Recent TRG blog posts

Rick Yvanovich

Rick is a versatile leader that wears multiple hats: he is USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, a Speaker, an Entrepreneur, a Techie, a Brit, a Baby Boomer, and a professional bean counter (hence the FCMA CGMA FCPA). Rick has worked for 30+ years in supermarkets, the accounting profession, breweries, newsagents, defence manufacturing, IT, property development and BP in the UK, China, Singapore, Switzerland and Vietnam. Rick views Coaching as essential to leadership and is inculcating the value in his own organisation. Thus, his current focus is on Ikigai, Life, Executive, Performance, Team, and Coaching Culture Coaching. Rick inspires and transforms professionals for consistently higher achievement through coaching.
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Recent TRG Blog Posts

Infor Helps Midsize Multinationals Manage Finance

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

While Europeans have long had to adapt to working in many languages, currencies and legal jurisdictions, a generation ago most midsize companies in the United States did all their business in their home country and in U.S. dollars. Today, though, the relentless globalization of the world economy means that an increasing number of midsize companies in North America are functionally multinational and face the challenges of managing a more complex and demanding accounting and financial management function.

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Blog Topics: Talent Management, CFOs, Financial Accounting Management Software

Business Success Comes from Financial Software

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

Business leaders everywhere are looking for new ways to gain as much profit as possible. They look from all different angles to see the best approaches in order to better run their business.

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Blog Topics: Financial consolidation, planning and reporting, IFRS, Financial Accounting Management Software, Infor SunSystems

SHL Group - Case study of Infor10 Financials Business (SunSystems)

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

SHL Group, Ltd, a global psychometric testing and assessment company with more than 800 employees, chose Infor10 Financials Business (SunSystems) plus Query & Analysis for its unified ledger and configurability in handling complex accounting and international invoicing. SHL's upgrade to the web-enabled SunSystems Enterprise makes it much easier to deploy worldwide and results in greatly improved speed and lower cost due to the ability to eliminate several current servers.

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Blog Topics: Financial Accounting Management Software, Infor SunSystems

Resolve to Make Your Business Healthier This Year

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

January is the perfect time to reflect on the previous year and plan for the next one. Like many people, you may have made New Year's resolutions about dieting, exercising and kicking bad habits. When you make a resolution about dieting, you focus on goals and hard numbers:

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Blog Topics: Talent Management

SEA CHANGE: TRANSITIONING TO IFRS

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

As the world transitions to a single, unified global accounting standard with the implementation of international financial reporting standards (IFRS), oil and natural gas exploration and production (E&P) companies in particular face daunting challenges with the transition. Even in countries that have already adopted or set out a path for adoption of the new standard, many questions still linger about how to interpret what amounts to largely broad statements of accounting principles under IFRS.

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Blog Topics: IFRS, Financial Accounting Management Software

SAP Leads, Oracle Lags In Enterprise Apps

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

The results are in from most of the top names in on-premises ERP software, and the results are clear: SAP is leading, Infor and Epicor are doing well, but Oracle is lagging big time.

SAP on Friday released preliminary numbers for its fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 2011, that showed software revenue increased 16% over the year-earlier period (17% in constant currencies) to 1.74 billion Euros ($2.2 billion). Software and software-related services revenue were up 12% over Q4 2010 to 3.72 billion euros ($4.7 billion), handily beating analyst's estimates of 3.6 billion Euros.

By contrast, Oracle's software sales for its fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 30 were up just 2% compared with the year-earlier quarter, whereas analysts expected at least a 7% increase.

The contrast is even sharper if you separate software revenues by type. Oracle's new-license revenues for databases and middleware were up 4% while applications revenue--primarily ERP and CRM--actually declined by 2%. Oracle blamed the overall shortfall on purchase delays tied to new internal approval requirements at customer firms.

In a statement, SAP claimed "significant" market share gains and declared "our innovation strategy is winning."

Backing up the innovation claim, SAP said sales of Hana, the company's in-memory appliance for real-time analytics exceeded its 100 million euro ($127 million) 2011 sales target by generating more than 160 million euros ($202 million) in sales.

SAP was not alone in reporting robust enterprise application revenues. Epicor on Thursday issued a preliminary report that software revenues increased in the range of 8% to 10% during the three-month period ended Dec. 31 (its first fiscal quarter). Total revenue for the quarter is expected to be $218 million to $219 million, up 4% to 5%.

Private equity firm Apax Partners acquired and merged Epicor Software and Activant Solutions last year to create a larger ERP and retail software vendor under the Epicor name. The firm's annual revenues are likely to exceed $800 million in 2012. The Q1 estimate of an 8% to 10% increase was for organic growth over and above the combined results of the two formerly separate companies.

Infor reported earlier this month that its software license revenue grew 16% over the year-earlier period in its second fiscal quarter ended Nov. 30, the same time period in which Oracle suffered a 2% decline. Infor acquired Lawson Software last year and is now the third largest ERP vendor after SAP and Oracle, with revenues expected to exceed $2.5 billion. The 16% increase at Infor did not include results from Lawson.

Microsoft is estimated to fall between Infor and Epicor in enterprise apps revenue, but the software giant does not break out financial details of its comparatively small Microsoft Dynamics business.

So with SAP and Infor posting double-digit gains and Epicor verging on that territory in its most recent quarter, what's the matter with Oracle? As I wrote earlier this month, Oracle customers may be suffering from what Nomura equities analyst Rick Sherlund dubbed "Fusion confusion," a reference to the new Fusion application suite Oracle rolled out in 2011.

"Contacts tell us that Fusion may be freezing Oracle out of the final stages of some apps deals as customers resist buying the old product but are not convinced the new Fusion suite is ready for prime time," Sherlund told StreetInsider.com .

Oracle portrays Fusion as its long-term replacement for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards ERP systems, and Oracle and Siebel CRM systems. The Fusion Suite is designed to be delivered as a service from the cloud or run on premises. But Oracle is not heavily promoting Fusion. Instead, Oracle is trying to get people to ease in pieces of Fusion with what it calls a "co-existence strategy and architecture" for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel apps, and Fusion.

In the case of PeopleSoft, for example, Oracle suggests the combination of PeopleSoft's financial and human capital management software with Fusion Talent Management. PeopleSoft also offers talent management capabilities, but they were only recently introduced, so customers might want to jump directly to the cloud-deliverable Fusion version of that application.

The coexistence strategy surely appeals to customers that want to avoid the chaos of rip-and-replace software deployments. But it also presents the dilemma of when to choose stability and when to opt for Fusion features including services-based delivery, role-based interfaces and embedded business intelligence.

Oracle and SAP are both selling the same idea: Keep the legacy core of software we've sold you, and buy our innovative new software that goes with it. SAP calls it "innovation on top of a stable core." The core is the single application code base of Business Suite 7, which SAP has committed to support with maintenance through 2020. In the latest quarter at least, it appears SAP's brand of innovation is winning.

Source:InformationWeek Author:Doug Henschen

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Blog Topics: Talent Management, Technology trends

Best of 2010: Accounting

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

After creating an ambitious agenda for the year, the standard-setters had to play hurry up and wait.

In the realm of accounting, no one moved more rapidly this year than the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board. The two standard-setting bodies set forth an aggressive agenda that called for a dozen or so new rules to be issued by 2011.

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Blog Topics: Financial Accounting Management Software

Accelerating Microsoft Windows 7 migrations with Citrix XenApp

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

Whether organizations have migrated to Microsoft® Windows Vista® or are still on Microsoft Windows® XP, it’s not a question of if they will migrate to Microsoft Windows 7®, but when. Companies are starting to ask difficult questions, such as: When will their mission-critical applications be supported? How much will it cost to migrate custom applications? Will their current hardware meet system requirements? When can they complete regression testing and workarounds for any uncovered compatibility issues? When can they get the budget and IT cycles to make all of this happen?

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Apple's Siri now works with Citrix Receiver

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

 In a boost to the enterprise and business side to the iPhone 4S, it appears that the Siri voice recognition software can be used with XenApp hosted apps.

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Apple's Siri now works with Citrix Receiver

Posted by Rick Yvanovich on

 In a boost to the enterprise and business side to the iPhone 4S, it appears that the Siri voice recognition software can be used with XenApp hosted apps.

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Rick Yvanovich

 Rick Yvanovich
 /Founder & CEO/

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