ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives (103)

Confirmit Moves to Voice of Customer and Feedback Management

Posted by ISG Research on 28 September 2012

Confirmit is one of the leading vendors of market research services. It has a full range of products that support every step of the market research cycle. Its software lets users create surveys that can be delivered through multiple channels, perform panel management (managing teams of people that contribute to research programs), collect the data from completed surveys, and use a suite of... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback Management, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, Operational Performance, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Text Analytics, Confirmit

How Effective Is Your Company’s Planning for Long-Term Investing?

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 September 2012

Effective capital planning and capital investment are vital to a company’s long-term success. The choices a company makes – how much to invest and in which facilities or projects – have a profound effect on its long-term success. For that reason, companies take pains to ensure that these decisions support their long-term strategies and are made as rationally as possible. Because Ventana Research... Read More

Topics: Planning, Office of Finance, Reporting, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Financial Performance, finance, capital budget, capital spending, FPM

Workforce Analytics Does Not Require Big Data – Yet!

Posted by ISG Research on 27 September 2012

Exactly what is the relationship between workforce analytics and big data? Most of the use cases for big data seem to revolve around marketing, social media and customer service initiatives where unstructured data sources reveal big value. Our research into big data analytics suggests a prime benefit of big data is in the ability to retain and analyze larger amounts of data and to increase the... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Human Capital Management, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance

Enghouse Interactive Contact Center Products Offer a Range of Capabilities

Posted by ISG Research on 27 September 2012

Enghouse Systems Ltd. is not one of the best-known brands in the contact center market, but if it keeps acquiring vendors at the rate it has been doing then it might soon be. It was founded in Canada in 1984, and from what I can see it is grown largely by acquisition to revenues of more than $120 million. It has morphed into Enghouse Interactive, which now represents nearly 90 percent of its... Read More

Topics: Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Enghouse interactive, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Unified Communications, Workforce Force Optimization

VPI Extends into Multi-channel Analytics

Posted by ISG Research on 26 September 2012

Voice Print International recently announced it has selected Hewlett-Packard’s Autonomy to deliver speech and multi-channel analytics. This news means VPI joins a small group of vendors that can provide a view of customer interactions across multiple communication channels, which is of growing importance to companies. My research into the contact center in the cloud shows that companies now... Read More

Topics: Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, VPI, Management, Analytics, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Text Analytics

Plumbing the Salesforce Clouds is Your Business

Posted by Mark Smith on 25 September 2012

Salesforce is a global software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to be reckoned with. The swarming crowds at its Dreamforce event last week were estimated to exceed 90,000. The company is rapidly growing an ecosystem that includes Sales, Service and Marketing Clouds; Force.com for building applications; and Data.com for storing data in the cloud centrally for use across Salesforce products. It is also... Read More

Topics: Master Data Management, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Social Media, SnapLogic, Zyme Solutions, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Data Governance, Data Integration, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Informatica, Information Builders, Information Management, Data, data integrity, database.com, Kapow

Other Side of the Pond Takeaways from Salesforce Dreamforce

Posted by ISG Research on 24 September 2012

Saleforce.com puts on a marketing event that no other software vendor can come close to. Any CEO that can get MC Hammer rapping about your company as an introduction to your keynote has to be admired. The actual content got mixed reviews; my colleague Mark Smith saw some shortfalls in how Salesforce.com supports analytics, while Robert Kugel felt the company’s cloud-based software could help... Read More

Topics: Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Data Management, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback Management, Social CRM, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Text Analytics, Unified Communications, Vendor(s), Workforce Force Optimization

Salesforce Struggles to Deliver on the Dream of Analytics

Posted by Mark Smith on 21 September 2012

I was at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference this week to hear about the latest advancements from the cloud computing software giant. Salesforce has helped revolutionize cloud computing for business, and its social media and collaborative technologies help advance business processes in sales, customer service and improve the interactions between employees, partners and customers. Salesforce... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, QlikView, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Social Media, Gooddata, SnapLogic, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, InetSoft, Information Applications, Information Management, KXEN, Operational Intelligence, Cloud9 Analytics, Domo, Information Builder iway, Roambi

Salesforce Dreamforce Keynote: Social is Changing Industry Power Structures

Posted by ISG Research on 21 September 2012

With more than 90,000 attendees registered and 100,000 more expected to watch via live stream on Facebook, Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce is the biggest technology event of this year. The conference kicked off yesterday morning with MC Hammer letting the packed house know that it was “Chatter time” and leaving little doubt about the theme of the Marc Benioff’s keynote speech: Social. Citing numbers... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Mobile, Sales Performance, Social Media, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Location Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Social

Salesforce Helps Midsize Company Dreams Come True

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 September 2012

I cover the meat-and-potatoes aspects of corporate computing. I also pay attention to the special needs of midsize companies (by our definition, those with between 100 and 999 employees), which are unlike those of either small business or large corporations. After attending this year’s Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com’s annual user meeting held this week in San Francisco, I can appreciate... Read More

Topics: Sales, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Social Media, ERP, Office of Finance, CRM customer service, SMB, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Dreamforce, finance, Security, FPM

Transforming Three Vs of Big Data into Three Ws of Business Analytics

Posted by ISG Research on 19 September 2012

Thinking about big data and the swirling world of analytics that surrounds it can be overwhelming. Broad-based organizational and technological changes are driving a new industrial constitution built on time-to-value and closed-loop systems of organizational and machine learning. As I analyze our next-generation business intelligence benchmark research results, I see trends in collaboration and... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Information Applications, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence

Genesys Advances Customer Service to the Cloud

Posted by ISG Research on 19 September 2012

In what will no doubt be one of a host of announcements coming out of Dreamforce, Genesys announced a new set of cloud-based services especially for Salesforce.com customers. Genesys is a well-known brand in the contact center market, but it has undergone significant change of late and is now an independent company in charge of its own destiny. This announcement demonstrates that it intends to... Read More

Topics: Salesforce.com, Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Genesys, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, CRM, Unified Communications

Are You Dreaming Social? Salesforce Is!

Posted by Mark Smith on 18 September 2012

The annual Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (Twitter: #DF12), just underway, may be the largest software conference ever, with attendance, physically and on the Internet, expected to be 90,000. Certainly, as one of the largest software events of 2012, this conference will be heavily covered via social media, while under the roof of the Moscone Center and surrounding hotels Salesforce will be... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Supply Chain Performance, Research, SFDC, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Information Applications, Information Management, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Dreamforce

Customer Feedback Processes Lagging in Companies Today

Posted by ISG Research on 17 September 2012

Many people these days talk about voice of the customer (VOC) programs and how they can improve business performance. The foundation of any VOC program is collecting customer feedback, analyzing it and using the insights to improve customer-focused processes, training and the use of technology. Changes usually focus on customer service, but increasingly companies are focusing on the customer... Read More

Topics: Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback Management, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Text Analytics

Oracle Presents a Taleo Future for Human Capital Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 17 September 2012

I attended Taleo World to see how well Oracle is integrating Taleo after acquiring the company in 2012. I assessed the announcement by Oracle earlier this year; it was clear then that Oracle needed to make this acquisition to boost its cloud computing and talent management efforts. In the three-hour keynote session, a business overview and software demonstrations indicated what Oracle has in... Read More

Topics: Social Media, Human Capital Management, Recruiting, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Oracle, Workforce Performance, HireVue, Hiring, HR, JobVite, Talemetry, Taleo

NewVoiceMedia Provides Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Research on 14 September 2012

Our recent benchmark research into the adoption of cloud-based systems to support contact center operations shows that around 10 percent of companies have adopted what is commonly termed communications in the cloud – that is, systems in the cloud to manage delivery of telephone calls to the right location, be it an internal extension number within an organization, a branch office number, a... Read More

Topics: Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Social CRM, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, NewVoicemedia, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Text Analytics

Splunk Bids to be King of Search and Operational Analytics

Posted by ISG Research on 14 September 2012

As I listened to the keynote address at, conf2012, the annual Splunk user conference, my initial impression was that the company was spreading itself too thin. The company highlighted four rather formidable areas of organizational focus: Enterprise 5.0, the company’s flagship data platform, which is now in beta; Development, which is support for building applications and integrating Splunk within... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Splunk, data fabric, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Operational Intelligence, Digital Technology

Look Who’s Hot in Data Integration for 2012

Posted by Mark Smith on 07 September 2012

Ventana Research has just released the 2012 Value Index for Data Integration, in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this software category for almost a decade. Our latest benchmark research in information management found that data integration is a critical component of information management strategies, according to 55 percent of... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Master Data Management, Microsoft, Pentaho, Sales Performance, SAP, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Talend, SnapLogic, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Data Governance, Data Integration, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), IBM, Informatica, Information Applications, Information Builders, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Oracle, Workforce Performance, Syncsort

Rethinking Budgeting for 2013

Posted by Robert Kugel on 07 September 2012

Budget season is about to open at most companies that operate on a calendar year, so this is probably as good a time as any to rethink the process. Almost all companies will undertake the construction of a budget this year the same way they did it last year, despite widespread complaints that it is a monumental waste of time. One major reason why budgeting never changes is that it isn’t important... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Planning, Sales Performance, Office of Finance, Reporting, Budgeting, Controller, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Compensation, cash management, FPM, Integrated Business Planning

Companies Should Consider Adopting Contact Centers in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Research on 05 September 2012

Our recent benchmark research on the contact center in the cloud shows companies are under more pressure than ever to upgrade their contact centers. The large majority of companies (73%) think it is very important to improve the way they handle customer interactions, and only a small percentage are fully satisfied with their current applications (19%) or their communications (14%). Upgrading... Read More

Topics: Customer Analytics, Customer Data Management, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback Management, Social CRM, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Text Analytics, Unified Communications, Workforce Force Optimization