Insights for IT Negotiations

Workday recently reported their FY23 Q1 earnings, and while it reported a good quarter, Workday did experience some challenges and deals being pushed to the second half of FY23. Organizations are responding to the looming economic uncertainty and resulting turnover at the executive level by tapping the breaks on engagements. While Workday still saw a subscription revenue growth of 23%, it was clea...

Salesforce reported Q1 FY23 earnings, and once again posted a strong total revenue growth of 24% while beating top- and bottom-line expectations. During the earnings call, Salesforce Co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor pointed towards the increased relevancy of Salesforce’s Customer 360 platform as a driving force behind their revenue growth. They also pointed to the amplified Customer 360 value...

ServiceNow held its annual Financial Analyst Day ahead of Knowledge ’22 this week, and there many key takeaways that current and new customers need to be aware of. ServiceNow is focused on expanding customer portfolios to include as many products within their 4 workflows (Technology, Customer, Employee and Creator) as they can. Their goal is to further entrench their solutions while also increasin...

It's Day 1 of SAPPHIRE and Chip Hanna, UpperEdge's SAP Practice Director, has a few important insights to share regarding SAP's announcement of a new strategic partnership with McKinsey. Anyone who is considering SAP RISE will find important information in this relevant and timely podcast and will get some reading-between-the-lines from the SAP/McKinsey announcement. Host: Chip Hanna: https://bit....

ServiceNow’s FY22 is off to a strong start, with a Q1 subscription revenue of $1.63B representing 26% growth year-over-year. ServiceNow closed 52 transactions in the quarter with over $1M in new annual contract value, an increase of 41%. ServiceNow has over 1,400 customers paying them over $1M per year, with the average annual spend among that group coming in at $3.9M. ServiceNow continues to leve...

Microsoft beat expectations on the top and bottom lines, posting FY22 Q3 total revenue of $49.4B. It is clear that the continued success is directly tied to Microsoft Cloud, which includes Azure, Office365, LinkedIn, Dynamics 365, Power Apps, and other cloud solutions. Microsoft Cloud eclipsed $23B in the quarter, representing a 32% increase year-over-year. In this podcast, Microsoft Practice Lead...

Salesforce reported FY22 Q4 earnings, and once again posted strong revenue growth of 26%. They also posted 25% revenue growth for the full year while raising FY23 revenue guidance by $300M. It was very clear that Slack will be a focus for Salesforce moving forward as they expect turn it into a $1.5B business by the end of FY23. In this podcast, Salesforce Practice Leader, Adam Mansfield, discusses...

ServiceNow had another strong quarter and year, with subscription revenue of $1.52B in Q4 and $5.57B for the full year, representing 29% and 30% growth respectively. ServiceNow also now has 1,359 customers that pay over $1M per year, with the average annual spend being $3.8M. ServiceNow is able to do this through organic growth and executing to a strategy that has resulted in successfully getting...

Microsoft once again beat analyst expectations, posting FY22 Q2 total revenue of $51.7B. Their success is being driven by the Microsoft Cloud (which includes Azure, O365, LinkedIn, Dynamics 365, Power Apps, and other cloud solutions). When selling their cloud solutions to enterprise customers, Microsoft will continue to pitch a “One Microsoft’ approach with the ultimate goal of getting them to use...

There is a direct correlation between SAP system implementation failures and how companies approach the SI selection process. The traditional procurement approach is flawed and fails to account for the complexities of an enterprise SAP SI selection today. The demand for SI services in strategic industries is accelerating as companies come out of the pandemic and shift from a “preserve and protect”...

Salesforce reported FY22 Q3 earnings this week and, once again, Salesforce posted a strong revenue growth of 27% while also raising full year guidance. Additionally, Salesforce now has two (2) business units or “clouds,” that being Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, that have an annual run rate of $6B. It was also announced that Bret Taylor will work with Marc Benioff as the co-CEO of Salesforce. Sale...

This is the third podcast in our three-part series covering SAP Support Model Case Studies. Listen to part one on SAP RISE here bit.ly/3k0SGEe and part two on the “Do It for Me” model here https://bit.ly/3mMGFnB SAP customers migrating their SAP workload to the cloud have four primary support models to choose from. These include the “Do It Yourself” model, the “Do It for Me” model, the professiona...

This is the second podcast in our three-part series covering SAP Support Model Case Studies. Listen to part one on SAP RISE here https://bit.ly/3k0SGEe SAP customers migrating their SAP workload to the cloud have four primary support models to choose from. These include the “Do It Yourself” model, the “Do It for Me” model, the professional model, and SAP RISE. In this case study, a client who was...

ServiceNow once again posted subscription revenue growth of 31%, beat previous guidance, and raised full-year guidance. ServiceNow also now has 1,266 customers paying over $1M per year with an average annual spend of $3.6M. ServiceNow is so confident in their ability to execute to their land and expand strategy that they continued to reinforce the fact that they are on a clear path to achieve $15B...

This is the first podcast in our three-part series covering SAP Support Model Case Studies. SAP customers migrating their SAP workload to the cloud have four primary support models to choose from. These include the “Do It Yourself” model, the “Do It for Me” model, the professional model, and SAP RISE. In this case study, a client chose the SAP RISE model where they were able to choose the hypersca...

Microsoft beat analyst expectations, posting FY22 Q1 total revenue of $45.3B. Once again, Microsoft’s success is largely being driven by the success of the Microsoft Cloud (which includes Azure, O365, LinkedIn, Dynamics, and other cloud properties). Microsoft will continue to push enterprise customers to adopt (and use) as many pieces of the Microsoft Cloud as they possibly can, including motivati...

Oracle is getting more aggressive with their Java inquiries and has even created a Java sales team which is separate from their application and technology sales teams and their LMS audit teams. This separate unit is compensated for closing Java sales and they are using creative ways to identify and advance sales opportunities, often being very aggressive. Some customers have even said that at time...

Oracle has increasingly been including its Cloud Learning Services in their cloud proposals, often without the client even asking for it. Should your company invest potentially millions into purchasing these services to gain access to a series of learning and training solutions from Oracle University? Oracle Practice Advisor, Erwann Couesbot, discusses what Oracle’s Cloud Learning Services are and...

Workday acquired Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software provider, Zimit, which will allow Workday to offer quote-to-cash process automation to companies in services industries. While Workday has been doing very well in their recent earnings and are continuing to build out their solution offerings, aggressive growth through acquisitions, hiring, partnerships, and geographic expansion, can make it dif...

Microsoft recently announced they are going to be increasing many Office 365 suites as well as the all-in cloud bundle, Microsoft 365 E3 pricing. Beyond increasing the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), there are several other motivating factors driving Microsoft to make this decision. In this podcast, Microsoft Practice Leader, Adam Mansfield, discusses why Microsoft is hitting their enterprise cus...

Salesforce announced their FY22 Q2 earnings and they once again had another strong quarter, posting an impressive 23% revenue growth while also raising full year guidance by over $300M. On top of this, Salesforce once again reminded everyone how confident they are that they will hit $50B by FY26. Beyond the normal callouts to the strength of their product portfolio (the Customer 360) and the stron...

Workday has received approval to sell their applications within the US Federal market and its Workday Government Cloud product is now listed on the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) marketplace. This is a huge opportunity for Workday who directly competes with Oracle in multiple areas. UpperEdge’s Workday Practice Leader, Jeff Lazarto, shares his thoughts on this signific...

Workday and Google announced a multi-year strategic partnership that will allow Workday applications to run on Google’s infrastructure. With both Workday and Google facing strong competition, this partnership and its joint go-to-market programs will create more sales and marketing channels that will help generate more opportunities and better position them to compete with the likes of Oracle, SAP,...

ServiceNow posted subscription revenue growth of 31%, beat previous guidance, and raised full year guidance. ServiceNow also increased the number of customers paying over $1M per year by 25%. Not only is ServiceNow clearly executing to their land and expand strategy, but they are also having success pushing more products into the portfolios of net new customers as well. In Q2, the average deal siz...

Microsoft once again beat both top and bottom line expectations as well as prior business segment revenue guidance. It is clear that Microsoft’s overall success and ability to achieve $60B in profit, is being driven by the success of their Commercial Cloud. Moving forwards, customers will heavily rely on Commercial Cloud and the products that make it up (Office 365, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Li...