ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Pricing, Planning and Performance Management Software Creates Business Value

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 July 2013

People who don’t spend much time analyzing the software market may have trouble understanding the differences between products in a given software category or the difference between two categories. This happens because vendors and commentators use the same words to describe different depths of functionality and degrees of comprehensiveness in one type of application. As well, there can be...

Topics: Performance Management, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Office of Finance, dashboard, PRO, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Supply Chain, CEO, demand management, FPM, S&OP

Mercer Unifies Talent Management Practice and Announces Product Suite

Posted by ISG Software Research on 30 July 2013

Mercer is a global consulting company that has more than 19,000 employees in more than 40 countries. One of the company’s major consulting practices is talent management. My colleague Mark Smith assessed Mercer’s survey delivery product WIN for compensation management in September 2011. Mercer recently held an analyst day in Boston where speakers discussed the launch of a new internal group...

Topics: MicroStrategy, Mercer, Towers Watson Talent Management, Analytics, Business Analytics, Workforce Performance, Compensation

BIRT Analytics Strives To Make Analytics Business Friendly

Posted by ISG Software Research on 22 July 2013

Actuate recently announced BIRT Analytics Version 4.2, part of its portfolio of business intelligence software. The new release includes several techniques used by analytics professionals placed behind a user-friendly interface that does not require advanced knowledge of statistics. Beyond the techniques themselves, release 4.2 focuses on guiding users through processes such as campaign analytics...

Topics: Sales Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Customer & Contact Center, Data Discovery

Enkata Optimizes Claims Processing

Posted by ISG Software Research on 20 July 2013

Enkata used to focus its products on improving agent performance in the contact center. It has gradually expanded that focus to include improving the performance of workers in the back office, an effort that has culminated in a suite of products that help companies improve processing of healthcare claims.

Topics: Customer Experience, Enkata, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Customer & Contact Center, Call Center, Contact Center, Desktop Analytics, Workforce Force Optimization

PivotLink Makes Attribution Modeling More Approachable

Posted by ISG Software Research on 20 July 2013

PivotLink is a cloud-based provider of business intelligence and analytics that serves primarily retail companies. Its flagship product is Customer PerformanceMETRIX, which I covered in detail last year. Recently, the company released an important update to the product, adding attribution modeling, a type of advanced analytic that allows marketers to optimize spending across channels. For...

Topics: Retail Analytics, Sales Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, PivotLink

Datameer 3.0 Introduces Advanced Big Data Analytics for Hadoop

Posted by ISG Software Research on 17 July 2013

Datameer , a Hadoop-based analytics company, had a major presence at recent Hadoop Summit, led by CEO Stephan Groschupf’s keynote and panel appearance. Besides announcing its latest product release, which is an important advance for the company and its users, Datameer’s outspoken CEO put forth contrarian arguments about the current direction of some of the distributions in the Hadoop ecosystem.

Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Information Applications, Strata+Hadoop

Hadoop Summit and Hortonworks Promise To Make Big Data More Engaging

Posted by ISG Software Research on 10 July 2013

Hadoop Summit is the biggest event on the West Coast centered on Hadoop, the open source technology for large-scale data processing. The conference organizers, Hortonworks, estimated that more than 2,400 people attended, which if true would be double-digit growth from last year. Growth on the supplier side was even larger, which indicates the opportunity this market represents. Held in Silicon...

Topics: Big Data, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Operational Intelligence, Strata+Hadoop

Salesforce.com Is Full of Surprises

Posted by ISG Software Research on 10 July 2013

Anyone who follows salesforce.com is used to surprises, but over the last couple of months the company has come up with some that go beyond the usual. It rebranded the recent user conference in London as a customer company event. This follows from changing its messaging to urge every company to become a customer company not a social company. The event itself was everything we have come to expect,...

Topics: Sales, Sales Performance, Social Media, Customer Experience, Social CRM, Voice of the Customer, Mobile Apps, Self-service, Operational Performance, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Information Applications, Call Center, Contact Center, CRM

Making Treasury More Strategic

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 July 2013

Along with other aspects of the finance organization, there’s increasing emphasis on having the treasury function play more of a strategic role in the organization. Typically, Treasury is charged with keeping track of and managing cash. Especially in larger organizations, this can be complicated because of multiple bank accounts, complex financing requirements and many methods of receiving and...

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Office of Finance, Controller, credit, debt, Analytics, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, cash management, Financial Performance Management

Peoplefluent Innovates with Video and Collaboration and also Unifies Recruiting

Posted by ISG Software Research on 04 July 2013

To strengthen its position in both core talent management and the social form of it, Peoplefluent has purchased a video collaboration platform and enhanced its existing recruiting products. My colleague Mark Smith wrote about Peoplefluent’s evolution toward a social talent management platform with its acquisition of Socialtext. In addition, our firm selected Peoplefluent’s customer Citrix for the...

Topics: Social Media, Customer Experience, HCM, Peoplefluent, Recruiting, Business Collaboration, Collaboration, Workforce Performance

IBM Improving the Science to Apply Business Analytics for Better Customer Engagement

Posted by ISG Software Research on 04 July 2013

I recently wrote how IBM is making customer analytics smarter. Since then IBM has run events in North America and Europe to demonstrate how it is continuing these efforts and expanding into other areas. Outside of the customer space you can read how my colleagues assess its efforts: Mark Smith discusses HR, Robert Kugel sees its impact on business overall, and Tony Cosentino addresses it in IT....

Topics: Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, Mobile Apps, Self-service, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, IBM, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, IBM Watson, Text Analytics

Roambi Means Mobile Business in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Software Research on 04 July 2013

Roambi, a supplier of mobile analytics and visualization software, announced the release of a cloud-based version of its product, which allows the company to move beyond the on-premises approach where it is established and into the hands of more business users. Roambi Business enables users to automate data import, create models and refresh data on demand. Furthermore, the company announced a ...

Topics: Mobile, Sales Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Operational Intelligence, Roambi