ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

The Big Deal is in the 2013 Business Analytics Research Agenda

Posted by ISG Software Research on 16 January 2013

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...

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

Joining Ventana Research to Inspire Human Capital Management

Posted by ISG Software Research on 16 January 2013

Hi; pleased to meet you! I’m tremendously excited to be joining the team here at Ventana Research, and I’m looking forward to adding my experience, observations and opinions to this team of very talented industry analysts! Let me start by telling you a little about my background, and then why a chose to come to work here and what I will be covering at Ventana Research.

Topics: Social Media, Human Capital Management, Market Research, Office of Finance, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Information Management, Workforce Performance, HR, Talent Management, Workforce Management

The Business of Sales and Marketing – Our Research Agenda for 2013

Posted by Mark Smith on 15 January 2013

Most organizations see improving the effectiveness of sales as a way to increase productivity. Those organizations that take advantage of the latest sales applications and technology are finding themselves with a competitive advantage, but many organizations lack the time and resources to assess and deploy appropriate platforms. That’s a shame, since most sales organizations have plenty to...

Topics: Sales, Sales Performance, Marketing, PIM, Sales Compensation, Sales Forecasting, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CPQ, CRM, Product Information Management, SFA

SAP Announces Business Suite on HANA

Posted by Robert Kugel on 11 January 2013

For the past couple of years I’ve been pointing to the importance of in-memory computing to the future of business applications. It’s an integral part of Ventana Research’s business and finance research agenda for 2013, and it’s one of the core technologies that senior executives should have an appreciation for because it can transform all core business processes, especially those that are...

Topics: Mobile, Predictive Analytics, Real-time, Sales Performance, SAP, Supply Chain Performance, ERP, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, In-memory, Workforce Performance, CRM, finance, Social, Business Suite, Financial Performance Management, HANA

Office of Finance Research Agenda for 2013

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 January 2013

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...

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 Rides R Language into Mainstream Business

Posted by ISG Software Research on 08 January 2013

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...

Topics: Big Data, SAS, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Information Management, Operational Intelligence, SPSS

Customer Service Presents Major Challenges

Posted by ISG Software Research on 07 January 2013

In today’s competitive markets, many organizations recognize that customer service represents an opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competition. However, our research into the agent desktop shows that providing excellent customer service is a real challenge in many areas, starting with managing the channels of communication required to offer customers a choice in how they interact...

Topics: Sales Performance, Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Customer Service, Call Center, Contact Center, Contact Center Analytics, CRM

Happy New Year: Build on Foundation of Lessons Learned in 2012

Posted by Mark Smith on 05 January 2013

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...

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

Like Big Data, Operational Intelligence is Evolving to Deliver Right Time Value

Posted by ISG Software Research on 02 January 2013

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...

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

California Blue Shield Foundation Uses FinancialForce to Improve Finance Effectiveness

Posted by Robert Kugel on 02 January 2013

As I’ve noted before, it’s common for CFOs of companies that are transitioning from being a small to a midsize business (that is, when they grow past about 100 employees) to find that the entry-level accounting package that they have been using no longer fits their needs. This software may be inexpensive to purchase and easy to use but it lacks many of the customization and business process...

Topics: Planning, Salesforce.com, ERP, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Reporting, close, closing, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, Financial Performance Management, FinancialForce.com

Why Maturity is Important for More Effective Planning and Budgeting

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 December 2012

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...

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

What Every CEO Should Know About Software for Finance and Sales

Posted by Robert Kugel on 26 December 2012

This is the third in a series of blog posts on what CEOs (and for that matter, all senior corporate executives) need to know about IT and its impact on running a business. The first covered the high-level issues. As I noted, it’s not necessary for a CEO 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...

Topics: Planning, Predictive Analytics, Sales, Sales Performance, Customer, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Budgeting, close, closing, PRO, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Information Management, CFO, CEO, FPM, Profitability, SPM

Quantrix Unveils Release 5

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 December 2012

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.

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

Saving Microseconds with Informatica’s Ultra Messaging

Posted by Robert Kugel on 20 December 2012

Increasingly, global financial markets compete on speed, so much so that high-speed trading capabilities have become a performance differentiator for the largest financial services firms and some investment funds. Transmitting messages with quotes, prices and trade data is a core capability for currency dealers. Informatica recently introduced Ultra Messaging, which is designed to offer global...

Topics: Sales, GRC, credit, currency, LAN, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Informatica, finance, WAN

The Dynamic Culture and Swedish History Behind QlikView

Posted by ISG Software Research on 20 December 2012

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.

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

Adaptive Planning Helps the University of Central Florida Plan Faster and More Accurately

Posted by Robert Kugel on 18 December 2012

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,...

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

Making Back Office Apps Fun

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 December 2012

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...

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

Longview Helps 3M Shape Its Future in Business Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 December 2012

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,...

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

The Conundrum of Changes in Market Research and Predictive Analytics

Posted by ISG Software Research on 13 December 2012

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.

Topics: Market Research, Marketing Planning, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Operational Intelligence

The Brave New World of Business Intelligence

Posted by ISG Software Research on 12 December 2012

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...

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