ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Your ATS Isn’t Broken, Your Hiring Flows Are

Posted by Matthew Brown on 25 August 2026

Your application tracking system (ATS) may not be broken. It may be doing exactly what your hiring process told it to do. In a market buzzing with AI, agentic workflows and automation, that should make recruiting leaders pause before they blame the platform, replace the system or automate the next step in a process nobody has challenged in years. Software does not get a free pass, and neither do... Read More

Topics: Employee Engagement, Talent Management, Employees & HCM - Business & Technologies

Everything is Context: The Many Layers of Context for Enterprise AI

Posted by Matt Aslett on 19 August 2026

I have previously described how context is everything when it comes to establishing enterprise trust in the output of generative and agentic artificial intelligence. Based on our recent interactions with analytics and data software providers, it might be more accurate to say that context is everywhere, as almost all providers of analytics and data software are currently positioning products in... Read More

Topics: Operations, Data Platforms, Generative AI, Data Intelligence, AI & Technologies, AI & Machine Learning, AI Governance

The Forecast Isn’t Broken. The Deal Process Is.

Posted by Barika Pace on 18 August 2026

Revenue forecasts are increasingly under pressure because boards, CEOs and CFOs want earlier visibility into growth risk, deal slippage and margin exposure. This means CROs can no longer treat the forecast as a weekly rollup exercise or a late-stage negotiation between sales managers and finance. The misdiagnosis is that many organizations blame forecast accuracy when the deeper issue is weak... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Are Your Contact Center KPIs Measuring What Matters?

Posted by Keith Dawson on 13 August 2026

How do you know if your contact center is doing what it is supposed to do? Seems straightforward: Look at the dashboard and determine what’s happening in the queue, the agent pool and the self-service containment rate. It’s been a very stable operating environment—until recently. For decades, contact center metrics were built on that stability. Centers existed to handle large volumes of inbound... Read More

Topics: Contact Center, agent management, Customer Experience Management, Intelligent Self-Service, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, CSAT, AHT, Handle Time, Queue, Hold Time, FCR

AI Imperatives for Business Software Providers

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 August 2026

I recently wrote about the distinction between personal productivity artificial intelligence (AI) and enterprise AI. Each has a role to play. An important challenge facing enterprises in the coming years will be encouraging and supporting the use of AI-enabled personal productivity applications for individuals and small workgroups while preventing their misuse in performing enterprise tasks and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Supply Chain Planning, Business Planning, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, supply chain management, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, Order-to-Cash, AI & Machine Learning, Buyer Behavior, AI Governance

The Fourth Enterprise Control Plane Is Emerging Around AI

Posted by Jeff Orr on 11 August 2026

Enterprise architecture has traditionally been organized around three primary control planes: infrastructure, identity and applications. Each evolved to solve a specific challenge. Infrastructure established where workloads execute. Identity determined who could access enterprise resources. Applications standardized business processes and information flows. Artificial intelligence introduces a... Read More

Topics: Observability, IT & Technologies, Identity, IT Management & Operations, AI Governance, Control Layer, Enterprise Architecture, Policy, Runtime Control, Detection and Response

Exasol Shines on High-Performance Agentic AI

Posted by Matt Aslett on 06 August 2026

Much like the emergence of cloud computing, agentic artificial intelligence is causing many data platform software providers to fundamentally rethink value propositions. For example, the ability to accelerate data workloads with custom hardware was an important differentiator in an era when almost all data processing was performed using on-premises server infrastructure but quickly became a niche... Read More

Topics: Analytics, Data Platforms, Generative AI, AI & Technologies

AI as Your Quiet Co-Manager in Performance Management

Posted by Matthew Brown on 05 August 2026

The most important artificial intelligence (AI) in performance management may not arrive as a flashy chatbot or new dashboard. It may work more quietly than that, sitting inside the performance tool, watching for patterns, connecting signals and nudging managers toward better conversations before performance problems become formal performance events. Not AI as the boss or the judge, and not AI as... Read More

Topics: Talent Management, Employees & HCM - Business & Technologies

Who Owns the Number When AI Agents Join the Sales Team?

Posted by Barika Pace on 04 August 2026

AI agents are moving into prospecting, meeting preparation and opportunity management. This means the revenue engine is no longer powered only by human sellers, and CROs must decide how digital labor fits within territories, crediting and compensation. The complication is that most performance systems were designed around people and transactions, not autonomous agents that can influence multiple... Read More

Topics: sales engagement, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies