ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Clouds are Raining Corporate Data

Posted by ISG Research on 04 January 2011

Cloud computing is having an increasingly large influence over the IT landscape. It’s likely that, whether you realize it or not, corporate data exists has and or is migrating outside the walls of your organization. Recent research by Ventana Research shows that in areas such as customer services, sales, workforce or human capital management, software as a service (SaaS) or cloud-based... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Data Integration, Information Management, Workforce Performance

Cisco Finesses Agents with Real Time Support Using Nexidia

Posted by ISG Research on 29 December 2010

Contact centers face a number of challenges beyond simply answering customer calls. Among them are improving customer satisfaction, increasing the number of calls resolved at the first attempt and ensuring agents comply with regulations. But chief among these, my research into contact center analytics shows, is the mandate to reduce the average length of time it takes to complete calls. Doing all... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Nexidia, Operational Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Call Center, Cisco, Contact Center, CRM

A New Financial Force in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Research on 15 December 2010

One of the prominent salesforce.com partners on display at the recent Dreamforce in San Francisco was FinancialForce.com. It’s one of a growing list of providers of in-the-cloud accounting and finance packages built on the Force.com platform. Like other of these accounting vendors (such as Compiere, Intacct, Netsuite and - to some extent and eventually– Workday), it aims principally at companies... Read More

Topics: ERP, Financial Applications, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, CFO, finance

Salesforce Analytics Identify a Break in the Clouds

Posted by ISG Research on 15 December 2010

Last week I attended salesforce.com’s Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco (Twitter #DF10). As a user of salesforce applications for the last four years in my previous positions, I was familiar with its analytic capabilities, or lack thereof. Certainly you can accomplish simple reporting and produce dashboards displaying salesforce data, which is adequate for narrowly focused reporting and... Read More

Topics: Sales, Salesforce.com, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer Service, Uncategorized

The Technology Stack and Innovation: SAP & The Rest

Posted by ISG Research on 14 December 2010

Vishal Sikka raised an important point about the software business during his remarks at the SAP Global Influencer Summit that my colleague just assessed (See: “SAP Elevates Technology Strategy for Enterprise Software and Solutions“). He contrasted the business strategy of consolidation that other companies are pursuing with his view of SAP’s strategy of innovation. In one sense, this assertion... Read More

Topics: SAP, Analytics, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Mobility, Uncategorized

A friend of ours

Posted by ISG Research on 13 December 2010

A friend of ours, Doug Henschen, showed up in my inbox last week in a new guise. Doug for years edited the TechWeb (and before that CMP) publication Intelligent Enterprise, and in my opinion did a great job of distilling all that was important in BI and the enterprise use of information for competitive advantage. But he isn’t editing IE anymore. Now he’s producing the InformationWeek Enterprise... Read More

Topics: Editorial, Journalism, Uncategorized, News, Publishing

Verint Adds New Dimension to Contact Center Analytics

Posted by ISG Research on 13 December 2010

One of the problems in the contact center and IT worlds is that terms mean different things to different people. Take “contact center” for example. The meaning was clear when it was just the call center because people knew it was a place that centralized the handling of customer phone calls. It became the virtual call center when calls were distributed over multiple sites. Then it became the... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Cloud Computing, Uncategorized, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Verint

SAP Elevates Technology Strategy for Enterprise Software and Solutions

Posted by ISG Research on 13 December 2010

At this year’s Influencer Summit (Twitter: #SAPSummit) SAP’s executive leadership team summarized the company’s progress in 2010 and described its plans for the coming year in a range of technologies. The event led off with co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe discussing by video from Germany the business and technology areas in which SAP expects growth in 2011. Jim focused SAP’s efforts in on-premises and... Read More

Topics: SAP, Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Mobility

Are Your Electronic Secrets Safe?

Posted by ISG Research on 10 December 2010

Near the top of one of the best columns I’ve read on l’affaire Wikileaks is this assertion: “Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms.” Characterizations aside, there’s an issue here that companies are... Read More

Topics: Data Integration, Information Management, Uncategorized

Talend Pushes Boundaries of Open Source Software Model

Posted by ISG Research on 09 December 2010

Talend, a vendor of open source data integration tools, recently announced its acquisition of Sopera, an open source application integration company whose products are based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It simultaneously announced an additional $34 million of funding. As I pondered what the announcements mean, I couldn’t help but think of the bigger picture. Is this entrepreneurial... Read More

Topics: SOA, Talend, Business Intelligence, CIO, Data Integration

NICE Systems Rebrands Smart Desktop for Agents

Posted by ISG Research on 09 December 2010

A few weeks back I wrote about how NICE Systems was venturing into the back office and my surprise that the core smart desktop product it had acquired with eglue, while a key part of this initiative, seemed to have disappeared as a stand-alone offering. Since then NICE has corrected my impression, pointing out that the product is still available in pretty much the same form as always. The problem... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, NICE Systems, Uncategorized, Call Center, Contact Center, CRM

Forecast: Cloudy

Posted by ISG Research on 02 December 2010

If you’ve walked past a playing TV recently, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed that Microsoft thinks it can profit from “The Cloud.” The folks in Redmond would have you store your pictures there so the family can access them, use it to collaborate over the weekend in a small business – you name it, Cloud Power can do it. The cloud is much discussed in the business arena these days as well, but... Read More

Topics: ERP, Cloud Computing, Data Integration, Uncategorized, CRM

Marching to Different Drummers

Posted by ISG Research on 02 December 2010

A colleague recently asked of an online professional group of which we’re members, “Is your personal computer faster than the one the boss gave you?” While answers are still trickling in, it looks pretty clear that the answer is, “Yes, of course.” Now, we do tend a bit toward the geeky, so there’s a bit of built-in bias. But it also stands to reason that business- and corporate-issued technology... Read More

Topics: Data Integration, Information Management, IT Analytics

The Cutting Edge

Posted by ISG Research on 02 December 2010

Someone slashed the top on my convertible a few days ago in a futile effort to find something of value. He or she got nothing; the perpetrator also managed to cost me at least the $500 deductible and, far worse, throw me into the maw of the monster that is the auto insurance bureaucracy. What will come out the other end still remains to be seen; I’ll keep you posted. But what this unexpected... Read More

Topics: Data Integration, Information Management

NICE Systems Ventures into the Agent Back Office

Posted by ISG Research on 28 November 2010

Most people involved with contact centers know of NICE Systems and its SmartCenter suite of workforce optimization products that support key contact center management capabilities such as call recording, quality monitoring, workforce management, customer feedback management and a variety of performance management and analytics tools. NICE recently received the top ranked Hot Vendor rating in the... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, NICE Systems, Customer Relationship Management, Operational Performance, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, CRM

inContact Provides Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Research on 28 November 2010

All the buzz in the contact center market these days is about the “contact center in the cloud.” I have written on the subject, in particular “Is a Contact Center in the Cloud a Reality?” and “Will Cloud Computing Finally Bring Innovation to the Contact Center?”. In considering this issue my thinking focuses on what goes into a contact center and then what vendors offer these systems in the... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, InContact, Operational Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, CRM

LiveOps Enhances Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Research on 28 November 2010

I have written a couple of pieces this year about the exciting news that a few vendors are now able to provide companies with a call center they can access in the Internet cloud – Will Cloud Computing Finally Bring Innovation to the Contact Center? and Is a “Contact Center in the Cloud” a Reality? There is currently a lot of hype around any kind of cloud-based computing, and the same is true of... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, LiveOps, Operational Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM

Enkata Advances Contact Center Analytics to Improve Customer Experience

Posted by ISG Research on 28 November 2010

Among the important findings of our latest benchmark research on contact center analytics were these two: 88 percent of companies said they can use analytics to improve the performance of the contact center (41% said they could make significant improvement), and the main issue holding them back from doing that is an excessive reliance on spreadsheets (90% indicated they use spreadsheets on a... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, Enkata, Operational Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM

Aurix Powers New Generation of Speech Analytics

Posted by ISG Research on 28 November 2010

Aurix is not a widely recognized vendor in the speech analytics market even though its technology powers products provided by companies such as CallCopy, KnoahSoft, NewVoiceMedia and OnviSource. In fact its strategy is to provide the engine that these and other partners use in market-facing speech analytics solutions. Its main product, Aurix speech search SDK, is a search engine that searches... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service, Uncategorized, Call Center, Contact Center Analytics, Voice Analytics

Tableau 6 Combines In-Memory Processing and Visualization

Posted by ISG Research on 28 November 2010

Tableau Software officially released Version 6 of its product this week. Tableau approaches business intelligence from the end user’s perspective, focusing primarily on delivering tools that allow people to easily interact with data and visualize it. With this release, Tableau has advanced its in-memory processing capabilities significantly. Fundamentally Tableau 6 shifts from the intelligent... Read More

Topics: Data Visualization, Enterprise Data Strategy, Tableau, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, In-Memory Computing