LEGOLAS?  JEDI?  JAKARTA? UHURU? What was your systems admin thinking when he named those servers?  A question I’m sure many of us have asked ourselves at work.  In this post, I’ll attempt to answer the question of “Why are all of the servers named after Snow White Dwarves?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Jamie Oliver, a British chef, has come to the United States on a quest to start a “Food Revolution,” a quest to change the eating habits of Americans for the better.

Jamie is taking it to the streets in his show on ABC, he’s building an army of followers via Twitter, and he’s put together a petition to take to the White House.  He started with one family and one school, and is building from there!

Read the rest of this entry »

We are really excited about the latest upgrade and new product offerings using technology from Groundwork Open Source.  This upgrade gives us three new options for fast, secure deployments for Prodagio monitoring customer-hosted and Saas environments.  Our collection of Nagios enhancements is designed to allow 360 degree visibility to your Prodagio or EMC Documentum repositories health and availability.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earth Day Resolution?…what is that? Oh…It’s just a little something I’ve done every year, since I was in 5^th grade. It hasn’t caught on quite like its big Brother the New Year’s Resolution, but it’s the same concept.  Let me explain.

The New Year’s Resolution works like this, every year at the stroke of midnight you kiss your partner and declare something you are going to change…usually something that will better YOU in some way – exercise more, drink less soda/beer, eat baked potato chips instead of fried, etc.

Earth Day Resolutions work the same way, except there is no kissing (I guess you could go kiss a tree, or a baby seal if there is one lying close to you…but that might be weird) and instead of doing something that will better you, you make a change that will better the Earth…or at least the part of Earth in which you live in. It doesn’t have to be something extravagant, just something simple that you can work into your daily life and keep up.  The goal is by Earth Day 2011 you are still doing your 2010 resolution and are ready to add on to it!

Read the rest of this entry »

I am a giver; a man of the people. A problem solver of sorts.  I have come to the realization that the latest trendy word or acronym has not been coined by a  “professional” in the Accounts Payable space in a long time.  We all know the easy ones like Automation, Touchless Transactions, OCR, Content Management, etc…….Snore.  Well I am here to give the people what they want; a term to be used when credibility is paramount.  I Brandon Henderson will deliver the next Trendy AP word. How about “Simplicity”. It’s a good word, no?  We all want simplicity in our life.  Unfortunately we all know that invoices are not simple, the idea of an invoice is simple, but the 120 line item non po invoice, not so simple.   Ok, so simplicity is out.  But is it?  Can someone provide a method that provides a simple way to process invoices? That’s a different topic for another day.  I am here to brain storm, to provide Controllers across the this great country of ours the ability to use a word that makes them seem smarter than their CFO.  I am not here to talk about providing less complex technology that provides a real time view of expenditures and liabilities. I am not here to talk about the ability monitor invoice approval times and enforce compliance measures.  I am here to summarize. I am here to vocalize a word that will flip the AP world upside down. I am….drawing a blank right now. If “Simplicity” isn’t fitting, there is bound to be another word better suited for this task. Maybe I’ll think of something in the next few days…

Field reports from IAPP have been full of interesting trends and buzz. The edgy and dark side of the conference is most participants feel the pressure to innovate or be outsourced. From our perspective, we have built the right products for managers to innovate and transform AP into a strategic financial management tool, instead of a commodity to be outsourced. Here is a quick recap of the show and how our products can help AP to capitalize on current trends:

1. Supplier Interaction – We think this awareness is more that timely. We are getting more interest in our Prodagio VSS product – Vendor Self Service. A few of our customers are starting to view themselves as customer service centers or at least are looking to that industry for the best practices on how to effectivley manage vendors in real-time. The solution logic is strong – push the responsibility for invoice entry out to your suppliers. This increases accuracy and lowers operating cost, but more importantly creates a automated vehicle to engage in Dynamic Supplier Management.
2. Linking Contracts with AP and Procurement - Another trend is linking AP with contracts. Prodagio has long seen this linkage in contracts and is the reason behind our investment in Prodagio Contracts.
3. Scanning or e-Invoicing – Sounds like the current trend is to do one or the other, but not both because of the time and cost involved. We built our Entry Channel Rules technology to handle transactions from any source so our customers are not limited by invoice ingestion technologies.
4. Dynamic Supplier Management – As we discussed in our webcast “An invoice is a demand on your cash” in February, the huge opportunity exists for companies to create a real-time linkage between AP and cash Management. Prodagio Analytics makes identifying these opportunities easy and Prodagio AP allows you to take immediate action.

More to come.

Prodagio Software products have just been included in two new industry analyst reports by Gartner and Forrester. Both firms list Prodagio Contracts as a leading offering in the Contracts Management space. In their latest research, Forrester has recognized our ability to provide both the benefits of content management and transactional contract capabilities.

Forrester Research – Prodagio Contracts

Predictions 2009: ePurchasing Market, Andrew Bartels, 30 March 2009.

“Imagitek leverages its EMC Documentum relationship to move into CLM. Imagitek has had an offering in the EIPP space for a number of years with its Prodagio A/P product. In 2005, it added a CLM product, Prodagio Contracts, to its procure-to-pay suite. Prodagio Contracts has 30 clients, including global, publicly traded corporations, state and local governments, and international clients. The product includes a flexible data model, business processes, integration technology, and an enterprise content management component built on EMC Documentum. As a result, the product combines contract terms-and-conditions architecture for integration with transaction systems and clause-level control over contract creation, negotiation, and management of contract obligations with the leverage of a leading ECM platform. Imagitek has also recognized the SaaS trend and delivers both hosted and on-premise solutions.”

Gartner – Prodagio AP

Procurement and the Oracle E-Business Suite, Debbie Wilson, 5 March 2009.

Gartner highlights Imagitek as a best-of-breed alternative to Oracle’s Procurement Applications. Prodagio Software is particularly relevant against Oracle in situations where multiple ERPs and backend systems exist or for shared services where consolidation across business units is required.

With all the recent economic changes, we decided to dig down into what is driving our Procure-to-Pay customers right now. Traditionally, the value of Accounts Payable solutions has been operational – to process invoices as inexpensively as possible. Our clients have always seen beyond core efficiency. It is not that they don’t value the operational improvements. They bank those benefits every day; but, they also see how with the right technology they can move beyond simple post-and-pay efficiencies.

Based on this experience, we see an invoice as a demand on your cash. On first blush, it seems simplistic. But when you let that perspective guide feature development instead of just operational efficiency then a new class of functionality emerges. The software no longer just ensures that bills are paid with as little cost as possible. To create maximum benefit for your organization, software needs to allow you to control timing, prioritizing and interrogation of supplier demands. This is even more important in today’s climate.

Every organization should be looking into a variety of strategies:

-Maximize discounts on bills you have to pay.
-Identify duplicate payments before a check is cut.
-Ensure you work closely with Procurement and lines of business to strategically manage critical vendors.
-Develop strategies for vendor negotiations that allow you to control timing and terms.
-Shift processing cost and data entry to vendors with Vendor Portals.
-Monitor for potential fraud by watching vendor and payment trends.
-Aid the CFO with compliance with detailed record-keeping, audit trails and process control.
-Maintain your corporate reputation and keep essential suppliers happy.

There is an article in IAPP’s February newsletter (http://www.iappnet.org/) called “Transforming AP into a Profit Center.” It corroborates the same themes our customers have been telling us.

This is a good time to give your Accounts Payable process some serious consideration. Outsourcing invoice payments to cut costs might give you some measure of efficiency; but, it won’t help you sleep better at night, manage your vendors effectively or ensure you’re not a victim to invoice fraud or errors.

Some things are too important to hand off – we think your company’s cash falls into that category.