SAP intends to increase the number of women in its management ranks at all levels to 25 percent by 2017 and reduce its carbon emissions to 2000 levels by 2020. The software giant recently discussed such plans during its Social Responsibility Initiative. SAP made it clear it sees such planning as something a modern business should do. "Engaging our employees and reducing emissions can no longer be seen as a nice to have," CFO Luca Mucic said during the webcast.

Nexonia is developing a product that would replace the discontinued Business Web Portal for Dynamics SL 2015. The company, whose products include expense reporting that integrates with a wide range of accounting software applications, says the portal will be ready for deployment in the early summer. Available for 10 years, the Microsoft portal was discontinued in September and Nexonia, based in Toronto, Ontario, had already developed a replacement for Dynamics GP.

VertexSMB has introduced a returns-only product for its cloud-based sales tax application. The new product enables businesses to import tax data from any financial system to generate returns. The company says accounting firms can use the system to prepare clients' sales and use tax filings. After setting up a VertexSMB account, users can export tax data into an adjustment file and upload it into the cloud application, which will automatically populate date forms and produce signature-ready PDF returns.