ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives (9)

Oracle’s AI Agents Amplify Value for Finance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 26 June 2025

Oracle’s recent industry analyst summit demonstrated significant progress in embedding artificial intelligence in its business applications—including those for finance, HR and supply chain management. This amplifies the already broad and deep functionality developed over decades. Oracle also continues to expand and extend its collaborative efforts with financial institutions, a form of... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, Order-to-Cash

Oracle AI Direction for Business Applications

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 25 June 2025

Oracle, long known for its dominance in databases and enterprise software, has a new message for the business world: Artificial intelligence (AI) isn't just a technology trend, it's a business imperative. At the recent Oracle Industry and Application Analyst Event, company executives made their most compelling case yet for why non-technical executives should care about a deeply integrated tech... Read More

Topics: Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Solace Enables Agentic AI with Solace Platform

Posted by Matt Aslett on 25 June 2025

My colleagues have recently described how agentic artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize enterprise computing by automating the handling of static and dynamic complexity to enable software to take action without the need for human intervention. Put simply, agentic AI is the orchestration of the execution of discreet business tasks by a combination of software components... Read More

Topics: Governance, AI, Generative AI, AI & Technologies, AI and Machine Learning, Streaming & Events

Oracle Summit 2025: Agentic HCM Moves from Hype to Hands On

Posted by Matthew Brown on 24 June 2025

I recently attended the Oracle Apps & Industry Analyst Summit in Redwood City, California. Over the course of two days, Oracle offered a concentrated look at a market that is both racing ahead and tripping over its own shoelaces. Generative, predictive and now agentic artificial intelligence (AI) have become the new currency of competitive advantage across HCM; Oracle alone has delivered more... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Employee Engagement, Learning Management, Talent Management, Workforce Management, Payroll Management, Total Compensation Management, Employees & HCM - Business & Technologies

Data Lakehouses Enable Data as a Product

Posted by Matt Aslett on 17 June 2025

I have previously described how data as a product was initially closely aligned with data mesh, a cultural and organizational approach to distributed data processing. As a result of data mesh’s association with distributed data, many assumed that the concept was diametrically opposed to the data lake, which offered a platform for combining large volumes of data from multiple data sources. That... Read More

Topics: Operations, Data Platforms, Data Intelligence, AI & Technologies

OneStream Roadmap for AI and Agents

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 June 2025

OneStream offers a platform designed to serve the needs of accounting and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) organizations. The software handles financial close and consolidation, planning and budgeting, analysis and reporting. OneStream recently held its annual user conference, Splash, in Nashville. In attending this meeting, my focus was once again on the progress the company has made over... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Analytics, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Consolidate and Close Management, AI & Technologies, AI and Machine Learning

Conga’s Existential Approach to Revenue Lifecycles and Operations

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 12 June 2025

At this year’s Conga Connect 2025 conference held in Orlando, FL, the enterprise software provider unveiled both a new chief executive and a sharpened vision for the future of revenue management technology. David Osborne, recently appointed CEO of Conga, took the stage for his keynote address with a foundational question: “Why?”—as in, why does Conga exist? It’s a question designed to provoke... Read More

Topics: Office of Revenue, Revenue Lifecycle Management

Salesforce Intention for Informatica Will Bolster AI and Data Efforts

Posted by Matt Aslett on 11 June 2025

I have previously explained how increased enterprise focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and agentic AI is a forcing function for enterprises to take long-overdue steps to improve data management and data governance. Data is integral to AI: large volumes of data are required to train models, while data freshness is important for inferencing in interactive applications and data quality is... Read More

Topics: Governance, Data Management, Generative AI, AI & Technologies, Agentic AI

Adobe Applies Agentic AI to Customer Journeys

Posted by Keith Dawson on 04 June 2025

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the idea of customer experience (CX) from a piecemeal, manually directed practice into a more streamlined and disciplined activity. The available technology has become so diverse and expansive that it is allowing enterprises to cope with a two-headed problem: providing more personalized and effective experiences is complex, and once... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience Management, Customer Journey, Adobe

Google Plots BigQuery Path from Data to AI

Posted by Matt Aslett on 03 June 2025

A little under a year ago, I explained how Google was positioning its BigQuery product as a unified data platform for processing data in multiple formats, across multiple locations, for multiple use cases—including business intelligence (BI) and artificial intelligence (AI)—using a combination of multiple data engines, including SQL, Spark and Python. The evolution of BigQuery as the focus of... Read More

Topics: Data Platforms, Generative AI, AI & Technologies

Google Next Highlights AI Investments

Posted by David Menninger on 03 June 2025

The artificial intelligence (AI) landscape is undergoing dramatic transformation, with enterprises rapidly adapting to a world where AI is no longer just a possibility but a necessity. ISG Market Lens research of 300 enterprises shows that AI initiatives were the second largest category of IT spending for 2024, behind customer experience initiatives. Furthermore, enterprises plan to increase 2025... Read More

Topics: Generative AI, AI & Technologies, AI and Machine Learning, Cloud Infrastructure

Software Increases Productivity in the Record-to-Report Cycle

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 May 2025

The six costliest words in managing a finance department are, “We’ve always done it this way.” The record-to-report (R2R) cycle describes the process of finalizing and summarizing the financial activities of a business for a specific accounting period—typically a month, quarter or fiscal year. It is important to note that R2R exclusively covers the activities between recording (keeping the books)... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Generative AI, Consolidate and Close Management, AI and Machine Learning

Knowledge Graphs are Critical to Data Intelligence and AI

Posted by Matt Aslett on 22 May 2025

I recently described how business data catalogs are evolving into data intelligence catalogs. These catalogs combine technical and business metadata and data governance capabilities with knowledge graph functionality to deliver a holistic, business-level view of data production and consumption. The concept of the knowledge graph has been part of the data sector for decades, but adoption has... Read More

Topics: Governance, Generative AI, Data Intelligence, AI & Technologies

What’s Next for AI and Sales?

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 21 May 2025

Ten years have passed since artificial intelligence (AI) first appeared in sales technology, and the results are mixed. Early tools applied rudimentary machine learning (ML) models to customer relationship management (CRM) exports, assigning win probability scores or advising on the “ideal” time to call. The mathematics was sound, the demos impressive, yet adoption faltered because little thought... Read More

Topics: sales engagement, Office of Revenue

AI-Enabled Contingency Planning is More Accessible Than Ever

Posted by Robert Kugel on 20 May 2025

We live in a time of uncertainty, not unpredictability. Especially when a business finds itself on an undefined journey with an unclear destination—whether caused by internal events or the world at large—having plans to deal with a range of outcomes increases the odds of success. Or, at least enduring the least amount of damage. Managing an organization in uncertain times is always hard, but... Read More

Topics: Machine Learning, Office of Finance, Supply Chain Planning, Business Planning, Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, Artificial intelligence, digital finance, Generative AI

Domo Addresses Data Products and Agentic AI

Posted by Matt Aslett on 20 May 2025

Domo is best known as a business intelligence (BI) and analytics software provider, thanks to its functionality for visualization, reporting, data science and embedded analytics. Additionally, as I recently explained, the company’s platform addresses a broad range of capabilities that includes data governance and security, data integration and application development, as well as the automation... Read More

Topics: Analytics, AI, Generative AI, Technologies

Conversational Automation’s Impact on AI and CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 15 May 2025

Conversational automation is one of those software segments that means something different depending on who you are or your role in an organization. According to my colleague Jeff Orr, the core of the idea is that conversational automation tools benefit from artificial intelligence (AI), allowing software agents, chatbots and virtual assistants to automate customer interactions and internal... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, Intelligent Self-Service, Conversational Intelligence

Oracle Wants to Be the Database for AI

Posted by David Menninger on 15 May 2025

Founded as Software Development Laboratories in 1977, Oracle is a behemoth in the software industry, generating more than $50 billion in revenue in its fiscal year 2024. Originally focused solely on the relational database market, the software provider operated as Relational Systems, Inc. for several years before adopting the name Oracle in 1982. The company went public in 1986 and became one of... Read More

Topics: Machine Learning, Artificial intelligence, Data Platforms, Generative AI

Gaining Financial Management Effectiveness in Midsize Enterprises

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 May 2025

Doing more with less is the defining characteristic of finance and accounting departments in midsize enterprises, which ISG research defines as organizations with between 100 and 999 workers. One frustrating truth confronting executives in these organizations is that, once their company stops being a small business, it has many of the same challenges that large enterprises face but with fewer... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, natural language processing, Procure-to-Pay

Preparing for Q-Day: Safeguarding Enterprises Against Quantum Threats

Posted by Jeff Orr on 15 May 2025

As quantum computing advances at an unprecedented pace, the concept of Q-Day—a day when quantum computers can fundamentally undermine our current encryption methods—has entered discussions among cybersecurity professionals and business leaders alike. While there is no definitive date set for Q-Day, we are approaching a critical juncture where traditional cryptographic techniques may no longer... Read More

Topics: Digital Technology, Cybersecurity, Digital Security