An increasing discuss in Enterprise 2.0 circles focuses on what value new technologies have for users who do back office functions. Questions persist about how Enterprise 2.0 technologies are built into the processes of every day life and what upside they really have.

In that regard, it's interesting to note the partnership announced today between NetSuite and InsideView to bring in real-time information from across the social Web into such departments as accounts payable and human resources. The partnership will bring InsideView's insights from across social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Blog Search into NetSuite's CRM and ERP offerings which will help to create what it calls a'Social ERP' system.

NetSuite is a Software-as-a-Service provider that provides a cloud computing platform to help manage software suites. Its customers are mid-sized companies and divisions of large enterprises. Inside View coins itself as a Sales 2.0 leader, "bringing intelligence gained from social media and traditional editorial sources to the enterprise to increase sales productivity and velocity."

NetSuite users will have access to information from a wide variety of traditional information sources and real-time social networks. The structured and unstructured information is aggregated and filtered by InsideView. It flows directly into the application and is filtered for the particular office function such as accounts payable. NetSuite says this is the first time a social component has been built natively into its application.

Some of the benefits the two companies see with the integration:

Better understanding of customers and partners to assess payment risk and improve collection processes
The ability to better use the buzz about suppliers and brand reputation and level of customer satisfaction
Integrate social profile information to engage job candidates across multiple channels, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter;
InsideView for NetSuite was built using NetSuite's SuiteCloud development platform. Additonal NetSuite partners are planning to build their own integrations, which the company says may mean more social components into the NetSuite environment.

Currently, NetSuite users may see information that others are collecting by subscribing via an RSS feed. Further integration could be the potential addition of activity streams for sharing intelligence.

This is an unfolding trend which we believe will create a more measured look at how Enterprise 2.0 applications fit with back office functions. It also represents another example of how business intelligence applications from companies like IBM will begin to compete in this realm as more efforts continue to meld structured and unstructured information.

Epicor Software Corporation (EPIC), a well-known provider of enterprise business software systems for the midmarket and divisions of Global 1000 companies, today announced that Epicor 9, the Company's next-generation ERP system continues to gain momentum with more than 30,000 user seats shipped worldwide to date.

Both new and existing customers globally and across industries are realizing the benefits of Epicor's award-winning real-time business management solution, launched last year at the Company's annual global user conference.

"We are extremely pleased with the success Epicor 9 has achieved since its launch, both in terms of new customer wins, and existing customer implementations and migrations," said George Klaus, chairman, president and CEO for Epicor. "We are committed to delivering world class solutions, services and support to our customers - to see them attain the benefits of improved business processes, productivity gains and overall success with Epicor 9 is gratifying. We expect the adoption of Epicor 9 to continue trending up, as we move toward availability of Epicor 9 in more than 50 countries and 30 languages by the end of next year."

Supporting Businesses as they Grow and Change

Manufacturers, distributors, financial institutions, service firms and retailers worldwide have selected Epicor 9 for its ease of use, ability to adapt to business and industry-specific requirements, and ultimately to scale as an organization expands or changes.

Finland-based EpiCrystals Inc. develops produces and sells advanced light sources for the latest projection display applications. Planning for strong future growth, EpiCrystals was looking for an ERP system that would grow with the company, was flexible and ready to adapt to change and selected Epicor 9.

"Epicor was clearly the right solution for us," said Markku Pajunen, operational director for EpiCrystals. "Our aim in the long term is to have large international companies as our customers. It is extremely important that we are able to easily integrate our ERP system to their systems for efficient and fast-moving processes. A global partner, such as Epicor, will therefore be a huge benefit to us."

Based in the UK, Linkam Scientific Instruments is the market leader in temperature controlled microscopy with products installed in thousands of laboratories worldwide. "We were looking for a flexible solution with low total cost of ownership that could integrate our processes across the whole company -- from sales and marketing right through to manufacturing," said Richard Lloyd, production manager for Linkam.

"After narrowing down our list to three major vendors we chose Epicor ERP because it was simply the most comprehensive solution. We were impressed with Epicor's approach, including the integration between CRM and Microsoft Office Outlook, as well as the ability for us to streamline our production. Functionality such as bar coding, work orders and workshop scheduling will help improve our manufacturing processes; the fact that Epicor is used in large organizations gives us the confidence that the solution has the scope to grow with us as we grow the business."

Global Industry Accolades for Epicor 9

Epicor 9 virtually puts "ERP everywhere," utilizing Web 2.0 concepts to provide users with a truly collaborative and dynamic enterprise business system experience. Technology is raised to a level that delivers unprecedented business management and supports continuous performance improvement through real-time, in-context business insight. At the core of Epicor 9 is an adaptable and collaborative business architecture that satisfies the needs of any enterprise regardless of country, industry, or access device, enabling business anywhere -- business without barriers.

The accomplishment of delivering this groundbreaking solution based on 25 years of experience building ERP solutions hasn't gone unnoticed, as Epicor 9 has garnered international recognition winning numerous awards since its launch. The most notable awards include "Best Recommended ERP Solution for China Manufacturing" at e-Works' Third Annual CIO Forum, 2009 Progressive Manufacturing 100 (PM100) Technology Partner award, a "Leading Innovation" award in Poland, and "Product of the Year" honors in 2008 from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. Epicor 9 also received finalist honors from the International Business Awards and American Business Awards (The Stevies) for "Best New Product or Service of the Year-Computer Software," "Business Innovation of the Year," and "Product Development/Management Team of the Year."