Big data involves interplay between different data management approaches and business intelligence and operational systems, which makes it imperative that all sources of business data be integrated efficiently and that organizations be able to easily adapt to new data types and sources. Our recent big data benchmark research confirmed that big data storage technologies continue to follow many approaches, including appliances, Hadoop, and in-memory and specialized DBMSes. With the variety,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Quality,
Master Data Management,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Data Integration,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence
LucidWorks addresses the growing volume of information now being stored in the enterprise and in big data with two products aimed at the enterprise with search technology. Though you may not be familiar with LucidWorks (previously known as Lucid Imagination), the company has for many years contributed to Apache Lucene, an open source search project, and commercialized and supported for it for business.
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Topics:
Big Data,
MapR,
Sales Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Cloudera,
Customer & Contact Center,
Hortonworks,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Search,
Strata+Hadoop
Business intelligence software is supposed to help businesses access and analyze data and communicate analytics and metrics. I have witnessed improvements to BI software over the years, from mobile and collaboration to interactive discovery and visualization, and our Value Index for Business Intelligence finds a mature set of technology vendors and products. But even as these products mature in capabilities, the majority lack features that would make them easy to use. Our recent research on ...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Mobile Technology,
Natural Language,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Discovery
One of the important lessons company executives should have learned over the past 15 years is that it’s dangerous not to do contingency planning, a subject that I’ve written about before. By this I mean real, think-outside-the-box contingency planning (not just extrapolating), which is especially important when doing long-range planning. The past decade or so has been punctuated by periods of elevated volatility in financial and product markets, and there’s a good probability it will occur...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
contingency,
currency,
driver-based,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
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Topics:
Big Data,
Splunk,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Machine data,
Operational Intelligence
The proper use of technology enables businesses to be more efficient. Our recent research into technology for business innovation found that 56 percent indicate innovative technology is very important, yet only 9 percent are very satisfied with theirs, showing plenty of room for improvement. As we enter 2013, businesses have more choices than ever for technology to improve business and IT. Our firm has identified six key technologies that give organizations significant competitive advantages:...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Mobile Technology,
Social Collaboration,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
CMO,
COO,
CTO
Human capital is most organizations’ largest investment and one of their largest differentiators against the competition. So it follows that those that take advantage of the compelling, game-changing technology now available in human capital management (HCM) will place themselves at a competitive advantage.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Social Media,
HCM,
Human Capital Management,
Learning,
Office of Finance,
Social Collaboration,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
Compensation,
finance,
HR,
Talent Management,
Workforce Management
Managing the access, storage and use of data effectively can provide businesses a competitive advantage. Last year I outlined what the big deal is in big data, as the initial focus on the volume, velocity and variety of data – what my colleague Tony Cosentino calls the three V’s – is only one small piece of how organizations should evaluate this technology. The more balanced approach is to include what he calls the three W’s – the what, so what and now what, which shifts the focus to an...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Master Data Management,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
MDM,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Data Governance,
Data Integration,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Product Information Management
Did you catch all the big data analogies people used in 2012? There were many, like the refinement of oil analogy, or the spinning straw into gold analogy, and less useful but more entertaining ones, like big data is like a box of chocolates, or big data is like The Matrix (because “there’s no way Keanu Reeves learns Kung Fu in five seconds without using big data”). I tend to like the water analogy, which I’ll use here to have a little fun and to briefly describe how I see the business...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Data
Businesses always see a lag between when technology makes some advance possible and when a majority of companies actually adopt it. There’s even a longer lag between the emergence of an advance in a business process or technique and the time it takes to become mainstream. When we write our research agendas at the top of each year, we have to strike a balance between focusing on the new and different, which is still many years away from general acceptance, and the mainstream, which has been...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Governance,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
close,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
Risk,
CEO,
Financial Performance Management,
FPM
Revolution Analytics is a commercial provider of software and services related to enterprise implementations of the open source language R. At its base level, R is a programming language built by statisticians for statistical analysis, data mining and predictive analytics. In a broader sense, it is data analysis software used by data scientists to access data, develop and perform statistical modeling and visualize data. The R community has a growing user base of more than two million worldwide,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
SAS,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
SPSS
Happy New Year to all my readers and followers. I hope everyone has gotten some rest and is ready for a great 2013. 2012 was a busy year in which we saw a critical inflection point, where an elevated focus on new methods and innovative technological approaches such as big data, business analytics, business and social collaboration, cloud computing, mobile technology and social media become part of the mainstream business and IT dialogue. These technologies are beginning to be part of or...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Market Research,
Mobile Technology,
Social Collaboration,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Technology
Ventana Research has been researching and advocating operational intelligence for the past 10 years, but not always with that name. From the use of events and analytics in business process management and the need for hourly and daily operational business intelligence, but its alignment with traditional BI architecture didn’t allow for a seamless system, so a few years later the discussion started to focus around business process management and the ability of companies to monitor and analyze BPM...
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Topics:
Big Data,
SOA,
Supply Chain Performance,
business activity monitoring,
business process monitoring,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Complex Event Processing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Operational Intelligence,
Service Cloud
Ventana Research does benchmark research that assesses the maturity of organizations across four dimensions: people, process, information and technology. We examine business issues along those dimensions because we recognize the interconnected relationships among them. Especially in larger companies, data issues such as accuracy and accessibility are often a root cause of poor performance of a core function. It may be a factor in such areas as poor customer service, sales execution or...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
Quantrix recently unveiled Quantrix 5, an updated version of its financial modeling software designed to fill the gap between spreadsheets and business intelligence (BI) systems. Quantrix provides users with many of the capabilities of an enterprise system and addresses shortcomings of desktop spreadsheet software without requiring extensive training.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
FP&A,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
Quantrix,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
FPM
I recently returned from Sweden, where QlikTech International hosted its annual analyst “unsummit.” Much of the information I was exposed to was under NDA, so I cannot talk about it here. What I can discuss, and what in many ways may be more interesting and more important, is the company’s focus on culture and philosophy.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Visualization,
QlikView,
Tableau,
Google,
discovery analytics,
exploratory analytics,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Impala,
big query,
Qliktech
When they were first introduced three decades ago, electronic spreadsheets provided a major advance in corporate planning compared to the paper spreadsheet-and-adding-machine systems they replaced. However, time passes and, as our research shows, desktop spreadsheets often hamper productivity because they were designed for personal productivity, not for managing repetitive, collaborative, enterprise-wide processes such as financial planning. The finance organization at the University of Central...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
Business software is beginning to undergo a design revolution comparable to the seismic shift from the green screen to the graphical user interface (GUI) that began in the mid-1980s. Three forces are at work. One is the retirement of large numbers of members of the baby-boom generation and the rise of a generation that grew up with computers and computer games from a young age. Also, software and technology vendors have been recognizing the need to “consumerize” business applications as mobile...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Supply Chain Performance,
OpenWorld,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Oracle,
Workforce Performance,
Dreamforce,
finance,
Tidemark,
Business,
design,
development,
GUI
Effective planning has always been a challenge for companies, and it’s all the more so today. Even when companies deploy dedicated planning applications, they often do not or cannot use them to full advantage. I had a chance to learn more about 3M Corp. use of business planning in our recent 2012 Leadership Awards, who is the diversified global manufacturer of consumer and industrial products, several years ago acquired a dedicated planning application, but because the system could not scale to...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
Big data was big news in 2012 and probably in 2013 too. The Harvard Business Review talks about it as The Management Revolution. The Wall Street Journal says Meet the New Boss: Big Data, and Big Data is on the Rise, Bringing Big Questions. Given big data’s popularity in the press, you might think that the technology market is only about big data and how companies use the vast and growing amount of data now available to organizations. While this technology can provide a significant opportunity,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Harvard Business Review,
Wall Street Journal,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Technology Innovation,
Strata+Hadoop
I recently started a series of blog posts on what CEOs (and for that matter, all senior corporate executives) need to know about IT. The first covered the high-level issues. As I noted there, it’s not necessary for a CEO of a company to be able to write Java code or master the intricacies of an ERP or sales compensation application. However, CEOs must grasp the basics of IT just as they must understand basic corporate finance, the production process and – at least at a high level – the...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
SaaS,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Customer,
ERP,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Complex Event Processing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
CEO,
PaaS
I’ve been examining how corporations plan and budget for more than decade. One clear pattern that has emerged is the difficulty that using desktop spreadsheets imposes on the process. Ventana Research recently published findings from our trends in business planning benchmark research, and the research once again confirms this observation. It shows that companies that use dedicated applications are consistently more satisfied (and much less dissatisfied) with the software they use than users of...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
The technology ecosystems are expanding rapidly and the use of big data and cloud computing challenge organizations to process information efficiently and deliver consistent high-quality data. To address these issues, Informatica has introduced two new offerings.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Social Media,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Data Integration,
Informatica,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Strata+Hadoop
Tableau Software is growing fast. Tableau has taken a “land and expand” strategy that drives what they call the democratization of analytics within organizations. Tableau has enjoyed first mover advantage in the area of exploratory analytics called visual discovery, a growing type of business analytics that allows companies to easily visualize data in a descriptive manner, but the company is facing competition as deep-pocket companies such as IBM, SAP and others become more aggressive in the...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Visualization,
Sales Performance,
Tableau,
Google,
discovery analytics,
exploratory analytics,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Operational Intelligence,
Impala,
big query
Business analytics has become the highest ranked technology innovation, according to our benchmark research on business technology innovation, but a lack of trained resources and inefficient technology have hampered the best of organizations when they attempt to roll out analytics. Our benchmark research on business analytics in 2012 found that the majority of analysts in organizations spend more of their time on data-related activities than on analytic tasks, and our 2013 research on business...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Narrative Science,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Expert Systems,
Digital Technology
The business/IT divide is a barrier that prevents most companies from achieving their true performance potential. The divide has remained a constant impediment since the dawn of business computing six decades ago. It’s not necessary for a CEO of a company to be able to write Java code or master the intricacies of an ERP or sales compensation application. However, that CEO must master the basics of IT just as he must understand basic corporate finance, the production process and – at least at a...
Read More
Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
competition,
executive,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
IT,
CEO,
FPM
People have been complaining about the budgeting and planning processes in their organizations for decades. If you’re old enough, you may recall President Carter’s failed attempt to use something called zero-based budgeting to impose discipline in federal outlays. (In his first year in office the federal government reported a whopping $54 billion deficit.) Some complaining is almost inevitable, but some reflects the one-way nature of the process. People spend time on creating a budget and don’t...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
Organizations engage in a range of forward-looking activities. Sales organizations have pipelines to forecast sales. Manufacturing organizations set and reset demand plans and near-term production schedules, often in response to longer-term production plans that determine what they will make and where and how they will make it. Logistics people plan inbound and outbound shipments. Marketing departments plan advertising and promotion campaigns. HR departments project staffing requirements and...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
At the recent Teradata’s annual Partners user conference, the company outlined its expanding role as a provider distributed information architecture technology. My colleague Tony Cosentino assessed Teradata’s business analytics and big data strategy, but there is more under the covers in regards to the company’s expanding role for big data and enterprise architectures. Over the last several decades Teradata has been known for providing enterprise data warehouse appliances, such as its unveiling...
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Topics:
Big Data,
QlikView,
SAS,
alteryx,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Hortonworks,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Strata+Hadoop
Unlike other recent conferences that seem to focus almost exclusively on cloud computing, this week’s Teradata Partners Conference emphasized big data and analytics. The vision that Teradata lays out is one in which new technologies such as Apache Hadoop live side by side with more traditional enterprise data warehouses (EDW) and companies have the flexibility to define their own approaches to BI tools. This approach, at least in the near and medium terms, makes a lot of sense, and is backed by
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Topics:
Big Data,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Teradata Aster
SAP has inaugurated a new series of business applications it calls Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) OnDemand as a cloud-based subscription service. The applications are part of SAP’s EPM version 10 suite, which it introduced last year. It’s a first step in what is likely to be a portfolio of general-purpose, lightweight and relatively low-cost apps designed to be used on mobile devices. Using HANA on the back end, the applications can deliver high performance in accessing masses of...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
expense,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Business Applications,
FPM,
HANA
Our benchmark research into retail analytics suggests that only 34 percent of retail companies are satisfied with the process they currently use to create analytics. That’s 10 percent fewer businesses satisfied than we found for all industries combined. The dissatisfaction is being driven by underperforming technology that cannot keep up with the dramatic changes that are occurring in the retail industry. Retail analytics lag those in the broader business world, with 71 percent still using...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Retail Analytics,
SaaS,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Operational Intelligence
At Oracle OpenWorld this week I focused on what the company is doing in business analytics, and in particular on what it is doing with its Exalytics In-Memory Machine. The Exalytics appliance is an impressive in-memory hardware approach to putting right-time analytics in the hands of end users by providing a full range of integrated analytic and visualization capabilities. Exalytics fits into the broader analytics portfolio by providing support for Oracle BI Foundational Suite including OBIEE,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
SAP,
exadata,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Exalytics,
IBM,
Oracle
Read More
Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Market Research,
Research,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
CMO,
Industry Analyst,
Influencers,
Technology Vendors
Two key themes that emerged from Larry Ellison’s Sunday night keynote at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld were faster processing speed and cheaper storage. An underlying purpose to these themes was to assert the importance of Oracle’s strategic vertical integration of hardware and software with the acquisitions of Sun. I try to view technology keynotes like this from the perspective of a practical business user. Advancements such of these are important because enhancing the performance and...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Customer Experience,
executive,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Data Management,
Financial Performance,
In-Memory Computing,
Information Management,
Business Process Management,
Data,
FPM
Exactly what is the relationship between workforce analytics and big data? Most of the use cases for big data seem to revolve around marketing, social media and customer service initiatives where unstructured data sources reveal big value. Our research into big data analytics suggests a prime benefit of big data is in the ability to retain and analyze larger amounts of data and to increase the speed of analysis. However, workforce analytics does not suffer from an overwhelming amount of data,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Human Capital Management,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
I was at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference this week to hear about the latest advancements from the cloud computing software giant. Salesforce has helped revolutionize cloud computing for business, and its social media and collaborative technologies help advance business processes in sales, customer service and improve the interactions between employees, partners and customers. Salesforce has made great advancements in cloud, social and mobile technology, as I have assessed and my...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
QlikView,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Gooddata,
SnapLogic,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
InetSoft,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
KXEN,
Operational Intelligence,
Cloud9 Analytics,
Domo,
Information Builder iway,
Roambi
With more than 90,000 attendees registered and 100,000 more expected to watch via live stream on Facebook, Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce is the biggest technology event of this year. The conference kicked off yesterday morning with MC Hammer letting the packed house know that it was “Chatter time” and leaving little doubt about the theme of the Marc Benioff’s keynote speech: Social. Citing numbers from McKinsey and IBM, Benioff suggested that social adds $1.3 trillion to the economy and that CEOs...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Location Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Social
Thinking about big data and the swirling world of analytics that surrounds it can be overwhelming. Broad-based organizational and technological changes are driving a new industrial constitution built on time-to-value and closed-loop systems of organizational and machine learning. As I analyze our next-generation business intelligence benchmark research results, I see trends in collaboration and mobile technology that will have a profound impact on business for generations to come. Given these...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence
As I listened to the keynote address at, conf2012, the annual Splunk user conference, my initial impression was that the company was spreading itself too thin. The company highlighted four rather formidable areas of organizational focus: Enterprise 5.0, the company’s flagship data platform, which is now in beta; Development, which is support for building applications and integrating Splunk within the broader IT infrastructure; Content, the continued development of core applications and use...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Splunk,
data fabric,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Operational Intelligence,
Digital Technology
Ventana Research has just released the 2012 Value Index for Data Integration, in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this software category for almost a decade. Our latest benchmark research in information management found that data integration is a critical component of information management strategies, according to 55 percent of organizations. Our benchmark research on organizations using this software not only uncovers best...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Master Data Management,
Microsoft,
Pentaho,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
SAS,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Talend,
SnapLogic,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Governance,
Data Integration,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
IBM,
Informatica,
Information Applications,
Information Builders,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Oracle,
Workforce Performance,
Syncsort
Budget season is about to open at most companies that operate on a calendar year, so this is probably as good a time as any to rethink the process. Almost all companies will undertake the construction of a budget this year the same way they did it last year, despite widespread complaints that it is a monumental waste of time. One major reason why budgeting never changes is that it isn’t important enough to be worth serious rethinking. Another reason is that too many vested interests are aligned...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
Controller,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
Compensation,
cash management,
FPM,
Integrated Business Planning
If you’re considering purchasing a financial performance management (FPM) suite, you shouldn’t overlook a recent entrant in the category, Tagetik (which sort of rhymes with “magnetic”). The company, which was founded in 1986 and is based in Lucca, Italy, began by focusing mainly on Europe, but has extended its efforts in the United States in the past two years. Tagetik 4.0 is an elegant implementation of a financial performance management suite running on Microsoft’s SharePoint infrastructure.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
close,
Consolidation,
Controller,
SharePoint,
XBRL,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Dashboards,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
Tagetik,
FPM
Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite competes in the open source and broader BI market. Its customer base is mostly in the small and midsized business and OEMs and SaaS providers who can embed Jaspersoft code directly into their offerings. Earlier this summer, the company introduced Jaspersoft 4.7, which features advancements in interactive reporting, big data access and mobile business intelligence for Android. The 4.7 release brings interactive features such as segmenting and filtering,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Jaspersoft,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications
I had a refreshing call this morning with a vendor that did not revolve around integration of systems, types of data, and the intricacies of NoSQL approaches. Instead, the discussion was about how its business users analyze an important and complex problem and how the company’s software enables that analysis. The topic of big data never came up, and it was not needed, because the conversation was business-driven and issue-specific.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Datameer,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Planview,
SuccessFactors,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
PivotLink
One of the community groups to which I donate my time is an organization that puts on a Concours d’Élegance – a vintage car show. Such Concours date back to seventeenth-century France, when wealthy aristocrats gathered to see who had the best carriages and most beaudacious horses. Our Concours serves as the centerpiece to a broader mission of raising money for several charities. There a many such events in the United States and elsewhere, but this one, which has been held every year since 1956,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
GRC,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
CFO,
finance,
Talent Management,
FPM
Our research consistently finds that defects in data are the root cause of a wide range of problems encountered by modern corporations. The magnitude of the problem correlates with the size of the company: Big companies have bigger headaches than midsize ones. Data issues diminish productivity in every part of a business as people struggle to correct errors or find workarounds. Issues with data are a man-made phenomenon, yet companies seem to treat bad data as some sort of force of nature like...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
GRC,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
finance,
FPM
A study by the McKinsey Global Institute published earlier this year suggests a coming shortage of more than 140,000 workers with deep analytical skills and a shortage of more than 1.5 million data-literate managers. I’m not sure how the study defined these roles, but I’d guess that those with deep analytic skills are those folks building the complex models, and the data-literate managers are those executives, middle managers and analysts who interpret the results and use the models to help...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Scientist,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
Over the years Tibco has provided infrastructure for enterprise data integration and has built a substantial installed base. Now the company positions itself as supplying next-generation analytics for big data through service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA has been around for a while; Ventana Research has been tracking it since 2006 and conducted benchmark research on SOA. But it remains a vaguely understood technology. Our research shows that SOA is not clearly defined in the market and that...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
SOA,
Spotfire,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Complex Event Processing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Tibco,
CEP,
Service Cloud
For the past several years Ventana Research has focused more on analytics and their importance to improving business performance. We’ve done extensive benchmark research in business analytics, detailing how they are used generally in business and in major functional areas of companies as well as their application in specific industries. We adopted this focus because technology advances are changing the landscape of analytics. Its use in business management, for example, is getting new scrutiny...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
best pracices,
business value,
cash management,
challenge,
financial planning
In this second in a blog series on business analytics I focus on the increasingly important area of predictive analytics. Our benchmark research into predictive analytics shows that while the vast majority of companies see this technology as important or very important for the future of their organizations, most are not taking full advantage of it. This finding suggests that there is an opportunity for companies to gain competitive advantage by implementing predictive analytics in the near term.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
When it comes to the task of managing performance, many organizations still find themselves fixated on the past rather than planning for improvement in the future. When performance management processes operate efficiently, technology to support activities such as modeling and analytics can optimize outcomes and help align them to targeted goals and objectives. This might seem trivial or easily done, but the reality is that most organizations lack a unified platform that anyone in the enterprise...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
Our benchmark research on business analytics suggests that it is counterproductive to take a general approach to the topic. A better approach is to focus on particular use cases and lines of business (LOB). For this reason, in a series of upcoming articles, I will look at our business analytics research in the context of different industries and different functional areas of an organization, and illustrate how analytics are being applied to solve real business problems.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
Our recent benchmark research on information management uncovered some startling facts about the level of technology adoption necessary for efficient information-centric organizations. Chief information officers (CIO) are responsible for the availability of information to their businesses in a consistent and timely basis, but in most organizations, information management is seen as just a delegated set of tasks and is not the CIO’s top priority. This unfortunate outlook can have a lasting...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Management,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Data,
IT
Karmasphere has an interesting story to tell. Much like Datameer, which I recently blogged about, Karmasphere sits on top of the Hadoop distributed platform where companies such as Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR compete. Karmasphere provides a collaborative environment and an analytical workbench that help companies write applications and workflows that run on top of Hadoop. The company’s business model looks to leverage legacy skill sets, such as SQL, which are already resident in most...
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Topics:
Big Data,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Karmasphere,
Strata+Hadoop
MicroStrategy, announced version 9.3. The announcement came out of Amsterdam this month just in front of MicroStrategy World, the company’s annual conference for the European market. Release 9.3 delivers significant updates in four main areas: big data, advanced analytics, automated administration and visual data discovery.
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Topics:
Big Data,
MicroStrategy,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Visual Insight,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Technology
Our research agenda for 2012 in human capital management outlined the importance of workforce management for all organizations. One provider, WorkForce Software, provides systems that support scheduling, time and attendance, leave and absence and fatigue management. As I noted in my last analysis on WorkForce Software, the company’s focus on the fatigue aspect of workforce management, especially in white-collar environments such as transportation, utilities and healthcare, has provided them...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Human Capital Management,
SuccessFactors,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
HTML5,
Time & Attendance,
Workforce Management
Usually, just figuring out how to start the process of change is a major barrier to improvement in business. I think that’s especially true when it comes to integrated business planning (IBP). I started using that term six years ago to differentiate that process from financial budgeting and the many other forward-looking activities used in companies. IBP applies to a longstanding objective: bringing together the disparate strands of forward-looking activities across a corporation to foster...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
Actuate, the driving force behind the open source Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project, is positioning itself in the center of the big-data world through multiple partnerships with companies such as Cloudera, Hortonworks, KXEN, Pervasive and a number of OEMs. These agreements, following on its acquisition of Xenos a couple of years ago, help Actuate address some big issues in big data, involving enterprise integration and closed-loop operational systems that provide...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Pervasive,
Eclipse,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Cloudera,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Strata+Hadoop
As volumes of data grow in organizations, so do the number of deployments of Hadoop, and as Hadoop becomes widespread, more organizations demand data analysis, ease of use and visualization of large data sets. In our benchmark research on Hadoop, 88 percent of organizations said analyzing Hadoop data is important, and in our research on business analytics 89 percent said it is important to make it simpler to provide analytics and metrics to all users who need them. As my colleague Mark Smith...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Datameer,
MapR,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloudera,
Customer & Contact Center,
Hortonworks,
IBM,
Information Applications,
Operational Intelligence,
Visualization,
Data Discovery,
Strata+Hadoop
One of the most important trends in business over the past 20 years has been the broadening use of information technology to manage and support activities. In the early decades of business computing, companies developed islands of automation for largely numeric functions such as billing, inventory management and accounting. Each ran on a proprietary system and engaged the time of a relative handful of employees. Today, just about everyone works with an IT system for at least some of their...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Governance,
GRC,
Management,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
compliance,
finance,
Risk,
financial risk management,
IT Risk Management
Kognitio has been serving the analytics and data needs of organizations for more than 20 years with an in-memory analytics platform that meets many of the big-data needs of today’s organizations. Kognitio Analytical Platform provides a unique massively parallel processing (MPP) in-memory database that can rapidly load data and calculate analytics; it is available both in an analytical software appliance and via cloud computing.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Social Media,
alteryx,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Hortonworks,
Information Management,
Kognitio,
Strata+Hadoop
Risk has always been an integral part of business, but our recent Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) benchmark research shows that companies deal with risk with varying degrees of effectiveness – especially operational risk. A majority of companies lag in their overall GRC maturity, as I covered in a recent blog post. Operational risk management should be of greater interest to executives today because they can have greater control of it than before. The expansion of IT systems to automate...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Customer Experience,
Governance,
GRC,
Management,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
compliance,
finance,
Risk,
financial risk management
Our benchmark research on business analytics finds that just 13 percent of companies overall and 11 percent of finance departments use predictive analytics. I think advanced analytics – especially predictive analytics – should play a larger role in managing organizations. Making it easier to create and consume advanced analytics would help organizations broaden their integration in business planning and execution. This was one of the points that SPSS, an IBM subsidiary that provides analytics,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Marketing,
Modeling,
Sales Forecasting,
Analytics,
IBM,
Uncategorized,
SPSS
At its Business Analytics Analyst Summit (Twitter: #IBMBAS12) this week, IBM unveiled its new release of analytics software for decision management. Over the last 25 years decision support systems have transformed into decision management, in which analytics, rules and optimization methods help organizations use information to guide optimal outcomes. IBM has experience and technology in these areas, most of it acquired, to apply to specific organizational needs in vertical industries. In...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
Workforce Performance,
Business Process Management,
Decision Management
Hadoop, the big-data technology, has transformed businesses’ ability to cost-effectively store and process large volumes of data for analysis. Numerous companies have invested in supporting Hadoop, and some produce commercial versions of the open source technology. At last year’s Hadoop Summit Hortonworks had just started to establish itself as one of these providers. Now, at the 2012 Hadoop Summit, with a new CEO, Rob Bearden, a new head of marketing, John Kreisa, and other hires, it is moving...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Datameer,
IT Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Hortonworks,
Information Applications,
Teradata Aster,
Strata+Hadoop
In our benchmark research in predictive analytics we’ve uncovered some intriguing tools for taking advantage of big data in the enterprise. Revolution Analytics, which we analyzed earlier this year, this month introduced its 6.0 release. Revolution extends the open source statistical programming language R with capabilities you would expect out of enterprise software. The company has grown substantially over the last several years and has an impressive list of more than a hundred customers in...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Linux,
Predictive,
Revolution,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Cloudera,
Data Mining,
Strata+Hadoop
Using Hadoop just got easier, thanks to Teradata’s introduction of SQL-H, a new query interface to analyze data from Hadoop. Most Hadoop access methods require preprocessing and staging of data from the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) using technologies such as MapReduce. These approaches require new skills and technologies, introducing more time and costs for users, which offset the benefits of Hadoop, which according to our big data benchmark research include increasing the speed of...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Teradata,
SQL-H,
Business Analytics,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Hortonworks,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Data,
Strata+Hadoop
At first I thought 1010data just developed a faster data warehouse technology to be used with business intelligence tools. After a recent briefing, however, I learned that it provides much more than a data warehouse; the product is a large-scale analytics server that empowers business analysts to work on big data, conducting for, example, market basket analysis or correlations of customer and product information. The software lets organizations retain and analyze more data and increase the...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Sales Performance,
Predictive,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management
Ventana Research recently completed benchmark research on governance, risk and compliance (GRC), three business activities that are naturally linked. Although managing them requires separate and sometimes very different processes, on the whole these activities affect each other: Effective corporate governance ensures compliances with laws, regulations and company policies, and without governance, there’s no way to control risk. Separately or considered together, managing governance, risk and...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Customer Experience,
Governance,
GRC,
Management,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
compliance,
Risk,
financial risk management
More than 1,000 people attended the 32nd annual Information Builders Summit conference this week to learn about the company’s advances in big data, business analytics, cloud computing, mobile technology and social media, which CEO and founder Gerald Cohen announced and demonstrated during his keynote address. With WebFOCUS version 8, Information Builders has made significant strides in a range of technology areas to support analytics and visualization since my analysis after last year’s...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Search
I recently spoke with Oversight Systems, an operational intelligence analytics company that uses predictive analytics and optimization to help companies save money, reduce the risk of loss and fraud, and reinforce corporate governance and compliance efforts. Ventana Research views operational intelligence as an emerging technology with the potential for a high return on investment. By continuously monitoring activities in a company’s IT systems, Oversight’s Web-based software continuously,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Fraud,
Governance,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
audit,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
controls,
Oversight Systems
SAP is planning to acquire e-commerce company Ariba in a transaction worth about US$4.3 billion expected to close in the third quarter of this year. Ariba provides cloud-based collaborative business commerce through a Web-based trading community that enables companies to find, connect and collaborate with a global network of partners. Its Commerce Cloud is a platform that businesses can use to buy and sell goods. Currently, Ariba counts more than 700,000 companies worldwide attached to this...
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Topics:
Big Data,
SAP,
ERP,
EDI,
end-to-end,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Uncategorized,
CRM,
SCM
Predictive analytics has the potential to help businesses increase the impacts of their actions by creating indicators that represent future outcomes based on existing behavior. This process becomes more complicated when they have to apply predictive analytics to what we call big data environments. As yet only 13 percent of organizations are using predictive analytics according to our business analytics benchmark research, although 37 percent indicated that predictive capabilities are very...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Opera Solutions,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Operational Intelligence
Informatica has announced a major release, version 9.5, of its software platform, which will be generally available in June. The company’s data integration technologies will support the new generation of computing that includes big data, cloud computing, mobile and social media. These computing environments, which our firm has defined as key business technology drivers for this decade, have a compelling impact on the data that enterprises create and use. Being smart about integrating and...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Supply Chain Performance,
Mobile Technology,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Informatica,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Strata+Hadoop
With the release of Business Analytics version 4.5, Pentaho has expanded its platform and tools to address the needs of business and IT. The product has come a long way since the version 4 release less than a year ago, which broke ground in ease of use and support for big-data sources. Advancing beyond its roots in business intelligence, Pentaho Business Analytics 4.5 addresses data discovery, data integration and data mining and provides visual discovery and analytics that operate against...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Pentaho,
Supply Chain Performance,
Mobile Technology,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Strata+Hadoop
Making business use of the vast amount of information on the Web and Internet along with a company’s intranet is no easy task. Kapow Software aims to help by providing tools to define and virtualize access to information, integrate it with other information, such as that in databases, and present it in a useful format. The tool can supply access to data from legacy applications such as PeopleSoft and Siebel, newer applications from Oracle and SAP and applications in cloud computing...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Supply Chain Performance,
Mobile Technology,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Kapow,
Strata+Hadoop
Splunk recently entered the financial markets as a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: SPLK) and also entered a new phase in its corporate growth. Splunk combines the power of search and discovery with analytics on data generated by IT systems, that they call machine data, and provide insight for a new generation of operational intelligence that helps everyone in IT including the CIO determine the efficiency of its systems that support business. The company has built a platform that can index data...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Splunk,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
IT Analytics,
Location Intelligence,
Machine data,
Operational Intelligence,
Strata+Hadoop
Through a series of acquisitions and organic development over the last five years, IBM has established itself as a leader in enterprise big data for business analytics. I recently wrote about IBM Smarter Analytics, which brings together the company’s portfolio of software, systems and services from analytics to big data. But supporting big data requires the ability to access many sources of information; our benchmark research on big data found that more than half of organizations require...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Vivisimo,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Cloudera,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
IBM,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
Read More
Topics:
Big Data,
Datameer,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
I want to share my observations from the recent annual SAS analyst briefing. SAS is a huge software company with a unique culture and a history of success. Being privately held SAS is not required to make the same financial disclosures as publicly held organizations, it released enough information to suggest another successful year, with more than $2.7 billion in revenue and 10 percent growth in its core analytics and data management businesses. Smaller segments showed even higher growth rates....
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
SAS,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Strata+Hadoop
For me, the most significant announcement to come out of the recent SAPinsider conference was the company’s formal release of Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) running on HANA, SAP’s in-memory computing appliance. For me, HANA is a potential “game changer” for planning, statutory consolidation and other analytics-supported financial processes because of the substantial reduction it enables in processing time from loading to reporting. In-memory systems provide a substantial edge in...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Customer Experience,
ERP,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
IFRS,
XBRL,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
finance,
Financial Performance Management,
GAAP,
HANA
My colleague Mark Smith and I recently attended data integration vendor Informatica’s annual industry analyst event. The company offered some impressive numbers regarding growth and profitability over the years, with 30 consecutive quarters of growth even during the recent recession. Through acquisition and its own research and development activities Informatica now has a broad portfolio of products. It includes data integration and supporting migration, replication and synchronization needs,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Integration,
Financial Performance,
Informatica,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance
Investing wisely in sales-related people and processes is a key to business success. In 2012, helping sales staff perform at their highest levels should be a top priority for management. That may take some effort, according to our benchmark research, which indicates that only 14 percent of sales organizations operate at the highest level of innovation and competitiveness. In recent years, most organizations merely discussed moving beyond using only their sales force automation application and...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Planning,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
assets,
Learning,
Office of Finance,
Performance,
Reporting,
Sales Compensation,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
channel,
coaching,
commission,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
I attended the Alteryx user conference called Inspire 2012 (Twitter: #Inspire12) in Denver this week. This fairly new analytics software company has been gaining customers in a range of brand-name organizations such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Supervalu, U.S. Cellular and VF Corp. The company focuses on meeting the needs of analysts across the business analytic spectrum including a geographic and location context for simplifying the analytic tasks and processes for the needs of business at the...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
R,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
alteryx,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Data
One trend in business software that’s still in its early stages but gathering momentum is the availability of modeling tools that fill the gap between desktop spreadsheets and enterprise systems. Granted this “early stage” has been under way for quite some time, but the technology has finally progressed to the point where I expect it to get increasing market traction.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Database,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Forecast,
Office of Finance,
Essbase,
Quantrix,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
finance,
analysis,
analytical application,
business model,
business plan,
financial model
Even in this recessionary economy Informatica has been defying spending constraints. At its annual analyst summit (Twitter #INFAAnalyst) the company unveiled its growth strategies. Informatica has more than 4,500 customers for data integration and information management and now is turning its attention to the data in social media networks. Our firm has already identified social media as a key technology that businesses must embrace over the next decade to improve competitiveness or just keep...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Market Research,
Social Media Intelligence,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Integration,
Mobility,
CMO
Business analytics and big data are common topics of conversation in the business and information technology markets, but these technologies are only building blocks to help businesses manage performance. Entering the conversation is Actuate, which for years has had a performance management division that provides software for managing progress toward objectives through a variety of analytic and action-focused techniques. The company has announced release of a promising new generation of its...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Performance Analytics,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance
The stakes have never been higher for suppliers of interactive business intelligence. Our benchmark research on business analytics finds that businesses overwhelmingly (89% of participants) want simpler analytics and metrics, and usability (57%) and functionality (47%) are the two most important evaluation criteria according to our Value Index vendor and product assessment methodology. In addition our business analytics research, 38 percent said that accessing analytics and metrics via mobile...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Mobility,
Oracle
MicroStrategy, one of the largest independent vendors of business intelligence (BI) software, recently held its annual user conference, which I attended with some of my colleagues and more than 2,000 other attendees. At this year’s event, the company emphasized four key themes: mobility, cloud computing, big data and social media. In this post, I’ll assess what MicroStrategy is doing in each of the first three areas. My colleague, Mark Smith, covered MicroStrategy’s social intelligence efforts...
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Topics:
Big Data,
MicroStrategy,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
I attended the annual MicroStrategy World in Miami to check on the progress this company known for business intelligence (BI) software has made in expanding into a mobile platform and tools company that also announced a new version of its products. While MicroStrategy’s efforts in mobile BI and cloud computing are ahead of its competitors in the BI industry, they’re not its only expansion points for enterprise software.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Market Research,
Social Media Intelligence,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Mobility,
CMO
We recently published the results of our benchmark research on Big Data to complement the previously published benchmark research on Hadoop and Information Management. Ventana Research undertook this research to acquire real-world information about levels of maturity, trends and best practices in organizations’ use of large-scale data management systems now commonly called Big Data. The results are illuminating.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance
I recently received an update from ERP software vendor Epicor, my first since it was acquired in May 2011 by Apax Partners, a private equity company, and simultaneously merged with Activant, an ERP and point-of-sale software company serving midsize retailers and distributors. In my view, taking the company private is a good idea since it will have to make ongoing investments that would not have been treated kindly by the stock market. Bringing Epicor and Activant together (and perhaps adding...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Microsoft,
Mobile,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
ERP,
Dynamics,
Epicor,
Sage,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Oracle,
Workforce Performance,
CRM,
Infor,
Social,
Financial Performance Management
Risk has always been an integral part of business, but as I’ve noted, companies deal with risk with varying degrees of effectiveness. A complex, ongoing process, operational risk management identifies risks to support successful operations of an organization, estimates the monetary and other measurable impacts if a risk event occurs, establishes methods for mitigating the severity of impacts should they occur, continuously measures the probability of a risk occurring within a relevant period of...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Governance,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
balanced scorecard,
enterprise risk management,
KRI,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Risk
My colleague Mark Smith and I recently chatted with executives of Tidemark, a company in the early stages of providing business analytics for decision-makers. It has a roster of experienced executive talent and solid financial backing. There’s a strategic link with Workday that reflects a common background at the operational and investor levels. As it gets rolling, Tidemark is targeting large and very companies as customers for its cloud-based system for analyzing data. It can automate alerts...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Master Data Management,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
GRC,
Budgeting,
Risk Analytics,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Governance,
Data Integration,
Financial Performance,
In-Memory Computing,
Information Management,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Risk,
Workday,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning,
Strata+Hadoop
Management decision-making typically involves a three-step process of inform, analyze and act. In the earliest days of what came to be known as business intelligence, developers created decision support systems that provided information and analytics to help executives and high-level managers choose the best course of action. Working with numbers rather than gut instinct still is viewed as a best practice. After all, a pilot who doesn’t trust his or her instruments is heading for an accident.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
closed loop,
contingency planning,
driver-based,
driver-based planning,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
best pracices,
business value,
cash management,
challenge,
financial planning
Rather than make predictions for 2012, which are everywhere right now, I want to look back at some of the surprising events of 2011. I think it’s worth considering what happened that wasn’t expected and what these things might tell us about the information technology market. Here, in no particular order, are the most important ones I see.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
Talend recently announced version 5 of its information management platform, which emphasizes unifying its various components. Through a combination of development activities, acquisitions and partnerships, Talend has been steadily building its portfolio of information management capabilities. In addition to its core data integration capabilities, it has added data quality, master data management, application integration and with this release business process management (BPM).
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Quality,
Master Data Management,
Talend,
Business Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Data Governance,
Data Integration,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Strata+Hadoop
I thought of writing a note on this topic when multinational corporations started to withdraw their deposits from eurozone banks, but the pessimism that event engendered was short-lived. Now, as the monetary crisis deepens in Europe, it’s perhaps time to ask what your company would do if parts of its financial system implodes. You may think that your company will not be affected because it doesn’t do business with the eurozone. Or you may believe that it’s unlikely to happen and therefore not...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
contingency planning,
crisis,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
best pracices,
business value,
cash management,
challenge,
financial planning