Analyst Perspectives

Analytics processes are all about how organizations use data to create metrics that help manage and improve operations. Yet, the discipline applied to analytics processes seems to be lacking compared to data processes. I’ve pointed out that the weak link in data governance is often analytics. Organizations can also do a better job tying AnalyticOps to DataOps and do more to define and manage...

There is always space for innovation in the data platforms sector, and new vendors continue to emerge at regular intervals with new approaches designed to serve specialist data storage and processing requirements. Factors including performance, reliability, security and scalability provide a focal point for new vendors to differentiate from established vendors, especially for the most demanding...

Ventana Research uses the term “data pantry” to describe a method of data storage (and the technology and process blueprint for its construction) created for a specific set of users and use cases in business-focused software. It’s a pantry because all the data one needs is readily available and easily accessible, with labels that are immediately recognized and understood by the users of the...

In previous perspectives in this series, I’ve discussed some of the realities of cloud computing including costs, hybrid and multi-cloud configurations and business continuity. This perspective examines the realities of security and regulatory concerns associated with cloud computing. These issues are often cited by our research participants as reasons they are not embracing the cloud. To be...

In the face of a very uncertain future, companies have been discovering the value of rapid planning and budgeting cycles. As events unfold, they’re changing expectations for the future significantly on a daily or weekly basis. However, even when the world returns to a steadier state, companies will benefit from making their planning and budgeting processes faster, easier, more relevant, more...

Recently, I suggested you need to “mind the gap” between data and analytics. This perspective addresses another gap — the gap in skills between business intelligence (BI) and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).

After decades of overpromising and underdelivering, technology has now evolved to the point where it is fundamentally changing how accountants work – for the better. The pandemic and resulting support of remote work set the stage for a transformation of how accounting efforts are structured and performed, all for the better. Remote audits that became routine during lockdowns are evolving into...

The market and buyer landscape for contact center operating services has changed significantly since the onset of the pandemic, now almost three years ago. Three years would have been enough time for some significant shifts, even without the pressure the pandemic put on service operations. Nevertheless, with on-premises systems now taking a backseat industrywide, it’s fair to say that CCaaS,...

The technology industry has established itself as a pivotal force in its ability to help organizations become more intelligent and automated. But doing so has required a journey of epic proportions for most organizations that have had to endure a transition of competencies and skills that was, in many places, transitioned to consulting firms who were hired appropriately to manage changes....

Earlier this year, I wrote about the increasing importance of data observability, an emerging product category that takes advantage of machine learning (ML) and Data Operations (DataOps) to automate the monitoring of data used for analytics projects to ensure its quality and lineage. Monitoring the quality and lineage of data is nothing new. Manual tools exist to ensure that it is complete, valid...

Emburse offers a single platform that enables organizations — small, midsize and larger —to manage their travel and related expenses, pay invoices and handle their corporate spend. Today, technology has the ability to significantly increase the efficiency with which organizations handle expenditures while simultaneously containing costs, increasing controls and improving visibility into where the...

One of the most significant considerations when choosing an analytic data platform is performance. As organizations compete to benefit most from being data-driven, the lower the time to insight the better. As data practitioners have learnt over time, however, lowering time to insight is about more than just high-performance queries. There are opportunities to improve time to insight throughout...

Embedded business intelligence (BI) continues to transform the business landscape, enabling organizations to quickly interpret data and convert it into actionable insights. It allows organizations to extract information in real time and answer wide-ranging business questions. Embedding analytics helps tackle the issue of extracting information from data which is a time-consuming process. Our...

Managing corporate income taxes is a challenge for chief financial officers and their tax department professionals. Tax codes are often complex, so tax accounting as well as the data required for tax provisions and tax compliance are different enough from statutory accounting to create significant workloads for the tax department. The provision for income tax expense and, for public companies,...

Organizations are increasingly utilizing cloud object storage as the foundation for analytic initiatives. There are multiple advantages to this approach, not least of which is enabling organizations to keep higher volumes of data relatively inexpensively, increasing the amount of data queried in analytics initiatives. I assert that by 2024, 6 in ten organizations will use cloud-based technology...

Vena Solutions offers organizations a platform for financial planning, analysis and reporting as well as software to manage accounting consolidation and close processes. From the start, Vena has designed its applications to meet the needs of midsize organizations, which typically have the same requirements as large enterprises but with significantly fewer resources to acquire, manage and maintain...

In today’s data-driven world, organizations need real-time access to up-to-date, high-quality data and analysis to keep pace with changing market dynamics and make better strategic decisions. By mining meaningful insights from enterprise data quickly, they gain a competitive advantage in the market. Yet, organizations face a multitude of challenges when transitioning into an analytics-driven...

The theme of this year’s Oracle NetSuite SuiteWorld was “Full Suite Ahead,” with content aimed at demonstrating to customers (and prospective buyers) the value of using more of what NetSuite has to offer. The business logic behind this concept goes beyond the obvious objective of upselling existing customers to increase the average annual recurring revenue. As is often the case with subscription...

The pandemic years saw an exponential rise in organizational investment in digital learning, and for good reason. With in-person learning no longer an option, organizations were forced to quickly adapt to the changing world of work in order to ensure workers were prepared with the knowledge and training necessary to operate in ways they had never before seen. Beyond operational imperatives,...

Almost all organizations are investing in data science, or planning to, as they seek to encourage experimentation and exploration to identify new business challenges and opportunities as part of the drive toward creating a more data-driven culture. My colleague, David Menninger, has written about how organizations using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) report gaining...