Business analytics have become mainstream in most organizations. Our latest research in technology innovation found analytics was the top-ranked technology in 39 percent of organizations. To deepen the sophistication of their analytics, businesses can add geographic context and maps to business intelligence applications to create what we call location intelligence. Applications and tools with a geographic and spatial context can help deliver new and deeper insights to business. Information...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Geographic Information Systems,
GIS,
Location Analytics,
Spatial Data Quality,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence
Managing data efficiently across the enterprise continues to be a large challenge for both business units and IT. Organizations need data supplied in a consistent format and timely manner to help manage their activities and processes, but some do not look beyond conventional approaches to improvement. Today’s large volumes of data make it more difficult to understand the relationships among data and the role of location-related data. Our 2012 benchmark research on information management found...
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Topics:
Master Data Management,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
MDM,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Governance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
DG
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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
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has a keen sense of where things are headed. He sees mobile and social as the two drivers of a world based largely in software. Last year I covered the announcements at the MicroStrategy events in Amsterdam and the vision Saylor put forth in his keynote speech. MicroStategy World 2013 last month finds the company delving into such diverse areas as identity management, marketing services and integrated point-of-sale applications. The uniting factor is mobile...
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Topics:
MicroStrategy,
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Experience,
alert,
Mobile Intelligence,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence
Human capital analytics is an area increasingly under discussion in businesses today as the linkages between employee performance and company success become increasingly clear, as do the roles analytics can play in maximizing that success. This intensified interest in analytics coincides with major changes in the processes of hiring, engaging, retaining and optimizing talent in the enterprise. It also reflects the impact of technology innovations such as cloud computing, the business use of...
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Topics:
HCM,
Human Capital Management,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
HR
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Kenexa,
Learning,
Performance,
Recruiting,
Smarter Analytics,
Smarter Workforce,
Social Business,
Social Collaboration,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation
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
Banking giant JP Morgan raised eyebrows in 2012 when it revealed that it had lost a substantial amount of money because of poorly conceived trades it had made for its own account. The losses raised questions about the adequacy of its internal controls, and broader questions about the need for regulations to reduce systemic risk to the banking system. At the heart of the matter were the transactions made by “the London Whale,” the name given to a JP Morgan’s trading operation in the City by its...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
error,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Data,
controls
Actuate this week announced BIRT Analytics, and thereby puts itself firmly into supporting a range of business analytics needs from data discovery and visualization to a range of data mining and predictive capabilities that allows itself new avenues of growth. Actuate has long been a staple of large Business Intelligence deployments; in fact the company claims that ActuateOne delivers more insights to more people than all other BI applications combined. This is likely true, given that Actuate...
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Topics:
Data Scientist,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Operational Intelligence,
Data Discovery,
commodity model,
Quinterian
SAP just released strong preliminary quarterly and annual revenue growth, which in many ways can be attributed to a strong strategic vision around the HANA in-memory platform and strong execution throughout the organization. Akin to flying an airplane while simultaneously fixing it, SAP’s bold move to HANA may at some point see the company continuing to fly when other companies are forced to ground parts of their fleets.
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Supply Chain Performance,
Business Objects,
Business Objects predictive analytics,
Crystal reports,
Operational Performance,
Visi,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
cognos insight,
SAP predictive analytics,
Sybase IQ
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
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
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
As a market research practitioner and a technology industry analyst covering big data and business analytics, I enjoyed listening to other analysts discuss the market research industry in a webinar. My own research augments and sometimes contrasts with that of the webinar participants.
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Topics:
Market Research,
Marketing Planning,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Operational Intelligence
We recently completed our benchmark research on next-generation business intelligence. Ventana Research looks as next-generation BI as a function of traditional BI that is converging with new technologies such as mobility, collaboration and cloud computing. Just a few years ago business intelligence might have been considered a mature category with incremental growth, but now it’s growing in new directions and it’s difficult today to call business intelligence mature.
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
IBM Watson blends existing and innovative technology into a new approach called cognitive computing. At the simplest operational level it is technology for asking natural language-based questions, getting answers and support appropriate action to be taken or provide information to make more informed decisions. The technology relies on massive processing power to yield probabilistic responses to user questions using sophisticated analytical algorithms. A cognitive system like Watson accesses...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Machine Learning,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Cognitive Computing,
Expert Systems,
IBM Watson
GoodData has been around since 2007, but it has seen especially explosive growth in the last year due to the fast adoption of cloud Business Intelligence. In a recent meeting, Roman Stanek, the company’s CEO, told me GoodData has more than 6,000 customers, and that many of these are household names. Given that he publicly stated a customer base of around 2,500 last year, it appears that the company’s growth is on an exponential curve. This momentum is attracting significant investment in the...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center
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
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
Read More
Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Twitter,
Workforce Performance,
CMO,
COO,
Industry Analyst,
Technology Vendors
Read More
Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Peoplefluent,
Planview,
Research,
Splunk,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Ceridian,
CFO,
CMO,
COO,
Datawatch,
Saba,
Technology
Mobile technology continues to advance weekly, with new software releases and new versions of devices. Though it has been in the headlines frequently in recent weeks, can Microsoft really change the mobile technology dynamics in the business world?
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Topics:
Microsoft,
Sales Performance,
Google,
Microsoft Windows Phone,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Technology
The idea of devising and using maturity assessments to improve business performance has been a staple of management, functional and strategic consultants for decades. It’s based on two unassailable principles. One is the general assertion that companies differ in their ability to do anything along a range from nonexistent to advanced. The second is that at any time it’s possible for a knowledgeable individual to construct a scale of competence for some business function from least to most...
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Customer Experience,
Governance,
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,
benchmark,
FPM
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Topics:
discovery tools,
exploratory analytics,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Operational Intelligence,
Cognos,
cognos enterprise,
cognos express,
cognos insight
Ventana Research has just released the 2012 Value Index for Business Intelligence, 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 business intelligence found that new technology advancements in business intelligence are critical to its future; more than two-thirds of organizations will use BI on mobile technology in the next year, and more than a fifth will do so...
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Topics:
Microsoft,
MicroStrategy,
Pentaho,
QlikView,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
SAS,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
IT Performance,
Jaspersoft,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
IBM,
InetSoft,
Information Applications,
Information Builders,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Oracle,
Tibco,
Workforce Performance,
arcplan,
LogiXML,
Spago Solutions
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
Our new world of multifaceted customer communications is driven by moments of interaction with the brand, often called moments of truth. Today’s call center analytics put companies in a position to manage these moments. Analytics that are specific to the call center include desktop analytics, event stream analytics, speech analytics, text analytics, cross-channel analytics and predictive modeling. These analytics, in turn, drive areas such as agent training and coaching, time and capacity...
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Topics:
Customer Engagement,
Customer Experience,
customer life cycle,
call center analytics,
capacity utilization,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Customer & Contact Center,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Workforce Analytics,
NPS
At the SAP TechEd conference in Las Vegas this week, the global software giant unveiled the latest versions of its technology, platforms and applications across the cloud, mobile and on premises. SAP executive Vishal Sikka followed up in person to his written response to the statements Oracle CEO and Chairman Larry Ellison made at Oracle OpenWorld on the limited nature of SAP’s HANA in-memory computing technology. Sikka presented a SAP HANA server with 100 terabytes of DRAM processing 1...
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Topics:
SAP,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Information Management,
SAP HANA,
SAP NetWeaver
I had the opportunity last week to visit PivotLink in the Bellevue, Washington, office that houses the company’s development team and marketing leadership to see its software. After taking the helm a little more than a year ago and putting a new team in place, CEO Bruce Armstrong has positioned the company above the fray of the crowded business intelligence software set. The company has smartly moved into the retail space with user-friendly tools that should appeal to mid-tier retailers and...
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Topics:
Retail Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Location Intelligence
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
I attended Oracle’s annual OpenWorld conference this week. The company claims it holds the world’s largest technology conference, with 50,000 attendees and a million people viewing sessions online. It was a great opportunity to get close to the Oracle Fusion Applications, which the company presented as proven and ready, with customers using them on-premises and in private and public cloud computing usage methods. In keynotes from executives Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd and Thomas Kurian and...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
SAP,
Social Media,
Mobile Technology,
Social Collaboration,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Management,
Oracle,
Workforce Performance,
CRM,
SFA,
Workday,
Workforce Analytics
IBM acquired SPSS in late 2009 and has been investing steadily in the business as a key component of its overall business analytics portfolio. Today, SPSS provides an integrated approach to predictive analytics through four software packages: SPSS Data Collection, SPSS Statistics, SPSS Modeler and SPSS Decision Management. SPSS is also integrated with Cognos Insight, IBM’s entry into the visual discovery arena.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
IBM,
Workforce Performance,
SPSS
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
Salesforce is a global software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to be reckoned with. The swarming crowds at its Dreamforce event last week were estimated to exceed 90,000. The company is rapidly growing an ecosystem that includes Sales, Service and Marketing Clouds; Force.com for building applications; and Data.com for storing data in the cloud centrally for use across Salesforce products. It is also focusing on social computing, as I outlined at the beginning of the event. Hundreds of Salesforce...
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Topics:
Master Data Management,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
SnapLogic,
Zyme Solutions,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Governance,
Data Integration,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Informatica,
Information Builders,
Information Management,
Data,
data integrity,
database.com,
Kapow
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
The annual Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (Twitter: #DF12), just underway, may be the largest software conference ever, with attendance, physically and on the Internet, expected to be 90,000. Certainly, as one of the largest software events of 2012, this conference will be heavily covered via social media, while under the roof of the Moscone Center and surrounding hotels Salesforce will be demonstrating the power of using social media concepts in the enterprise and combining those...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Supply Chain Performance,
Research,
SFDC,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Dreamforce
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
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
In my last rant, on business analytics and the pathetic state of dashboards, I pointed out significant flaws in business intelligence software created by technology providers and in how it is being deployed by business and IT. Now I want to follow up with some insight on disconnects to a critical asset that is essential to the success of business analytics. I mean key performance indicators (KPIs), a term used in inaccurate ways that have diminished the value of the concept for business.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
KPI,
IT Performance,
Key Performance Indicators,
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
Over the last several months, my colleague VP and Research Director Tony Cosentino and I have been assessing vendors and products in the business intelligence market as part of our upcoming Value Index. Tony recently wrote about the swirling world of business analytics, covering many of the dynamics of this industry. He and I have been reviewing the breadth and depth of over 15 of these vendors using our Value Index methodology, which examines the products closely in terms of usability,...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Dashboards,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Expert Systems
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
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 managing product information, organizations know they have room for improvement; only 27 percent trust their efforts completely, and less than a fifth (19%) are very satisfied with them. Almost half (48%) say they have too many incompatible tools, while 41 percent do not have a centralized information repository and 45 percent use a manual process to create a single complete, consistent and reliable product record. All of these facts and more from our product information...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
MDM,
PIM,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management (IM),
Product Information Management
What does it cost to run an IT department? That’s an easy question to answer, but for most companies, why it costs that amount is not. IT departments often complain that most of their budget is devoted to funding daily operations and basic maintenance (“keeping the lights on”), but often, one big overlooked problem is the chargeback process that most companies use to assign IT department operating costs.
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Topics:
Sales,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
chargebacks,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
IT cost
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
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
On the heels of the release of his new book, The Mobile Wave, Microstrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor delivered an interesting keynote at Microstrategy World in Amsterdam this past week. Unlike other keynotes we’ve seen at various supplier conferences, the presentation was not a sales pitch. There was no reference to the fact that the company was simultaneously launching MicroStrategy 9.3, a major new release of its flagship offer. The presentation focused almost entirely on the rise of mobile...
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Topics:
Microsoft,
MicroStrategy,
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Google,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Applications,
Nexus 7,
Surface,
Digital Technology
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
I’ve written frequently on issues that confront desktop spreadsheet users, such as business modeling and capital investment, as well as the risk and control issues spreadsheets pose and their contribution to paralysis by analysis. I focus mainly on the technology aspects of organizational challenges, and I usually recommend replacing stand-alone desktop spreadsheets with more appropriate tools. Yet there are many instances where spreadsheets work well, and in other cases people continue to use...
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Topics:
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
CFO,
finance,
Training
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
It’s clear that certain customers generate more profits than others, just as some products offer greater economic returns than others, as I’ve noted before. For this reason, efforts to improve customer profitability are not a new trend. Good managers have always looked for ways to achieve the highest sustainable margins. However, at some point, almost all businesses realize that increasing sustainable profitability can’t be achieved simply through increasing revenue or cutting costs. Those...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
CRM,
Financial Performance Management,
Profitability
Callminer is best known as a vendor of speech analytics software. Along with its own suite, its products also are embedded in those of several other vendors to provide speech analysis. During a recent briefing, I learned that the company has not only expanded into text and social analytics but also that its latest release includes more features and a friendlier user interface, two requirements that my research shows are essential in persuading companies to more widely adopt analytics for...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Callminer,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Text Analytics
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
The demand for business information on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets continues to increase, while the technology to support it has not. In our benchmark research on information applications, only 11 percent of organizations said they are very satisfied with their ability to provide such information, and their top two complaints with existing technologies are that they are too slow and not adaptable or flexible. The unique aspects of mobile technology, from the small screen size...
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Publishing,
Roambi,
Digital Technology
What’s a fast, free and reasonably reliable way of gauging the effectiveness of a finance department’s management? It’s the number of days it takes it to close the books. Companies that take six days or fewer after the end of the period to close their monthly, quarterly or semiannual accounts demonstrate a basic level of effectiveness that those that take longer do not. In my judgment, finance executives should regard a slow close as a negative key performance indicator pointing to...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Office of Finance,
close,
Consolidation,
Controller,
XBRL,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
CFO,
Data,
Document Management,
Financial Performance Management
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
The use of social collaboration to support human capital management is increasing as the need to engage talent becomes a higher priority in organizations. In particular, those that have a growing population of workers from the millennial generation see social media as a primary means of communication. Social collaboration is growing in acceptance – 58 percent of organizations now permit it, according to our benchmark research on social collaboration and human capital management (HCM). For many...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Globoforce,
Human Capital Management,
Social Collaboration,
Social Recognition,
IT Performance,
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
It’s clear that sales organizations need to be efficient, but many are unaware of critical applications they could deploy to establish sales excellence. In my recent analysis, “Sales Organizations Need a Swift Technology Kick”, I outlined why sales departments have to look beyond using sales force automation (SFA) and spreadsheets and examine dedicated applications for improving productivity and effectiveness. Our benchmark research in sales applications found a new set of application...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Sales Forecasting,
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,
SFA
Anyone who focuses on the practical uses of information technology, as I do, must consider the data aspects of adopting any new technology to achieve some business purpose. Reliable data must be readily available in the necessary form and format, or that shiny new IT bauble you want to deploy will fall short of expectations. Our research benchmarks cover a range of core business and IT processes, and they regularly demonstrate that data deficiencies are a root cause of issues organizations have...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
GRC,
IBM Business Analytics,
Business Technology Innovation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
finance
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
Business has been getting smarter about using technology for analyzing processes and optimizing outcomes, but still has much room for improvement when it comes to operational management. Traditional project management has advanced to encompass financial and operational planning, including prioritization toward goals and expected outcomes, creating the concept of portfolio management. In essence, optimizing the use of people and processes associated with products and services along with...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Portfolio Management,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO
On the first morning of the Pitney Bowes (PB) Insights 2012 User Conference in New Orleans I had the opportunity to meet with John O’Hara, president of Pitney Bowes Software, and his management team. Given the staid reputation of the company, I expected to encounter more formal behavior and a highly structured meeting format. Instead I met an engagingly curious and purposeful management team with a fresh perspective and a portfolio of products that puts the company in the middle of the business...
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Topics:
Mobile,
Social Media,
Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Location Intelligence,
InfoMgt; Location
After the SAS analyst event last year, I wrote that it is hard to keep track of everything SAS has to offer because it had so many products and developments in the pipeline. Back from this year’s event, I can report that 2011 was successful, its revenue and worldwide presence are up, and SAS continues to expand its channels to market. On top of everything I saw last year even more products and developments are in the pipeline, but the theme and focus remain the same: enabling business analytics.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Management,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Contact Center Analytics,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Vendor(s)
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
A main reason why desktop spreadsheets are pervasive in midsize companies (which we define as those with 100 to 1,000 employees) is that these organizations do not have the financial and manpower resources to implement and maintain traditional enterprise business intelligence and performance management systems. To address this gap in the market, several years ago IBM Cognos launched Express, a business intelligence and planning software package designed specifically for midsize companies as...
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Topics:
ERP,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Dashboards,
IBM,
Uncategorized,
CFO,
finance,
Financial Performance Management
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
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
Hello! I’m excited to be the newest member of the Ventana Research leadership team to bring research insights and education to the business analytics and technology industry. I’d like to start by telling you a bit about who I am, why I’ve chosen to join this company and what I hope to contribute.
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Topics:
Social Media,
Market Research,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence
Our benchmark research into the contact center in the cloud shows that almost all companies now support multiple communication channels to engage with customers. Most of them also involve multiple business units in handling inbound and outbound interactions. More companies now support at-home agents, and contact centers are becoming more distributed. These scenarios are a good fit for cloud-based systems, and the research finds that the top three ways organizations said they can meet these...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Echopass,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications
When the Salesforce.com marketing machine rolls into town, you have to sit up and listen, and that’s what 14,000 attendees did at the latest Cloudforce event in London. The company took over a vast portion of the ExCel London Exhibition Centre to accommodate the keynote speech, lots of side events and meeting rooms and an expo floor where attendees could see demonstrations of every product and service, including many from partners showing what they have to offer.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
LiveOps,
NewVoicemedia,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Text Analytics,
Vocalcom
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
Recently my colleague Mark Smith wrote about Splunk and its latest technology supporting analytics for IT on machine data and providing operational intelligence. I wasn’t familiar with the company, which has focused on IT users and improving the performance of a company’s networks and IT systems. From a customer management perspective, these are of little interest unless they impact the customer experience; for example, if the website is down or the online banking system is unavailable. But in...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Splunk,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
CRM
It has been a busy time for Genesys, a company best known for computer/telephony integration (CTI) and routing software for contact centers. In February it split from Alcatel-Lucent and announced that with financial backing from two investment funds it was going forward as a stand-alone company. Over the last few years Genesys has diversified its portfolio to include workforce optimization, agent desktop, intelligent customer front door (ICFD) and analytics. Amid the current economic...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Genesys,
Operational Performance,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
CRM
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
Conventional wisdom in the contact center is that self-service options for customers reduce the number of their telephone calls. However, my benchmark research into the use of technology in contact centers throws doubt on this, finding that companies still expect the volume of interactions through all channels, including the phone, to increase. This is further supported by my benchmark research into customer experience management which shows many customers starting out with self-service opt to...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Customer Experience,
NICE Systems,
Social CRM,
Operational Performance,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
CRM
Our latest benchmark research on sales applications and technology reveals three trends sales organizations see as critical to improving their operations and performance: mobile technology like smartphones and tablets, collaborative capabilities and business analytics applied to sales. At the same time many sales processes are becoming easier to use, including compensation, forecasting and quota and territory management. To take advantage of these advancements sales management has to establish...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Location Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
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
Business intelligence software is increasingly mobile, becoming available via smartphones and tablets and now enabling planning and what-if scenarios to determine the impacts of changes that might be made to improve performance. InetSoft, which has been providing business intelligence tools for more than 15 years, has advanced its technologies to address these trends. The company recently announced version 11.2 of InetSoft Style Intelligence, adding many new capabilities. Among them, the...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
InetSoft,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Interactive Intelligence,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I attended NICE Systems’ annual Interactions (Twitter #Interaction2012) conference in Nashville to get the latest from this growing global software business that focuses on customer-centric applications. If you have not heard of NICE you might not be primarily involved in managing and interacting with customers, the area in which NICE has been growing organically and by acquiring technology providers that complement its existing portfolio. As we discussed in recent analyses, and NICE acquired...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
NICE Systems,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Interactive Intelligence,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I recently attended the second in the series of customer engagement days organized by the Directors Club (GB & NI). The format of the event was the same as the first day that I wrote about and included three keynote presentations and three roundtable sessions where attendees discussed how organizations should engage with customers. As for the first event I chaired the roundtable on perfecting multichannel customer engagement in the contact center and gave a keynote on how social media is...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
NICE Systems,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Genesys,
InContact,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Interactive Intelligence,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Noble Systems,
Verint
Thanks to Datawatch, businesses may find themselves buying and deploying fewer new business analytics and business intelligence tools. As I noted in my analysis last year, the company’s new management has begun to transition it to a more appealing market position in which it helps enterprises use analytics to improve operational efficiency and decision-making. The Datawatch products focus on data virtualization – that is, accessing data from multiple sources not usually seen as accessible for...
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Topics:
Supply Chain Performance,
IT Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Datawatch