Analyst Perspectives

Data catalogs provide an inventory of data assets that surface metadata from data platforms, analytics tools and applications that can be used to facilitate data discovery and data usage across an enterprise. As I recently explained, however, there are actually multiple types of data catalogs that offer functionality to address specific use cases and user roles, including data inventory, data discovery and data governance. The data intelligence catalog is an emerging category that combines...

Conversational automation leverages artificial intelligence (AI)-powered agents, chatbots and virtual assistants to automate both customer interactions and internal processes. These systems understand natural language, sentiment and intent, generating relevant responses and executing actions based on user input. The software provider landscape is analyzed in the ISG Buyers Guide for Conversational Automation.

As enterprises seek to expand and accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) many are finding that longstanding analytics and data challenges are a barrier to success. As was explained in ISG’s State of Generative AI Market Report, AI requires data that is clean, well-organized and compliant with regulatory standards. The need for good data management is by no means new, but the expectations and demands associated with AI are a forcing function for enterprises to take long-overdue...

The HCM market has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. Legacy providers, long the dominant force, built their platforms primarily for administrative efficiency—streamlining HR processes but often overlooking the broader employee experience. However, today’s workforce expects more. Employees and managers now demand intuitive, engaging and connected HR experiences that extend beyond transactional tasks.

AI, like analytics, must lead to action. Too often, in both cases, too much of the exercise is left to the reader. We have tools to provide sophisticated analyses, including AI platforms that can be used to predict many types of behavior, but we fall short in helping the workforce know what to do with that information. Some examples are more obvious, such as fraud detection. If a transaction is predicted to be fraudulent, the transaction should be blocked. But even this example is not as cut...

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are comprehensive software platforms designed to integrate and manage all the core processes of an enterprise while recording transactions and their financial consequences to support the accounting and finance functions. ISG Software Research recently completed our Buyers Guide™ for ERP systems, designed to help enterprises that are replacing their existing ERP software to make the best choice, both in terms of the product’s performance as well as the...

Late 2024 saw the publication of the 2024 ISG Buyers Guides for DataOps, providing an assessment of 49 software providers offering products used by data engineers, data scientists, and data and AI professionals to facilitate the use of data for analytics and AI needs. The DataOps Buyers Guide research includes five reports which are focused on overall DataOps, Data Observability, Data Orchestration, Data Pipelines and Data Products. This is the first time in the industry when all software...

It is now more than two years since the launch of ChatGPT introduced the world to generative AI (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs). GenAI-based assistants and co-pilots are now widely adopted, with individuals and enterprises adopting GenAI models to automate the generation of text, digital images, audio, video and code, amongst other things.

Trintech provides finance departments in larger and midsize enterprises with software to accelerate their accounting close processes while achieving hard and fast accuracy and compliance requirements with less effort. The financial records of an enterprise must be periodically reviewed and summarized to create financial statements that inform executives and interested third parties of the organization’s financial condition and performance. A consolidation of the financial records and other...

Payroll is one of the most universal touchpoints within any organization, impacting every employee on a regular basis. It’s the one thing every employee notices if it does not work perfectly. Yet, despite its far-reaching presence, payroll often operates quietly in the background, treated as an administrative function focused solely on ensuring people are paid accurately and on time. This perception, while understandable, drastically undervalues what payroll can offer.