Analyst Perspectives

I recently noted that as demand for real-time interactive applications becomes more pervasive, the use of streaming data is becoming more mainstream. Streaming data and event processing has been part of the data landscape for many decades, but for much of that time, data streaming was a niche activity. Although adopted in industry segments with high-performance, real-time data processing and...

The analytics and business intelligence market landscape continues to grow as more organizations seek robust tools and capabilities to visualize and better understand data. BI systems are used to perform data analysis, identify market trends and opportunities and streamline business processes. They can collect and combine data from internal and external systems to present a holistic view.

The applicant tracking system, for all its shortcomings, revolutionized the way people found and applied for jobs when it first hit the market in the mid-1990s. Electronic applications quickly became the norm, resume or application review became more accessible for hiring teams and compliance was much more trackable and achievable, thanks to streamlined application processes. Today, tracking and...

Anaplan offers a cloud-based business planning platform that incorporates a modeling and calculation engine. The tool makes it relatively easy to add or expand the scope of plans that can be connected and monitored on a single platform. This Integrated Business Planning (IBP) approach enables organizations to use the software for financial planning or budgeting, sales, supply chain, workforce,...

I have recently written about the importance of healthy data pipelines to ensure data is integrated and processed in the sequence required to generate business intelligence, and the need for data pipelines to be agile in the context of real-time data processing requirements. Data engineers, who are responsible for monitoring, managing and maintaining data pipelines, are under increasing pressure...

The contact center industry is reexamining how organizations engage with contact center agents. One thing that we learned from the forced movement to work-from-home was that organizations have to provide agents with appropriate tools to collaborate and communicate with peers and supervisors as well as workers in the back office who participate in all sorts of customer-facing or customer-adjacent...

I recently explained how emerging application requirements were expanding the range of use cases for NoSQL databases, increasing adoption based on the availability of enhanced functionality. These intelligent applications require a close relationship between operational data platforms and the output of data science and machine learning projects. This ensures that machine learning and predictive...

Environmental, social and governance issues have grown increasingly pressing over the past few years as investors and government entities urge organizations to measure and disclose ESG metrics. I’ve already covered the broader topic as it relates to external reporting and how financial planning and analysis groups are likely to own this mandate going forward. (It’s mainly been a marketing and...

I often use the term “analytics” to refer to a broad set of capabilities, deliberately broader than business intelligence. In this Perspective, I’d like to share what decision-makers should consider as they evaluate the range of analytics requirements for their organization.

I spent years in the talent acquisition space, and I think that at least several months of that time – cumulatively – was spent just trying to get people to calm down. Talent acquisition is a critically important business process, but if I had a dollar for every time I had to remind someone that there really are no recruiting emergencies, I’d be a wealthy woman.

Streaming data has been part of the industry landscape for decades but has largely been focused on niche applications in segments with the highest real-time data processing and analytics performance requirements, such as financial services and telecommunications. As demand for real-time interactive applications becomes more pervasive, streaming data is becoming a more mainstream pursuit, aided by...

Field service is a segment of customer experience that is dominated by two elements: the complexity of the issues handled, and the high cost of providing on-site services. It is recognized as a critical component of the service experience, especially when managing the condition of high-precision equipment in the medical, manufacturing and utility industries. It is also a high-risk moment in the...

Organizations are collecting vast amounts of data every day, utilizing business intelligence software and data visualization to gain insights and identify patterns and errors in the data. Making sense of these patterns can enable an organization to gain an edge in the marketplace and plan more strategically.

Although the digital transformation of the finance department was a topic of discussion before 2020, it became a front-and-center issue as organizations locked down and in-office interactions became impossible. Finance and accounting departments were immediately confronted with a challenge because of their limited adoption of technology that would support a virtual working environment. As our...

When joining Ventana Research, I noted that the need to be more data-driven has become a mantra among large and small organizations alike. Data-driven organizations stand to gain competitive advantage, responding faster to worker and customer demands for more innovative, data-rich applications and personalized experiences. Being data-driven is clearly something to aspire to. However, it is also a...

Since its inception 20 years ago, Ventana Research has advocated for a shorter accounting close because it can improve the performance of the entire organization, not just finance and accounting. An important benefit of a shorter close is increased staff time for analysis and the preparation of reports and narratives that improve communications with the board and outside investors. Similarly, the...

There are more digital channels in the commerce space than ever before: the web, mobile apps, text, voice-activated “agents,” video and social channels. Conversational computing and hyper-personalization are transforming customer engagement, and organizations may need to undergo a digital platform renovation to optimize customer and product experiences or risk lagging behind competitors. B2B...

We’ve recently published our latest Benchmark Research on Data Governance and it’s fair to say, “you’ve come a long way, baby.” Many of you reading this weren’t around when that phrase was introduced in 1968 to promote Virginia Slims cigarettes, but you may have heard the phrase because it went on to become a part of popular culture. We’ve learned a lot about cigarettes since then, and we’ve...

In my more than two decades in the world of human resources and human capital management technology, I have never seen a topic become so completely ubiquitous so quickly as has employee experience. This is great news from my perspective. As I addressed in this recent analyst perspective, market factors have forced organizations to acknowledge the tremendous bottom-line value of an engaged...

We conducted our recent Smart Close Dynamic Insights Research in part to assess to what extent the substantial disruptions of the pandemic have impacted the accounting close. When office lockdowns began in the first quarter of 2020, many finance departments were challenged by having to do their quarterly close remotely without their normal face-to-face interactions. In the United States, the...