ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Vena Provides Practical Support for Integrated Business Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 November 2022

Vena Solutions offers organizations a platform for financial planning, analysis and reporting as well as software to manage accounting consolidation and close processes. From the start, Vena has designed its applications to meet the needs of midsize organizations, which typically have the same requirements as large enterprises but with significantly fewer resources to acquire, manage and maintain... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management

IBM Builds on Analytics and BI Foundation

Posted by David Menninger on 29 November 2022

In today’s data-driven world, organizations need real-time access to up-to-date, high-quality data and analysis to keep pace with changing market dynamics and make better strategic decisions. By mining meaningful insights from enterprise data quickly, they gain a competitive advantage in the market. Yet, organizations face a multitude of challenges when transitioning into an analytics-driven... Read More

Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, IBM, IBM Watson, AI and Machine Learning

Oracle NetSuite Goes Full Suite Ahead to Deliver Customer Value

Posted by Robert Kugel on 25 November 2022

The theme of this year’s Oracle NetSuite SuiteWorld was “Full Suite Ahead,” with content aimed at demonstrating to customers (and prospective buyers) the value of using more of what NetSuite has to offer. The business logic behind this concept goes beyond the obvious objective of upselling existing customers to increase the average annual recurring revenue. As is often the case with subscription... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Finance Performance Management

Three Trends in Digital Learning for 2023

Posted by ISG Research on 23 November 2022

The pandemic years saw an exponential rise in organizational investment in digital learning, and for good reason. With in-person learning no longer an option, organizations were forced to quickly adapt to the changing world of work in order to ensure workers were prepared with the knowledge and training necessary to operate in ways they had never before seen. Beyond operational imperatives,... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Learning Management

The Arguments For, and Against, In-Database Machine Learning

Posted by Matt Aslett on 23 November 2022

Almost all organizations are investing in data science, or planning to, as they seek to encourage experimentation and exploration to identify new business challenges and opportunities as part of the drive toward creating a more data-driven culture. My colleague, David Menninger, has written about how organizations using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) report gaining... Read More

Topics: Data Governance, Data Management, Data, data operations, analytic data platforms, Analytics and Data, AI and Machine Learning

Cloud Computing Realities Part 3: Business Continuity

Posted by David Menninger on 22 November 2022

In my previous perspectives on cloud computing, I addressed some of the realities of cloud costs as well as hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. In the midst of the pandemic, my colleague, Mark Smith, authored a series of perspectives on considerations for business continuity in general, beginning with this look at some of the investments organizations must make to mitigate the risk of business... Read More

Topics: Business Continuity, Cloud Computing, Digital Technology

Technology Puts the ‘A’ Back in FP&A

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 November 2022

The starting point of an era is never precise and rarely conforms to neat calendar delineations. For example, the start of the 20th century is associated with the outbreak of war in 1914. So I expect that decades from now, the consensus will hold that what became known as the 21st century began in the year 2020, with the pandemic serving as a catalyst that accelerated already existing trends and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, AI and Machine Learning

IBM Planning Analytics Enables Agility Based on Insight

Posted by Robert Kugel on 18 November 2022

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is a comprehensive, cloud-based business planning application that supports what Ventana Research calls integrated business planning. We coined this term in 2007 to describe a high-participation approach to business planning that integrates strategy, operations and finance. Our Next Generation Business Planning Benchmark Research demonstrated the value of IBP:... Read More

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Office of Finance, embedded analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, Watson, Digital transformation, AI and Machine Learning

Partner Ecosystem Success Relies on Targeted Technology

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 17 November 2022

The idea of partnerships in business is most definitely not new. Wholesaling through distributors and retailers is centuries old. For some industries, their entire model is selling and servicing through partners. Think auto parts, and the auto part stores visible in most neighborhoods. But what is new is that partnerships are moving beyond this reseller model towards product partnerships, where a... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, partner management, Office of Revenue

Oracle CloudWorld: HCM Leads Employee Experience Potential

Posted by ISG Research on 16 November 2022

It has been three years since Oracle hosted a CloudWorld event live in Las Vegas, and it is clear the time has not been wasted. With 12 new releases since the last event, the Oracle human capital management product team has made significant advances in both product and service. Three areas of note: Oracle HCM’s continued focus on personalization of experience, meeting the HCM needs of the... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management

Mind the Gap Between Data and Analytics

Posted by David Menninger on 16 November 2022

If you’ve ever been to London, you are probably familiar with the announcements on the London Underground to “mind the gap” between the trains and the platform. I suggest we also need to mind the gap between data and analytics. These worlds are often disconnected in organizations and, as a result, it limits their effectiveness and agility. Part of the issue is that data and analytics tasks are... Read More

Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Data Management, data operations, Analytics and Data

Databricks Lakehouse Platform Maximizes Analytical Value

Posted by Matt Aslett on 16 November 2022

I have previously written about growing interest in the data lakehouse as one of the design patterns for delivering hydroanalytics analysis of data in a data lake. Many organizations have invested in data lakes as a relatively inexpensive way of storing large volumes of data from multiple enterprise applications and workloads, especially semi- and unstructured data that is unsuitable for storing... Read More

Topics: Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Data Management, Data, Streaming Data Events, analytic data platforms, AI and Machine Learning

Planning for a More Uncertain World with Board International

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 November 2022

The door opened to a new world in 2020, one that renders old assumptions suspect and future outcomes more varied and uncertain. It’s likely that the transition to what’s next will be bumpy, which makes planning more effectively that much more strategic. Board International offers a platform that enables financial planning and analysis groups to forecast, plan, budget, analyze and report, using a... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management

Prophix’s Finance Platform Boosts Midsize Departments’ Effectiveness

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 November 2022

Prophix offers cloud financial software for planning, budgeting, reporting and statutory financial consolidation designed to meet the requirements of midsize organizations and divisions of larger corporations. The company was one of the first to offer a planning platform capable of bringing together a company’s diverse planning processes and financial planning and budgeting. Its consolidation and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Optimizing Customer Communication Channels

Posted by Keith Dawson on 09 November 2022

For quite a few years now, two trends have put the contact center on a collision course. First, the technology used to handle customer inquiries has been evolving quickly, moving organizations farther and farther away from the traditional mode of primarily answering voice calls. At the same time, consumers have become much more demanding. There’s no doubt that customers are more likely to use... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, agent management

IBM’s Cloud Pak for Data Builds a Foundation for Data Fabric

Posted by Matt Aslett on 08 November 2022

I have written recently about the similarities and differences between data mesh and data fabric. The two are potentially complementary. Data mesh is an organizational and cultural approach to data ownership, access and governance. Data fabric is a technical approach to automating data management and data governance in a distributed architecture. There are various definitions of data fabric, but... Read More

Topics: Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Governance, Data Management, Data, data operations, AI and Machine Learning

Vertex Manages End-to-End Indirect Tax Compliance Worldwide

Posted by Robert Kugel on 08 November 2022

The worldwide market for software to manage indirect income taxes, which includes sales and use, goods and services (GST) and value-added taxes (VAT), has been growing because of recent compliance mandates, the growth of e-commerce as well as a desire to accelerate business processes by reducing friction in areas such as tax compliance, cutting administration costs and lowering risk. Vertex... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting

A New Approach to ERP for a More Effective Finance Department

Posted by Robert Kugel on 04 November 2022

ERP systems have been a fixture of organizational process management and record keeping for so long (more than three decades) that it is likely that few who use the software are aware that ERP is an acronym for Enterprise Resources Planning. Its smooth and uninterrupted functioning is essential to an organization’s accounting and finance processes. In manufacturing and distribution, ERP manages... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

NICE Elevates Power of Customer Experiences

Posted by Mark Smith on 02 November 2022

Pressures to engage consumers through every interaction and provide a delightful customer experience are influencing advancements in business and technology. Organizations are challenged to manage friction points experienced by billions of consumers amid expanding digital channels. These issues must be addressed to engage and respond to customers every second of the day. We assert that, through... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

Contact Centers Should Revisit KPIs for Strategic Relevance

Posted by Keith Dawson on 02 November 2022

Traditional key performance indicators used for performance measurement in contact centers are no longer sufficient. These outdated standards don’t reliably inform mid- and upper-level leadership about the true impact of agent work and behavior. Organizations should begin to expand the notion of what’s important in order to make the contact center a stronger organizational institution, more... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, data artisan, Contact Center, agent management

High-Volume Recruiting Requires Specialized Technology Approaches

Posted by ISG Research on 01 November 2022

Some weeks back I published my thoughts about the traditional applicant tracking system and how that technology is no longer sufficient to support organizations’ complex recruiting needs. This is particularly true when trying to take a one-size-fits-all approach to hiring processes. Having identical hiring processes and requirements for professional hires as for low-complexity, low... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Talent Management

Actian Manages Avalanches of Data

Posted by Matt Aslett on 01 November 2022

In their pursuit to be data-driven, organizations are collecting and managing more data than ever before as they attempt to gain competitive advantage and respond faster to worker and customer demands for more innovative, data-rich applications and personalized experiences. As data is increasingly spread across multiple data centers, clouds and regions, organizations need to manage data on... Read More

Topics: Data Management, Data, data operations, analytic data platforms