Top 10 Online ERP software

Latest news about Online ERP software

2022. Chinese ERP startup Dianxiaomi raises $110M



Dianxiaomi, a startup which is making the software that allows Chinese exporters to more easily figure out what to sell and how to sell, has secured $110 million in a Series D funding. Dianxiaomi creates a suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for Chinese vendors on Wish, Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Shopee, Lazada and the like. The target users are small and medium-sized sellers with 5,000 orders per day or less. The SaaS provider itself is expanding overseas as well. It’s launched localized ERP products for sellers in Southeast Asia and Latin America, respectively. Globally, it claims to be serving 1.5 million users and has partnered with some 50 e-commerce platforms. In Southeast Asia, it has amassed 430,000 users that are selling within the booming region.


2022. Open-source/cloud ERP provider Axelor raised €10M



Axelor, that provides an open-source, low-code BPM platform that helps build fully-featured ERP and CRM applications, has raised €10 million in a Series A funding. It already has more than 1,000 tools and customers, such as PSA, Ministère de la justice, Hauts-de-seine and Trenitalia. Axelor provides its solution both under an open-source license and a commercial license. Its approach enables organisations to create modules leveraging the low code platform, rather than the code-based approach such as the Belgian-based rival Odoo.

2021. Microsoft announces new tools to modernize supply chain and manufacturing



Microsoft is announcing a new manufacturing solution called the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, along with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights, a tool designed to give customers more visibility into what’s happening along their supply chain routes and intelligence to deal with issues as they arise. The manufacturing cloud is designed to help collect these signals and warn manufacturers when they might need additional supplies. The Supply Chain Insights tool is specifically designed to map out supply chain routes and root out issues that could affect delivery of key raw materials before bottlenecks happen. Together they are designed to bring more agility and flexibility to manufacturing companies.


2021. xentral, an ERP platform for SMBs, raises $75M



xentral, a German startup that develops ERP for online small businesses, has raised a $75 million Series B. The startup covers services like order and warehouse management, packaging, fulfillment, accounting, and sales management, and, right now, the majority of its 1,000 customers are in Germany. Customers include the likes of direct-to-consumer brands like YFood, KoRo, the Nu Company and Flyeralarm. It hooks into Shopify, eBay, Amazon, Magento, WooCommerce, and also CRM systems like Pipedrive to collect the software together in one place, and tries to do it all automatically in the background so that companies can really focus. The goal is that a business owner who decides on Friday that they need a flexible ERP can implement and configure xentral over the weekend and hand it over to their team on Monday


2021. IFS Launches IFS Cloud



IFS has launched IFS Cloud - a single platform that innately connects all its products to deliver the end-to-end capabilities a company needs to orchestrate its customers, people and assets. Customers can choose to deploy best-of-breed or leverage the power of connecting their value chains across capabilities such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human capital management (HCM), asset management (EAM) and field service (FSM). With IFS Cloud, IFS offers a unique and single technology platform with one common user experience, one data model and one consistent support offering. IFS Cloud brings simplicity, choice and innovation to organizations that need to evolve to new business models, control costs, expand faster and serve their customers better. By implementing IFS Cloud, companies can easily scale and simply switch on new functionality (such as additional modules or new innovative capabilities) when the time is right for their business.


2021. Katana raises $11M to be the SaaS powering manufacturing entrepreneurs



Katana, an Estonian startup that has built manufacturing-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for SMBs, has raised $11 million in Series A funding. Katana positions itself as the “entrepreneur manufacturer’s secret weapon” with a plug-and-play ERP for small to medium-sized manufacturers. The idea is to wean companies off existing antiquated tools such as spreadsheets and legacy software to manage inventory and production. The startup is also playing into macro trends, such as the advent of online marketplaces and D2C e-commerce, that are resulting in an explosion of independent makers, spanning cosmetics to home décor, electronics to apparel, and food and beverages.


2021. Xentral nabs $20M to help online-facing SMBs run back offices better



Xentral, a German startup that develops enterprise resource planning software covering a variety of back-office functions for the average online small business, has picked up a Series A of $20 million. The company’s platform today covers services like order and warehouse management, packaging, fulfillment, accounting and sales management, and the majority of its 1,000 customers are in Germany — they include the likes of direct-to-consumer brands like YFood, KoRo, the Nu Company and Flyeralarm. The challenge with Xentral in that regard will be to see how and if they can bring more businesses to the table and tap into the kinds of tools that it provides, at the same time that a number of other players also eye up the same market. (Others in the same general category of building ERP for small businesses include online payments provider Sage, NetSuite and Acumatica.)


2020. Microsoft introduced its customer data platform inside Dynamics 365



Microsoft announced a major update to its Dynamics 365 product line, which correlates to the growing amount of data in the enterprise and how to collect and understand that data to produce better customer experiences. The company is adding functionality to its customer data platform (CDP), a concept all major vendors (and a growing group of startups) have embraced. It pulls together into one place all of the customer data from various systems, making it easier to understand how the customer interacts with you, with the goal of providing better experiences based on this knowledge. Microsoft’s CDP is called Customer Insights. Microsoft clearly isn’t alone in this type of offering, as every big company that sells marketing tools from Adobe to Salesforce to SAP is offering similar products for similar reasons.


2020. Koch Industries acquires Infor ERP for $13B



Infor, which makes large-scale cloud ERP software, announced that Koch Industries has bought the company for $13 billion. Koch is the customer and the lead investor in Infor. The ERP vendor was a step before going public, so Koch decided to keep it private. As a global organization spanning multiple industries across 60 countries, Koch has the resources, knowledge and relationships to help Infor continue to expand its transformative capabilities. Infor may be the largest company you never heard of, with more than 17,000 employees and 68,000 customers in more than 100 countries worldwide. All of those customers generated $3 billion in revenue in 2018.


2019. Workday to acquire online procurement platform Scout RFP for $540M



Workday has entered into an agreement to acquire online procurement platform Scout RFP for $540 million. The acquisition builds on top of Workday’s existing procurement solutions, Workday Procurement and Workday Inventory. The company is trying to be the end-to-end cloud back office player and one of their big gaps has been in procurement. A lot of the Workday investments are in portfolio companies that are complimentary to Workday’s larger vision of the future of Cloud ERP. Today’s definition of ERP includes finance, HCM (human capital management), projects, procurement, supply chain and asset management


2017. Workday acquired CRM startup Pattern



Financial management and HR software vendor Workday acquired two-year-old, Redwood City, Calif.- based startup Pattern. Thus Workday is going to compete with Salesforce and other alternatives. Pattern had aimed to lighten the load of managing customer relationships for salespeople and was funded by Felicis Ventures, SoftTech VC, First Round Capital, and various angel investors, who last year provided the company with $2.5 million in seed funding. Some of Workday’s past acquisitions include big data analytics vendor Platfora, acquired last year, and the online learning company Zaption, which Workday also acquired last year and promptly shut down. Terms for both deals were not disclosed.


2017. Sage Group buys cloud ERP software Intacct



British enterprise software company Sage Group will acquire cloud ERP provider Intacct for $850 million. Intacct, which competes with Financial Force, Oracle’s NetSuite and other alternatives, said in a related statement that it now has 11,000 customers for its enterprise resource planning software. Sage Group also provides cloud accounting and ERP software. The acquisition of Intacct supports its ambitions for accelerating organic growth by winning new customers at scale and builds on our cloud-first acquisitions, strengthening our integrated suite of cloud solutions.


2016. Oracle buys cloud ERP provider NetSuite for $9.3B


Oracle will acquire NetSuite for about $9.3 billion. Both Oracle and NetSuite’s cloud service offerings aimed at enterprise customers will continue to operate and “coexist in the marketplace forever,” according to a statement by Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. Eighteen-year-old NetSuite claims a dominant position in the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) space, which includes offerings to help businesses track supply and demand, inventory, accounting, customer relationships (CRM) and HR. The ERP industry has been an active space for M&A and general consolidation over the past few years, and Oracle in general has been an aggressive acquirer of smaller companies throughout 2016, with recent pick-ups including Opower and Textura.


2015. Workday is going to fund machine learning startups



Workday, the finance and human resources SaaS software provider, announced a new program called Workday Ventures, an investment arm focusing on startups with a machine learning bent. It intends to fund 10-12 companies this year and it has already funded several companies including Thinair, a security service; Unbabel, an online translation tool; Metanautix, a company creating tools to make sense of big data and Jobr, a mobile tool for searching and applying for jobs. As early stage startups with an emphasis on machine learning, these are the types of companies Workday is hoping to work with. Unlike a typical venture capital firm, Workday isn’t setting up a fund with a specific amount of money looking for a set return on its investments. Instead, it sees this as a strategic, rather than a financially motivated project.


2015. FinancialForce cloud ERP raises $110M to take on SAP and Oracle



FinancialForce, the cloud ERP built on top of the Salesforce1 platform, announced a new round of funding, landing $110M in additional investment. As the cloud matures, we are seeing more back off functions like ERP moving to the cloud and beginning to gain traction. Up until now, it’s a market that has been dominated by the usual suspects SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, but cloud players like FinancialForce and NetSuite are beginning to make some noise. FinancialForce itself is an interesting player. FinancialForce is built on Force.com and certainly sells itself as the logical ERP product for Salesforce customers. It has gone beyond this, however. While FinancialForce still works admirably well with Salesforce customers, it is a credible offering in its own right.


2014. Oracle E-Business Suite unveiled cloud-centric apps



Oracle has refreshed its ERP solution E-Business Suite to provide more integration with the company's cloud services. It also made it more tablet friendly. The Financials portion has been integrated with Oracle Revenue Management Cloud to let users leverage the revenue compliance and recognition benefits of that product. Enhancements in Project Contracts and Project Billing lets U.S. federal contractors improve cash flow, increase transparency and automate billing. Purchasing has been improved with changes that provide more buyer productivity in dealing with large orders. The changes include Web ADI-enabled spreadsheet creation, as well as modifications to purchase order lines, schedules and distributions. Web ADI, or Applications Desktop Integrator, is Oracle's tool for connecting its applications with Microsoft Excel.


2013. SAP makes big companies effective with Big Data. Competitors are crying


In recent years, SAP was probably the least innovative IT giant (compared to competitors Oracle, Microsoft, IBM). All SAP's own innovative projects mostly failed (remember Business ByDesign), and the only thing that SAP could do - is buying other companies (SuccessFactors, SyBase, Ariba). But at this time, SAP is going to outdo all the competitors on the wave of new trendy technology - Big Data. What is Big Data? ***


2012. CDC Software and Consona unite into one company - Aptean



Hong Kong based CDC Software (hybrid enterprise software provider of on-premise and cloud deployments with more than 10,000 customers in 50 countries) merged with Indianapolis-based Consona Corp. to form Aptean. As a combined organization, Atlanta-based Aptean has more than 9,000 customers, 1,500 employees, and a worldwide network of sales and support operations. Consona and CDC have complementary solutions in key application areas, including customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM).


2012. Consona acquired open source ERP software provider Compiere



US enterprise software company Consona has purchased on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Compiere, a move that gives it a place at the cloud-computing table. Compiere is a bit of an anomaly in the ERP world, being both cloud-based and open source, although it does have peers such as OpenBravo. Its software mostly focuses on distribution, and will therefore complement Consona's products for small to mid-sized discrete manufacturers, according to a statement. Consona plans to maintain and further develop Compiere's products, which have some 130 customers, and will continue supporting the vendor's open-source strategy, the statement added.


2012. SAP became NetSuite's customer. Business ByDesign will be closed


Most of all NetSuite loves trolling its rival - SAP. From time to time they organize anti-SAP conferences, marketing campaign a la Business ByNetsuite and produce videos like that one above. And they haven't missed the opportunity to joke on SAP at this time. At the opening of the conference SuiteWorld, Zach Nelson (CEO of NetSuite)  took the stage and announced that in the past year the company has achieved their biggest ever win: ERP-giant SAP has become NetSuite's customer. The audience was shocked, and then Zach explained. ***


2011. Google Wallet: How it works


Today, Google has launched a new service - Google Wallet, which allows to pay for goods in stores with the help of a smartphone. Of course, it's more the future than the present technology even in US. But it's interesting to see how we'll pay in the future. For a user Google Wallet is a mobile application that is installed on a smartphone. In this application you enter your bank card details (or get a card directly from Google) and add your loyalty cards. Then, with your smartphone you go to the store and when approaching the point of sale, launch the Google Wallet application, enter your PIN-code, select a card, tap the terminal with your smartphone, and ... your money fly to the retailer. ***


2011. Transifex - online service for app translation


If you want to sell your business application (or service) on the European market, you need to translate the interface to at least 5-6 major European languages. Of course you can hire a professional translator to do this job, but if the translator doesn't understand your app and doesn't use it - he'll hardly make a good translation. It's ideal when the translation is done by the app users themselves. But there are also many problems with this option. For example, how to combine multiple translations from different users, or how to update the translation for the new version if the old translator disappeared. Fortunately, there are special crowd-sourcing translation services for such cases. And Transifex is one of the best of them. ***


2011. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 adds cloud services



MBS President, Kirill Tatarinov (at the left) plays with Dynamics AX 2012 via Kinect ***


2011. CloudBudget - No-consulting budgeting solution on Force.com


CloudBudget - is an online budgeting start-up that allows small and medium companies plan their financial incomes and expenses. Usually excel is used for this purpose, but CloudBudget makes the budgeting process easier, faster and eliminates errors that usually follow excel calculations. In addition, it greatly facilitates the financial planning for geographically distributed companies. The service is built on Force.com platform and in the Salesforce style - note the "No Consulting" sign in the video. Unlike most competing SaaS-products (for example, Adaptive Planning) CloudBudget does not require involvement of consultants in the budgeting process. It provides a simple questionnaire on business language, that allows automatically adapt the system to individual business and industry knowledge base (for professional services, telecoms, hi-Tech, construction). ***


2010. Cisco also jumps into Social CRM



Cisco has never developed CRM systems. Besides, Cisco is in good relations with Salesforce and even resells this CRM system to its customers. But it seams that now the IT giants want to jump into all hot markets, such as Social CRM. So Cisco has unveiled its social CRM system - SocialMiner. Like the other solutions of this class, it can monitor Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks for mentioning of company name or its products. Users can create multiple campaigns, select the keywords and the system will provide daily search results, new "social contacts" and analytical reports. You can not only view and analyze what people are saying about your company on the Internet, but also engage in the discussions with "social contacts" - respond them directly from SocialMiner. ***


2010. Who says Enterprise Software isn’t Cool? Watch what its users can do!


We often pay attention not only to the new business applications and modern trends in Enterprise software, but also on how vendors advertise themselves and their products. This sphere is also shifting to the Enterprise 2.0 style: instead of boring PowerPoint presentations and PDF brochures without images, we see exciting blockbusters and show-projects. Instead of boring descriptions - humorous sketches about how bad is running business without the software. Such marketing attracts attention and most importantly, makes users "friendly" towards the software, even if the software itself is not so friendly, for example like SAP. The new SAP's show-project Run Better is showing not the ERP system but the cool things that its users do. Check also the other examples of beautiful marketing from Box.net, Mainsoft and NetSuite.


2010. Microsoft plans to provide Dynamics ERP as SaaS service



Michael Park, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Business Solutions team, shared some plans about the future of company's SaaS suite Microsoft BPOS. BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) currently includes MS Exchange Online, MS SharePoint Online, MS Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting. And Microsoft is going to add Dynamics CRM and Dynamics ERP to this package. While it's no surprise with CRM (Microsoft has been providing the SaaS version Dynamics CRM Online for quite a long time), the SaaS ERP from Microsoft - is something new. Today some Microsoft partners are already providing vendor's ERP solutions as hosted services, but Microsoft never told about the release of the own SaaS ERP version. ***


2010. SAP Business ByDesign goes live



Finally, SAP has officially launched its SaaS ERP system, SAP Business ByDesign, which will compete with NetSuite, Workday and other cloud ERP solutions. As you know, it's not a fresh product. It was released 3 years ago, but due to the scalability problems, its sales were stopped, and still the system was used by fewer than 100 companies worldwide. SAP Business ByDesign is designed for SMB (50-500 employees) and primarily for manufacturing and professional services industries. It's a single multitenant service to automate all business areas, including manufacturing, financials and sales. The updated version SAP Business ByDesign 2.5 provides support for mobile devices, integration with MS Excel, custom forms and user interface based on Silverlight. But its pricing will hardly cause a revolution in SaaS sphere. ***


2010. SAP acquired Sybase to get the cloud database and mobile apps



The world's largest enterprise software vendor, SAP has become even more large. For $5.8 billion SAP has acquired Sybase,  the company primarily known as one of the leading database and enterprise mobile applications vendor. Until now, SAP didn't have its own database and provided customers a freedom of choice in this matter. At the same time SAP was reselling about a billion dollars worth of Oracle databases - a bad idea considering SAP and Oracle are in direct competition. However, it is unlikely that Sybase database will replace all other database middleware in the traditional SAP ERP deployments. On the other hand, it can be very useful for cloud deployments and creation of the own SaaS platform for SAP Business ByDesign. Because Sybase has recently released the cloud version of its database, which is primarily designed for Amazon EC2. ***


2010. Google deploys crowdsourcing support system



As is known, it's almost impossible to reach Google customer support. And there are 2 reasons for that. First, almost all Google services are free. Second, if the company decide to organize the traditional customer support and answer all the questions, then this would be the largest support team in the world. Therefore, Google decided to implement the beautiful solution and give users the opportunity to answer the questions of each other. Two months ago, Google acquired Aardvark, the social network for mutual support, and without considerable redesign put it to work: added it to Youtube and Google Toolbar. Probably soon Aardvark will appear on all Google services. How it works? ***