modern connection architecture delivers fast, smart data by integrating sources in the cloud and on the ground. SnapLogic was built on proven consumer Web standards that bring cloud speed, scale and ease to businesses. The company’s Snaps – standardized containers that connect any kind of data – are available for instant download in the first of its kind SnapStore, where developers, system integrators, and independent software vendors can build and sell reusable application-specific connectors. Based in San Mateo, CA, SnapLogic is funded by leading venture investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Follow SnapLogic on Twitter: @SnapLogic, and visit the SnapLogic blog.

FinancialForce.com Gains Momentum with Professional Services Organizations as Firms Augment Salesforce CRM Investments

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today reported that it continues to experience strong customer success in the professional services market. FinancialForce.com’s success follows research that shows professional services organizations (PSOs) are increasingly moving to cloud solutions to better manage the full spectrum of people, projects, customers and financials.

Some of the PSOs that have selected FinancialForce.com solutions include Centerstance, Inc., Chi Solutions, Convio, HumanConcepts, IMS Health, Maxwell Systems, NAV Canada, Perceptive Software, Quattro Innovation Group, Sysnet, The Compliance Company Inc, Universal Mind, and Voxclever.

“A high percentage of Salesforce CRM users sell services,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO and president of FinancialForce.com. “Now this large group of users is extending their CRM applications to include professional services automation and online accounting to improve utilization and increase efficiency. PSOs can eliminate departmental barriers and create a more collaborative environment centered on their customers. We are experiencing rapid growth in this industry because PSOs recognize the value of running sales, services and finance applications all on the Force.com cloud.”

Earlier this year, FinancialForce.com enhanced its offerings for professional service organizations by launching FinancialForce PSA, a cloud based solution that leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com to the benefit of services organizations. It enables PSOs to manage their people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. FinancialForce SRP is the first complete Services Resource Planning (SRP) solution built entirely on Force.com. Combining Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA, and FinancialForce Accounting, the solution helps PSOs sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively and overcome the obstacles found in a siloed or fragmented systems approach.

“I had a notion that having our entire internal enterprise systems native to the Force.com platform would be more effective and efficient. Now I realize that initially I underestimated the resulting benefits and positive outcomes by several orders of magnitude,” said Greg Lueck, managing partner at Centerstance. “It is so powerful to be able to track all of our business from accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities through closed-won sales to the delivery and completion of the project, to the final billing on one platform with one interface using one data repository. I just can’t imagine going back to the ‘old school’ way.”

“The big challenge company-wide was that marketing, sales and professional services didn’t have a 360 degree view of our customer,” said Patrick Kearney, vice president, professional services, Perceptive Software. “With FinancialForce.com, Perceptive now has an up to date view on where we are at with our key performance metrics. Not only are we more efficient, but we’re more effectively scheduling our team members. Having access to real-time data allows us to balance work load and work assignments to ensure that the right people are assigned to the right projects. This leads to higher customer and employee satisfaction."

“FinancialForce PSA has helped HumanConcepts move our professional services organization from a country-specific team to a global team,” said Peter Robson, professional services manager at HumanConcepts. “Many features, such as time-tracking, billing, and project notes are helping us to effectively communicate the current project status to the executive team, track project budgets, and keep our sales team aware of progress and issues encountered. The next step is using FinancialForce PSA to help us manage resource allocation based on current utilization and up-coming sales opportunities!”

Learn More at Dreamforce ‘11

At Dreamforce ‘11, SPI will reveal findings of a new in-depth benchmarking study of Salesforce CRM customers in the professional services industry. FinancialForce.com co-sponsored the research.

What: “Are You Selling Services? Learn How to Sell, Deliver and Bill More on Force.com”
Where: Dreamforce ’11, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Golden Gate C2
When: Wednesday, August 31, 3:30--4:30 p.m.

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

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Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Customer, U.S. News & World Report, to Present at Dreamforce '11

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that FinancialForce for Media customer U.S. News & World Report will be speaking at Dreamforce ‘11 in a session titled, “Inventory, Traffic, and Billing Integration Success Stories”. U.S. News & World Report managers will discuss the benefits of integrating pipeline management, ad server activity, and billing applications to help transition from print to digital media. The session is scheduled for September 1 at 2:00pm PT and includes presentations from salesforce.com, Facebook, Inc. and Austereo Group Limited. Details are as follows:

Who: Gregg Vivolo, salesforce.com; Melissa Telzer, salesforce.com; Karen Chevalier, U.S. News & World Report; Yingjie Shu, U.S. News & World Report; Phyllis Panza, U.S. News & World Report; Ross Forgione, Austereo Group Limited; Todd Miner, Facebook, Inc.
What: Media focus on success stories connecting sales cloud to inventory, traffic, and billing systems.
Where: San Francisco InterContinental, 888 Howard Street - Grand Ballroom AB
When: Thursday, September 1, 2:00pm - 3:00 pm PT.

The U.S. News & World Report management team will talk through the current challenges faced by the media industry and U.S. News’ desire to increase efficiency and shorten the billing cycle through integrated booking and billing for advertising campaigns. By integrating Salesforce CRM, ad servers, and FinancialForce Billing in the cloud, the company has gained unprecedented efficiency and complete account visibility through all stages of the online advertising sales, ad serving, and billing cycle.

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

# # #

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

Salesforce.com Customer Benchmarks to be Unveiled at Dreamforce ‘11

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0100

Research and consulting firm, Service Performance Insight (SPI) www.spiresearch.com will reveal findings of a new in-depth benchmark study of Salesforce CRM customers in the professional services industry at Dreamforce ‘11. FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, co-sponsored the research.

Based on data from more than 200 professional services organizations (PSOs), the research will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of how PSOs are using Salesforce CRM and Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions today. SPI will also reveal how PSOs can improve their performance by better integrating their CRM and PSA systems on Force.com

What: “Are You Selling Services? Learn How to Sell, Deliver and Bill More on Force.com”
Where: Dreamforce ’11, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Golden Gate C2
When: Wednesday, August 31, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

SPI is dedicated to helping Professional Services (PS) organizations make quantum improvements in service productivity and profit. SPI will unveil the findings of the new research report on stage at Dreamforce.

“We will discuss best practices and performance characteristics of companies selling and delivering services with Salesforce CRM,” said Jeanne Urich, Managing Director, SPI. “We have some interesting data on what Salesforce.com customers are doing well and what they are not doing so well. As part of the session, we will offer suggestions on how PSOs can make dramatic improvements to their operations, customer satisfaction and financial performance.”

Previous SPI research showed that Salesforce CRM is the most dominant front office solution in the industry, currently in use at one third of professional services organizations in North America. It also detailed that organizations with integrated CRM and PSA reported higher bid/win ratios, higher project margins, higher utilization and higher revenue per billable consultant.

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 509-0498

FinancialForce.com Voted Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud UK Awards

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:30:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has won the category of Best Cloud Offering in the EuroCloud UK Awards for its FinancialForce Accounting application, delivered on Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com.

The purpose of the Awards is to highlight best practices, innovation and customer success achieved by providers of cloud services and products in the UK. FinancialForce Accounting was recognised by the judges, drawn from the EuroCloud Board, as the cloud product that is most distinctive in its features and market appeal. The judges considered factors such as innovation, business impact and value of the capabilities offered, while also looking for leadership in best practices across technology, operations and go-to-market.

“This is the first time we have run this awards programme and we were impressed by the overall standard of entry,” said Phil Wainewright, industry analyst and vice-president of EuroCloud. “There is much innovation happening in the cloud industry and Europe and the UK in particular, are building momentum. The recent EuroCloud Congress in Luxembourg showcased some of the finest examples of cloud computing and the growing maturity of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is empowering European businesses to seize the opportunities that this technology can deliver. It’s also great to see a European organisation like FinancialForce.com doing so well in the US market. A deserving winner of this accolade.”

EuroCloud is the first pan-European network of SaaS and cloud computing vendors and industry experts, with a presence today in 27 European countries. EuroCloud UK brings together companies engaged in cloud computing or SaaS-related business activity to network together, share best practice and build the profile of the industry. The EuroCloud UK Board includes members from C Infinity, CohesiveFT, D2C, Fujitsu EST, Mimecast, RightNow, Salesforce.com, SAP, Webroot, Zylog Systems and Procullux Ventures.

FinancialForce.com launched in September 2009, backed by UNIT4 (AMX: UNIT4) and salesforce.com. This industry recognition comes on the back of a period of growth and success for FinancialForce.com, including being named in the Red Herring Top 100 North America in June and achieving finalist at the coveted CODiE Awards in Business Software.

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Emma Hoyle, PR Manager
FinancialForce.com
Email: ehoyle@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423537977
Twitter: @hoylee

FinancialForce.com Delivers New Application for Publishers to Dramatically Simplify the Business of Online Advertising

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today launched a new solution to enable media companies to integrate Salesforce CRM, ad servers and FinancialForce Billing in the cloud.

FinancialForce for Media automates the process of selling, tracking and billing for online advertising campaigns. The solution closes the loop between Salesforce CRM, ad servers like Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers and FinancialForce Billing, creating one integrated process. Now online publishers will gain unprecedented efficiency and complete account visibility through all stages of the online advertising sales, ad serving and billing cycle.

FinancialForce for Media helps publishers make the shift to online products including mobile platforms with optimal speed and operational performance. It is designed to work seamlessly with all Force.com applications and synchronize with other ad severs and ERP systems. By providing 360-degree account and agency views from a single cloud, publishers can analyze an account’s opportunities, insertion orders, impressions served, click rates, billing and receivables all from one easily accessible information source.

“Media companies typically rely on separate disconnected systems to support their opportunity-to-cash process,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com. “This fragmented environment causes manual, labor-intensive processes which are prone to error. Data fragmentation also leads to billing reconciliation problems and makes unified account visibility elusive or impossible. As a result, publishers often face long billing cycles that contribute to delays in cash flow and long period close processes.”

U.S. News & World Report is one of the first customers to implement FinancialForce for Media to unify and replace multiple systems. By connecting Salesforce CRM, DoubleClick DART Sales Manager (DSM), DoubleClick DART for Publishers (DFP) and FinancialForce Accounting and Billing into a closed loop system, US News made dramatic efficiency gains and greatly improved account visibility.

“We were able to reduce our billing cycle by two weeks,” said Yingjie Shu, Vice President, Information Technology, US News & World Report. “We are far more efficient and have dramatically improved the billing reconciliation process. Our sales and management teams now have information from the entire opportunity to billing cycle at their fingertips on Force.com.”

“It has never been more critical for publishers to differentiate themselves in the competitive and ever changing media landscape. Cloud computing is allowing us to do that,” said US News’ Shu. “FinancialForce.com’s media solution is providing the data, process efficiencies and insight we need to optimize ad sales and deliver the best service to our clients. We picked the right company to support our business.”

“As publishers face the urgent need to adapt to a new media landscape, they have to escape the constraints, inefficiencies and endless development timelines of traditional disconnected enterprise systems,” said Renny Monaghan, vice president, Industry Solutions at salesforce.com. “With an end-to-end system on the Force.com platform, media companies can overcome a historical barrier to increase ad sales and deliver customer service while keeping a lid on administrative costs. FinancialForce for Media is a prime example of the power of the new era of cloud computing.”

FinancialForce for Media unifies and automates process and data flows across traditionally fragmented media industry financial environments. An opportunity created in Salesforce CRM is linked to proposal creation in an ad server based on available ad units. This proposal is synced to FinancialForce Accounting for the creation of a media sales agreement and an insertion order; at the same time, the opportunity is updated in Salesforce CRM. Once the ad has been served, billing information is imported to FinancialForce Accounting to update the sales agreement on an as-needed basis. Users can automatically create invoices, easily reconcile with the original proposal and post updated account information to accounts receivable as required. FinancialForce for Media can integrate with a variety of ad servers such as Operative and ERP systems such as Peoplesoft, Oracle and SAP.

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Named Red Herring Top 100 North America Tech Company

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has been named to the 2011 Red Herring Top 100 North America list. Red Herring announced its Top 100 award in recognition of the leading private companies from North America, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

Red Herring’s Top 100 North America list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across North America to the Top 100 Winners. We believe FinancialForce.com embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. FinancialForce.com should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

FinancialForce.com launched in September 2009, backed by UNIT4 (AMX: UNIT4) and salesforce.com. This industry recognition comes on the back of a period of growth and success for FinancialForce.com, whose solutions are now used by companies in 23 countries. FinancialForce.com’s solutions, including FinancialForce Accounting and FinancialForce PSA, continue to be particularly popular with organizations using Salesforce CRM, who want seamless connectivity between sales, billing, professional service and finance processes on a single cloud platform.

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of the companies relative to their sector peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in North America.

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Drives Finance Department Productivity with Spring ‘11 Release

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today released FinancialForce Accounting Spring ‘11. The release is focused on improving the productivity of finance departments by streamlining tasks and using clever automation and wizards to simplify complex processes that can consume a finance department’s time. Spring ‘11 reduces the number of touches and keystrokes in many accounting processes and now fully leverages the electronic authorization capabilities provided by the Force.com platform.

“Our primary goal with Spring ’11 is to help finance departments improve productivity,” said Debbie Ashton, VP of product and customer success. “We talked with a large number of companies about processes that were draining their time. Finance teams are clearly under tremendous pressure to do more with fewer staff. We found several areas where we could eliminate steps, automate functions, or make complex accounting processes simpler. Spring ‘11 will improve the work velocity and efficiency of the finance department over and above the efficiency gains they derive with a cloud solution.”

Spring ‘11 includes a number of new functions to eliminate touches, and where it is necessary, dramatically increase the speed of data entry. More streamlined and innovative automation has also been introduced in areas such as Searching, Bank Reconciliation and Currency Revaluation. For instance, a Currency Revaluation Wizard takes users through all the steps of a currency revaluation and culminates in automated entries to book both the unrealized gain/loss and the subsequent reversing journal.

“Too often, accounting software and financial systems get in the way of doing day-to-day business,” said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, managing director, THINKstrategies. “By reducing the number of touches and keystrokes involved in many accounting processes, FinancialForce.com’s Spring ‘11 release enables financial departments to improve their productivity, save time and money.”

A significant addition to the release was the use of Force.com’s authorization workflow. “One big complaint financial managers shared with us was how much time they spend chasing line managers and executives for transaction authorizations. Repeated emails and phone calls just don’t cut it anymore,” said Ashton. “Besides adding to the period close task list, financial managers have better things to do than chasing their colleagues.”

When combined with Force.com authorization workflow, financial managers can create simple or multi-tiered electronic approval processes and have complete visibility to any authorization bottlenecks. Unlike emails, the system tracks and attaches the authorization history to each transaction, providing an iron clad audit trail and solid controls. The system uses the same authorization engine used by Salesforce CRM users, so companies don’t have to invest in additional authorization workflow tools, allowing them to use a familiar tool company wide.

FinancialForce Accounting Spring ’11 is available immediately to FinancialForce Accounting users as part of their monthly subscription fee.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Partners with Xactly Delivering End to End Sales Performance Management on Force.com

Tue, 24 May 2011 13:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions and Xactly Corporation, provider of on-demand sales compensation management built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced an agreement to create the first native end to end sales commission management and accounting solution for salesforce.com customers.

Excel spreadsheets are still the most widely used tool for managing sales commissions, however, they are error-prone and difficult to monitor and audit. Using a truly integrated end to end solution, sales and finance executives can design, implement, manage, audit and optimize sales compensation management programs easily and affordably. Using Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce Accounting and Xactly Express, Force.com customers can provide sales teams with accurate commission data and payments in line with customer and revenue goals and objectives.

“Companies require accurate sales performance management data around sales compensation if they want to benefit from behavior altering intelligence,” said Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO, Xactly Corporation. “With Xactly, customers can easily calculate commissions, while gaining real-time data on team and individual performance, which helps them better understand how sales is performing. FinancialForce Accounting ties that data back into the Salesforce CRM opportunity while providing a system of record to show and record exactly what has been invoiced and paid. The power of the Force.com platform is enabling a new kind of integration that delivers compelling business benefits.”

The power of a shared platform enabled FinancialForce.com and Xactly to quickly build a seamless integration between the applications that couldn’t be achieved if the data was held in separate silos. The combined solution provides sales teams with the ability to analyze sales and commissions in any number of ways including commissions earned by month and type and commission payments against plan. Commission payments can also be viewed by product as well as invoice status tracked via a dashboard against each customer account. Commissions are paid based on the status of Sales Invoices in FinancialForce Accounting to ensure accuracy and fluid compensation flow. Teams can also choose to see rankings of salespeople by percentage of sales commission against quotas.

“Commissions calculations need a trusted system of record and FinancialForce Accounting provides that,” said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. “The combined solution is the first for sales performance delivered entirely on Force.com, where the applications share the same data model. This true integration very quickly enables users to see exactly what has been invoiced and paid as it happens. For the first time, Salesforce CRM users can tie together Opportunities, Invoices, Commissions and Expense data into a single dashboard.”

FinancialForce.com and Xactly will be attending the SIIA All About The Cloud Conference in San Francisco, May 23-26. Jeremy Roche will present a session on cloud platforms titled "Using Cloud Platforms to Enable a Free-Market Approach to Apps," on Wednesday, May 25th. FinancialForce.com was recently named a finalist in the 26th annual CODiE™ Awards in the Best Financial Management Solution category. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 25th at the CODiE Awards Luncheon, to be held as part of the SIIA All About Cloud conference. FinancialForce.com is also sponsoring and attending the Xactly CompCloud 2011 user conference in San Francisco May 23-25, where more than 250 customers, partners and visionaries in cloud and sales compensation management will share best practices and strategies for leveraging compensation to improve bottom line results.

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

About Xactly Corporation
Xactly Corporation is the market leader in on-demand sales performance management. The company’s SPM Suite of products, enables sales and finance executives to design, implement, manage, audit and optimize sales compensation management programs easily and affordably. Xactly’s solutions automate the process of aggregating data from disparate systems into a secure, hosted repository, and enable companies to leverage this business data, which is the lifeblood of sales performance management. Xactly helps companies improve operational performance, optimize sales effectiveness, proactively manage risk and compliance, and maximize profits. The Xactly family of products is used by sales and finance executives, compensation analysts, sales operations and sales professionals across a variety of industries, ranging from SMBs to large enterprises. For more information, visit www.xactlycorp.com or call 1-866-GO-XACTLY

FinancialForce.com is a Finalist for the 2011 Red Herring Top 100 North America Award

Thu, 19 May 2011 17:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com announced today it has been selected as a finalist for Red Herring's Top 100 North America award, a prestigious list honoring the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the North American business region. This is on the heels of the company recently being named a finalist in the Software & Information Industry Association’s CODiE Awards and being named by THINKstrategies as a winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards.

This industry recognition comes on the back of a period of growth and success for FinancialForce.com. The company now has customers in 23 countries, with a new customer in China as the latest addition. FinancialForce.com’s solutions, including FinancialForce Accounting and FinancialForce PSA, continue to be particularly popular with organizations using Salesforce CRM, who want seamless connectivity between sales, billing, professional service and finance processes on a single cloud platform.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the most innovative companies from a pool of hundreds from across North America. The nominees are evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries.

This unique assessment of market potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of a company, which allows Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument for discovering and advocating the greatest business opportunities in the industry.

"This year was very rewarding," said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring."The global economic situation has abated and there are many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products. FinancialForce.com shows great promise and therefore deserves to be among the finalists."

Finalists for the 2011 edition of the Red Herring 100 North America award are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of companies in the telecommunications, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, mobile and other industries completed their submissions to qualify for the award.

The finalists are invited to present their winning strategies at the Red Herring North America Forum in Hollywood, California, June 13-15, 2011. The Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony the evening of June 15.

Last month, FinancialForce.com announced that it has been named a finalist in the 26th annual CODiE Awards in the Best Financial Management Solution category. FinancialForce.com was chosen as a finalist from among 16 nominations in the category. Nominated products underwent an extensive review by judges via live demonstration, trial product access, and analysis of product documentation.

FinancialForce.com was also selected by THINKStrategies as a winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program. The BoSS Awards program is an ongoing program of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace, which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations.

FinancialForce.com is backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, salesforce.com and UNIT4.

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To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

Centerstance Moves to Force.com and Connects CRM, PSA and Accounting on a Single Cloud Platform

Wed, 18 May 2011 14:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that Centerstance, a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies identify and move key business processes to the cloud, has chosen to standardize its IT infrastructure on Force.com, the leading cloud computing platform from Salesforce.com. As such, the company has implemented end-to-end Services Resource Planning (SRP) using the Salesforce CRM application, FinancialForce Accounting and FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA).

Centerstance is closing the loop between sales, project delivery and accounting to help them sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively while leveraging the scalability, flexibility, and TCO advantages of the world’s leading cloud platform. Having a single system to manage sales and service is enabling their services teams to base their decisions on the same data, in real time, so decision-making is efficient and effective. Resources are managed more effectively across customer projects and access to past, current and future project information in one system allows them to make better short term and long term decisions, which positively impact their customers, team, and business.

“We make a living by ensuring the delivery of ROI on the IT strategies we recommend to our clients,” said John Marshall, Managing Director of Delivery, Centerstance. “Where companies integrate systems across business processes in the cloud and data silos are eradicated, they see huge value through better collaboration and more visibility over customer care and team performance, which is vital for professional services firms. We are confident in our strategy and believe that truly integrated systems, that share the same cloud development ethos, can deliver significant advantage.”

The best professional services organizations have a clear strategy, with well synchronized teams, operating in a coordinated and collaborative environment. Despite this, many professional services organizations struggle to align their underlying systems and processes to support their strategies and truly create a collaborative workplace. The impact of a siloed approach on utilization and profitability was exposed in research conducted recently by Service Performance Insight (SPI Research), a research and consulting organization dedicated to benchmarking the performance of professional services organizations. It showed that the Top 5% firms benefit from integrated systems and report almost double the revenue growth and more than 250% higher net profit than the benchmark average. They also report a high level of customer referenceability.

“Through a single log-in, the management team has insight into our business operations that we didn’t have before,” said Greg Lueck, managing partner, Centerstance. “We recently acquired a new company and had none of the IT issues that used to be associated with merging a business. Through one log-in, they had immediate access to everything they needed. It is important that we practice what we preach, and we feel strongly that integrating business functions using cloud applications on Force.com is delivering for us in spades.”

Centerstance is one of several leading services firms that have recently selected FinancialForce solutions. Other PSA customers include: IMS Health, NAV Canada, Maxwell Systems and Convio Inc.

FinancialForce PSA is a cloud based solution that leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com to the benefit of services organizations. It enables services organizations to manage their people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. FinancialForce SRP is the first complete Services Resource Planning (SRP) solution built entirely on Force.com. Combining Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA, and FinancialForce Accounting, the solution helps services companies sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively and overcome the obstacles found in a siloed or fragmented systems approach.

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About Centerstance
Centerstance helps companies who are confronting business transformation and solution development issues. Unlike traditional technology solution providers or classic management consultants, our experts are firmly rooted in both worlds, enabling us to define and deliver business solutions for our clients. We're proud to possess one of the strongest management consulting teams on the West Coast. We're recognized as the regional expert in helping companies identify and move key business processes to the Cloud. We serve clients of all sizes, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. To learn more please visit www.centerstance.com

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com CEO to Present at All About the Cloud Conference

Wed, 11 May 2011 13:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that president and CEO Jeremy Roche will present a session on cloud platforms at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) All About Cloud conference, taking place at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, May 23-26, 2011. Roche’s presentation, “Using Cloud Platforms to Enable a Free-Market Approach to Apps,” is scheduled for Wednesday, May 25, at 11:50am. Details are as follows:

Who: Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com
What: “Using Cloud Platforms to Enable a Free-Market Approach to Apps”
Where: All About Cloud, Palace Hotel, 2 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco
When: Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 11:50 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PT

In his session, Roche will examine how cloud is driving a shift in a well established industry and how it is starting to enable users to look beyond single cloud app selections and commit to a preferred cloud platform to replace single-source ERP. He will also discuss how FinancialForce.com is leading the way for free-market ERP on the Force.com platform and reshaping the battle for financial and accounting applications. More on this topic can be found on FinancialForce.com's blog.

Roche was the driving force behind the creation of FinancialForce.com in 2009 with investments from UNIT4 and salesforce.com. Prior to launching FinancialForce.com, he was instrumental in the success and global expansion of CODA, a UK-headquartered public company specializing in enterprise accounting applications and subsequently acquired by UNIT4.

FinancialForce.com was recently named a finalist in the 26 th annual CODiETM Awards in the Best Financial Management Solution category. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 25 th at the CODiE Awards Luncheon, to be held as part of the SIIA All About Cloud conference.

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About All About the Cloud Conference
OpSource and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) proudly bring you the world's largest ISV Cloud Computing conference, All About the Cloud. Marking its 6th year, All About the Cloud represents the world's largest forum for the advancement of the as-a-service industry. From security and compliance, true multi-tenancy, integration, and platform strategies, All About the Cloud has it all. The Cloud is here to stay and it is changing the way every one of us consumes IT services and delivers applications.
For more information please go to: http://siia.net/aatc/2011/default.asp

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

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Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Finalist for 2011 CODiE Awards in Business Software

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has been named a finalist in the 26^th annual CODiE^TM Awards in the Best Financial Management Solution category.

FinancialForce.com was chosen as a finalist from among 16 nominations in the category. Nominated products underwent an extensive review by judges via live demonstration, trial product access, and analysis of product documentation. Finalists will now be reviewed by SIIA members, who will vote on winners for each category. The winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 25 th at the CODiE Awards Luncheon, to be held as part of the SIIA All About Cloud conference, where Jeremy Roche, the president and CEO of FinancialForce.com, will be speaking about "Using Cloud Platforms to Enable a Free-Market Approach to Apps."

"We are thrilled to be named a finalist for the 2011 CODIE Awards," said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO, FinancialForce.com. "FinancialForce Accounting is the ideal complement to Salesforce CRM, a previous winner of the CODiE awards. Because, FinancialForce Accounting and Salesforce CRM applications are embedded together on the Force.com platform, executives have complete visibility of the entire opportunity to cash process, in one cloud based system. This approach streamlines billing processes, optimizes cash and breaks down the walls between accounting and sales departments."

FinancialForce.com focuses entirely on building business applications on Force.com, the Cloud Computing platform from salesforce.com, including accounting, billing, professional services automation (PSA) and services resource planning (SRP). Its applications help fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises align finance, sales and service in a way that enables profitable growth.

"We are pleased to have such a diverse range of companies and products as finalists this year," said Rhianna Collier, Vice President of the SIIA Software Division. "The competition is always tough and it reflects the level of innovation across a wide range of companies in the industry. The growth in participation certainly mirrors what we are seeing as priorities in the business software market."

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About the CODiE Awards

The CODiE Awards, originally called the Excellence in Software Awards, were established in 1986 by the Software Publishers Association (SPA), now SIIA, so that pioneers of the then-nascent software industry could evaluate and honor each other's work. Since then, the CODiE Awards program has carried out the same purpose- to showcase the software and information industry's finest products and services and to honor excellence in corporate achievement.

About SIIA

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to more than 500 leading software and information companies. For more information, visit www.siia.net.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world's leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

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Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Selected as Best of SaaS Showplace Winner

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:40:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that it has been named by THINKstrategies as a winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program.

The BoSS Awards program is an ongoing program of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace, which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations.

“We appreciate this award from THINKstrategies and we thank them for recognizing the value we deliver to our customers,” said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. “We strongly believe that a combined FinancialForce Accounting and Salesforce CRM solution on the Force.com platform is the best way for companies to harness the power of the cloud and enable previously siloed departments to work together more effectively. As a result, our customers invoice more efficiently and accurately, collect cash more quickly, and ultimately improve customer service.”

FinancialForce.com focuses entirely on building business applications on Force.com, the Cloud Computing platform from salesforce.com, including accounting, billing, professional services automation (PSA) and services resource planning (SRP). Its applications help fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises align finance, sales and service in a way that enables profitable growth.

“With around 95% of our operations running through the Salesforce and FinancialForce systems, we have accomplished our goal of eliminating duplication of data as much as possible and feel we are massively more efficient as a result,” said Lucy Mills, business excellence manger, Nimbus Partners. “We used to spend around 45 minutes just producing an invoice and now it takes seconds.”

“By using FinancialForce.com, we initially cut month end from 4 to 2 days,” said David Tan, operations director, Quattro Innovation Group. “Even with our company doubling in size over the past 6 months we are now running month end in 1-2 days.”

“Organizations of all sizes across nearly every industry are recognizing the benefits of adopting Cloud-based, SaaS solutions to help them run their business operations better, “ said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, the founder of the SaaS Showplace, which is now a part of the new Cloud Computing Showplace, and managing director of THINKstrategies, the strategic consulting firm, which conceived and administers the Showplace. “FinancialForce.com’s SaaS-based applications enable organizations to more effectively manage their operations at a lower cost so they can achieve their corporate objectives.”

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About the SaaS and Cloud Computing Showplace

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Showplace is a part of the newly expanded Cloud Computing Showplace, the largest, vendor-independent, online directory and best practice resource center of SaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions including Managed Services, founded and administered by THINKstrategies.

This Showplace was established in 2006 to provide:

• Enterprise decision-makers a quick directory of the leading SaaS providers and a convenient source of valuable insight regarding SaaS trends.
• SaaS providers a targeted tool to increase their visibility among enterprise decision-makers, and gain access to key enabling technology suppliers.
• Enabling technology suppliers a specialized platform to increase industry awareness regarding their SaaS solutions.

For more information, go to www.cloudshowplace.com.

About THINKstrategies, Inc.

THINKstrategies, Inc. is the only strategic consulting services company focused entirely on helping its clients capitalize on the unprecedented business opportunities created by the technology industry shift from a product-centric to a services-driven orientation and an 'on-demand' delivery model.

THINKstrategies' mission is to help our clients re-THINK their corporate strategies, and refocus their limited resources to achieve their business objectives. THINKstrategies helps enterprise decision-makers with their sourcing strategies, IT solutions providers with their marketing strategies, and VCs with their investment strategies.

For more information regarding THINKstrategies' unique consulting services, visit www.thinkstrategies.com, or contact us at info@thinkstrategies.com.

About FinancialForce.com

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Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

Perceptive Software Rated Top 5% Best of the Best Professional Services Firms in SPI 2011 Maturity Benchmark

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) customer Perceptive Software has been rated in the top 5% best-of-the-best Professional Services (PS) organizations benchmarked against more than 200 leading firms in this year’s PS Maturity Benchmark Report from SPI Research.

Service Performance Insight (SPI Research) is a research and consulting organization dedicated to helping PS organizations make quantum improvements in operational efficiency and effectiveness. Based on analysis of the 214 participating organizations, SPI Research found twelve firms (5%), including Perceptive Software, that significantly outperformed the benchmark average by excelling in all five service performance dimensions – Leadership, Finance and Operations, Human Capital Alignment, Service Execution and Client Relationships. The Top 5% firms reported almost double the revenue growth and more than 250% higher net profit than the benchmark average. They also report a high level of customer referenceability.

Perceptive Software is a strong proponent of cloud computing and is building an applications infrastructure on the Force.com platform from Salesforce.com. The company relies on Salesforce CRM integrated with FinancialForce PSA to deliver competitive advantage.

“Having one system for both sales and service is vital for services teams to be successful,” said Patrick Kearney, Vice President, Professional Services, Perceptive Software. “We base our decisions on the same data, in real time, helping us manage resources more efficiently and effectively across customer projects. Ultimately, this allows us to make better short term and long term decisions that positively impact our customers, our team, and our business.”

The SPI report also measured the value of systems integration and real-time visibility. In the study, companies with integrated CRM and PSA systems reported higher bid/win ratios, higher project margins, higher utilization and higher revenue per billable consultant. The report states: “Every leading organization has invested in a PSA solution and they are twice as likely to have integrated their PSA application with their core financial application. This level of integration between their PSA and core financial applications provides excellent visibility to resource scheduling and project profitability so they can quickly respond to changing requirements while delivering best-in-class margins.”

“Professional services organizations typically have a difficult job balancing customers, profitability and the team,” said Todd Bursey, General Manager, PSA at FinancialForce.com. “It is vital that they do this successfully through a collaborative applications approach so they can direct their attention and resources to selling and delivering for their customers, not wrestling with technical integration or administrative burdens. Thanks to FinancialForce.com, services teams can fully integrate CRM, PSA and Accounting on one platform, leveraging the full power of the cloud to optimize their business.”

FinancialForce PSA is a cloud based solution that leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com to the benefit of services organizations. It enables services organizations to manage their people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application, providing early visibility into new projects and demand on resources, a single view of the customer and actionable insight into data that makes a difference. They get the benefits of native integration with Salesforce CRM and the scalability and flexibility of the world’s leading enterprise cloud platform.

SPI Research, Perceptive Software and FinancialForce.com will host a webinar on Wednesday, April 20th at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET/7:00 pm BST with the topic “Aligning Sales and Service for Growth.” It will discuss sales and service challenges and business processes, looking at best practice examples and how CRM and PSA integration drives growth for professional services organizations. To register, please visit the registration page for this event.

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About Perceptive Software (www.perceptivesoftware.com)
Perceptive Software, a stand-alone business unit within Lexmark International, builds enterprise content management software to help organizations effortlessly manage the entire lifecycle of their documents and information, fueling greater operational efficiency. Organizations in more than 30 countries rely on Perceptive Software and its flagship product ImageNow® to simplify their business processes through cost-effective content management solutions that create immediate and lasting impact.

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.
To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Delivers the First End-to-End Cloud Solution for the Professional Services Industry on Force.com

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today launched FinancialForce SRP, the first complete Services Resource Planning (SRP) solution built entirely on Force.com. Combining Salesforce CRM, professional services automation (PSA), and accounting, the solution helps services companies sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively while leveraging the scalability, flexibility, and TCO advantages of the world's leading cloud platform.

Professional services firms have traditionally been underserved by the various point solutions available on the market. Lacking effective end-to-end solutions, services organizations are left to address different parts of the project lifecycle through separate, siloed applications: CRM to manage sales, PSA to manage people and project portfolios, and accounting products for billing, accounts receivable and project accounting.

The impact of a siloed approach on utilization and profitability was exposed in a recent study by Services Performance Research titled: The 2011 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark. The authors surveyed 214 professional services organizations and analyzed firms against a maturity model which included metrics to measure the value of systems integration and real-time visibility. In the study, companies with integrated CRM and PSA systems reported higher bid/win ratios, higher project margins, higher utilization and higher revenue per billable consultant.

"We have already seen tremendous value from linking our CRM and PSA applications in Salesforce," said Tom Link, CTO, Universal Mind. "It provides the entire company with better insight into our customers and the services we are providing to them, rather than the fragmented view of customers, projects and resources many services organizations struggle with today. The addition of a cloud accounting application that also 'speaks Salesforce' will deliver further visibility and efficiency benefits. These business activities are dependent on one another and cannot truly be synergistic and collaborative without connected systems that mirror the way we work."

"There's a real need in the market for a complete SRP solution," said Scott Guinn, Research Director, Enterprise Applications at IDC. "An end-to-end solution on the Force.com cloud platform can deliver compelling benefits to services companies, particularly those who don't have their Salesforce CRM system well integrated to PSA."

As the only end-to-end solution for services companies on the Force.com cloud platform, FinancialForce SRP closes the loop between sales, project delivery and accounting. FinancialForce.com applications share the same secure, scalable Force.com platform as Salesforce CRM, enabling services companies to run all of their core systems on a single solution with common customer account records, user interface, login, workflow engine, and reporting tools.

Organizations gain visibility and actionable insight by seeing all activities related to a customer on one 360° account view, including activities from sales, professional services, billing, and accounts receivable. Processes flow seamlessly from sales through project management and services delivery to accounts receivable and general ledger; an optimized process for invoicing and receivables speeds payment and maximizes cash flow.

"Professional services organizations need to focus their attention and resources on selling and delivering services, not wrestling with technical integration or administrative burdens," said Todd Bursey, General Manager, PSA at FinancialForce.com. "With our SRP solution, FinancialForce.com is making it possible for the first time for these companies to leverage the full power of the Force.com platform to optimize their businesses."

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world's leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com."

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

Linvio and FinancialForce.com Integrate e-Payments with Accounting for salesforce.com customers

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Linvio, Inc. and FinancialForce.com today announced the integration of Linvio's PaymentConnect ecommerce framework with FinancialForce Accounting on Force.com, the cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. This combined solution creates the only native end-to-end order management, accounting and e-commerce solution for salesforce.com customers.

The FinancialForce application provides Salesforce users with comprehensive accounting functionality, while PaymentConnect adds support for managing e-payments, building payment-based workflow automation, and integrating services provided by PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net and RBS Worldpay. Combined, these products connect invoicing to online payment and record processed payments against entries in the general ledger. The PaymentConnect framework also includes modules from Linvio and various third-party ISVs that provide out-of-the box support for Force.com-integrated shopping carts, event management, software license management, and non-profit donation management.

"We are already receiving a lot of interest for this combined solution as companies look to add e-commerce functionality to Salesforce CRM and FinancialForce Accounting," said Ron Wild, president and CTO of Linvio, Inc. "Businesses are looking for ways to run their entire operations in the cloud and we're delighted to have a solution that makes that possible."

"PaymentConnect is a very powerful and easy-to-use application that does exactly what it is supposed to do - process and manage payments," said Dave Venancio, senior manager at Den-Mat Holdings, Inc. "Within hours, PaymentConnect was able to process payments within our native Salesforce applications and soon thereafter within our custom Force.com applications. Using PaymentConnect with FinancialForce Accounting, we can automatically post cash receipts and refunds and now manage our customer service and financials end-to-end on the Force.com platform."

Business-to-business companies can automate the entire order to payment process, while business-to-consumer companies can publish product catalogues and native Salesforce store fronts or connect existing shopping cart solutions hosted outside the Salesforce environment. Integration with FinancialForce Accounting means that reconciliation of both one-time and recurring payments to the ledger are simplified. Invoices can be paid quickly and efficiently from within the Salesforce CRM application with the appropriate accounting entries automatically generated within FinancialForce Accounting.

"With the combined solution, Linvio and Financialforce.com are delivering value to salesforce.com customers and truly making the accounting process easier and more reliable," said Debbie Ashton, vice president, product at FinancialForce.com.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce Accounting is the only online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Based on 30 years of financial application development, it allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM to truly 'Speak Salesforce,' dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, cash collection and customer service. And FinancialForce Accounting's real-time, international financials solution fully leverages the native integration with Salesforce CRM, providing up to the minute market knowledge and collaboration at the speed of social networking.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:

Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

About Linvio, Inc.
Linvio specializes in "cloud-based" solutions for salesforce.com users. Whether you are a start-up, a non-profit, or a Fortune 500 enterprise, cloud-based computing can help your business operate more efficiently, more effectively, and at the same time reduce costs. Our products and custom solutions extend the capabilities of Salesforce enabling customers to build specialized content management, e-commerce, training, and a variety of other innovative applications using the salesforce.com Force.com platform. We have helped literally hundreds of companies move from desktop and on-premise solutions to manageable, scalable, and integrated software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.

FinancialForce.com Completes Acquisition of Appirio Professional Services Enterprise Solution

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:00:01 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced it has completed its acquisition of the PS Enterprise cloud solution from Appirio, Inc.

PS Enterprise gives services management the insight required to put the right people on the right projects for successful services delivery. It is not another siloed PSA (Professional Services Automation) application-it supports a services business end-to-end, bridging the gap between how services teams sell and deliver projects. Combined with FinancialForce Accounting and Salesforce CRM, it creates the only end-to-end solution for services companies on the Force.com cloud platform.

This combined application approach delivered from a single cloud platform enables FinancialForce.com to offer a complete cloud-based solution to help services companies sell work, do work and bill work more effectively. Unlike other products that are interfaced or bolted together at a programmatic level, these applications are on the same platform. They share the same customer account records, same user interface, same login, same workflow engine, same reporting tools etc. This means users can see all activities related to a customer on one account view, including activities from sales, professional services, customer service, billing and accounts receivable. Processes such as billing flow from the professional services application through to accounts receivable and general ledger. This single application environment provides unparalleled productivity, efficiencies and reporting.

"Acquiring PS Enterprise is another step in our long term strategy to provide complementary back office solutions built on the Force.com platform that deliver even greater value to salesforce.com customers," said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. "We are clearly strong believers in the power of the Force.com platform, but even we were surprised at how easily we could integrate the two solutions. This is a big benefit for our customers, and it's a clear advantage for FinancialForce.com compared to vendors who are attempting to cobble together solutions from disparate platforms."

FinancialForce.com will continue to support PS Enterprise integrations with customers' existing finance systems, both cloud-based or on-premise.

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About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com builds cloud accounting applications on Force.com, the world's leading enterprise cloud computing platform from Salesforce.com. FinancialForce applications are designed for growing organizations, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables them to increase the bottom line, not just the revenue. The expertise behind the company is based on 30 years of experience in developing accounting systems. FinancialForce.com is backed by two of the biggest players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Expands Management Team to Support Growth

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced that to meet growing market demand it has expanded the management team, making three significant appointments.

Jim Carney has joined the company as financial controller, Tom Brennan as vice president of product marketing, and Todd Bursey as general manager of the new FinancialForce PS Enterprise business. All three will report to Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com.

"The time is right to add the best talent to our leadership team, as we're already seeing a positive response from our most recent product launch, Winter 11, and our recent acquisition of Appirio PS Enterprise," said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. "The addition of Jim Carney to finance, Tom Brennan to product marketing, and Todd Bursey to lead our PS Enterprise business, comes at an opportune time, as all three gentlemen's experience and skill sets will further accelerate our expansion path."

Carney has more than 25 years of experience in finance, most recently serving as vice president of financial operations for Comcast Cable Communications. Prior to Comcast, he held financial executive positions at industry-leading companies AT&T Broadband, Charter Communications, and ARI Network Services, Inc. Carney holds a B.S. in Accounting and a Masters in Accountancy from the University of Denver.

Brennan has over 20 years of experience in the financial software space and is a pioneer in the ASP market, serving as a founding board member of the ASP Industry Consortium. Previously, he was vice president of sales and vice president of marketing at CODA, a developer of financial software for multi-national companies. Brennan went on to become vice president of sales and marketing at The Taylor Group, where he helped develop the firm into an award winning Microsoft Business Solution partner and Application Service Provider, known as ManagedOps.com. He most recently served as president of Proactis, Inc., where he successfully launched the company's North American operations. Brennan holds a B.S. in accounting from Mount St Mary's University and an M.B.A. in marketing and international business from American University.

Bursey joined the company as part of FinancialForce.com's recent acquisition of the PS Enterprise solution from Appirio, Inc. and will lead the company in the area of Professional Services Automation (PSA). Bursey spent two years at Appirio in sales and implementation roles before heading up the PS Enterprise business for the past two years. His career began at Accenture before he moved into consulting and eventually became director of business operations at Borland. Bursey holds a B.S in civil engineering from the University of Arizona.

Photos

Download print quality photos of Tom Brennan, Todd Bursey and Jim Carney.

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About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com builds cloud accounting applications on Force.com, the world's leading enterprise cloud computing platform from Salesforce.com. FinancialForce applications are designed for growing organizations, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables them to increase the bottom line, not just the revenue. The expertise behind the company is based on 30 years of experience in developing accounting systems. FinancialForce.com is backed by two of the biggest players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Bradley
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Announces Agreement to Purchase Appirio Professional Services Enterprise Solution

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced an agreement to purchase the PS Enterprise cloud solution from Appirio. The acquisition will extend FinancialForce.com's strategy of providing complementary solutions built on the Force.com platform. Together, the solution sets create the first end-to-end solution for services for project-based companies on the same cloud platform.

Unlike other application acquisitions, the line between the PSA, accounting and Salesforce CRM functions is indiscernible, and the three applications are literally embedded together on the highly secure and scalable Force.com platform. As a result, services companies can run all of their core systems - including marketing, sales and customer management; services management and delivery; and accounting and reporting - on a single solution. And by taking advantage of FinancialForce Billing, Appirio customers can now make the process of invoicing and collecting cash as swift as possible, maximizing cash flow during the lifecycle of a project.

This will be the first acquisition driven by a shared cloud platform, demonstrating the increasing importance of platforms and the growing pre-eminence of Force.com. By leveraging the Force.com platform, customers will benefit from having their data and their applications on the same platform, improving their business processes and giving them powerful, real-time visibility and reporting across their entire operation.

"PS Enterprise customers can be assured that the solution will be actively developed, supported and marketed as we seek to build on its position as one of the leading cloud based PSA solutions worldwide," said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. "We will continue to focus on this and delivering world class cloud accounting applications. This acquisition brings together two of the leading application development teams on Force.com. Our increased applications footprint means that customers benefit from our ever greater platform expertise and enjoy greater choice as the areas of functional support grow."

FinancialForce.com is backed by two of the biggest players in the applications business, majority stakeholder UNIT4 (NYSE Euronext: UNIT4) and Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM). The acquisition aligns well with the strategies of both as UNIT4 has a strong focus on solutions for services based organizations and salesforce.com has a high penetration in the services sector.

"PS Enterprise has been very successful as a standalone solution, but combined with FinancialForce.com and its domain experience, it will be even more compelling to a wider range of customers," said Todd Bursey, VP of PS Cloud at Appirio, who will be joining FinancialForce. "PS Enterprise together with FinancialForce Accounting gives services organizations of any size a more complete solution to tackle how they get the work, do the work and bill the work."

Both solution sets will continue to be sold and supported separately. PS Enterprise will continue to integrate with customers' existing finance systems, both cloud-based or on-premise.

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About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Dan Reidy
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: dan@reidycommunications.com
Tel: 415-497-3109

The Deal - Unzipping the Wall Between Sales and Finance

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Endless and impossible targets, the pressure to create revenue and off the wall office one-upmanship are the stuff of comedy in this satirical debut novel highlighting the ups and downs of life in sales and balancing the new business pipeline of requirements with closing a deal. Launching today, The Deal is available as a free eBook and can be downloaded at www.saleslovesfinance.com. It takes a no-holds-barred view of the age-old tenacious relationship between sales and finance, with something for everyone: comedy, corporate intrigue, and even some office romance.

The Deal tells a story all too familiar to those in corporate office culture. An overly aggressive salesperson, hell bent on making High Achievers Club, is forced together with a by-the-numbers, buttoned-up accountant to resolve the problems that plague so many companies: walking a tightrope between the new business pipeline of requirements and closing the next big sales deal.

Praise for The Deal

"This is a very original-and very humorous-look at the intricate relationship between sales and finance. It delivers the pivotal lessons of the new era of computing in an entertaining way. A great read."

- Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, salesforce.com

"The book is sophisticated enough to blow past the ordinary stereotypes of what makes up a sales 'guy' and a finance 'person' and shows you the more granular - and truer - way they interact at companies. Then it goes on to give you guideposts on actually resolving those often destructive tensions. I literally read this short book in one sitting."

- Paul Greenberg, Author, CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition

"The move to cloud computing is, rather than some assume, much more than a replacement of in-house IT with outsourced. Rather it is a fundamental change which enables a level of transparency, collaboration and efficiency that was simply impossible previously. The Deal tells that story in an engaging and entertaining way."

- Ben Kepes, Industry analyst

The Deal was done in collaboration with FinancialForce.com, the leading provider of online cloud accounting solutions. The FinancialForce.com team contributed real-life anecdotes from their experiences of working closely with sales and finance teams who have found success in moving to cloud CRM and accounting solutions.

"The Deal is the new handbook for those frustrated stars of sales and finance who know there's a better way to work together," said Jeremy Roche, President & CEO of FinancialForce.com. "The Deal is a satirical way to look at a serious subject and shares our goal to unite sales and finance. We hope people enjoy this creative and humorous approach to telling an important story and can take some inspiration from it."

Free copies of the book are available while stocks last at the DreamForce conference this week, booth #806 or go to www.saleslovesfinance.com to download a free copy of the book for Kindle, iPad or other e-readers.

Excerpts from the book

Dave Whitman, Sales: "We are not on the same side. You're in Finance. I'm in Sales. We're the chicken and the fox. The dying man and the buzzard. The dingo and the baby. We are natural enemies. It's nothing personal. It's just the way it is. Your job is to make my life harder. My job is to prevent you from torpedoing deals."

Jessica Holmes, Finance: "If the company is a body, Sales is the ears. Finance is the brain. We take raw information and do something with it. And we're the heart. Because the lifeblood of this company is revenue, and who controls that? We do. We regulate the blood. Which makes us the liver, too, now that I think about it. And the spleen. We manage the waste of your expense reports. We're essentially the entire body. Except the ears."

"...we have a gnome. To tell who last updated the spreadsheet. We call him Gerald. He's-"

"A gnome."

"He's a little toy with green boots and a red hat. You know. A plastic toy. And if you need to update the spreadsheet, you look around the office to see who's got the gnome. Then you ask them to email you the spreadsheet. And you take the gnome, so the next person knows who has the latest version. It's not as stupid as it sounds."

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Media Contact:
Maria Krinsky
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com Completes the CRM to Finance Cycle with Winter '11

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

San Mateo, CA., December 01, 2010: FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced Winter '11, the 5th generation release of FinancialForce Accounting. As well as significant user enhancements, the release delivers new capabilities for Sales Ordering and the Quote to Cash process, making the combined FinancialForce.com and salesforce.com applications the first, and only end-to-end CRM to Accounting solution available on the Force.com platform.

Winter '11 is designed to deliver an enhanced user experience including advancements in reporting while other new features have been added to make the transition from Sage and QuickBooks easier for smaller companies. FinancialForce.com has also added a new Sales Order application that is completely embedded and initiated from within Salesforce CRM's Opportunity and Quote functions.

Using this new facility, sales orders can be created from an opportunity or quote in a single click. High volume organizations can produce orders automatically in the background, benefiting from a "no touch" order processing environment, eliminating rekeying or the need for a detached order system between the CRM and finance functions. After a sales order is approved, users can instantly create an invoice from the order and produce the associated accounting entries by using FinancialForce Billing. The end result is a seamless process that completes the Opportunity to Cash or Quote to Cash cycles all on the same cloud platform.

"Quote to cash is a fundamental process in any organization," said Lucy Mills, Partner and Product Manager, Nimbus. "At Nimbus we needed to streamline our processes. With FinancialForce Accounting Winter '11, our users can seamlessly drive sales opportunities to recognized revenue, connecting sales and finance and removing discrepancies while retaining our core vision - One Nimbus, One strategy, One platform."

In addition to filling the process gap between disparate systems, FinancialForce Winter '11 connects information and the people involved with the Quote to Cash cycle across departmental boundaries. This customer-centric approach presents finance teams with an iron clad audit trail that extends from the balances in the General Ledger all the way back into Salesforce CRM opportunities, including a view of customer quote activity. Conversely, it provides customer facing employees with a complete view of the financial activity from within Salesforce CRM, so they can understand the customer's current credit status and payment history, enabling them to avoid sales to bad payers and assist in collecting past due accounts.

"Cloud computing is about more than just cheaper and faster software, it can make it much easier to integrate processes that cross departments and share information" said Robert Kugel, senior vice president, Ventana Research. "FinancialForce Winter '11 provides the next step that enables sales and finance teams to align their efforts to help companies operate more effectively and maximize the value of every customer order."

"Customer orders are the lifeblood of any business, so it is surprising how many companies struggle to perform this efficiently and accurately," said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. "More than ever, every customer order counts, and the more efficient companies are in responding to demand, the bigger the benefits. Our customers will enjoy lower transaction and administrative costs, more accurate billing, faster cash collections and higher customer satisfaction."

FinancialForce.com delivers three releases every year, ensuring all customers benefit from the latest cloud accounting technology to manage their finance functions. The next phase of development will focus on the contract management process.

FinancialForce Accounting Winter '11 and Sales Orders will be available from the Salesforce.com AppExchange. FinancialForce Sales Orders can be easily self-implemented using a specially designed QuickStart wizard, so customers can start benefiting from this new functionality in 30 minutes or less from initial installation to entering sales orders and inquiries.

- ends -

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is an online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Based on 30 years of financial application development, it allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM to truly 'Speak Salesforce,' dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, cash collection and customer service. And FinancialForce Accounting's real-time, international financials solution fully leverages the native integration with Salesforce CRM, providing up to the minute market knowledge and collaboration at the speed of social networking.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Dan Reidy
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: dan@reidycommunications.com
Tel: 415-497-3109

FinancialForce.com Delivers New Self-Service Finance Portal to Improve Customer Loyalty and Cash Flow

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 06:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today released 'My Account', extending the benefits of the Salesforce Customer Portal. Using My Account, FinancialForce Accounting users can securely publish billing and payment activity for their customers on a Salesforce Customer Portal.

My Account enables businesses to provide their customers financial self-service, 24 hours a day, adding a financial dimension to a company's overall customer relationship management strategy. With My Account, these customers can view outstanding invoices, purchasing history, payment status and download invoices electronically. It provides a transparent view of the financial relationship between customer and supplier, increasing customer satisfaction while reducing a finance department's workload.

'We are saving time through automated invoice processing with FinancialForce Accounting and the self-service portal is a great add-on,' said Tracy Howard, Controller at Wi-Fi Alliance. 'As a membership organization it is important that we are clear and transparent in all our financial transactions. We are an early adopter of My Account, and it's apparent that it will help us provide members with account status updates and encourage quicker payment of invoices. The portal provides the same intuitive user experience we have come to expect from FinancialForce.com.'

My Account addresses several of the issues that impact the management of customer-supplier relationships, including:

providing a common location for suppliers and customers to cooperatively resolve payment issues;
clarifying which invoices are due for payment;
eliminating the typical back and forth activities related to lost invoices and other invoice history requests;
enabling customers to elect to be notified when new invoices have been posted to the Portal, keeping them informed and encouraging prompt payment; and
improving Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and cash flow while simultaneously reducing service costs and time spent dealing with payment disputes.

'We see huge benefit in improving synergy and collaboration between the accounting, service and sales functions,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com. 'We believe CRM should incorporate all aspects of a business relationship, including the financial relationship. My Account extends the financial and receivables views we currently provide to Salesforce CRM users to their customers. This leads to a more holistic and seamless service experience for the customer.'

- ends -

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is the only online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Based on 30 years of financial application development, it allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM to truly 'Speak Salesforce,' dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, cash collection and customer service. And FinancialForce Accounting's real-time, international financials solution fully leverages the native integration with Salesforce CRM, providing up to the minute market knowledge and collaboration at the speed of social networking.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:

Maria Krinsky
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

A Year in the Life - FinancialForce.com Celebrates 1st Anniversary

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 06:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, celebrates its first anniversary and 12 month milestone with record volumes of new customers signed in the last quarter.

FinancialForce.com was founded in 2009 with an investment from UNIT4, one of the world's largest business software companies, and salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company. The number of countries in which user organizations are based has hit 20 with users across five continents. FinancialForce Accounting remains one of the top accounting systems built on Force.com, the world's most successful cloud computing platform.

'The FinancialForce.com team has grown considerably, particularly in North America, with significant growth in customer-facing staff,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. 'At the same time we have launched innovation after innovation - from Chatter integration and the first application for Chatter, through apps for the iPhone and Blackberry - as well as a steady stream of core product updates. It's been an exciting first year as FinancialForce.com. Our success is testament to the reach of cloud computing, the power of Force.com and the strength of our team's global financial accounting expertise.'

FinancialForce.com users have given the cloud accounting solution rave reviews in videos, at events and on salesforce.com's AppExchange, where its average score is a near-perfect 4.9 out of 5. It is particularly popular with organizations using Salesforce CRM, who can sign up for FinancialForce Accounting and immediately have access to a finance system that seamlessly ties the sales, billing and finance processes together without need for integration.

George Hu, EVP of platform, marketing and alliances at salesforce.com and board director of FinancialForce.com, said, 'Customers are generating business success with FinancialForce Accounting by gaining the unique benefits of running CRM and accounting on the same platform. FinancialForce.com's rapid success in just a year is further proof that the most critical business applications, such as accounting, can be built and run on the Force.com enterprise cloud computing platform.'

Customers include Telegraph Media Group, the WiFi Alliance, Life Champions, Voxclever, University of Houston's Sales Excellence Institute and the Compliance Team, Inc. They have moved from legacy systems including those from Quickbooks, Sage and Netsuite to move their accounting to FinancialForce.com.

'Many have outgrown their old accounting systems, need serious international capabilities or just want a modern cloud finance system that can scale with them as they change and grow,' said Jeremy Roche. 'Customers are using our solutions to run their business better, or to innovate in ways they never could before. With tools like Chatter and mobile applications they're giving staff the tools to do their jobs better and deliver genuine customer success.'

- ends -

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange 2

Force.com is the only proven enterprise platform for building and running business applications in the cloud. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM (http://www.salesforce.com/) applications, more than 800 ISV partner applications like those from CA Technologies, FinancialForce.com and Fujitsu, and 170,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 82,400 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel. Force.com also enables developers to make any enterprise app social by leveraging the social collaboration components including profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds available with Chatter.

Applications built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed to the entire cloud computing community through the salesforce.com AppExchange 2 marketplace http://appexchange.salesforce.com/, now featuring the ChatterExchange.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is an online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Based on 30 years of financial application development, it allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM to truly 'Speak Salesforce,' dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, cash collection and customer service. And FinancialForce Accounting's real-time, international financials solution fully leverages the native integration with Salesforce CRM, providing up to the minute market knowledge and collaboration at the speed of social networking.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Dan Reidy
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
Email: dan@reidycommunications.com
Tel: 415-497-3109

All Traffic Solutions Selects Ascent for Salesforce and FinancialForce Accounting via Salesforce.com AppExchange 2

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:00:00 +0100

Precisio Business Solutions, the makers of Ascent, and FinancialForce.com, today announced that a mutual customer, All Traffic Solutions, has deployed Ascent for Salesforce and FinancialForce Accounting via AppExchange 2 for a complete Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Built using Force.com, the enterprise cloud computing platform, Ascent for Salesforce and FinancialForce Accounting are immediately available for test drive and deployment on AppExchange 2 at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

'Having received an amazing response to a recently introduced web-based product line, we needed an enterprise solution that could scale easily, adapt quickly and provide instant awareness across the company,' said Scott Johnson, co-founder of All Traffic Solutions. 'We identified pre-integrated applications on Force.com that are well positioned to fully meet our business needs. Being able to select top providers for key portions of our process and have them work as one is something you just don't get with any other ERP strategy.'

Ascent for Salesforce incorporates many enterprise functions such as sales order fulfillment, purchase orders, inventory management, master planning, production work orders and RF bar code scanning, and bar code printing capabilities, to name a few. Financial Force develops online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform. Centralizing business systems on Force.com will ensure seamless business processes from order and customer management, and accounting.

'This is a very exciting time for all of us. The combination of Ascent and FinancialForce Accounting on AppExchange 2 has created a reliable and innovative ERP solution in the cloud. The Force.com platform is truly a robust architectural foundation to solve any business need,' said Shaun McInerney, president of Precisio. 'All Traffic Solutions and many other customers are a testimony to Force.com as a powerful and reliable business platform.'

'Customers love adding real-time financials, all in the cloud with FinancialForce Accounting, and they want to bring that same benefit to more functional areas of their businesses,' said Debbie Ashton, vice president, products at FinancialForce.com. 'With cloud apps, end users can take a customized approach to ERP and have the ability to quickly tailor the solution to their specific needs. All this without the set-up and cost issues usually associated with such large enterprise-wide IT projects.'

'Salesforce.com's AppExchange 2 is the ideal avenue for partners like FinancialForce and Precisio to come together to provide our customers outstanding value,' said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer at salesforce.com. 'The innovation and reliability FinancialForce Accounting and Ascent for Salesforce provides in tandem with salesforce.com creates a powerhouse ERP system for customers.'

–ends –

About All Traffic Solutions

Located in State College, Pa., All Traffic Solutions is the traffic safety division of Intuitive Control Systems, LLC For more information, please visit www.alltrafficsolutuions.com.

Scott Johnson
All Traffic Solutions
814 237 9005 x 202

About Precisio Business Solutions

Precisio Business Solutions has been recognized in many ways by partners and customers for their innovation and steadfast ability to support the Ascent application. Some examples include being named a finalist for Native App of the year at salesforce.com's 2008 Dreamforce conference, being named a 2009 Force40 finalist and several stellar reviews on the Force.com AppExchange directory. Ascent for Salesforce CRM is deployed and servicing customers globally on the Force.com platform.

For more information visit www.ascenterp.com or contact:
Shaun McInerney
908 981 0150
smcinerney@ascenterp.com

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is the only online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com.

For more information visit www.FinancialForce.com or contact:
Maria Krinsky
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
415 704 5012
maria@reidycommunications.com

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange 2

Life Champions Upgrades to FinancialForce Accounting from Sage to Support Membership Drive

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced that Life Champions has chosen to replace Sage with FinancialForce Accounting to support its mobile membership sales initiative.

Life Champions is a specialist membership management organisation working on behalf of local and international charities and not-for-profit membership organisations to offer incentives to existing members and to encourage new ones. The business plans to extend its team to include field agents to promote membership. Field agents will be equipped with iPads and will record new opportunities directly in Salesforce CRM. Credit card payments can be processed on the spot and transactions seamlessly created in FinancialForce Accounting.

The Life Champions membership programme generates continuous revenue to the Chosen Causes and FinancialForce Accounting will manage that process. The seamless connection between FinancialForce Accounting and Salesforce CRM means all this can be done through a single input by the field agent working remotely from an iPad. For the first time, Life Champions will have a real-time view of every new membership transaction, outstanding payments and real-time balance sheet data.

'Our entire platform has been scaled to over 500m accounts in multiple territories and therefore needed the scalability and flexibility that FinancialForce Accounting delivers through cloud computing architecture.' said Simon Stimpson, President & CEO, Life Champions. 'Our systems will manage over 1m Chosen Causes providing live reporting and visibility to enable us to amend campaigns on the fly. Providing real-time reporting and trigger based integration to our marketing campaigns through Social Media and digital marketing channels will help us maintain our industry beating operational statistics. Whilst still a relatively young company, our Cloud based architecture and innovative product range allows us to compete on a world stage at a fraction of the cost which in turn, will provide sustainable revenues for our Chosen Causes'

–ends –

About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Emma Hoyle
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

About Life Champions

Life Champions is a membership rewards and benefits company delivering innovative loyalty programmes to not-for-profits, schools, charities, social media groups, membership organisations, retailers and brand owners. Our Enterprise Cloud CRM system enables us to support over 1m Chosen Causes whilst providing hi value service to members and new revenue streams to our retail and commercial partners.

To learn more please visit www.life-champions.net

Media Contact:
Lynn Loganathan
Head of Marketing
+44 (0) 203 170 8775

Mindflash.com Adopts FinancialForce.com to Better Integrate Sales and Finance Operations

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced that Mindflash.com (http://www.mindflash.com) has selected FinancialForce Accounting to more tightly integrate its finance and sales operations.

Mindflash.com is revolutionizing employee training by making online training easier, faster and more cost effective than ever before. Mindflash's easy-to-use tools enable anyone to create a training on anything, using content they already have, and inserting quizzes and other learning materials to make sure employees have mastered the material. By using Mindflash, small business owners can be confident of each and every employee's abilities.

By leveraging FinancialForce Accounting, Mindflash is able to directly connect financial information with the company's Salesforce CRM system, facilitating a tighter integration between financial and sales operations. The FinancialForce application enables Mindflash to consolidate the management of customers and financials within the Force.com suite to ensure the best possible customer service and overall business efficiencies.

'FinancialForce.com's tight integration with our Salesforce CRM and the real-time financials provided by FinancialForce Accounting have enabled us to further optimize our customer service and business performance,' said Jason MacMurray, VP Operations and Partnerships, Mindflash.com.

FinancialForce Accounting works seamlessly with Salesforce CRM because it is built on the Force.com platform. FinancialForce Accounting automatically taps into the existing customer records, product lists and price lists in Salesforce CRM. It leverages all the infrastructure and software systems used to build Salesforce CRM, including its tools for customization, integration, reporting and collaboration. And because FinancialForce Accounting was built into Salesforce CRM - and not interfaced – it eliminates issues with master record synchronizations, time lags, transaction interfaces or batch updates that are typical when integrating non-native finance and accounting systems to Salesforce CRM.

–ends –

About Mindflash.com

Mindflash is revolutionizing employee training by making online training easier, faster and more cost effective than ever before. Mindflash helps organizations give employees the vital information they need to succeed. Mindflash's easy-to-use tools allow users to create online courses for their colleagues, using content they already have, adding a quiz to ensure uptake and reporting on the results. Mindflash.com investors include the Investment Group of Santa Barbara (IGSB). The company is based in Santa Barbara, Calif., with an office opening soon in Palo Alto, Calif.

To learn more please visit www.mindflash.com

About FinancialForce.com

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:

Maria Krinsky
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

myGearStore Upgrades to FinancialForce Accounting from NetSuite to Enable Apps to 'Speak Salesforce'

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced that myGearStore has chosen to replace NetSuite with FinancialForce Accounting to help fulfill up to 7,000 sales per day during peak season.

myGearStore sells the latest Apple accessories via its website, www.myGearStore.com, as well as Amazon.com, eBay, Buy.com, and their retail store in Orange County, CA. The business has to account for 600 to 3,000 transactions every day while providing a smooth customer experience and accurate payment processing. Centralizing its business systems on Force.com from salesforce.com and rolling out FinancialForce Accounting will ensure seamless business processes from order management, shipping and accounting.

FinancialForce Accounting works seamlessly with Salesforce CRM. The myGearStore customer service team has immediate access to accurate sales data, empowering them to organize replacements and credit notes with confidence. Working with cloud applications on Force.com gives myGearStore a real-time view of every open transaction and current balance sheet data.

'We were previously using NetSuite but found that we struggled to reliably maintain all our integrations to marketplaces,' said Ben VanderBeek, Executive Director of IT, myGearStore. 'We deal with a high volume of relatively low value transactions, and are 100% reliant on connected systems to help us manage electronic transactions accurately. FinancialForce Accounting will enable us to have sales and finance on the same platform so we have a true picture of business performance at all times. The application is easy to use and has the same look and feel as Salesforce CRM, so it's like using one system. Our knowledge of Force.com means we can easily customize our applications as required.'

Leveraging the combined FinancialForce.com and salesforce.com solution, myGearStore has ambitious plans for its future. The cloud computing model will allow rapid scaling in line with business growth while providing seamless data flow and consistent sales and service effectiveness.

-ends -

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is the only online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Based on 30 years of financial application development, it allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM to truly 'Speak Salesforce,' dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, cash collection and customer service. And FinancialForce.com's real-time, international financials solution fully leverages the native integration with Salesforce CRM, providing up to the minute market knowledge and collaboration at the speed of social networking.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.

Media Contact:
Maria Krinsky
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

Survey: Salesforce CRM Customers Long for Link into the Finance Department

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Even as IDC reports that Software-as-a-Service solutions may soon overtake traditional packaged applications in total sales, integration between disparate elements continues to be a top concern among many users. In particular, the majority of recently surveyed Salesforce CRM users are fed up with the lack of integration provided by popular financial and accounting solutions, including QuickBooks and Sage.

Professionals from more than 200 small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in North America described the biggest challenges with their current accounting solution in the survey. Of those who used Quickbooks or Sage and Salesforce CRM, 67% cited lack of CRM integration as their biggest headache.

The survey was conducted by FinancialForce.com, developer of the only cloud accounting application built natively on the Force.com platform from Salesforce.com. Launched in 2009, Salesforce CRM customers including Telegraph Media Group, CyberSafe Limited and the Wi-Fi Alliance have deployed FinancialForce Accounting to replace their legacy accounting systems. FinancialForce Accounting shares Salesforce CRM's simple design and interface and provides a highly sophisticated financial management solution that scales from the smallest to the most complex multinational organization.

Survey participants went one step further to provide color on how the lack of integration impacts their work and their companies, including:

'We have a double entry problem between Salesforce CRM opportunities and QuickBooks purchase order records and we don't have our finances in the cloud.'
'Our accounting app leaves finance very disconnected from business, as opposed to being in the thick of it.'
'Does not integrate with Salesforce CRM, which we are increasingly adopting across the organization. We are faced with a large integration challenge or a change of financial application.'
'Invoicing needs to be integrated into salesforce.com.'
'We had to build our own A/P and A/R in salesforce.com, and it isn't connected with our accounting app.'
'Our accounting app cannot track sending and receipt of invoices without manual entry in salesforce.com.'

Other frustrations cited by respondents included a lack of multi-company functionality, an unwieldy amount of manual data entry, incompatibility with Macs and an inability to scale:

'[QuickBooks] doesn't do multi-user gracefully.'
'I have a multi-product, multi- sector, i.e., multi-revenue stream business. Quickbooks cannot handle it without excessive data input.'
'We use Macs and PCs and even the online version does not work on both.'
'[The program] generally feels like 1999.'

'Our sales team loves using Salesforce CRM, but we were frustrated by the lack of a direct link of what was quoted to customers and what they actually bought and were billed for. Managing invoices was a full time task,' said Tim Alsop, Technical Director of CyberSafe Limited. 'Since the finance team got on board with FinancialForce Accounting, there's a new love affair that's been struck. The sales and accounting teams are now on the same page. We've replaced inefficient manual processes with better customer service, faster turnaround on key cash flow reports and a complete view of all customer accounts for the first time.'

'Communication breakdowns between sales and finance are a major cause of invoicing mistakes, impaired cash flow and damage to the bottom line,' said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. 'The tight connection between sales and accounting reduces the chance of user error, which, in turn, promotes better customer service. Our recent integration with salesforce.com's Chatter platform makes collaboration around sales opportunities even more effective. Based on the responses to this survey, customers who use desktop accounting systems that don't properly integrate with Salesforce CRM are missing a trick.'

To learn more about the FinancialForce Accounting solution, visit the new FinancialForce.com demo center.

About the Survey

The survey, recently conducted by FinancialForce, took place over a 2 week period in the second quarter of 2010. The results are based on input from over 200 finance, accounting, sales and IT professionals from small-to-medium-sized businesses in the U.S. using Salesforce CRM.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is the only online cloud accounting solution built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Based on 30 years of financial application development, it allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM to truly 'Speak Salesforce,' dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, cash collection and customer service. And FinancialForce.com's real-time, international financials solution fully leverages the native integration with Salesforce CRM, providing up to the minute market knowledge and collaboration at the speed of social networking.

Media Contact:
Maria Krinsky
Reidy Communications for FinancialForce.com
maria@reidycommunications.com
(415) 704-5012

FinancialForce.com announces VMforce™ connector service for Java developers

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced a new VMforce connector service that will enable Java developers to quickly and easily build FinancialForce Accounting functionality into their own VMforce applications.

The FinancialForce VMforce connector provides pre-configured web services, opening the doors for VMforce Java developers that want fast, easy access to enterprise accounting functionality on the Force.com platform. It will significantly reduce configuration and set up time of the FinancialForce Accounting web services layer. Out of the box, VMforce developers will have access to the accounting functionality they need to make their apps enterprise-ready quickly and easily.

'VMforce is an exciting proposition and provides a huge opportunity for Java developers,' said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. 'FinancialForce Accounting will work out of the box with VMforce as soon as it is available, with all the accounting business logic and critical controls applied. Developers normally have to configure and set up the FinancialForce.com web services layer which is a technical job and can be time consuming. This tool eliminates the need for manual configuration enabling VMforce developers to develop apps quicker and be more productive.'

VMforce, the world's first enterprise Java Cloud, was announced recently by Salesforce.com and VMware. Using VMforce, 6 million enterprise Java developers, including over 2 million developers using the Spring framework backed by the SpringSource division of VMware, will be able to tap into Force.com platform services. VMforce is currently scheduled to be available in developer preview in 2010 and the FinancialForce connector service will be made available to developers around the same time.

*VMforce is a trademark of VMware Inc.

- Ends -

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce Accounting is a unique online cloud accounting solution - the only one to be built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. It allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM – the world's most successful online solution – to truly 'Speak Salesforce' in a way no other cloud accounting system can do, dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, collecting cash and servicing customers.

Having created the only financial management solution that 'Speaks Salesforce,' FinancialForce.com does for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM - it gives organizations a complete understanding of their financial and business performance that is 100% up-to-the-minute and accurate.

FinancialForce Accounting's unique real-time design is always in balance and up to date, delivering the confidence of reliable figures from secure systems, looked after by the world's most trusted enterprise cloud computing platform. It is aimed at organizations outgrowing their original accounting applications and looking for a simple yet powerful accounting solution with the capability to support them as they expand locally and even internationally.

FinancialForce.com was funded with an investment from UNIT4 (parent company of accounting software specialist CODA) and salesforce.com. It combines CODA's 30 years of designing and building financial applications, with the salesforce.com platform's decade of dependability, availability and security.

The result is a range of cloud computing applications, including FinancialForce Accounting – a full Software as a Service (SaaS) accounting application – delivered on a subscription basis; the first international SaaS accounting system developed on salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, Force.com.

For more information, please contact:

Emma Hoyle
FinancialForce.com PR Manager
ehoyle@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

FinancialForce.com delivers Summer ’10 with Chatter-Powered Inter-departmental Collaboration

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced the availability of Summer '10, the 4th generation release of FinancialForce Accounting. This new version includes significant new features and Chatter powered inter-departmental collaboration engine. The announcement was made today at The Grape Escape analyst event in Boston.

FinancialForce.com delivers three releases every year based on new Force.com platform developments from salesforce.com, ensuring all customers benefit from the latest cloud accounting technology to manage their finance functions. Summer '10 will be the first edition of FinancialForce Accounting to include built-in collaboration features from Chatter, salesforce.com's new enterprise messaging application due for general release on June 22nd. As the only accounting application that 'speaks Salesforce', the collaborative element of this release will set FinancialForce Accounting customers apart.

FinancialForce Accounting is among the first apps to leverage the advantages of Chatter. Customers will benefit from collaboration around business processes like order to cash, which dissolve inter-departmental boundaries that hinder the running of an effective business. The Chatter-enabled FinancialForce application will allow more frequent and effective collaboration around sales opportunities, customer accounts and service issues in order to achieve best pricing and payment structures for big deals or avoid costly payment delays and disputes.

The latest FinancialForce release has been developed with a focus on making accounting processes even more efficient for users. It includes a completely new user interface with an enhanced look and feel, increased depth of functionality related to intercompany accounting and revenue recognition, and a faster pay process.

'Our customers will be the first to benefit from the collaborative business processes available with Summer '10,' said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. 'We have combined the latest cloud accounting technology with the ability for finance and other departments to collaborate more effectively. Cloud is the future of accounting and FinancialForce.com will continue to leverage the latest technologies to help accountants work smarter.'

Supporting customer quotes
'At last a product that does really well in completing the business process from sales to accounting via selling, billing and cash.' – James Love, VP Sales and Marketing, ICEF GmbH

'We are already reaping the benefits of having a single platform that supports our core business functions from sales, to consulting management, procurement and financial reporting.' – David Tan, Operations Director, Quattro Innovation Group

'It is very exciting knowing that we have all our company and customer data in one place - we can do things that would be quite simply impossible if the data was kept in disparate locations.' – Oliver Cornes, Owner, Juicy Property

'Salesforce.com has exceeded all expectations, but the finance component was missing. Because FinancialForce Accounting is built to work seamlessly with the CRM, we have one view of every customer, an impressive web based system and better functionality than ever before. It is helping us be successful as a business.' – Gary White, CEO, White Springs Inc. '...We selected FinancialForce.com to link our sales and financial process together. We expect to gain significant process improvements from creating this linkage, and more importantly, we're seeking to provide our clients with increased levels of service.' - Paul Cheesbrough, CIO, Telegraph Media Group

- ends –

About FinancialForce.com

For more information, please contact:

Emma Hoyle
FinancialForce.com PR Manager
ehoyle@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

FinancialForce.com and CloudApps Deliver Carbon Management and Accounting for Sustainable Businesses

Wed, 26 May 2010 13:00:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced a partnership with CloudApps, a carbon management specialist, to help companies measure, manage and monetize carbon as an asset. The collaboration comes in the wake of increasing legislation, including the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which came into effect at the start of April 2010 and the voluntary Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) scheme, which many global corporations subscribe to.

The applications were both developed on Force.com, salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, to seamlessly provide an end-to-end carbon management and accounting solution. This means companies of any size can measure, monitor and account for their current carbon emissions and engage with their employees to dramatically reduce future emission levels and operational costs. Delivered at a low cost, the combined cloud-based solutions allow companies to rapidly get started on their carbon management journeys.

The emerging role of Sustainability Officer involves the management and reduction of carbon emissions across the entire company resulting in reduced operational costs, while the CFO benchmarks emission levels against the competition and reports the financial implications to the board. Together they can ensure compliance with voluntary and legislative global climate change requirements, drive significant cost savings and further enhance their brand.

'When managed as an asset, carbon creates a business advantage, yet very few companies do it well,' said Simon Wheeldon, CEO of CloudApps. 'The ability to tie accurate and timely carbon management into financial accounting, forecasting and reporting gives customers the ability to manage the emissions, costs and the cash flow implications of carbon. CloudApps' partnership with FinancialForce.com provides a rapid-response to evolving environment regulations, enhancing products and rolling these out to our customers in days, not weeks or months.'

CloudApps Carbon integrated with FinancialForce.com Accounting enables customers to rapidly measure their carbon emissions and produce accurate compliance reports. They can benchmark their carbon footprint against others, engage employees to identify and manage carbon reduction programs and smooth cash flow by forecasting future carbon allowance requirements. In addition, it enables them to share their work with all stakeholders further promoting their brand and green credentials.

FinancialForce.com takes the information on carbon emissions from the CloudApps Carbon application and converts it into accounting transaction data so that carbon can be monitored and reported as an asset in its own right. Delivered in the cloud utilizing a pay-as-you-go subscription model, this offering is easy and inexpensive to install and maintain compared to other offerings on the market.

'CloudApps is delivering an innovative carbon management solution that is helping companies understand what is required of them and how they can accurately monitor, report and manage the reduction of their carbon emissions,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com. 'Together with FinancialForce.com, this solution offers companies better visibility of their environmental impact and associated costs. It is no longer a question of if they do it, but how they do it, and using integrated cloud applications built on a proven technology platform like Force.com will be a cheaper and less risky alternative to many other offerings on the market today. Responsible businesses of all sizes can benefit from integrated sustainability and online accounting.'

- ends –

About FinancialForce.com

As the only financial management solution that 'Speaks Salesforce,' FinancialForce.com does for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM - it gives organizations a complete understanding of their financial and business performance that is 100% up-to-the-minute and accurate.

For more information, please contact:

Emma Hoyle
FinancialForce.com PR Manager
ehoyle@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

About CloudApps
CloudApps is the leading provider of enterprise solutions that are helping companies of all sizes to reduce their operating costs, comply with global voluntary and legislative climate change requirements and engage with their key stakeholders to enhance their brand and realise value from their carbon asset.

CloudApps Carbon is an innovative, cloud-based Emission Management solution that is offered on a subscription basis and delivered on salesforce.com enterprise cloud-computing platform, Force.com. For more information, please visit http://www.cloudapps.com.

Media Contact:
Paul Maher, Positive Marketing
T: 05600 921012
M: 07900 600013
pmaher@positivemarketing.org

FinancialForce.com customers offered secure online bank payment facilities

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:30:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced it has extended its functionality by adding electronic processing of bank payments to its online accounting offering.

Customers will benefit from a fully automated, on-demand end-to-end payment system. Through integrations, initially with SunGard in the US, which supports check processing and banking system integration, and Albany Software in the UK, a company developing electronic payment software for Bacs payments, FinancialForce Accounting users will have one seamless system for managing customer accounts and making and receiving payments.

'These integrations are designed to make life even easier for our users and are part of a strategy that will see us extending the payment options available to our customers,' said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO, FinancialForce.com. 'We are delivering a full, on-demand, end-to-end solution all the way to the bank to try to take this headache away from our customers. Through a fully integrated system like this, our customers can manage payments in a secure service environment without any risk. It also means that they can encourage their customers to pay invoices quicker so they will have better cash flow and budget control.'

FinancialForce.com has also added PayPal integration to its offering for users that choose to email invoices to customers, providing the option to pay an invoice online immediately and securely via PayPal.

Additional links
PayPal integration and FinancialForce.com integrated simultaneously with Facebook and PayPal illustrations:
http://developer.financialforce.com/integrations#facebook-and-paypal

FinancialForce.com recent announcements: http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/press-releases/

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is a unique online cloud accounting solution - the only one to be built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. It allows finance teams of organizations using Salesforce CRM – the world's most successful online solution – to truly 'Speak Salesforce' in a way no other cloud accounting system can do, dramatically simplifying processes like invoicing, collecting cash and servicing customers.

For more information, please contact:

Emma Hoyle
FinancialForce.com PR Manager
ehoyle@financialforce.com
+44 (0)1423 537977

FinancialForce.com Launches Chatterbox on Salesforce.com’s ChatterExchange

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:01:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced it has launched Chatterbox, a new app on salesforce.com's ChatterExchange, helping to accelerate the market shift to Cloud 2, the next cloud computing paradigm.

Chatterbox is a powerful new Salesforce Chatter-enabled business collaboration application using the new social capabilities of Force.com. The speed of business change, combined with reliance on haphazard technologies like email, is preventing increasingly virtual companies from being agile. Chatterbox is the first collaboration tool of its kind that alerts staff proactively about changes in the business so they can collaborate and react to solve problems, improve processes and drive competitiveness. It is among the first apps to leverage the social components of Chatter now available in the Force.com platform.

Chatterbox monitors activities on Force.com against a set of rules defined by the user. When a rule is triggered, the users linked to that rule are notified and a Salesforce Chatter stream is started. Chatterbox searches constantly for events that trigger those alerts and encourages collaboration in response to a situation.

Business situations could include the following:

• When an outstanding credit on a customer account goes over 90 days – finance and sales professionals linked to that account can be immediately alerted, then they can quickly identify the reasons for non-payment and act to try and solve the problem to help cash flow and prevent further sales to that client being held up.
• When a specific supplier has been paid or a new supplier engaged – to help procurement and marketing departments better manage their suppliers and improve relationships.
• Customer accounts that show no activity for a specified length of time – may indicate service deficiencies and help ensure customers are contacted regularly.
• New sales over a specific size or won against a key competitor – to keep management and marketing abreast of sales trends.

With Chatterbox, users from anywhere in the business can monitor important business data in real-time. This detail and the resulting conversations that are kicked off by Salesforce Chatter are captured and recorded by the system for audit purposes and historical analysis. Using Chatter, organizations can avoid the inevitable email issues such as time lapses and unstructured communication. Users can communicate with all the people from across departments that are relevant to the discussion and can see at a glance what has happened so far, who is involved and what actions are being taken at that moment.

Salesforce Chatter provides a rich suite of social collaboration components including profiles, status updates and real-time feeds that developers and partners are now using to build new social enterprise apps. The ChatterExchange, a new category on AppExchange 2, provides a single location for customers to try and buy these new solutions that can extend the benefits of cloud computing and social-enabled business applications throughout the enterprise. The new ChatterExchange can be found at www.appexchange.com/chatter.

'With Chatterbox, FinancialForce.com has really considered the business value that social collaboration can deliver for enterprise customers,' said George Hu, executive vice president, marketing and alliances at salesforce.com. 'Real-time collaboration using social enterprise tools like Salesforce Chatter and FinancialForce.com's Chatterbox will break down traditional communication barriers and overcome the problems associated with email or legacy on-premise collaboration software.'

Chatterbox works with salesforce.com applications, FinancialForce.com applications and any custom objects or ISV products running on the Force.com platform. The application provides anytime, anywhere access to real-time feeds via Blackberry or iPhone mobile devices, so users can be updated and respond as business issues arise.

'Agile firms win, and the costs of losing a deal or a customer are too high to risk these days,' said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. 'Companies have fewer decision makers than ever and are dealing with huge change, so they need to be proactive if they want to really learn about what's going on in their business. Traditional communication tools like email or phone are flawed when you need many people to collaborate. They respond at different speeds or communicate one-to-one, so everyone is at different stages in a conversation. Chatterbox, in collaboration with Salesforce Chatter, solves that and has the potential to tear down the walls between front and back office and those between departments. It enables companies to proactively monitor business activity and focuses the company around solving the big problems: improving customer service, delivering better products, driving down costs and increasing the bottom line. This is a new kind of business collaboration we've never seen before.'

Availability:
The Chatterbox beta will be available to registrants via the new ChatterExchange, a brand new category for social enterprise apps that is now part of AppExchange 2.

For more information and video demonstrations please visit:
http://www.financialforce.com/products/collaboration/chatterbox/

FinancialForce.com recent announcements: http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/press-releases/

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange
Force.com is the only proven enterprise platform for building and running business applications in the cloud. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM (http://www.salesforce.com/) applications with more than 800 ISV partner applications like those from FinancialForce.com and Fujitsu, and nearly 150,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 72,500 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel. Force.com now enables developers to make any enterprise app social by leveraging the social collaboration components including profiles, status updates and real-time feeds available with Chatter.

Applications built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed to the entire cloud computing community through the salesforce.com AppExchange 2 marketplace http://appexchange.salesforce.com/, now featuring the ChatterExchange.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com Launches FinancialForce with Chatter on Salesforce.com’s ChatterExchange

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:01:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced it has launched FinancialForce.com with Chatter on salesforce.com's ChatterExchange, helping to accelerate the market shift to Cloud 2, the next cloud computing paradigm.

FinancialForce.com is among the first to leverage the social components of Chatter now available in the Force.com platform. Chatter will change the way FinancialForce Accounting users interact with sales and the rest of the business, improving cross-department collaboration.

With particular focus on driving collaboration between sales and finance departments, the Chatter-enabled FinancialForce application will allow more frequent and effective collaboration around sales opportunities, customer accounts and service issues in order to achieve best pricing and payment structures for big deals or avoid costly payment delays and disputes. It will bring finance out of the back office and back into the heart of the business, enabling them to get involved in conversations earlier to negate problems and improve customer service.

Users can choose to follow Chatter groups that apply to their role, receiving updates and taking part in discussions on specific topics. It can be used to support processes like month-end close, when finance staff typically spend considerable effort chasing information and input from around the organization.

Other examples might include:
• A salesperson leading a large bid might collaborate with the team working on the bid and include the CFO or the controller, allowing finance to give input on how best to structure the pricing and payment schedule for the deal and to provide revenue-recognition guidance.
• A helpdesk agent setting a customer issue to a high priority level could make finance and sales aware of the potential impact this might have on outstanding payments due or sales discussions in progress.
• A salesperson following a specific account can be informed that the customer hasn't paid in the agreed time. He / She can chase that customer in their next meeting to push payment through or find out if other issues exist that finance should be aware of.

'We have worked closely with salesforce.com to build Chatter capability into our application, creating the first truly collaborative cloud accounting solution,' said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. 'It's a game changer in terms of how people will interact with each other and our application. Since we launched FinancialForce.com, our customers have found huge benefit in more closely linking finance and sales, people and processes, and this will enable better collaboration to make business processes more efficient.

'Many finance tasks involve chasing down information, and this will help them stay informed, deal with issues before they become a problem for the business and improve cash flow. Better collaboration with customer-facing teams will mean better customer service. Chatter will also allow us to build future features in our applications dedicated to collaboration, as well as new applications that use the Chatter social capabilities of the Force.com platform.'

FinancialForce.com for Chatter will be available to customers, subject to their license for Chatter with salesforce.com. The application provides anytime, anywhere access to real-time feeds via Blackberry or iPhone mobile devices, so users can be updated and respond as business issues arise.

Availability:
FinancialForce.com for Chatter is available in beta now and will be available to all FinancialForce.com customers when Chatter moves to general release.

Additional links:
Chatter page incl. videos:
http://www.financialforce.com/products/collaboration/chatterbox/

FinancialForce.com recent announcements: http://www.financialforce.com/news-events/press-releases/

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com Releases QuickStart Application

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:12:00 +0100

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, has launched QuickStart, a wizard-driven application that helps organizations set up their accounts online quickly and easily.

QuickStart is designed to help small and medium size organizations with limited in-house accounting resources or standard accounting requirements to set up their chart of accounts, the vital coded listing of all the accounts used by an organization. It also benefits larger organizations that want to take an industry 'best practice' approach to accounting.

'QuickStart is a great example of how we can quickly respond to customer feedback,' said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO, FinancialForce.com. 'FinancialForce.com is a compelling offering for companies of varying sizes. It is more comprehensive than other on-demand accounting solutions and therefore we have found that some businesses with limited accounting resources need assistance setting up their chart of accounts. That is hardly surprising, since even experienced accountants do not change their accounting system every day. Yet the design of your chart of accounts is critical to how you structure financial information. Get it wrong, and you may struggle to report on the most important financial and operational trends in your business.'

The 10-step QuickStart application provides straight-forward, pre-defined steps for setting-up FinancialForce Accounting. A default chart of accounts will provide users with a starting point based on five sector templates:

IT/high tech
professional services
media
medical services
generic

The professional services template, for example, enables users to account for consulting revenue, while the media template accounts for items such as advertising sales. This new wizard-driven approach to setup can reduce the time it takes users to create and refine their accounts structure by up to 75%, even if they have never designed a chart of accounts before.

'QuickStart enables customers to set-up and start using FinancialForce Accounting within hours even if they have never designed a chart of accounts before,' added Roche. 'They can then customize their accounting system further as their business grows.'

About FinancialForce.com

As the only financial management solution that 'Speaks Salesforce', FinancialForce.com does for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM - it gives organizations a complete understanding of their financial and business performance that is 100% up-to-the-minute and accurate.

FinancialForce.com announces out of the box SAP integration for sharing of financial data

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:15:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from Salesforce.com, today announced that it has partnered with SKYVVA, a German specialist in SAP and salesforce.com integration, to develop an out of the box solution for delivering FinancialForce Accounting data into SAP Financials.

The integration will be demonstrated for the first time at Cloudforce Frankfurt today and will offer significant benefits to a number of organizations including:
• Those using FinancialForce.com to account for the salesforce.com Service Cloud to pass data into SAP.
• Those wanting to move subsidiaries into the cloud while maintaining use of SAP Financials at head office.
• Dispersed organizations wanting to integrate franchises into the organization using SAP at head office.

The integration will enable these companies to easily and securely pass financial data relating to opportunities, sales and work orders in the form of invoices into SAP Financials which will record the data and produce the necessary sales and cash records. In this way, FinancialForce.com will provide out of the box integration, where it will generate balanced financial transactions for business processes in the cloud and integrate that with existing on-premises technology infrastructures.

'We are being approached by a number of large organizations that are using ERP systems such as SAP, that want to quickly and easily generate financial transactions from their salesforce.com applications and present them for posting to their on-premises ERP applications,' said Jeremy Roche, President and CEO of FinancialForce.com. 'This is an example of creating a hybrid solution between cloud based and on-premises applications, where the benefits of deploying in the cloud can help to quickly deliver a solution and complement existing technology infrastructures. This approach simplifies integration, and ensures that all business processes are completed and accounted for and that there are no lost transactions such as unbilled customers. SKYVVA's expertise and integration suite built natively on Force.com has enabled FinancialForce.com to deliver a compelling integration for which we can see many different applications for a diverse range of businesses.'

- ends –

About FinancialForce.com – www.FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is backed by UNIT4 (parent company of accounting software specialist CODA) and salesforce.com. It combines CODA's 30 years of designing and building financial applications, with the salesforce.com platform's decade of dependability, availability and security.

Emma Hoyle
PR Manager, FinancialForce.com
T: +44 1423 537 977
M: +44 7769 671378
ehoyle@financialforce.com

About SKYVVA – www.skyvva.com
SKYVVA is an organization based in Germany, which specializes in developing integrations between cloud applications and on-premise back office business applications, primarily SAP business applications. SKYVVA´s Cloud Integration Suite is the first international integration solution developed on salesforce.com´s force.com platform, the world´s most trusted enterprise cloud computing platform. SKYVVA ´s out of the box Integration Apps are delivered on a subscription basis.
Bernd Jung, Managing Director
C: +49 (0) 172 814 7720
P: +49 (0) 89 2555 755 20
email: bernd.jung@skyvva.com

FinancialForce.com launches cloud accounting apps for iPhone and BlackBerry

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Facts:
FinancialForce.com has launched iPhone and BlackBerry clients for FinancialForce Accounting, the first and only enterprise-class finance application on the Force.com cloud computing platform.

Features of the mobile client include:
• dashboards for accounting information, such as bank balances, overdue customer invoices and amounts owed to suppliers.
• query access to invoices and credit notes.
• logging of calls, notes and conversations with customers and suppliers.
• the ability for both sales and accounting teams to assign, collaborate and complete tasks related to both CRM and accounting data.

Quote:
'By providing our customers with secure mobile access to their CRM and financial data, we aim to give them even more ways to realize the potential of cloud accounting,' said Jeremy Roche, President & CEO, FinancialForce.com. 'With these apps, they can analyze, organize and take action on vital business information that used to be locked inside their accounting software whenever they are away from their computers.'

About FinancialForce.com – www.FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the global leader in online accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from Salesforce. It aims to do for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM by delivering unique cloud accounting applications that give accountants and CFOs online, real-time financial information, always in balance and always up to date. This gives them a better understanding of their business, with the confidence of reliable figures, from secure systems, looked after for them by the world's most trusted enterprise cloud computing platform.

The result is a range of cloud computing applications, including FinancialForce Accounting – a full Software as a Service (SaaS) accounting application, delivered on a subscription basis; the first international SaaS accounting system developed on salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, Force.com.

Telegraph Media Group selects FinancialForce.com for cloud accounting

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the new cloud accounting company formed with investment from Unit 4 Agresso and salesforce.com, has announced that Telegraph Media Group has selected its solutions for use in its media sales department. FinancialForce Accounting will automate this busy department's largely manual invoicing and accounting processes and will integrate with the Group's existing salesforce.com CRM solution to give a single view of the Group's advertising sales and subscription management data. In addition, FinancialForce Accounting will produce invoices, create all accounting entries and automatically pass them into the Telegraph's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, Agresso Business World, which is also part of Unit 4 Agresso.

The Telegraph Media Group is the multimedia publisher of the Daily Telegraph, the UK's biggest-selling broadsheet. Its other titles include telegraph.co.uk; The Sunday Telegraph; and The Telegraph.

The Telegraph Media Group's selection of FinancialForce Accounting supports its strategy to move many of its business systems into the cloud via salesforce.com's Force.com platform while keeping its core Agresso ERP solution on site. An additional advantage of FinancialForce Accounting is that, for the first time, non-financial users of Agresso can access a 360-degree view of the financial data held against customer accounts in real time and in read-only format.

Jeremy Roche, CEO for FinancialForce.com, said: 'FinancialForce Accounting has been developed so it is easy and cost effective to implement and can help larger organizations like the Telegraph move elements of their accounting process into the cloud without the need to remove or replace their entire ERP solution. In signing this deal with Telegraph Media Group, we have demonstrated something significant: that cloud and on-premise applications can coexist happily and deliver quantifiable benefits to organizations of all sizes. In this case, FinancialForce.com is essentially acting as accounting middleware, providing a link between the cloud and on-premise applications selected by Telegraph Media Group.'

Paul Cheesbrough, CIO for Telegraph Media Group, said: 'The advertising sales process is an important part of our business, and it's key to ensure the accurate billing of advertisements placed across all of the Group's products and services. Salesforce.com is the core platform that underpins this process, and we selected FinancialForce.com to link our sales and financial process together. We expect to gain significant process improvements from creating this linkage, and more importantly, we're seeking to provide our clients with increased levels of service. The fact that FinanicalForce.com natively works with both Salesforce.com and Agresso ERP was another major reason for the decision.'

About FinancialForce.com – http://www.FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com aims to revolutionize the future of accounting by doing for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM. It delivers unique cloud accounting applications that give accountants and CFOs online, real-time financial information, always in balance and always up to date. This gives them a better understanding of their business, with the confidence of reliable figures, from secure systems, looked after for them by the world's most trusted enterprise cloud computing platform.

FinancialForce.com is backed by Unit 4 Agresso (parent company of accounting software specialist CODA) and salesforce.com. It combines CODA's 30 years of designing and building financial applications, with the salesforce.com platform's decade of dependability, availability and security.

The result is a range of revolutionary cloud computing applications, including FinancialForce Accounting – a full Software as a Service (SaaS) accounting application, delivered on a subscription basis; the first international SaaS accounting system developed on salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, Force.com.

FinancialForce.com – a UK success story

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

New company showcases its latest offering at Cloudforce in London
Two new UK customers go on record to discuss benefits

FinancialForce.com, the new cloud accounting company formed with investment from Unit 4 Agresso and salesforce.com, will be showcasing its latest edition, Winter 10, at salesforce.com's Cloudforce 2 London conference at the Novotel West in London this week. In addition Juicy Property and Adestra are the latest of a string of new customers to discuss the benefits they have seen having implemented FinancialForce.com applications in their organizations.

FinancialForce.com originated in the UK so it is fitting that it ends what has been a successful year for the new company in London and in front of a UK audience. Hosted by salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff, Cloudforce 2 London is expected to attract senior business decision makers from across the UK who are looking to adopt cloud based applications and services.

Winter 10 was developed by FinancialForce.com following discussion with customers and partners and enhances the existing financial management capabilities of FinancialForce Accounting. It adds Enhanced Debt Management, which assists companies automate and manage their cash collection processes effectively. In addition, Integration Rules seamlessly pull non-financial data into the finance application through a point and click user interface, while the new Launchpad capability acts as a navigational aid to simplify some of the sophisticated finance processes used by businesses today.

Among the expanding global customer community is Juicy Property, a London-based company providing an online property management tool to landlords. The system provides features to cover all the key areas of property management to help save time, reduce risks, and get financial control. Oliver Cornes, Director for Juicy Property, said: 'We've been trialling the FinancialForce application since the initial CODA 2go release in 2008, having realised early-on that CRM is limited unless it provides visibility over financial data as well. FinancialForce.com is different to other offerings because it isn't just integrated with salesforce.com, it runs in salesforce. It is very exciting knowing that we have all our company & customer data in one place - we can do things that are quite simply impossible if this data is kept in disparate locations.

'Some of the key benefits we have seen since we implemented FinancialForce Accounting include our ability to see financial data on the same screen as support/marketing/sales information. This 360 degree view of business critical information gives us better control and management and enables us to review and analyse our performance quickly and accurately. For these and many other reasons it is clear we have made the right decision in selecting FinancialForce applications and we would recommend the solution to any organisation looking for best in class cloud accounting capabilities in the cloud.'

Adestra is another customer which benefits from the FinancialForce.com offering. Boasting a customer list including some of the leading retailers, publishers, agencies and charities in the country, Adestra is a leading UK based email marketing services provider. Steve Denner, Founder and Director for Adestra, commented:' We provide web based services to our clients and so moving our applications into the cloud was a logical and strategic move for us as a business. We already utilise salesforce.com as a full end-to-end customer relationship management solution and are impressed with the quality and accessibility we have across our data. The next step for us was to find a cloud accounting solution that would work alongside our CRM. Being built on salesforce's Force.com platform gave FinancialForce Accounting the edge. FinancialForce.com is not just rich from a financial and accounting perspective but also the team behind the company clearly understands the challenges we face. Our need for accurate and reliable information and how to deliver a solution that meets these needs. Their friendly and flexible approach to the project has made them a pleasure to work with and I'm convinced we made the right choice of solution for now, and for the future.'

To see more and learn how Financial Force Accounting could revolutionise your approach to financial management, please visit www. FinancialForce.com.

Albany Software partners with FinancialForce.com to provide on-demand online payment functionality

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Albany Software, a pioneering developer of electronic payment software solutions for Bacs payments, has today announced the launch of Albany ePAYMENTS for Software as a Service (SaaS) accounting solution – FinancialForce.com. Through this dynamic partnership FinancialForce.com customers can embrace Albany's advanced software technology to access online Bacs payment functionality from within FinancialForce.com's on-demand, cloud-based accounting solution.

The FinancialForce.com solution is unique in the market as it is the only accounting solution built on salesforce's force.com platform. Albany ePAYMENTS is now also available as a composite application on force.com and works in conjunction with FinancialForce.com's SaaS solution to facilitate Bacs payments. Albany ePAYMENTS isolates the financial payment-related data stored in FinancialForce.com and transmits it to Bacs for onward payment processing. Albany ePAYMENTS is an essential connection between FinancialForce's accounting solution and the financial clearing house, enabling automated electronic payments.

Debbie Ashton, Vice President, Product for FinancialForce.com, comments, 'In working with Albany, we benefit from their expertise in electronic fund transfers and their close relationship with the UK banking community. In adding Albany ePAYMENTS to our FinancialForce.com solution we can now offer our customers a fully automated on demand, end-to-end payment system which streamlines the process and adds even greater operational efficiency.'

FinancialForce.com is a functionally rich accounting solution that is scalable, cost-effective, quick to implement and requires none of the initial capital outlay, infrastructure work or installation processes and costs associated with more traditional on-premise applications.

Providing payments as a SaaS solution is a complex and challenging task due to the security ramifications, however through the fully-integrated system, FinancialForce.com customers are given the opportunity to manage payments through a service environment without any risk to their business.

Adrian Stafford-Jones, Managing Director of Albany Software, comments, 'By transmitting the data held within the accounting solution through Albany ePAYMENTS, financial transactions are possible at the touch of a button. There is no longer any need to re-key data or write cheques, and payments are confirmed online. In this way, Albany ePAYMENTS connects the cloud-based accounting system to Bacs and streamlines all financial processes.'

Stafford-Jones continues, 'This latest opportunity to use Albany's electronic payment function through an online service approach means organisations can access this information whilst on the move and do so securely, providing greater flexibility attaining both significant time and cost savings for businesses.'

Stafford-Jones concludes, 'In today's business it is essential for any accounting solution to have an effective and efficient payment option on offer to enable its customers' greater control over all electronic funds transactions, consequently improving their cash flow and providing accurate budgeting. With Albany's extensive experience in providing solutions that effortlessly integrate with other third party systems, end-users receive a seamless, user-friendly and cost effective component within their existing accounting solution.'

Financialforce.com powers accounting for enterprise developer ‘Less Software’

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Newly launched cloud accounting solution provider FinancialForce.com today announced that it has added US-based Less Software to its expanding global customer base. Less Software provides sophisticated supply-chain-management software to businesses across the United States via software-as-a-service subscription.

In an industry-wide review, FinancialForce.com's scalability, cost effectiveness, security and rich financial and accounting functionality elevated it above its competitors, said Less Software CEO and cofounder Mike Flanagan.

'As a cloud company ourselves, we knew cloud accounting would eliminate the time and cost involved with owning, maintaining and supporting software on site,' Flanagan said. 'We also wanted a product that didn't compromise on power or flexibility. After comparing several alternatives we found that FinancialForce Accounting offered the broadest and deepest combination of financial and accounting capabilities. At the click of a mouse button, we can access in-depth business-critical data securely and from any location, at any time, in real time. And we have peace of mind because FinancialForce.com hosts our data on salesforce.com's trusted, robust and secure Force.com platform.'

Working closely with FinancialForce.com consultants, Less Software expects to go live soon with billing and core accounting including accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger.

'With FinancialForce.com, we not only get world-class financial management software, we also get a team that understands what we want to do as a business and how to make it happen,' Flanagan said.

FinancialForce Accounting's flexible payment model and multi-currency capabilities will also support Less Software's ambitious expansion plans.

'We chose the FinancialForce application as an accounting and finance engine that can grow with us as our business expands and evolves' Flanagan said. 'We only pay for the capacity we use, allowing us to increase our expenditure gradually rather than paying for idle capacity. And as a fully internationalized solution, FinancialForce Accounting gives us the robust enterprise financial management capabilities that will help us succeed in markets throughout the world.'
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FinancialForce.com Winter 10 release helps companies reduce debt

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, the new cloud accounting company formed with investment from Unit 4 Agresso and salesforce.com, will unveil its latest edition, Winter 10, at salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week. This latest release enhances the existing financial management capabilities of FinancialForce Accounting, adding:

• Enhanced Debt Management to assist companies automate and manage their cash collection processes effectively;
• Integration Rules which seamlessly pull non-financial data into the finance application through a point and click user interface; and
• the Launchpad which acts as a navigational aid to simplify some of the sophisticated finance processes.

At a time when cash management couldn't be more important, Winter 10 from FinancialForce.com comes with powerful new debt management capabilities which help organizations to pursue debt and automate the cash collection processes more effectively. At the click of a mouse button, reminder letters can now be scheduled and sent via email from within FinancialForce Accounting without the need to swap into another application. These reminder notices can be scaled by the customer in terms of severity, from a polite reminder to a more serious legal notification, depending on the age of the debt.

Unlike competitive offerings FinancialForce Accounting reminders can be run in batches rather than on a case-by-case basis thereby saving time for finance professionals or administrators. In addition, on receipt of the reminder, a customer can select to pay the outstanding invoice immediately, using PayPal's 'Pay Now' button, which can be embedded in the reminder email.

Building on one of its key strengths – integration – Winter 10 also incorporates new and unique Integration Rules. FinancialForce.com recognizes that the accounting system is at the heart of operations so it is critical to provide an easy method to pull data from an organization's other line of business applications into FinancialForce Accounting. Although FinancialForce Accounting is built on salesforce's Force.com platform, these new Integration Rules will work with any application, even ones not built on the platform. That means regardless of how a business chooses to generate financial transactions from business events it can use Integration Rules to map that process into FinancialForce Accounting – without the need for custom development or expensive specialist programmers.

In addition, the solution is configured to allow customers to manage this process themselves through an easy to use point-and-click application. Customers benefit from a flexible and agile solution that provides financial and management information in a single place, and lets them share and collaborate on integrated management and financial information from around the business.

Another important enhancement is the Launchpad, which simplifies and provides a visual representation of what are normally complex financial accounting processes. Customers can see at a glance the workflow they need to follow to complete a financial transaction quickly and efficiently and can familiarise themselves with that process. Research by FinancialForce.com has found that using such simple visual navigation tools simplifies and enhances the experience of using financial applications, so the Launchpad makes FinancialForce Accounting even more user friendly and accessible to finance and general business users alike.

Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com, said: 'In developing the Winter 10 release we have listened to what our customers and partners have asked for from the product suite and acted on that feedback. Winter 10 delivers powerful and comprehensive accounting and finance functionality combined with the ability to improve debt management and cash flow. In addition we have made it easier to integrate with other core applications within an organisation and even easier to use. The enhanced functionality we are delivering makes FinancialForce applications even more compelling as a cloud accounting solution.'

Financialforce.com and customers take to the stage at Dreamforce

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

FinancialForce.com, a new Unit 4 Agresso company that delivers finance and accounting applications in the cloud, will attend the Dreamforce Global Gathering 2009, salesforce.com's seventh annual user and developer conference. The event runs from November 17 to November 20 at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

At the conference, FinancialForce.com will unveil new and enhanced functionality for its 100% Force.com-native SaaS finance application, FinancialForce Accounting. The Winter 10 release will extend the application's financial management capabilities with Debt Management, which helps companies automate and manage their cash-collection processes; Integration Rules, which seamlessly pull non-financial data into the application through a point-and-click user interface; and the Launchpad, which simplifies navigation of sophisticated finance processes.

FinancialForce.com will also host a global customer discussion panel on Wednesday, November 18, at 2.15pm PT at North 125 in the Moscone Centre. Customers including Quattro Innovation from Australia and Compliance Team Inc. and Live Out Loud from the United States will explain why they selected FinancialForce Accounting and the business issues resolved since signing up.

To learn more about FinancialForce.com or to set up a briefing, please visit us at Dreamforce at booth 416. Alternately, please contact Emelyne Interior at financialforce@lewispr.com or Hilary Goodband at hilary.goodband@coda.com.

UNIT4 Agresso Creates New Company with Minority Investment from Salesforce.com – CODA 2go becomes FinancialForce.com

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

UNIT4 Agresso (NYSE Euronext: U4AGR), parent company of financial software specialist CODA has announced that it has joined forces with salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company to create FinancialForce.com, a new company that delivers finance and accounting applications in the cloud. Both UNIT4 Agresso and salesforce.com are investing in FinancialForce.com, which leverages CODA’s cloud accounting application formerly known as CODA 2go, which has been transferred into the new company.

FinancialForce.com aims to change the future of accounting and finance by delivering unique accounting applications in the cloud that give finance professionals and CFOs the efficiency, success and confidence they desire. Built on salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud-computing platform, Force.com, FinancialForce.com offers accounting solutions delivered via the cloud for both salesforce.com and non-salesforce.com customers alike.

FinancialForce.com delivers the power of a real-time, enterprise accounting system to organizations of all sizes. It will support such businesses as they evolve, expand and outgrow more traditional accounting systems while offering all the benefits of cloud computing including ease of implementation, rapid return on investment and reduced cost and complexity. FinancialForce.com’s rich functionality is built using CODA’s 30 years’ experience in designing and building world class financial applications combined with the security, reliability and availability of salesforce.com’s trusted real-time Force.com service infrastructure.

The CODA 2go team and products have transferred to FinancialForce.com, which will be run from the company’s new corporate headquarters in San Mateo, California as well as from its EMEA headquarters in Harrogate in the UK. FinancialForce.com already has established sales, pre-sales and support teams in North America and the UK to take the new solution to market. Salesforce.com will provide first line support for FinancialForce.com, giving customers of both Salesforce CRM and FinancialForce applications a single consistent point of contact.

Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA, has been appointed President and CEO of FinancialForce.com. George Hu, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Alliances at salesforce.com, Chris Ouwinga, Chairman and CEO of UNIT4 Agresso, Edwin van Leeuwen, CFO of UNIT4 Agresso and Jeremy Roche make up the FinancialForce.com Board of Directors.

“In establishing FinancialForce.com we are revolutionizing the future of accounting. FinancialForce.com will do for finance and accounting what salesforce.com has done for CRM," Roche commented. "We are enabling customers of all sizes to choose accounting as part of a broader, integrated cloud computing solution and giving them the power of enterprise accounting without the pain of owning the software themselves. As a pioneer on the Force.com platform, CODA has worked closely with salesforce.com while developing and launching CODA 2go. We believe that having a native solution built on the Force.com platform will give us a significant competitive advantage when selling to salesforce.com customers and is key to our go to market strategy.”

For customers using or evaluating Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce.com comes with an unequalled level of integration between its accounting functions and salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. This allows users to make the most of customer relationships - from making initial contact to ensuring smooth accounting processes and accurate invoicing, right through to the ongoing customer relationship. For non-Salesforce CRM users, FinancialForce.com offers a new choice of a comprehensive accounting solution built around salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud-computing platform. FinancialForce.com will revolutionize the future of accounting by delivering a cloud computing application that helps companies get real-time insight into data from across customer services, sales and accounting, giving a complete view of the business position at a time when cash flow has never been more important.

FinancialForce.com customer Sallie Kennedy, CFO for Compliance Team, Inc., said: “Since selecting FinancialForce.com we have benefited from the improved efficiency and agility that cloud computing delivers. In addition, we have cost effective, real-time access to FinancialForce.com’s best in class financial management capabilities but without the headache of owning, managing and maintaining the software ourselves. We can access business critical financial information at anytime and from any Web-enabled device and can act on the information quickly and decisively. We also have peace of mind knowing that FinancialForce.com is built on salesforce.com’s infrastructure so our data is secure.”

George Hu from salesforce.com, said: “FinancialForce.com’s mission is to create applications that make the finance department as successful as sales and service teams are with salesforce.com. That means creating and delivering the world’s only finance applications that are as easy to deploy and use, and as customizable and trusted as Salesforce CRM. Together with Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce.com gives existing salesforce.com customers one solution for the front and back office delivered on the Force.com platform.”

FinancialForce.com – Revolutionizing the Future of Accounting with Cloud Computing

FinancialForce.com provides rich functionality for businesses around the world:

A complete accounting application; featuring general ledger accounting, user defined budgets and spreadsheet integration, full accounts payable, accounts receivable and invoicing
Multi-currency and multi-company support; allowing organizations to manage accounts across different countries, divisions and companies
Support for global accounting and reporting requirements; reducing concerns about meeting the specific reporting and tax legislation of different countries
Real-time accounting; all ledgers are instantly updated to deliver real-time financial data and ensuring the system can never go out of balance
Quick to implement; with no infrastructure to worry about, businesses can be up and running in hours or days
Scalable; no matter what size the business today or in the future, the product will be able to support the management of cash flows, debtors and creditors
Access anywhere; because FinancialForce.com is accessed via the cloud, businesses can access their accounts from anywhere that has an internet connection, without the need to acquire and maintain servers, so deployment is fast and cost effective
Predictable license fee; with no infrastructure and maintenance fees to worry about, a business just has to pay a regular subscription based license fee
Robust and secure; because FinancialForce.com is built on the Force.com platform, customers benefit from the reliability, security and availability of salesforce.com’s proven real-time infrastructure.

Pricing and Availability

FinancialForce.com is now available to salesforce.com customers as well as non-salesforce.com customers. Pricing for the current release of FinancialForce applications starts from $125 per user per month. To order, or for more information, please visit: http://www.FinancialForce.com.

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About FinancialForce.com – www.FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is backed by UNIT4 Agresso (parent company of accounting software specialist CODA) and salesforce.com. It combines CODA’s 30 years of designing and building financial applications, with the salesforce.com platform’s decade of dependability, availability and security.

About UNIT4 Agresso – www.unit4.com

Headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands UNIT4 Agresso was founded in 1980. Today, UNIT4 Agresso is the 4th largest mid-market ERP solution provider in the world according to analyst IDC (2008). It develops, sells, implements and supports business software for running, managing and optimising a wide range of private and public sector organizations across the globe. The group has 3,500 staff in offices across 14 European countries and 5 countries outside Europe, from where it supports customers and partners in all regions of the world. It is publicly quoted on the NYSE Euronext Amsterdam (U4AGR).

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The company's portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at http://www.salesforce.com/crm/, has revolutionized the ways that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers across sales, marketing and service. The company’s Force.com platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) helps customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing.

As of July 31, 2009, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 63,200 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Copyright (c) 2009 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About CODA

CODA software is designed for multi-currency, multi-language, multi-country, multi-company and multi-site operations. It is used by around 2,600 medium and large organizations in more than 100 countries in a variety of markets and within both public and commercial sectors. CODA is a UNIT4 Agresso company.

CODA nets experienced sales staff to join expanding CODA 2go team and opens office on US west coast

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

CODA, the financial software specialist, has announced that it has appointed Adrian Ivanov as its new VP of Sales for CODA 2go, the first and only enterprise SaaS finance application built on salesforce.com's Force.com platform. In addition, three new Account Executives join the CODA 2go team. Alexander Turner and Christopher Zyla join Adrian to extend the USA sales team while Tony Pickering joins the EMEA team. A new office has been established in San Mateo California as CODA seeks to take advantage of the increasing level of interest and demand for its cloud based accounting solutions.

Adrian and his team bring a wealth of experience in enterprise software, business development, product positioning and marketing from their time with companies including Oracle, PeopleSoft, Workday and Zoho, Such experience will be crucial as CODA looks to take CODA 2go forward to wider market adoption.

In addition, CODA has established an office in San Mateo California. This will enable CODA to offer a more local service to customers on the West coast of the USA and will serve as CODA 2go's principal office alongside existing operations in New Hampshire, USA and in the UK.

Adrian commented: 'These are exciting times for CODA 2go. As organizations of all sizes begin to recognize the benefits of cloud accounting, CODA 2go's competitive advantages stand out more clearly than ever. Only CODA 2go offers the secure, reliable, thoroughly tested infrastructure of the Force.com platform, and the expertise that comes from CODA's 30 years developing finance software. As part of Unit 4 Agresso, CODA also has the backing of its parent company, a hugely successful global player in the business and financial software space. I'm delighted to work with the CODA team and look forward to taking CODA 2go into new and exciting markets as we build on its success around the world.'

CODA's latest announcements come as the company expands its presence in the US finance software market, most recently through alliances with Force.com application solutions experts Mavens Consulting and outsourced online accounting solution provider Corefino

'Over the past few months, we've seen a sharp increase in the number of leads for CODA 2go,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO, CODA. 'Enlarging our sales team and opening a new office will help us explore those opportunities and expand the user community for CODA 2go. The salespeople will work with our partner community to ensure we deliver not only a first-class financial solution in the cloud but also first-class customer support and service.'

- ends-

About CODA

CODA was founded in 1979 and has around 500 employees working at 18 offices in 14 countries. It creates, markets and implements a comprehensive range of software systems designed specifically to meet the needs of financial directors and finance Departments. These include financial management systems, analysis applications, and business process management and control software to implement compliance solutions. Its service oriented architecture also makes CODA software easy for clients and other vendors to integrate with their business applications.

CODA software is designed for multi-currency, multi-language, multi-country, multi-company and multi-site operations. It is used by around 2,600 medium and large organisations in over 100 countries in a variety of markets and within both public and commercial sectors.

CODA part of Unit 4 Agresso NV, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange (U4AGR).

For more information please visit: www.coda.com

About CODA 2go

CODA 2go is CODA's new SaaS accounting application designed to deliver high functionality accounting on a subscription basis. It is the first international SaaS accounting system developed on salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, Force.com

For more information, please visit www.coda2go.com.

About Unit 4 Agresso

Headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands Unit 4 Agresso was founded in 1980. Today, Unit 4 Agresso is the 4th largest mid-market ERP solution provider in the world according to analyst IDC (2008). It develops, sells, implements and supports business software for running, managing and optimising a wide range of private and public sector organizations across the globe. The group has 3,500 staff in offices across 14 European countries and 5 countries outside Europe, from where it supports customers and partners in all regions of the world. It is publicly quoted on the NYSE Euronext Amsterdam (U4AGR).

CODA partners with Mavens on CODA 2go

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0100

CODA, the finance software specialist, today announced a partnership with Force.com application solutions experts Mavens Consulting, in a move that will extend CODA's market reach in the United States. Through the partnership, Mavens will work with CODA to deploy and support CODA 2go, the first international SaaS accounting system developed on Salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, Force.com.

'This partnership demonstrates further that we are successfully building an ecosystem of partners around CODA 2go, providing a range of services around our cloud accounting solution. We are very impressed with Mavens' background in traditional ERP and professional services and knowledge of the Force.com platform,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA. 'They not only have the experience to execute projects for large enterprises but also understand how to help clients take full advantage of CODA 2go's 360-degree view of a company's finances.'

Mavens founder Prasad Kanumury said the company had already begun implementing CODA 2go for its clients.

'With its single-ledger design and broad accounting functionality, CODA 2go gives CFOs unparalleled visibility into their operations at a fraction of the cost of a traditional ERP finance package,' Kanumury said. 'And because it's built on Force.com, it provides industry-leading security and tight integration with Salesforce CRM. At a time when executives are paying such close attention to the bottom line, that makes for an unbeatable proposition.'

Major international software vendor launches cloud accounting service to Australian market

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A complete accounting application; featuring general ledger accounting, user defined budgets and spreadsheet integration, full accounts payable, accounts receivable and invoicing
Multi-currency and multi-company support; allowing organisations to manage accounts across different countries, divisions and companies
Support for global accounting and reporting requirements; meaning there are no concerns about meeting the specific reporting and tax legislation in Australia
Quick to implement; with no infrastructure to worry about, businesses can be up and running in hours/days
Scalable; meaning that no matter what size the business today or in the future, the product will be able to support the management of cash flows, debtors and creditors
Access anywhere; because CODA 2go is accessed via the cloud, businesses can access their accounts from anywhere that has an internet connection and with no servers to acquire and maintain, deployment is fast and cost effective
Predictable license fee; with no infrastructure and maintenance fees to worry about, a business just has to pay a regular subscription based license fee
Robust and secure; because CODA 2 go is built on salesforce.com's Force.com platform, it comes with the same levels of assurance and security being enjoyed by the likes of Cisco and St George bank
Available to all; CODA 2go is available to salesforce.com customers as well as non-salesforce.com customers

CODA, the UK headquartered award winning accounting software specialist, today launched CODA 2go, a cloud based accounting package to the Australian market. Aimed at businesses from one user upwards, CODA 2go is the first accounting solution to be built entirely on Force.com, salesforce.com's leading enterprise cloud computing platform, and to seamlessly integrate with the salesforce sales and service clouds.

The launch coincides with research unveiled by CODA today that shows Australian businesses lack control of their cashflow and only 10% have had any success in improving payments from debtors. In a survey of 100 CEOs and business owners, 63% of respondents said they have no idea of the state of their cashflow, have a vague idea or admit it should be better. It also revealed that typical business owners are time poor with 40% saying that doing the books is something that gets done at the weekends or in the evenings.

When asked about using a cloud based accounting package, the survey revealed openness to the concept - less than a third (30%) said they had any reservations about using an online accounting package.

Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA, said: 'This research and conversations we've had with businesses shows that the Australian market is incredibly open to the concept of cloud accounting and managing their business accounts in an on-demand environment, so it makes perfect sense to us to bring CODA 2go to Australia. With our knowledge of financial management and accounting solutions and building on salesforce.com's success in Australia, we are confident of the market opportunity open to us.'

'The fact that so many respondents are not prioritizing time to get on top of accounts suggests Australian business owners are time poor. The survey also showed that 40% lack any automated processes to help manage their business, instead relying on spreadsheets or paper and pen. An easy to use, cost effective and functionally rich accounting tool is just the tonic.'

CODA 2go available today

CODA 2go is available for all businesses in Australia. As an added benefit for those using, or contemplating Salesforce CRM, it provides seamless integration allowing users to make the most of customer relationships - from making initial contact to ensuring smooth accounting processes and accurate invoicing, right through to the ongoing customer relationship. It will help companies get insight into data from across customer services, sales and accounting, giving a complete view of the business position at a time when cash flow has never been more important.

CODA 2go offers an additional choice for organisations looking for best of class financial management without the time and resource costs associated with more traditional on-premise software implementations.

CODA 2go provides rich functionality for Australian businesses:

Early Australian customer success

One customer already benefiting from CODA 2go is technology consultancy firm, Quattro Innovation Group Pty Ltd, based in Sydney.

David Tan, Director of Operations, said: 'We first came across CODA 2go on salesforce.com's AppExchange and decided to take advantage of the free trial. I am a qualified accountant and was impressed with the rich functionality on offer within CODA 2go and, being based on the Force.com platform, allows us to seamlessly integrate with our Salesforce CRM, staying aligned with the aim to run all our business applications on the cloud.

'We were looking for a system that did not require any server hardware, with an intuitive interface and that we could implement ourselves. CODA 2go proved to be the stand-out product available, whilst saving us money and ensuring scalability as our business grows. All in all, CODA 2go is providing us with best in class financial management capabilities hosted and managed in the cloud – it provides a nice synergy with how we run our business and what we communicate to our customers.'

A free 30 day trial of CODA 2go is available from www.coda2go.com.au and will be supported locally by Australian SaaS consultancy and salesforce.com partner Sqware Peg.

Shawn Stilwell, CEO, Sqware Peg said: 'We're seeing a lot of demand from customers and prospects to run more of their business in the cloud, especially as they look to upgrade from legacy business software. CODA 2go is a really attractive offering for them, bringing proven, enterprise class functionality and reliability to businesses of all sizes.'

Steve Lucas, senior vice president of Force.com and Alliances, salesforce.com said: 'The Force.com platform provides a great opportunity for ISVs to build applications and services and create a frictionless route into new markets. The power of the platform to deliver real-time functionality without the need for additional infrastructure makes for a compelling offering and it's really reduced the barriers for CODA to launch into Australia.'

About the survey

The survey was commissioned by CODA and carried out by Pure Profile. It surveyed 100 small business owners and CEOs in businesses with less than 50 staff.

Pricing and availability

CODA 2go can be accessed from www.coda2go.com.au and is available today. It costs businesses an introductory price of AU$160 per user, per month, with read only access available for AU$35 per user, per month. The read only version allows sales teams and execs to get instant visibility into their customer account history and other information they may need to make more informed decisions.

A free 30 day trial is available from www.coda2go.com.au

CODA 2go, a new cloud based accounting offering, secures local channel representation

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0100

CODA, the UK headquartered award winning accounting software specialist, today launched CODA 2go, a cloud based accounting package to the Australian market. Aimed at businesses from one user upwards, CODA 2go is the first accounting solution to be built entirely on Force.com, Salesforce.com's leading cloud computing platform, and to seamlessly integrate with Salesforce CRM.

To support the company's local push, local SaaS consultancy Sqware Peg has been announced as the first company to represent the product in Australia and New Zealand. CODA 2go is looking to expand its relationships in the region and believes this partnership with Sqware Peg will enable it to extend its market reach in a way it could not have done on its own.

Jeremy Roche, CEO for CODA, said: 'Our research shows that the Australian market is incredibly open to the concept of cloud accounting and managing their business accounts in a hosted environment so it makes perfect sense to us to bring CODA 2go to Australia. With our knowledge of financial management and accounting solutions and building on salesforce.com's success in Australia, we are confident of the market opportunity open to us.'

'Local expertise and support are crucial for our success and we see great opportunity to work with Sqware Peg to exploit the appetite for hosted applications from those companies looking for an alternative to their legacy on-premise systems.'

CODA 2go is available for all businesses in Australia, but for those using Salesforce CRM as well it provides seamless integration allowing users make the most of customer relationships - from making initial contact to ensuring smooth accounting processes and accurate invoicing. It will help companies get insight into data from across customer services, sales and accounting, giving a complete view of the business position at a time when cash flow has never been more important.

With 96% of Australian businesses employing less than 20 staff*, CODA 2go will initially target the SMB market, but the product scales to meet the needs of larger enterprises. CODA 2go offers an additional choice for organisations looking for best of class financial management without the time and resource costs associated with more traditional on-premise implementations.

CODA 2go provides rich functionality for Australian businesses:

A complete accounting application; featuring general ledger accounting, user defined budgets and spreadsheet integration, full accounts receivable functionality allowing businesses to track the sales cycle from new lead through to payment, and accounts payable with full vendor management
Multi-currency and multi-company support; allowing organisations to manage accounts across different countries, divisions and companies
Support for global accounting and reporting requirements; meaning there are no concerns about meeting the specific reporting and tax legislation in Australia
Quick to implement; with no infrastructure to worry about, businesses can be up and running in hours/days
Scalable; meaning that no matter what size the business today or in the future, the product will be able to support the management of cash flows, debtors and creditors
Access anywhere; because CODA 2go is accessed via the cloud, businesses can access their accounts from anywhere that has an internet connection
Predictable license fee; with no infrastructure and maintenance fees to worry about, a business just has to pay a regular subscription based license fee
Robust and secure; because CODA 2 go is built on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, it comes with the same levels of assurance and security being enjoyed by the likes of Cisco and St George bank
Available to all; CODA 2go is available to salesforce.com customers as well as non-salesforce.com customers

A free 30 day trial is available from www.coda2go.com.au

CODA 2go has already launched in the US and the UK markets where it has referenced customers and a very healthy pipeline.

* According to Australian National Bureau of Statistics

CODA and Corefino partner on breakthrough cloud computing accounting service

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

CODA and Corefino, two of the accounting world's most innovative technology companies, have joined forces to give mid-market chief financial officers (CFOs) a powerful new low-cost alternative to the traditional on-premise software model offered by the 'Big 3' enterprise resource planning (ERP) giants. The new three-part accounting service, called Corefino 2go, combines the CODA 2go accounting package, built on the Force.com cloud computing platform, with Corefino's Triple-C Technology Platform and experienced, outsourced accounting staffs.

The cloud-based solution is available immediately via monthly subscription service, can be deployed in a month or less and requires only an internet connection to access data and download reports.

The partnership combines UK-based CODA's three decades of experience delivering best-of–class financials to organizations around the world with the turnkey People-Place-Platform solution of Silicon Valley-based Corefino, formally launched in May 2009. By joining forces with CODA, Corefino will maximize the power of its unique Triple-C (Connect, Correct and Comply) framework, which comprises more than 500 airtight, self-contained best practices and key business processes across the finance function.

'The Corefino People-Place-Platform approach gives mid-market CFOs an unbeatable strategic advantage, extricating them from the daily routine that keeps them from focusing on their key objectives,' said Karen Watts, CEO, Corefino. 'That's why we call it the CFO's Strategic Accelerator. This partnership with CODA uses cloud computing, business process outsourcing and Web portal technology to deliver a breakthrough service for companies in the mid-market. There is nothing at all remotely like it available on a monthly subscription basis.

'Before founding Corefino, I was a CFO myself. I'm well aware that routine accounting is a high-touch, people-resource-heavy, technology-centric function that adds zero value to a company's strategic mix. What we are saying is, 'Give it to us – we are experts at this. Spend your technology and people resource money elsewhere on activities and strategies that are going to take your company to the next level.''

Through their partnership, CODA and Corefino will deliver a wide range of benefits to mid-market enterprises including:
• key business processes and applications implemented, managed and maintained by specialists leaving the company free to focus core business activities
• reduced reliance on internal and frequently scarce IT and administrative resources so that organizations can ensure their people are working on more strategic business processes
• a cost-effective means to access a best-of-breed finance system, delivered via the internet and charged on a per-user, per-month subscription basis
• ability to benefit from affordable business process outsourcing
• rapid deployment and return on investment
• secure anytime, anywhere access to financial data for a complete view of business performance
• none of the issues related to on-premise software, such as ongoing maintenance, post-implementation changes or system upgrades.

'This announcement could not have come at a better time,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO, CODA. 'Companies around the world are trying to streamline their operations while keeping up best practices and maintaining access to the highest-quality financial data, which they absolutely need to make good business decisions. We're seeing the result of that in the strong demand for our cloud-based accounting software, CODA 2go, where we already have customers in six countries and three continents and a healthy pipeline of opportunities.'

'By partnering with Corefino, we'll be able to reach new markets in an even more powerful way. We are combining the leading enterprise cloud computing platform in Force.com with CODA's best-of-breed financials and Corefino's best practices to deliver an entire family of accounting and financial solutions completely in the cloud – something we believe no one else is offering to the mid-market. It is very exciting to lead the way in what we see as a significant and market-changing development.'

'CODA and Corefino's partnership will help mid-market companies achieve cost savings and business efficiencies by moving their routine accounting operations into the cloud,' said Steve Lucas, senior vice president, Force.com marketing and alliances, salesforce.com. 'Corefino 2go customers will get the advantage of CODA's first-class accounting solution, as well as Corefino's Triple-C business processes framework and experienced staffing. At the same time, they will benefit from running their financials on the trusted, secure Force.com enterprise cloud computing platform.'

CODA Soars Into The Year Of Cloud Computing With CODA 2go Spring '09

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Manchester, NH – April 07, 2009 - CODA Group, the finance software specialist, today launched its much-awaited CODA 2go Spring '09 accounting Software as a Service (SaaS) at salesforce.com's Cloudforce conference in London.

Spring '09 is the second release of CODA 2go and considerably extends the functionality of the first release to offer a complete accounting application. This release covers accounts payable and general ledger accounting, including spreadsheet integration, as well as enhanced accounts receivable and invoicing functionality. Its multi-company, multi-currency capabilities make CODA 2go suitable for any size of business.

Built 100% natively on Force.com, salesforce.com's cloud computing platform, CODA 2go is the first accounting solution that works seamlessly with Salesforce CRM. Having CODA 2go and Salesforce CRM running on the Force.com cloud computing platform and leveraging the same shared infrastructure means that users get the most out of their customer relationships, from making initial contact to ensuring smooth accounting processes and accurate invoicing. It will help companies leverage valuable data across customer services, sales and accounting, giving a 360-degree view of the business at a time when cash flow has never been more important.

'We have been impressed by what CODA has achieved in such a short space of time,' said Jason Cremins, CEO of Remote Media, a CODA 2go Spring '09 beta customer . 'Building on Force.com has clearly worked to their advantage, as CODA 2go and Salesforce CRM work together seamlessly. The latest release offers all the accounting functionality we need and works easily with our own Force.com solution, signagelive.com, a SaaS Digital Signage solution for revenue recognition. Working closely with CODA and salesforce.com, we have been able to run our entire business operation in the cloud, which is critical to our global business strategy.'

CODA 2go is available via a monthly subscription model. Initial pricing for a full subscription to CODA 2go will begin at $125.00 per user per month. Starting today, a free 30-day trial of the Spring '09 release will be available at http://www.coda2go.com/freetrial

'This is the CODA 2go release that many have been waiting for,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA. 'This release builds on CODA's 30 years' experience in developing best-of-class accounting software. It is simple to set up and use and cost-effective to run, and for many companies and subsidiaries, it will better meet their accounting requirements than on-premises software. We expect it to quickly become the de facto cloud accounting solution for salesforce.com customers, as well as those companies that are looking for an on-demand accounting application that is more sophisticated than others on the market, without the complexity and cost that often implies.'

'CODA brings vast experience and a long track record of customer success in accounting and financials to cloud computing,' said Steve Lucas, senior vice president, Force.com marketing and AppExchange, salesforce.com. 'We've been thrilled with the pace at which they've delivered innovation and customer success on Force.com. CODA 2go gives customers a best-in-class accounting application in the cloud that doesn't require them to manage and maintain complex client/server infrastructure.'

For more information, please visit http://www.coda2go.com

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About CODA & CODA 2go
CODA creates, markets and implements a comprehensive range of software systems designed specifically to meet the needs of financial directors and finance departments. These include on premise financial management systems, analysis applications and business process management and control software to implement compliance solutions.

CODA was founded in 1979 and has around 500 employees working at 18 offices in 14 countries. CODA is part of Unit 4 Agresso NV, an international software developer headquartered in the Netherlands and listed on the Dutch stock exchange. It has around 3,500 staff in 19 countries and 5,200 client organizations.

Invoicing Mistakes Pose Serious Threat to Cash Flow, CODA Survey Finds

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

CODA, the finance systems specialist, today released results of a survey demonstrating that invoicing errors are sapping businesses of revenue at a time when they need it most–a phenomenon CODA has dubbed the 'Margin of Error.' The problem stems from the common business practice of submitting multiple invoices at once. If a customer finds an error on even one, it will often hold the entire batch for verification. This can take weeks, even months, and delay payment for an indefinite period-a serious concern for any company trying to weather hard economic times.

CODA set out to determine the prevalence and importance of the Margin of Error by surveying more than 100 U.S. accountants at small-to-medium-size businesses (SMBs). It found that the issue is both costly and widespread. A large percentage of respondents confirmed that invoicing is a common source of cash flow problems, and a significant number estimated that at their companies, improper invoicing delays thousands of dollars of revenue per month.

Among the key findings:

89% of respondents said that cash flow has become a more important problem for their company in the downturn
47% said that invoicing delays are a 'definitely' or 'somewhat' common source of cash flow problems for their company
25% estimated their company has at least $5,000 a month delayed due to invoicing errors
Nearly 17% have seen payments greater than $50,000 delayed due to invoicing errors
In a possible sign of disconnect between finance departments and upper management, 58% of respondents reported that finance was feeling more pressure to invoice properly in the downturn; however, almost 60% said their company was 'not at all' looking for ways to improve its invoicing process.

'Cash flow is the lifeblood of business, especially in times like these when credit is hard to come by,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO, CODA. 'The results of this study show that the Margin of Error is worse than a nuisance. It's a drag on the bottom line. For small to medium-size businesses, payment delays can mean the difference between survival and bankruptcy. Luckily, there are several ways to minimize the risk of these errors, so long as management listens to finance and takes the problem as seriously as it deserves. We hope this survey prompts businesses to have those internal discussions and find a solution that works for them.'

One of the more common causes of invoicing error is the use of finance software that lacks the ability to track sales through a company's CRM system, from the salesperson's first contact to the recognition of revenue. To remedy this problem, CODA has developed powerful 'Opportunity to Cash' functionality in its CODA 2go on-demand accounting package. Built on the Force.com platform, CODA 2go is completely embedded with Salesforce.com and so enables accountants to go from their 'opportunities' in Salesforce CRM to create an invoice at the click of a button and post the transaction to their sales ledger. This gives users the most complete possible view of the sales process and eliminates re-keying of data, minimizing the chance for confusion -- and error.

Introduced in 2008, CODA 2go is the first 100%-native enterprise accounting application developed on the Force.com platform and is a leading example of the industry trend toward 'cloud accounting'.

About CODA & CODA 2go

CODA creates, markets and implements a comprehensive range of software systems designed specifically to meet the needs of financial directors and finance departments. These include on-premise financial management systems, analysis applications and business process management and control software to implement compliance solutions.

Founded in 1979, CODA has nearly 500 employees working at 18 offices in 14 countries. CODA is part of Unit 4 Agresso NV, an international software developer headquartered in the Netherlands and listed on the Dutch stock exchange. It has around 3,500 staff in 19 countries and 5,200 client organizations.

CODA 2go now available through Force.com Checkout

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

MANCHESTER, NH, DEC. 8, 2008 - CODA Group, the finance software specialist, today announced the availability of CODA 2go in the Force.com Checkout pilot program. CODA 2go is the first SaaS accounting system to be developed and run on salesforce.com's Force.com platform and trusted global service infrastructure. As a 100% Force.com native application, CODA 2go is immediately available to U.S. customers for order through Force.com Checkout on the AppExchange at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/

'CODA is a clear leader in developing and delivering financial applications that make customers successful. Our customers have been asking for a native accounting application for some time, and CODA 2go delivers the features required by organizations of all sizes,' said Polly Sumner, President, platforms, alliances, and services of salesforce.com. 'CODA has been able to leverage the Force.com platform to the hilt – developing CODA 2go in just months as opposed to years with other technology models. Now, with Force.com Checkout, CODA can leverage an additional sales and distribution channel that will accelerate their go to market strategy.'

The first CODA 2go release delivers Opportunity to Cash functionality, enabling users to create an invoice directly from their completed 'opportunities' in Salesforce CRM at the click of a button and post the transaction to their sales ledger. It is fully integrated with Salesforce CRM and will help companies manage business processes by providing simple access for authorized users from initial sales enquiry to closing the deal to collecting cash within one integrated product. The next release, including general ledger accounting and purchasing, is currently planned for Q1 2009.

'We are happy to be one of the first applications available via the new Force.com Checkout service,' commented Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA. 'Since the inception of CODA 2go, we have accomplished many firsts, including delivering the first native accounting application and what we believe is the most advanced SaaS accounting application on the market today. We have been part of the creation of the business model for Platform as a Service (PaaS) with salesforce.com as well as creating the legal and operational framework around delivering applications in a PaaS environment. What we have created and will continue to build on is a fully scalable, unified international accounting solution.'

A free 30-day online trial of CODA 2go was announced last week and can be accessed at http://www.coda2go.com/freetrial

Force.com Checkout – Accelerating Customer and Partner Success in the Cloud
The Force.com platform, AppExchange and Checkout provides a comprehensive set of services to accelerate customer, developer and partner success with cloud computing. Applications available through Force.com Checkout run entirely on the Force.com platform, and inherit the security, reliability and availability of salesforce.com's proven global infrastructure.

CODA completes successful CODA 2go beta programme and launches free trial

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

CODA Group, the finance software specialist, today announced that it has completed a successful beta programme for CODA 2go, and from today has made available a free 30 day online trial and demo at http://www.coda2go.com/freetrial.

CODA 2go is the first international SaaS accounting system developed on salesforce.com's Force.com platform. The service is integrated with Salesforce CRM applications and runs on salesforce.com's trusted global service infrastructure.

Since its launch at Dreamforce Europe in May, development of CODA 2go has continued and CODA has undertaken a successful beta programme, which has seen several companies from the UK and US implement and test the order to cash module. Companies trialling the software included salesforce.com customers CyberSafe, Model Metrics, SaaSpoint and Xenogenix.

'We have been impressed with the CODA 2go service and plan to extend our use of the different functions available over the coming months,' said Tim Alsop, Technical Director at CyberSafe. 'With direct communication with the CODA 2go development team, we believe being part of the early adoption programme has put us at a significant advantage. Integration between CODA 2go and Salesforce CRM is seamless and the look and feel is the same, so users feel they are working within one system. It delivers accounting functionality that we have been crying out for and closes a loop between sales and finance. CODA's pedigree in developing finance systems is very apparent.'

The first CODA 2go release delivers Opportunity to Cash functionality, enabling users to go from their 'opportunities' in Salesforce CRM to create an invoice at the click of a button and post the transaction to their sales ledger. It is fully integrated with Salesforce CRM and will help companies manage business processes by providing simple access for authorised users from initial sales enquiry, to closing the deal, to collecting cash within one integrated product.

The CODA 2go service is available via salesforce.com's Force.com AppExchange, a Web marketplace for SaaS applications. CODA provides complete helpdesk support for all trial users and any requests for assistance can be made directly from the application. The trial is delivered with a pre-populated set of data and comprehensive award winning online help and supporting documentation to help customers get up and running quickly and familiarise themselves with the capabilities of CODA 2go. Templates and detailed guidance are also provided to support a smooth implementation when customers are ready to move CODA 2go into their production environment.

CODA 2go is available via a monthly subscription model. Initial pricing for a full subscription begins at £70.00 per user per month with other pricing options available for alternative feature packs. For the first six months, customers that sign up to release one of the CODA 2go service, will receive a free upgrade to release two when it becomes available, including full general ledger and accounts payable functionality.

A new dedicated CODA 2go website also launches today at www.coda2go.com

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About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange
Force.com is the only proven Platform as a Service for building and running business applications in the cloud. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM applications, more than 800 ISV partner applications like those from CODA and Fujitsu, and more than 85,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 47,700 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel.

Force.com is the fastest platform for building and deploying complex business applications. Unlike a stack of disparate client/server hardware and software products, Force.com unifies the development and deployment model from the database to the device, allowing developers to easily assemble applications with clicks, components and code, and then instantly deploy them on salesforce.com's trusted global infrastructure. Customers and partners are using Force.com to build all kinds of business applications from supply chain management to compliance tracking, brand management, accounts receivable, claims processing applications and much more.

Applications built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed to the entire SaaS community through the Force.com AppExchange marketplace at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

On-demand accounting service CODA 2go wins respected industry award

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0100

CODA Group, the finance systems specialist, has won a prestigious industry award for its new on-demand accounting system, CODA 2go. It was awarded for best instructional documentation in this year's UK Technical Communication Awards, organised by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) for its CODA 2go Online Help facility.

CODA 2go is CODA's new SaaS (software as a service) accounting service, the first to be built entirely on salesforce.com's Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. Its Online Help facility is an important element of the usability of the business application, guiding both new and experienced users through the service. It provides a sequence of help topics to enable system administrators to set up CODA 2go, and provides conceptual, procedural and reference topics to enable users, such as accountants and data entry clerks, to use the service. The help facility also enables users to filter for topics relevant to their specific job function.

The awards winners were announced last night at a gala dinner at the annual ISTC Conference, the largest UK event for technical communicators, held between September 23rd and 25th at Eastwood Hall, Nottingham. CODA 2go Online Help was voted the winner based on its well-structured, well-presented and well-written format.

'We are extremely proud to win this prestigious industry award,' said Debbie Ashton, Product Director at CODA. 'The CODA 2go development team have worked very hard to deliver an industry leading SaaS application and industry leading help text to support it. Although the service is generally very easy to use, it is essential that users can find information when they need it to guide them through the product for a seamless user experience. Clearly the judges recognised that we have developed an effective tool in guiding product users, and we are delighted by this endorsement.'

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About The ISTC
The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) has been established for 60 years and is the largest UK body representing information development professionals. The ISTC encourages professional education and standards, provides guidance about the value of using professional communicators, and provides research resources and networking opportunities for its members and industry affiliates.

The annual UK Technical Communication Awards recognise and reward excellence in the efforts organisations and companies make to communicate effectively with the users of their products and services, their customers, and their staff.

For more information, please contact:
Paul Ballard, Head of ISTC Marketing, paul.ballard@3di-info.com 01483 211533

About CODA
CODA creates, markets and implements a comprehensive range of software systems designed specifically to meet the needs of Financial Directors and Finance Departments. These include financial management systems, analysis applications, and business process management and control software to implement compliance solutions. Its service oriented architecture also makes CODA software easy for clients and other vendors to integrate it with their business applications.

CODA was founded in 1979, has around 600 employees working at 18 offices in 14 countries. CODA software is designed for multi-currency, multi-language, multi-country, multi-company and multi-site operations, and is used by around 2,600 medium and large organizations in over 100 countries in a variety of markets and within both public and commercial sectors.

CODA is part of Unit 4 Agresso NV, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and listed on the Dutch stock exchange. The Unit 4 Agresso group is an international developer and distributor of integrated business information and management systems and security solutions, providing secure e-business solutions to its customers. It has around 3300 staff in 19 countries and 5200 client organisations.

CODA Launches First Enterprise Accounting System Built and Run Entirely on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

LONDON and Harrogate, UK, salesforce.com Dreamforce Europe conference – May 07, 2008 - CODA Group, the global finance systems specialist, and salesforce.com, [NYSE: CRM] the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, today announced the immediate availability of CODA 2go, the first on-demand financial system built entirely on salesforce.com's Force.com Platform-as-a-Service.

The first release, launching today, delivers Opportunity to Cash functionality, enabling users to go from the 'opportunities' in Salesforce to create an invoice at the click of a button and post the transaction to their sales ledger. It is fully integrated with salesforce.com's CRM application and will help companies manage business processes by providing simple access for authorised users from initial sales enquiry, to closing the deal, to collecting cash within one integrated product. The system was launched today at Dreamforce Europe, salesforce.com's European User and Developer Conference at the Barbican Centre in London.

'CODA's development team has worked tirelessly to get this first release of the product out and we have been impressed with the level of enthusiasm and expertise they have shown throughout the collaboration,' said Polly Sumner, President, Platform, Alliances, and Services at salesforce.com. 'We share a common vision with CODA to enable customers to manage and share all of their business information entirely on demand. CODA 2go is a great example of how the flexibility inherent in the Force.com platform enables ISVs to deliver innovative and breakthrough business applications.'

CODA 2go runs on the Force.com Platform, benefiting from the industry-leading performance and availability, global scale, multi-tenancy and security of salesforce.com's award-winning service.

'CODA's 25+ years experience in developing international accounting systems, combined with the Force.com platform, have enabled us to deliver a robust on-demand finance application more quickly and efficiently while maintaining our high standards,' said Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA. 'The first release covers Opportunity to Cash processes with General Ledger Accounting, Purchase to Pay and Sales Order Processing functionality being delivered over the coming months. We have developed and delivered functionality in months that would have taken years had we built this from the ground up. And because we are using a proven technology platform in Force.com, it includes world-class security and the ability to quickly customise user screens, which have been lacking in on-premise applications to date.

'This is the first product of its kind and we believe it is unrivalled in the marketplace. We want to do for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM, and Software as a Service is a logical extension of CODA's 'open platform' commitment. This clearly shows that in a mature software market we remain agile and innovative. CODA is known for developing the best finance applications in the world and we believe we have done it again, only this time delivered using the best on-demand technology available.'

CODA 2go – World's First Accounting System on Force.com
CODA 2go will deliver all the advantages of CODA's financial expertise, including: multi-everything accounting; built on a unified ledger, for optimum efficiency, consistency and accuracy; together with the most flexible chart of accounts on the market – enabling users to analyse costs and revenues easily across many different dimensions. All delivered as a flexible, scaleable on-demand service. The applications can be used individually or together or be easily integrated to supplement an existing 'on-premise' accounting system. With a long track record of customer success, CODA 2go will reduce the cost and complexity of managing and maintaining software infrastructure, and will deliver significant benefits to customers, including:
• Improved financial visibility – across the whole process, from converting an opportunity to an order, through to creating an invoice and tracking the delivery of the order.
• Real-time credit management – built-in rules to ensure approval requirements are met, for example preventing accidental credit limit breaches.
• Better-informed decisions – easy, controlled 'self-service' access to finance and CRM information to assist decision-makers, without tying up the finance team.
• Control – the finance department retains full control over which transactions and other data items from the CODA systems are made available to the sales team.

'When we saw CODA 2go for the first time, we knew it was the right finance application for our professional services business,' said Adam S. Caplan, President, Model Metrics LLC, CODA 2go Beta customer. 'It looks great with the same look and feel as our Salesforce CRM and the integration is seamless. It will help to streamline our customer account management across the business and give us fantastic flexibility and a wealth of features while leveraging our on-demand application strategy.'

Pricing and Availability
CODA 2go is currently scheduled to be available on a trial basis in the current quarter via a monthly subscription model. Initial pricing for a full subscription to CODA 2go will begin at $125 per user per month with other pricing options available for alternative feature packs.

Please visit http://www.coda2go.com or call +44 (0)1423 509999 for more information.

Jeremy Roche will be announcing the launch live on stage today during the Keynote presentation alongside Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, at Dreamforce Europe.

The Keynote address can be viewed live from 1300 BST at http://www.salesforce.com/company/investor/

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Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Force.com reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables the creation of a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond client/server computing. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to benefit the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand as thousands of salesforce.com customers have installed thousands of on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at http://www.salesforce.com/crm/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet. The company's Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace available at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

As of January 31, 2008, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 41,000 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol 'CRM'. For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

###

Copyright (c) 2008 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the 'no software' logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Jane Lawrence
EMEA PR Director
salesforce.com
Tel: +44 (0) 870 734 5052
jlawrence@salesforce.com

CODA appoints manager for new on-demand software business in North America

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

CODA Financials, Inc., the finance software specialist, today announced it has appointed Kevin Roberts, currently VP of Business Development, to head up its new Software as a Service organization in North America.

CODA plans to launch its new on-demand accounting system, CODA 2go, in May this year, which will provide companies of all sizes with advanced, international financial accounting capabilities delivered via the world's leading Software as a Service platform. CODA is adapting its sales and marketing, implementation and support strategy to reflect the market differences from the on-premise model it is used to.

'The radically different approach that on-demand products require to successfully take them to market, is something we are very conscious of,' said Steve Pugh, CEO of CODA Financials, Inc. 'As such we are setting up a separate business unit to address those requirements so we can successfully bring CODA 2go to customers. Kevin has all the experience necessary to make this business a success. We can see huge potential for this type of software delivery in the future and expect that our experience in developing and delivering world-class finance systems will benefit us and our customers as we move forward with this new business model.'

CODA will continue to serve the on-premise market as it always has done. Software as a Service is a logical extension of CODA's 'open platform' commitment. Delivering CODA 2go on salesforce.com's Force.com platform will allow CODA to offer its product portfolio to a far wider range of businesses.

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Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com (http://www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

CODA recruits dedicated sales and marketing team for on-demand software

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

CODA, the finance software specialist, today announced it is recruiting a dedicated sales and marketing team to support the new Software as a Service offering.

CODA 2go, CODA’s new international accounting system, will provide companies of all sizes with financials on demand. The new recruits will focus on sales and marketing solely for CODA 2go and CODA’s on-demand market strategy. They will join a dedicated team within CODA focusing on the on-demand market. The extreme flexibility of the design of CODA 2go will enable it to address the accounting system needs of a huge range of customers – from those with just tens of employees to those with tens of thousands.

“The level of feedback and demand we are already seeing is highly encouraging as we start to build our ‘go to market’ team,” said David Turner, Group Marketing Director at CODA. “CODA 2go will further extend our wide choice of supported technology platforms and allow us to address an even broader range of organisations. We are growing a business around a new product and delivery method which is very exciting for us, but means we need to approach sales and marketing in a different way. We believe it is important to evolve and build more flexibility into our go to market strategy as the choice of software delivery methods expands. We can see huge potential for this type of software delivery in the future.”

The first CODA 2go product will be launched at salesforce.com’s Dreamforce Europe user conference in London in May, just seven months after the partnership was formally announced. The first release, built on Force.com, salesforce.com’s Platform-as-a-Service, will address the end-to-end sales invoicing process. It enables users to create an invoice from within the CRM software at the click of a button and post the transaction to their sales ledger, simplifying the sales process. Users will be able to turn sales orders in their Salesforce CRM applications into cash more efficiently, manage customer accounts better and reduce working capital requirements.

Such is the interest in CODA 2go that CODA recently launched a blog (http://blog.coda2go.com/) which provides updates on the development of CODA 2go to keep finance and IT professionals and salesforce.com customers abreast of key developments in the on-demand marketplace. The level of interest and interaction this has generated is helping drive development efforts and it includes a comment posted by Marc Benioff, CEO and founder of salesforce.com who says: “It’s terrific to see the innovation and breakthrough technology coming from CODA on the force.com platform.”

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Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com (http://www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

CODA announces completion of phase one in the development of its on-demand Financials, CODA 2go, built on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

CODA Group, the finance software specialist, today announced it has completed the first phase in the development of CODA 2go, CODA’s powerful global accounting system which will provide companies of all sizes with finance on demand.

Following the announcement of a strategic alliance with salesforce.com at its Dreamforce user and developer conference in September, CODA has already completed development of an end-to-end sales invoicing process built on Force.com, salesforce.com’s Platform-as-a-Service. The new development is an excellent complement to Salesforce CRM applications, allowing users to create an invoice at the click of a button and post the transaction to their Accounts Receivable ledger, simplifying the sales process.

The new CODA 2go product will be unveiled at the first-ever European Dreamforce event in London in May 2008. It will deliver Accounts Receivable as a service to support the order-to-cash process, including generating invoices, posting cash and cash management. Users will be able to turn sales orders in their Salesforce CRM applications into cash more efficiently, manage customer accounts better and reduce working capital requirements.
Sales invoicing represents a successful first phase in a fast-moving product development process. Further releases of CODA 2go on Force.com will cover general ledger, procure-to-pay and other accounting processes, giving full visibility and control over an organisation’s finances. CODA 2go offers the full multi-country, multi-company features that CODA has become synonymous with.

“Using the same agile development methodology as salesforce.com we are pleased to announce this important milestone,” said Debbie Ashton, head of product management at CODA. “We have made use of Visualforce in the development process, which has allowed us to heavily customise the user interface so that for example, invoices are generated in a familiar format for users. The CODA 2go screens will have a similar look and feel as the salesforce.com application, so moving between the finance application and the CRM application will be a seamless experience. We have developed a close working relationship with salesforce.com and we are confident that the final application will be unrivalled in the marketplace given our pedigree in delivering finance systems.”

Salesforce.com’s Visualforce provides a complete framework for building and deploying any kind of user experience, and enabling any kind of interface design and interaction to be built and delivered entirely on demand. These user interfaces can extend the standard force.com look and feel, or replace it with a complete unique style and set of interactions, allowing the power of Platform-as-a-Service can to be extended to virtually any requirement.

Commenting on collaboration efforts, Clarence So, Chief Marketing Officer at salesforce.com said: “CODA has impressed us in its development approach. They are showcasing the power and innovation possible with Force.com and Visualforce. We’re thrilled that customers will be able to take advantage of CODA’s market-leading finance applications on Force.com to extend the benefits of Platform-as-a-Service throughout their enterprise.”

To support development efforts, CODA has today launched a blog designed to provide updates on the development of CODA2go as well as keeping finance and IT professionals and salesforce.com customers abreast of key developments in the on-demand marketplace. The blog can be accessed at http://blog.coda2go.com/

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About Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com (http://www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

CODA and Salesforce.com Announce New CODA 2go Enterprise Accounting System Built on the Force.com On-Demand Platform

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0100

CODA Group [CODA: AIM], the global finance systems specialist, and salesforce.com, [NYSE: CRM] the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced a strategic alliance that will see CODA develop the first on-demand financial system built natively on salesforce.com’s Force.com on-demand platform. CODA’s new service, CODA 2go, will offer companies of all sizes a real-time, global finance system on demand. The alliance was announced today at Dreamforce ‘07, salesforce.com’s User and Developer Conference in San Francisco.

“CODA’s on-demand financial system showcases the power of the Force.com platform for building and delivering any kind of application on-demand,” said George Hu, Chief Marketing Officer, salesforce.com. “We share a common vision with CODA to enable customers to manage and share all of their business information entirely on-demand.”

“Software as a Service is a logical extension of CODA’s ‘open platform’ commitment. Delivering CODA 2go on salesforce.com’s Force.com platform will allow CODA to offer our product portfolio to a far wider range of businesses,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA. “CODA 2go is a powerful unified ledger accounting system that addresses the needs of organizations from tens of employees to tens of thousands. Good financial control matters to big and small organizations alike, and we believe CODA 2go will bring to finance what Salesforce has to CRM – delivering enterprise strength capabilities to the whole market on demand.”

CODA’s long established strategy is to provide solutions for CFOs and their finance teams in organisations of all sizes, to meet the business challenges of their finance function, what ever they may be.

The first release of CODA 2go is expected for delivery during early 2008, and will address revenue management, including creating and managing sales orders, generating invoices, posting cash and cash management. The service will then be quickly expanded to cover procurement and the full range of financial management activities.

CODA also unveiled an integration application, CODA Integrator for salesforce.com, to allow users of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform and CRM applications to interact with CODA’s current enterprise accounting system, Financials, creating an integrated front-to-back office application.

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Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Force.com reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables the creation of a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond client/server computing. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to benefit the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand as thousands of salesforce.com customers have installed thousands of on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/.

About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company’s Salesforce suite of on-demand CRM applications allows customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. Force.com, the world’s first on-demand platform, enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful new on-demand applications that extend beyond CRM to deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy and The Business Web across the enterprise. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, available at http://appexchange.salesforce.com/. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com’s world-class training, support, consulting and best practices offerings.

As of July 31, 2007, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 35,300 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

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