ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives (117)

Zyme Solutions Tackles Channel Data Challenge

Posted by ISG Software Research on 04 May 2011

Companies (especially in high technology) that sell through an indirect channel face a difficult challenge because global sales channels are complex, fragmented and changeable, with different business practices and customs than direct channels. Keeping track of which products have sold in and sold through which partners can be a difficult task. Unless a company is working with only a handful of...

Topics: Sales, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Human Capital Management, Zyme Solutions, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), channel, CRM

Prospects for Ending Forklift Migrations of ERP

Posted by ISG Software Research on 03 May 2011

Back in the old days (20 years ago or so) companies that wanted to expand or update their telephone systems had to do what was called a “forklift migration.” In other words, they had to remove big, heavy and very expensive boxes of electronics from an equipment room and replace them with newer big, heavy and very expensive boxes. The process of adding, deleting or changing people, offices and...

Topics: SAP, ERP, Office of Finance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Oracle, Infor

It’s Time for the Contact Center To Change

Posted by ISG Software Research on 03 May 2011

Twenty years ago, when I began consulting in the contact center industry, building a call center was a hard, resource-consuming task. Just to begin handling calls required purchasing lots of proprietary equipment, such as PBXs and automatic call distributors (ACDs), as well as software for computer/telephony integration (CTI) and business applications such as case management and CRM – and then...

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Sales Performance, SAP, Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Data Management, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback Management, Social CRM, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, InContact, LiveOps, Operational Performance, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Workforce Performance, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Interactive Intelligence, Text Analytics, Unified Communications, Workforce Management, Contactual

Interactive Intelligence Integrates Contact Center Interactions

Posted by ISG Software Research on 25 April 2011

Interactive Intelligence (ININ) recently invited partners, consultants and analysts to Portugal to hear about the latest developments in its products. Not surprisingly given the extensive range of products it now supports, none of us had much time to enjoy Lisbon but were put through an intensive program of presentations and discussions.

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback Management, Social CRM, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, RightNow, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Workforce Performance, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Desktop Analytics, Interactive Intelligence, Text Analytics, Unified Communications, Workforce Management

Alight Does Agile Planning

Posted by ISG Software Research on 25 April 2011

Alight Planning sells planning and budgeting software mainly to midsize companies and stresses its software’s ability to support a more effective approach to corporate planning and budgeting. It calls this “agile planning,” a term used to contrast a traditional, highly deterministic method of drawing up and executing plans with an “agile” mindset that is better able to deal with the high level...

Topics: Planning, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Forecast, Office of Finance, budget, Budgeting, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, CFO, agile, budgeting software, CEO, Integrated Business Planning

Total Compensation Management Research: Voice Your Needs and Opinions

Posted by ISG Software Research on 25 April 2011

Are you a human resources executive who’s still using spreadsheets and various database systems to track and manage compensation and incentives of your workforce? If you aren’t, then believe it or not, you’re in the minority.

Topics: Sales Performance, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, Compensation, finance, Talent Management, Workforce Performance Management

Datawatch Offers Shorter Path from Data to Information

Posted by ISG Software Research on 25 April 2011

Turning data into information for taking actions and making decisions has bedeviled businesses throughout the computer age. Many organizations have data in dozens of applications and legacy systems along with many reports in various business intelligence systems. The challenge is to get data from each of the reports and assemble it into contextualized views of information for particular business...

Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Reporting, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Information Applications, Workforce Performance, Datawatch, Document Management

Predictive Analytics Are on the Rise

Posted by ISG Software Research on 24 April 2011

In various forms, business intelligence (BI) – as queries, reporting, dashboards and online analytical processing (OLAP) – is being used increasingly widely. And as basic BI capabilities spread to more organizations, innovative ones increasingly are exploring how to take advantage of the next step in the strategic use of BI: predictive analytics. The trend in Web searches for the phrase...

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Predixion, R, Revolution Analtyics, Sales Performance, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, IBM SPSS, Information Builders, Information Technology, KXEN, Netezza, Oracle, Tibco, Workforce Performance

Datawatch Offers Shorter Path from Data to Information

Posted by Mark Smith on 22 April 2011

Turning data into information for taking actions and making decisions has bedeviled businesses throughout the computer age. Many organizations have data in dozens of applications and legacy systems along with many reports in various business intelligence systems. The challenge is to get data from each of the reports and assemble it into contextualized views of information for particular business...

Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Reporting, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Workforce Performance, Datawatch, Document Management

OpenPages 6.0 Enhances GRC by Integrating Data and Text

Posted by Robert Kugel on 20 April 2011

Although I continue to believe that governance, risk and compliance (GRC) is not a firm software category, software vendors continue to add depth and breadth to their offerings that support corporate governance, help manage risks systemically in business and IT and provide greater visibility into compliance efforts. For example, with its release of OpenPages 6.0 IBM had made an important...

Topics: Governance, GRC, Office of Finance, Chief Risk Officer, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Financial Performance, compliance, Risk, Internal Audit

Infor Helps Midsize Multinationals Manage Finance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 April 2011

While Europeans have long had to adapt to working in many languages, currencies and legal jurisdictions, a generation ago most midsize companies in the United States did all their business in their home country and in U.S. dollars. Today, though, the relentless globalization of the world economy means that an increasing number of midsize companies in North America are functionally multinational...

Topics: ERP, Office of Finance, Sunsystems, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Financial Management, Infor, Corporate Finance, FMS

Talent Acquisition Best Practices in the Age of Social Media Coming Soon

Posted by ISG Software Research on 14 April 2011

You’d think it was raining “social.” Social media, social networking, social marketing, social recruiting, social learning – so many aspects of business these days have a “social” component to them.

Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Workforce Performance, Talent Management

PBBI Provides Portrait of Customers through Predictive Analytics

Posted by ISG Software Research on 13 April 2011

Since last summer, Portrait Software has been part of the Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI) subsidiary. Since the acquisition the combined teams have been putting together a comprehensive set of products to support data quality and customer interaction management. The suite includes the Portrait Self-Service Analytics, Miner, Uplift, Uplift Optimizer, Dialogue, Interaction Optimizer and...

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Sales Performance, Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Call Center, Contact Center, CRM, Data Mining

Peopleclick Authoria Elevates Workforce Analytics by Acquiring Aquire

Posted by ISG Software Research on 06 April 2011

Human resources professionals must deal with volumes of workforce data that resides in disparate software systems, including individual spreadsheets. But although the data is accessible to them, many organizations don’t have technology to aggregate, synthesize and analyze it, and so cannot easily use it to make efficient and effective decisions about talent acquisition and talent management.

Topics: Learning, Performance, Recruiting, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Mobility, Workforce Performance, Compensation, Hiring, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics

Executives Learn about Advances in Customer Experience Management

Posted by ISG Software Research on 06 April 2011

IQPC Europe, a global organizer of business conferences, recently held its Executive Customer Contact Exchange, where contact center and customer service executives and senior managers gathered to find out about developments in the management of customer interactions and the customer experience. Attendees had a variety of reasons for coming; the largest group consisted of attendees who (29%) said...

Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Customer Experience, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM

New Recruiting Technology Humanizes Talent Acquisition

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

Humanize every step of the employee experience. That was the grand theme of this year’s opening keynote just over a week ago at ERE Expo 2011 Spring by Matthew Jeffery, global director of talent brand for Electronic Arts, titled “Recruitment 3.0: Why traditional recruiters will be replaced by ‘emotional marketers.’” His speech emphasized the importance of emotionally connecting with candidates...

Topics: Sales Performance, Learning, Performance, Recruiting, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Mobility, Workforce Performance, Compensation, Hiring, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics

The Information Management Technology Revolution in 2011

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

The information management (IM) technology market is undergoing a revolution similar to the one in the business intelligence (BI) market. We define information management as the acquisition, organization, control and use of information to create and enhance business value. It is a necessary ingredient of successful BI implementations, and while some vendors such as IBM, Information Builders,...

Topics: Data Quality, Social Media, IT Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Technology, CIO, Complex Event Processing, Data Governance, Data Integration, Information Management, Information Technology, Operational Intelligence

Contactual Delivers Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

Creating the technology architecture for a modern contact center is no easy task. To do so, companies typically have to integrate lots of technology: systems to manage their communication channels (voice, e-mail, postal mail, mobile, Web, IM, etc.), systems to route interactions to the best available resource to handle the interaction, be it human or automated (routing, IVR, CTI, etc.),...

Topics: Customer Experience, Operational Performance, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM, Contactual

SAP Solidifies Software Category with SAP BusinessObjects GRC 10.0

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

When the term “governance, risk and compliance” (GRC) was introduced almost 10 years ago, software for this purpose was not a real category but a loose grouping of disparate applications that had something to do with meeting the requirements of the recently passed Sarbanes-Oxley Act. (You can find my perspective on the GRC category from a couple of years ago here. Now, with the release 10.0 of ...

Topics: SAP, GRC, Office of Finance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Information Management, CFO, Corporate Governance, Governance Risk and Compliance

SunGard IntelliMatch: Financial Governance and Reconciliations

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

Back-office operations in commercial and investment banks are among those critical functions that are underappreciated until they stop working well. This includes transaction reconciliations and the related exceptions management. Reconciliations are necessary to achieve a reasonable assurance of complete and accurate record of trading activity. The process is especially challenging now, partly...

Topics: GRC, Office of Finance, Financial Governance, Reconciliation, Sungard, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Information Management, CFO, Corporate Governance, Governance Risk and Compliance