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Digital Business Market Agenda for 2021 and Beyond

Posted by Mark Smith on 24 February 2021
With the announcement of Ventana Research market agenda, a new expertise in Digital Business has been launched, I will outline the areas of focus that provide insights to organizations that can be used to optimize technology, increase agility and organizational readiness. We are proud to provide expertise on digital effectiveness through our research and insights on trends and best practices.... Read More

Topics: Performance Management, Governance, Business Continuity, Risk, Digital transformation, Experience Management, Digital Communications

The 2021 Market Agenda for Customer Experience: Achieving Excellence in Engagement

Posted by Keith Dawson on 24 February 2021
Ventana Research recently announced its 2021 market agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. Most organizations have some degree of focus on managing how they interact with their customers, but it is often a disjointed and constrained process. Developing an effective customer experience has become an investment priority in recent years as organizations increasingly recognize the... Read More

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Customer Service, Contact Center, Workforce Management, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

The 2021 Market Agenda for Analytics: Converting Data Into Insights

Posted by David Menninger on 24 February 2021
Ventana Research recently announced its 2021 market agenda for Analytics, continuing the guidance we’ve offered for nearly two decades to help organizations derive optimal value from technology investments to improve business outcomes. It’s been exciting to follow innovations in the analytics market, but for businesses, it can be challenging to stay on top of these changes and find ways to... Read More

Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, natural language processing, Process Mining, Streaming Analytics, AI and Machine Learning

Profitability Management: A CFO Priority to Gain Competitive Advantage

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 February 2021
Profitability management produces a sustainable competitive advantage but by 2025 only one-third of companies will have implemented a profitability management initiative, explains Ventana Research SVP and Research Director Robert Kugel. This brief video shows why FP&A organizations must be part of a profitability management approach to pricing and costing. Read More

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, Sales Operations, CFO, Profitability, Price and Revenue Management

The Ventana Research 2021 Market Agenda: How Digital Effectiveness Impacts Organizational Agility

Posted by Mark Smith on 17 February 2021
Ventana Research has announced its market agenda for 2021, continuing the tradition of transparency in our efforts to educate and guide the technology market but also our independence as we do not share our market agenda or analyst perspectives with any external party. Each year, we proudly formulate our market agenda that is not biased by clients or the technology industry, focusing on education... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Office of Finance, Analytics, Data, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, Office of Revenue

Use Software for More Effective Tax Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 February 2021
The post-pandemic world will see much returned to normal, but there will also be change. For businesses that faced shutdowns, these changes will include higher taxes to pay for the costs of mitigating the economic impact, and the loss of tax revenue. In addition to imposing higher tax rates, some governments will strive to raise revenue by accelerating their adoption of digital technologies to... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Revenue, robotic finance, lease and tax accounting

How to Take Advantage of AI/ML Today

Posted by David Menninger on 08 February 2021
The industry is making huge strides with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). There is more data available to analyze. Analytics vendors have made it easier to build and deploy models, and AI/ML is being embedded into many types of applications. Organizations are realizing the value that AI/ML provides and there are now millions of professionals with AI or ML in their title or... Read More

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Preparation, Digital Technology, AI and Machine Learning

BlackLine Matches Receivables for Continuous Accounting

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 February 2021
BlackLine recently held its first virtual user conference, Beyond the Black, where it detailed numerous additions and enhancements to its applications. Of note was the launch of BlackLine Cash Application, an accounts receivable (AR) processing software based on software originally developed by recently acquired Rimilia. The new application fits the company's product strategy of providing... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, AI and Machine Learning

Continuous Planning is Optimized with AI and External Data

Posted by Robert Kugel on 01 February 2021
In the context of planning, budgeting and benchmarking, external data includes information about the world outside an organization such as economic and market statistics, competitors and customers. Today, a comprehensive set of external data is a “nice to have” item in most organizations, but that’s likely to change. External data is necessary for useful and accurate business-focused planning and... Read More

Topics: Information Management, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, Predictive Planning, AI and Machine Learning

The Opportunity for CX is Beyond Your Contact Center

Posted by Keith Dawson on 26 January 2021
The contact center has long represented the starting point for customer experience initiatives. Now, however, most organizations are finding that they need to invest beyond this singular point of engagement. When organizations look at customer experience holistically, they see the need to incorporate the perspectives of people in other departments and channels of customer engagement. These... Read More

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, Contact Center

Introducing Precisely for Data Integrity

Posted by David Menninger on 25 January 2021
Data is becoming more valuable and more important to organizations. At the same time, organizations have become more disciplined about the data on which they rely to ensure it is robust, accurate and governed properly. Without data integrity, organizations cannot trust the information produced by their data processes, and will be discouraged from using that data, resulting in inefficiencies and... Read More

Topics: business intelligence, Analytics, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Information Management, Data, data lakes

Cloudera Consolidates Its Data Platform

Posted by David Menninger on 22 January 2021
Organizations are dealing with exponentially increasing data that ranges broadly from customer-generated information, financial transactions, edge-generated data and even operational IT server logs. A combination of complex data lake and data warehouse capabilities are required to leverage this data. Our research shows that nearly three-quarters of organizations deploy both data lakes and data... Read More

Topics: PROS Pricing, embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Information Management, Data, data lakes, AI and Machine Learning

Tableau and Salesforce bring New Look to Business Analytics

Posted by David Menninger on 20 January 2021
Businesses are transforming their organizations, building a data culture and deploying sophisticated analytics more broadly than ever. However, the process of using data and analytics is not always easy. The necessary tools are often separate, but our research shows organizations prefer an integrated environment. In our Data Preparation Benchmark Research, we found that 41% of participants use... Read More

Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Preparation, Information Management, Internet of Things, Data, Digital Technology, natural language processing, Conversational Computing, AI and Machine Learning

Snowflake Builds on Its Success

Posted by David Menninger on 15 January 2021
Traditional on-premises data processing solutions have led to a hugely complex and expensive set of data silos where IT spends more time managing the infrastructure than extracting value from the data. Big data architectures have attempted to solve the problem with large pools of cost-effective storage, but in doing so have often created on-premises management and administration challenges. These... Read More

Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Data, data lakes, AI and Machine Learning

Emerging Data Platforms Tackle Big Challenges

Posted by David Menninger on 14 January 2021
Organizations are always looking to improve their ability to use data and AI to gain meaningful and actionable insights into their operations, services and customer needs. But unlocking value from data requires multiple analytics workloads, data science tools and machine learning algorithms to run against the same diverse data sets. Organizations still struggle with limited data visibility and... Read More

Topics: business intelligence, embedded analytics, Analytics, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Data, Information Management (IM), data lakes, AI and Machine Learning

The Necessity of Sales Performance Management

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 06 January 2021
True leadership is the ability to motivate sales organizations to perform at their best. But the demand to do so requires the support of an orchestrated process and tools designed to help sales teams work in a directed manner that can help attain quotas through compensation plans. To manage quotas and resources and optimize sales compensation, everyone in the sales organization, from managers to... Read More

Topics: Sales, Sales Performance Management, intelligent sales, sales enablement

People Analytics: A New Generation of Workforce Insights

Posted by ISG Research on 28 December 2020
People analytics is a specific focus in Human Capital Management (HCM) that enables organizations to have data-driven insights that optimize the impact and value of the workforce. These analytics are essential for addressing a broad scope of HCM objectives, but while reducing compliance risks and highlighting demographic trends have dominated the people analytics landscape for decades, various... Read More

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Workforce Analytics, HR Analytics

Intelligent Virtual Agents Are an Imperative for Digital Self-Service

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 December 2020
The pandemic has raised the stakes for self-service in every part of the customer journey. In 2020, the customer service industry underwent a shock to its collective system by pulling up stakes and moving agents to remote work. At the same time, consumers moved away from in-person interactions in stores and branches. This systemic disruption has led to longer call wait times and tougher... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, Digital Technology, natural language processing, Conversational Computing, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

PTC Brings Innovation to Product Experiences

Posted by Mark Smith on 21 December 2020
Augmented reality (AR) is a critical component of digital technology. The role of AR is to virtualize the visualization and engagement of assets and products with information that can enhance the value of it for many purposes including manufacturing, marketing, sales and service. Consider how manufacturing and field service organizations are starting to use AR technology for hands-free call-up of... Read More

Topics: Sales, Business Continuity, Internet of Things, Business Planning, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, Digital transformation, mobile computing, extended reality

Make Accounts Receivable Pay

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 December 2020
Can you imagine a more arcane and boring topic than accounts receivable? Unless you are the CFO, controller, chief accounting officer or treasurer of an organization, maybe not. Anecdotally, as it’s part of the trend to the digital transformation of all things in the department, there appears to be greater interest in this area of the Office of Finance. With populations locked down and the... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, AI and Machine Learning

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