Appirio Launches Professional Services Enterprise to Move Services Organizations to the Cloud

New Professional Service Automation Solution Built on Force.com, Designed for the Needs of the World's Most Sophisticated Service Firms

Note: As of Jan 1, 2011, Professional Services Enterprise, an application formerly provided by Appirio Inc. on Force.com, is now owned, developed and supported by FinancialForce.com.


SAN MATEO, Calif.—August 25, 2009—Appirio (www.appirio.com), a cloud solution provider, today announced a new cloud-based professional service automation (PSA) solution. Built completely on the Force.com platform and designed for the world’s most sophisticated professional service organizations, Appirio Professional Services Enterprise™ delivers end-to-end support for managing people, projects, customers and transactions.

The Solution

Appirio's Professional Services (PS) Enterprise uses the cloud to help services teams put the right people on the right projects for successful delivery to customers, and gives management insight that can be acted upon across every aspect of a services business. PS Enterprise is different from other solutions because it supports a services business end-to-end, bridging the gap between how projects are sold and how they are delivered. PS Enterprise customers also benefit from the scalability, flexibility and total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages of the leading cloud platform, Force.com.
“Appirio is a great example of how ISVs are bringing new applications to market quickly and efficiently on the Force.com platform,” said George Hu, EVP Platform, Marketing, and Alliances, salesforce.com. “PS Enterprise delivers the speed and flexibility of the Force.com platform to professional services teams, and inherits all the benefits of our trusted cloud infrastructure. This delivers the power of cloud computing to services professionals in any industry.”

PS Enterprise in Action

• Make your numbers: As the quarter closes in, services executives can identify a project that has been booked but not scheduled, and assign the right resource to accelerate the project's delivery to meet that quarter's sales goal
• Put the right people on the right projects: A practice manager working to close a big deal can make a tentative resource request for highly sought after individuals with a certain skill level while the deal is still in the pipeline
• Improve utilization: A staffing coordinator can see that utilization is below target in certain regions or practices and makes matches between open resource requests and available resources to close the gap
• Stay on budget: A consultant entering a timecard can see if a project is approaching the end of budgeted hours, offering the business better insight into over- or under-estimating service costs

The Customer Need

“Traditional enterprise apps fall short of the mark for project-based businesses; many times meeting less than 50 percent of the business requirements,” explained Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Solutions with IDC. “And because traditional PSA solutions only solve part of the problem, the market is ripe for an end-to-end Cloud-based solution designed specifically for the needs of professional services firms.”
“Perceptive Software delivers enterprise content management solutions to 2,000 customers in 45 countries,” said Patrick Kearney, vice president of professional services for Perceptive Software, Inc. “We chose Appirio PS Enterprise to power our services business, link our sales, support and services teams, better manage our utilization and margin and ensure successful delivery to our customers.”
"NAV CANADA has over 2,200 technology professionals working to develop, implement and maintain civil air navigation systems that safely and reliably serve our customers and the flying public," says Claudio Silvestri, CIO of NAV CANADA. "We chose Appirio PS Enterprise to deliver an enterprise-class product that can be easily extended to meet the needs of our business and integrated with our Oracle financial system.”
“Traditional enterprise software is simply not tailored to the needs of large professional service organizations,” explained Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “By building on Force.com, Appirio was able to develop a more flexible, scalable solution that can support big teams at a significantly lower TCO. We understand this market’s requirements and initially developed PS Enterprise for use by our own services business and the 1000+ person teams that we've managed in the past.”

Useful Links

Watch a 3-minute demo of Appirio PS Enterprise in action
View screenshots of Appirio PS Enterprise
Check out Appirio's new "Professional Services Cloud" blog
Find out more about Services Resource Planning and see it in action, join us for a webinar with a leading analyst firm on September 29th

Pricing and Availability

Pricing for PS Enterprise starts at $45 per user per month for organizations with more than 100 users. For more information or to switch your enterprise services organization to the cloud, please contact Appirio.

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About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com), a cloud solution provider, offers both products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of the cloud. With over 2500 customers, Appirio has a proven track record of implementing mission-critical solutions and developing innovative products on cloud platforms such as salesforce.com, Google Apps, and Amazon Web Services. From offices in the U.S. and Japan, Appirio serves a wide range of companies including Avago, Hamilton Beach, Japan Post Network, Ltd, Pfizer and Qualcomm. Appirio was founded in 2006, is the fastest growing partner of salesforce.com and Google, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.