Procurify - What is Cloud-Based Spend-Management Software?

Last night I had the pleasure of being invited to attend the Procurify event hosted at KPMG Canada's offices in downtown Vancouver. The event offered some exceptional networking opportunities but also gave some insight into the Procurify solution of a "cloud-based, online and mobile spend-management software."

As the solution is targeted at the finance folks there was an interesting mix of people and I must say that KPMG & Procurify were excellent hosts. The mix in the audience was an exceptional bonus to the event and provided the opportunities for many to have conversations that ranged beyond the traditional IT/cloud services discussions and talk about diverse business challenges and opportunities.

"Procurify...takes finance and accounting processes that take hours or days and reduces it to minutes..."

The presentation itself included a panel discussion of the service offering, including some quick case studies and a walk-through of signing up & using key functions.

The panel consisted of (L to R):

• Praven Gupta, QuickMobile CFO/COO
• Herman Chandi, Procurify VP of Business Development
• Norbert Huber, KPMG Partner, Management Consulting & Technology Enablement

The elevator pitch for Procurify is that this subscription service which scales to any size business takes finance and accounting processes that take hours or days and reduces it to minutes by making the interface simple to use, and accessible where-ever the people who need it are.

The business workflows targeted by this solution seem to be procurement and travel or other expenses. The workflow was remarkably simple, and watching it in action made me a little jealous of those who have adopted it. I've had to work with the manual processes that this solution targets in the past and have felt the pain. 

As paperwork and chasing people down isn't my strong-suite, the built-in receipt scanning/upload and automated expense submission/approval workflows integrated into the Procurify solution had me drooling a bit. You simply use the mobile app on your smartphone, take a photo of your receipt from the app, and upload it with a minimum of other information needed.  I can see how this could be a game changer for increasing efficiencies and transparency for corporate spending. 

"...biggest challenge with start-ups in Vancouver is getting support in your home town."

Praven Gupta provided some interesting insights on his real-life use of the service, but in the open Q&A afterwards, provided one of the most insightful quotes of the night. When the panel was asked what the biggest challenge as a start-up in Vancouver was, Praveen responded that the "biggest challenge with start-ups in Vancouver is getting support in your home town." 

The observation was that while Vancouver is becoming a hotbed for innovative start-ups and increasingly provides great resources to bring the best & brightest entrepreneurs here, local-based business seem reticent to adopt their products and services - all the big and early sales go over-seas or outside of Vancouver. Praveen challenged Vancouver based business to better understand the service offerings being developed locally and engage with them.

"...biggest challenge with cloud offerings is integration..."

Earlier in the presentations, when giving an over-view of what a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solution offering is, Norbert from KPMG made the observation that one of the biggest challenges with "cloud (offerings) is integration" implying that having multiple SaaS services can increase the likelihood of data integration and integrity risks. This is a valid point that I'd love to explore deeper with other cloud & SaaS experts - feel free to share your opinions on that matter please!

So in the end, a great and informative event, and I'm very thankful to Procurify and KPMG Canada for inviting me to attend, observe, and share what I've learned with you.

For more information on Procurify or KPMG Canada please check the links in this blog, or follow them on Twitter:

• #GoProcurify
• @Procurify
• @KPMG_Canada

As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback on this article and any others via Twitter or email.

@itManageCast

itManageCast@gmail.com

HPSU 2009 - Part 3

BTO Mainstage - Robin Purohit

Discussion of Trends and Roadmap of Products

Robin took the BTO Mainstage to lead a discussion of trends and provide a roadmap products. First Robin discussed some of what he referred to as "Breakthrough Communities" which included

• User communities - Vivit
• Web 2.0 Collaboration
• Customer Advisory Boards

The next topics were around hot tech trends and how those affect HP Software.

Virtualisation

~ 15 M virtual machines shipped last year - expected to double over the next 3 years. Robin noted that there are improvements in data protection & virtualisation from the HP perspective. I'll be getting more information fro the show floor tonight & tomorrow.

SaaS

18% of biz apps are expected to be deployed via SaaS (Software as a Service). HP in the last 6 months has made the latest Service Manager & Asset Centre available via SaaS for customers who don't want to run the applications in-house.

Web 2.0

Robin noted that there is a hot trend seeing the transition of rich internet technology from the consumer world to the enterprise. These Web 2.0 apps power rich visuals, but have a huge impact to QA, Security, and support/performance

aspects of managing your datacentre.

Robin also noted that there is what he called a "regulatory tsunami" coming - indicating that if we think there's been a lot of work around SOX etc., just wait to see what the current US & International administrations will be annoncing in the next year. HP is preparing to assist customers in this area by way of their Tower software acquisition, and a focus on PCI compliance with that branch of HP Software. This also segued to the topic of "cloud governance" and how to know that when you are buying IT services on the wire & paying for use you are protected. This is where the HP services groups "Cloud Assure" steps in making sure that what you buy will work.

As always the lecture to the audience came around to the topic of quantifying the business value of IT. HP is making efforts to move beyond cost and show revenue related to IT services that IT delivers. Not a new message, but HP has tooled up more applications in this area. The release of the HP IT Financial Management Portfolio includes Financial Planning & Analysis which shows cost trends over time by different lines of biz, and provides a breakdown of labour vs. capital. This product integrates with 3rd party ERP & financial systems for single point of glass analysis. Robin also mentioned the upcoming release of PPM 8.0. The new suite also includes enhanced Asset Management with a focus on software licence management; Robin stressed the well versed point that licence compliance is the key use & ROI area for this tool.

The discussion moved on to the Application Security Centre with the free 21 day trail of App Sec Centre on SaaS. Robin informed us of HP's opinion that 35% of flash apps violate Adobe best practices, which is where the SWFScan tool comes into play. Apparently the tool is aware of nearly 4000 flash applications, and has had 13000 downloads so far, driven by the fact that 35% of all webstes run flash of some variety.

Data Protector was the next topic, and HP claims to reduce TCO of backups by 50%. This tool currently has 30000 installs and HP claims market leading growth for a product that is the leading solition for virtual servers & storage. Marketing figures, nothing of substantial intrest to me there.

The presentation came around at last to Application Lifecycle Management, and Robin showed the HP vision that outlines somewhat like this:

Vision - Roadmap - Release - Cycle - Daily

CMS - PPM - Requirements - QC - Compliance

HP flogs the use of their "Agile Accelerator", with it's inclusion of "best practices" to speed adoption, and the app lifecycle is being completed by a focus on app retirement. Pretty interesting that last part, but vague still. The numbers quote for ROI purposes were $200-300k hardware & other savings to be seen when you consolidate but I suspect those are average numbers from fortune 500s.

Robin then discussed HP Operations Orchestrator, and HP Configuration Management. Apparently this week they will be publishing a set of best practices for configuration management - I will read & review those once they're available.

Next Robin brought up some brief guests:

Jonathon M Gregory, Partner Strategic Effetiveness (SITE) @ Accenture - claims 5-30% savings by implementing Accenture's IT financial mgt solution. Jonathon spoke very briefly and basically made a commercial for how Accenture is the key player in finding the single version of the truth for IT. If you want to know more find your local Accenture rep! :-)

Robin mentioned RIM and HP Operations Manager on the BES solution was briefly plugged - I will get more info from the show floor and share it.

The last speaker before we were subjected to a 45 minute commercial for how wonderful HP software is was virtualisation - how do we do it right in the data centre. Brian Byun, VP of Global Alliances for VMware spoke quickly about VMware Vsphere 4. In short, it creates a private cloud architecture and supports cost transparency models by leveraging vCentre to implement shared infrastructure capacity planning, and allows customers to federate the infrastructure & include resources from external suppliers.

Lastly, before Brian left, he & Robin made an announcement: VMware will be launching integrated BSM for physical and virtual systems, HP DDM will be integrated in future releases of the vCentre suite, and there will be integrated virtual and physical client desktop management.