Analyst Perspectives

Early last December, just before ChatGPT became the new, bright, shiny object, The Economist magazine ran a story proclaiming that we had finally arrived at the age of boring artificial intelligence (AI). From my perspective, it’s unfortunate that didn’t last and that AI has been relegated back to the buzzword league. AI will be an increasingly important feature of business software through the...

Organizations looking to improve the customer experience and contact center operations should closely examine the processes at work in the front-end self-service environment. Technology advancements are converging at this gateway, including artificial intelligence, chatbots and knowledge management. The front end of the customer interaction offers a greater opportunity for customer engagement...

As data continues to grow and evolve, organizations seek better tools and technologies to employ data faster and more efficiently. Finding and managing data remains a perennial challenge for most organizations, and is exacerbated by increasing volumes of data and an expanding array of data formats. At the same time, organizations must comply with a growing list of national and regional rules and...

As a rule, I dislike terms like “digital finance transformation” because there’s a wave-the -magic-wand quality to it that obscures the not-so-simple people and process elements necessary for true transformation. Six of the most common – and expensive – words used in an accounting department are “we’ve always done it this way.” Persuading staff to change can be a struggle, even if change makes...

Modern business relies on having a clear, continuous understanding of customer perceptions and intentions. That insight is increasingly used to deliver them experiences that they would consider excellent, in turn leading to higher satisfaction and more profitable relationships. Qualtrics, a provider of Experience Management (XM) software, focuses on creating applications that analyze customer...

At its March 2023 analyst conference, 8x8 described a significant pivot in its focus. Going forward the company will be emphasizing the Contact Center (CCaaS) side of its portfolio, which to this point has represented a small portion of its overall sales. It made several product announcements to bolster the argument that it can effectively meet the needs of complex contact center operations while...

Organizations are continuously searching for new business opportunities hidden in their data. They are using various technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to uncover granular insights that can support decision-making. Existing tools and dashboards are effective for observing standard metrics; however, they do not address follow-up questions, such as why...

Success with streaming data and events requires a more holistic approach to managing and governing data in motion and data at rest. The use of streaming data and event processing has been part of the data landscape for many decades. For much of that time, data streaming was a niche activity, however, with standalone data streaming and event-processing projects run in parallel with existing...

An external audit examines an organization’s performance of accounting tasks. It validates the soundness of accounting systems and policies and compliance with generally accepted accounting principles in preparing financial statements – chiefly the income statement, balance sheet and statements of cash flow and equity. The auditor certifies that there are no material errors or omissions, and that...

I have previously written about the importance of data democratization as a key element of a data-driven agenda. Removing barriers that prevent or delay users from gaining access to data enables it to be treated as a product that is generated and consumed, either internally by employees or externally by partners and customers. This is particularly important for organizations adopting the data mesh

Now more than ever, effective data management is crucial to enable decision-makers to better assess information and take calculated actions. It is also important to keep up with the latest trends and technologies to derive higher value from data and analytics and maintain a competitive edge in the market. However, every organization faces challenges with data management and analytics. And as...

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Learning Management Value Index 2023 is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect the real-world...

Having recently completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Learning Management Systems (LMS), I’d like to share some of my observations about how the market has advanced since our assessment three years ago.

A decade ago, organizations were sold on best-of-breed technology stacks. In the world of human capital management, that meant a separate system for each of the myriad processes that make up a worker's life span with a company. The approach seemed to make sense because a single system cannot be the best at everything, can it? Is it realistic for a single provider to create the most advanced...

Data analytics provide valuable insights and enable organizations to make better decisions, improve performance and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Analytics can change frequently depending on the data being analyzed and the methods used to gather and process it. Factors such as new data, changes in the underlying systems or updates to algorithms can all contribute to differences...

I recently wrote about the potential use cases for distributed SQL databases as well as techniques being employed by vendors to accelerate adoption. Distributed SQL is a term that is used by several vendors to describe operational data platform products that combine the benefits of the relational database model and native support for distributed cloud architecture, including resilience that spans...

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management 2023 is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories...

For 2023, the Office of Finance practice of Ventana Research introduced Close, Consolidate and Report as one of its six focus areas. The change reflects the recent evolution of technology that supports this part of the finance department calendar. Ventana Research expects that the increasing investment in software to streamline these processes will, by 2026, result in two-thirds of finance and...

We added purchasing, sourcing and payments to our core Office of Finance focus areas this year to reflect new and important opportunities to use technology to gain effectiveness through greater efficiency. Doing a better job of record-keeping and organizing paperwork – especially in a minutiae-laden process like source-to-pay – may seem trivial. Yet digitally transforming core business processes...

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Product Experience Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market has advanced over the last two years. The product information management software market is quite mature and products from any of the vendors we assess could be used to effectively deliver information to help your organization improve its...