FinancialForce.com announced today an agreement today to purchase Appirio’s Professional Services Enterprise product. FinancialForce.com is a provider of accounting and back office solutions for Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. PS Enterprise is a web-based product built on Force.com for professional services teams to manage “people, projects, customers and transactions.” This will give FinancialForce.com and PS Enterprise users a unified service for handling CRM, billing and project management.
Salesforce.com and FinancialForce.com competitor Netsuite bought OpenAir, a vendor of hosted solutions for professional services firms, in 2008. CEO Jeremy Roche thinks his company’s solution will be better than Netsuite’s because all the pieces are fully integrated within Force.com.
FinancialForce.com has been aggressively positioning itself against Netsuite in recent months. For example, it issued a press release touting its landing of former Netsuite customer myGearStore.
FinancialForce.com has close ties to Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a key investor in FinancialForce.com, and Salesforce.com Vice President for Marketing and Alliances George Hu sits on FinancialForce.com’s board.
Disclosure: Salesforce.com paid for a plane ticket and hotel room for Klint Finley to attend the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.
