The recent buzz around business analytics has generated resurgent conversation about what businesses need from their data to optimize business processes and make better decisions. Our benchmark research on business analytics in more than 2,500 organizations produced unprecedented information about business and IT usage and competency with analytics. It confirmed that effective use of business analytics requires a balance of people and skills, processes, information and technology not just to...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Uncategorized,
Workforce Performance,
Business Planning,
CFO
InetSoft is a business intelligence vendor that is not well-known but has more than 3,000 customers. Why do you need to know about another BI vendor? As I’ve written in the past, there’s a place in this market for both the megavendors and smaller vendors. InetSoft, one of the latter, has developed a broad set of capabilities over the years that have resonated with its customers. It recently announced and brought to market a significant new release, Style Intelligence 11.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
InetSoft,
Information Applications
As recently as two years ago, Pentaho was all about open source business intelligence. The company used an open source business model to build a base of more than 1,200 paying customers and establish more than 8,000 production deployments. It still has an open source business model, but the company has created a broad yet integrated product line that deserves to be evaluated on its features, not just its licensing scheme. This week Pentaho announced version 4.0 of its BI suite along with...
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Topics:
Pentaho,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
OLAP,
Visualization,
Workforce Performance
Cloudera is riding the wave of big data. I first learned about the company while working at Vertica, one of Cloudera’s partners. Customers that managed large amounts of structured relational data also needed to process large amounts of semistructured data such as the type found in web logs and application logs. The emerging channel of social media provided another source of data lacking the structure that would lend itself to analysis in a relational database. Other organizations needed to...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CDH3,
Cloudera,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Management,
Strata+Hadoop
At this year’s Information Builders Summit, the company’s annual conference for users and analysts (Twitter: #Summit2011) in Dallas, the long-time supplier of business intelligence and information management software showed how it has been able to sustain double-digit revenue growth thanks to highly accessible and scalable software that operates on a variety of platforms and data sources. Its recent expansion into information management, master data management and integration helps...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Google,
Playbook,
RIM,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Builders,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Uncategorized,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Technology
I recently attended IBM’s analyst summit on business analytics. Since last year’s event was largely a preview of Cognos 10, which was several years in the making, I wondered what this year’s event would be about. IBM focused much of the attention on predictive analytics, strengthened by its acquisition of SPSS. My colleague Robert Kugel covered another theme from the event in his post on Cognos Planning.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
The Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI) analyst summit and conference this week provided an opportunity to hear about the $5 billion technology provider’s strategy to become “the leader in customer communications.” This term makes sense when applied to a division of the company that brought the efficiency of the postal meter to mailrooms around the world. Of course a lot has changed for the company and for business since then. Today parent company Pitney Bowes envisions success in a future...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Communications,
Customer Interaction Technology,
Pitney Bowes,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Location Intelligence,
Unified Communications
Predictive analytics can be valuable tools for performance management. When the term is applied to planning or forecasting, many people take it to mean the ability to automate plans or forecasts. It’s true that using predictive analytics correctly is likely to enhance their accuracy, but these techniques do not eliminate the need for judgment; in practice, many organizations may realize more value from applying predictive analytics to assess results than to forecast outcomes. Moreover, as...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Budgeting,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
I think one of best epigrams attributed to Mark Twain is, “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody ever does something about it.” This also has relevance to the situation with corporate planning and budgeting. Bemoaning its lack of value and calling for some sort of change goes back a long way, but few companies have matured their process. In the 1970s something called “zero-based budgeting” was all the rage in business and accounting periodicals. It was energetically advocated by President...
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Topics:
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
contingency planning,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
finance,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning
Informatica has announced version 9.1 for Big Data. I wrote previously about Informatica 9.1,the latest iteration of the company’s data integration platform, following its industry analyst summit. At that event in February, the company officials alluded to future plans regarding Hadoop and other big-data sources yet to be finalized. This announcement reveals those plans. Informatica will support three types of “big data”: big transaction data from relational databases and data warehouse system,...
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Topics:
Big Data,
MapReduce,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Integration,
Informatica,
Strata+Hadoop
Over the past six years big technology corporations have been acquiring all sorts of software companies, accelerating a general consolidation of the software industry since the dot-com boom ended in 2001. The consolidation has been driven in part by the deceleration of technology innovation in the business software market. Technology evolution, however, has been steady and progressed far enough now that I think we’re about to witness a revolution in how companies use analytics in business...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Budgeting,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
Cognos,
acquisition
Gadgets be gone: That was one of my lighter tweetable sentiments from last week’s HRO Today Forum analyst summit, and you’ll see why below. At this gathering we industry analysts discussed the difference in perspectives on innovation, or the lack thereof, held by HR technology suppliers and the HR practitioners who buy and use their products, many of whom attended the HRO Today Forum.
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Human Capital Management,
business innovation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Workforce Performance,
Talent Management,
Workforce Planning,
HR technology
At this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW conference (Twitter: #SAPPHIRENOW) SAP demonstrated its in-memory computing technology and applications. SAP’s High Performance Analytic Application (HANA), which I think of as a high-availability network appliance, is part of the technology industry movement to increase the performance and scalability across a range of applications, from analytics to transactions, to drive timely insights on data or real-time interactions across a business value chain that includes...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
COO
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Google,
Playbook,
RIM,
Smart Phones,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Location Intelligence,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Sybase. Mobile Industry,
Tablets,
Digital Technology
At SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE NOW conference (Twitter: #SAPPHIRENOW) this month, the company introduced a new portfolio of human capital management applications that will be available on many devices and added mobility options for users, including offerings for smartphones and tablets and cloud computing. This move beyond the traditional on-premises approach of SAP’s ERP Human Capital Management product suite is a critical step forward for SAP if it is to remain relevant for HR organizations.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Human Capital Management,
Metrics,
Mobile Applications,
Business Technology Innovation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
data mart,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
To maintain a productive workforce, businesses need to be able to put information in front of users at every level, from executives to front-line managers. Mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablets can provide analytics and business intelligence (BI), but so far this market niche has been dominated by publishing dashboards and reports that conform to the limits of mobile platforms. Analytics and BI software developers usually opt to publish charts and tables to Web pages on a...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Google,
Smart Phones,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Roambi,
Sybase. Mobile Industry,
Tablets,
Digital Technology
At the SAPPHIRE NOW conference this week, SAP released the production version of the cloud-based Sales OnDemand software that it unveiled earlier in the year. There has been a lot of the esoteric commentary of SAP Sales OnDemand from those that exclusively cover the IT industry. Unfortunately the majority of them have never worked in sales or held a quota that prevents a provide a deeper perspective on the relevance to the sales organization and what it can provide to existing SAP customers or...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Sales Compensation,
Sales Force Automation,
Sales Forecasting,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
Less than a week after attending ADP’s industry analyst day, I flew to Washington, D.C., to attend Mercer’s analyst forum, which gave me a chance to compare another human resources juggernaut. While ADP is known primarily for payroll and business process outsourcing, Mercer is known for HR consulting and benefits outsourcing. Mercer is not as big as ADP, with $3.5 billion in annual revenue and over 27,000 customers, most of which are large multinational and midmarket companies, servicing over...
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Human Capital Management,
Metrics,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
data mart,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics,
Workforce Planning
Workforce planning is a business process that done right ensures an organization of suitable access to talent to ensure future business success. At a Mercer analyst summit I attended recently, which I wrote about in “Mercer Promotes Possibility of the New Empowered Workforce,” one of the sponsor execs kept challenging the HR industry analyst community to do more research on workforce planning, since her company and its customers are spending more time and money on just that.
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Metrics,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
data mart,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics,
Workforce Planning
At the SAPPHIRE NOW annual conference, (Twitter: #SAPPHIRENOW) the advantage of the mobile technology SAP gained through its acquisition of Sybase is becoming evident. In a blog before the conference I touched on the importance of mobility to the company’s future. From walking around, assessing keynotes and sessions and talking to companies using SAP, it seems that the big bet that SAP made on mobility is paying off.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Google,
Smart Phones,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Sybase. Mobile Industry,
Tablets,
Digital Technology
It is no easy task to change the culture of a global technology company, especially one that has a very demanding customer base with high expectations for advancing its widespread product lines. This is the challenge that SAP faces as it transitions from a company of three-letter-acronym collections of applications including CRM, SCM and ERP to one that focuses on specific business processes and needs. (My colleague recently discussed the problems in forklift migrations of ERP.) This transition...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
COO
Read More
Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Social Media,
Human Capital Management,
Metrics,
Mobile Applications,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
data mart,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
Going into ADP’s industry analyst day, I was curious about where a 61-year-old “payroll” company fits in today’s market for human capital management. It certainly has a presence, with over 550,000 customers across multiple lines of business – HR, payroll, tax and benefits administration – and nearly $9 billion in revenue with three consecutive quarters of growth coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Mobile Applications,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management
The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant trifecta that devastated Japan has had a negative impact also on companies that embraced the concept of managing a lean supply chain – one that minimizes inventories at each stage. If news accounts are to be believed, there seem to be legions regretting that decision as disruptions caused by the disasters have a ripple impact, hampering manufacturers’ ability to deliver goods worldwide. But although current events are a wake-up call highlighting the...
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Human Capital Management,
Marketing,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Workforce Performance,
Supply Chain
At this year’s user conference, it was clear that change is afoot at MarkLogic, whose technology platform enables users to access information more easily accessible within applications and devices. Last month the board of directors appointed a new CEO, Ken Bado, created the new position of chief marketing officer (CMO) and named a head of global services and alliances, all within three weeks. The Silicon Valley software company has been growing in the last several years but appears not fast...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
MarkLogic,
Reporting,
XML,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Content Management,
Document Management,
Information Platform,
Search
Consolidation in the human capital management software market is in full swing. Recently Peopleclick Authoria acquired Aquire Solutions, and just this week Golden Gate Capital and Infor agreed to buy Lawson Software for about $2 billion, which my colleague Robert Kugel commented.
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Learning,
Learning Management System,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Planning
Turning data into information for taking actions and making decisions has bedeviled businesses throughout the computer age. Many organizations have data in dozens of applications and legacy systems along with many reports in various business intelligence systems. The challenge is to get data from each of the reports and assemble it into contextualized views of information for particular business needs. In our benchmark research on what we call information applications, only 11 percent of...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Sustainability,
Reporting,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Datawatch,
Document Management
Back in the old days (20 years ago or so) companies that wanted to expand or update their telephone systems had to do what was called a “forklift migration.” In other words, they had to remove big, heavy and very expensive boxes of electronics from an equipment room and replace them with newer big, heavy and very expensive boxes. The process of adding, deleting or changing people, offices and phone numbers was equally burdensome and costly. This all seems quaint now because digital telephony...
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Topics:
SAP,
ERP,
Office of Finance,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Oracle,
Infor
Are you a human resources executive who’s still using spreadsheets and various database systems to track and manage compensation and incentives of your workforce? If you aren’t, then believe it or not, you’re in the minority.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
finance,
Talent Management,
Workforce Performance Management
Turning data into information for taking actions and making decisions has bedeviled businesses throughout the computer age. Many organizations have data in dozens of applications and legacy systems along with many reports in various business intelligence systems. The challenge is to get data from each of the reports and assemble it into contextualized views of information for particular business needs. In our benchmark research on what we call information applications, only 11 percent of...
Read More
Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Reporting,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance,
Datawatch,
Document Management
In various forms, business intelligence (BI) – as queries, reporting, dashboards and online analytical processing (OLAP) – is being used increasingly widely. And as basic BI capabilities spread to more organizations, innovative ones increasingly are exploring how to take advantage of the next step in the strategic use of BI: predictive analytics. The trend in Web searches for the phrase “predictive analytics” gives one indication of the rise in interest in this area. From 2004 through 2008, the...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Predixion,
R,
Revolution Analtyics,
Sales Performance,
SAS,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM SPSS,
Information Builders,
Information Technology,
KXEN,
Netezza,
Oracle,
Tibco,
Workforce Performance
Turning data into information for taking actions and making decisions has bedeviled businesses throughout the computer age. Many organizations have data in dozens of applications and legacy systems along with many reports in various business intelligence systems. The challenge is to get data from each of the reports and assemble it into contextualized views of information for particular business needs. In our benchmark research on what we call information applications, only 11 percent of...
Read More
Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Reporting,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Datawatch,
Document Management
Although I continue to believe that governance, risk and compliance (GRC) is not a firm software category, software vendors continue to add depth and breadth to their offerings that support corporate governance, help manage risks systemically in business and IT and provide greater visibility into compliance efforts. For example, with its release of OpenPages 6.0 IBM had made an important enhancement by marrying the document management capabilities of its OpenPages acquisition with Cognos’s...
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Topics:
Governance,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Chief Risk Officer,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
compliance,
Risk,
Internal Audit
While Europeans have long had to adapt to working in many languages, currencies and legal jurisdictions, a generation ago most midsize companies in the United States did all their business in their home country and in U.S. dollars. Today, though, the relentless globalization of the world economy means that an increasing number of midsize companies in North America are functionally multinational and face the challenges of managing a more complex and demanding accounting and financial management...
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Topics:
ERP,
Office of Finance,
Sunsystems,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
Financial Management,
Infor,
Corporate Finance,
FMS
You’d think it was raining “social.” Social media, social networking, social marketing, social recruiting, social learning – so many aspects of business these days have a “social” component to them.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Experience,
Human Capital Management,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Workforce Performance,
Talent Management
Human resources professionals must deal with volumes of workforce data that resides in disparate software systems, including individual spreadsheets. But although the data is accessible to them, many organizations don’t have technology to aggregate, synthesize and analyze it, and so cannot easily use it to make efficient and effective decisions about talent acquisition and talent management.
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Topics:
Learning,
Performance,
Recruiting,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Hiring,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Learning,
Performance,
Recruiting,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Hiring,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
When the term “governance, risk and compliance” (GRC) was introduced almost 10 years ago, software for this purpose was not a real category but a loose grouping of disparate applications that had something to do with meeting the requirements of the recently passed Sarbanes-Oxley Act. (You can find my perspective on the GRC category from a couple of years ago here. Now, with the release 10.0 of SAP BusinessObjects GRC, SAP is taking another step toward making the software category a real,...
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Topics:
SAP,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
CFO,
Corporate Governance,
Governance Risk and Compliance
Back-office operations in commercial and investment banks are among those critical functions that are underappreciated until they stop working well. This includes transaction reconciliations and the related exceptions management. Reconciliations are necessary to achieve a reasonable assurance of complete and accurate record of trading activity. The process is especially challenging now, partly because of today’s high and growing volumes in the wide range of asset classes in which all larger...
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Topics:
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Financial Governance,
Reconciliation,
Sungard,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
CFO,
Corporate Governance,
Governance Risk and Compliance
According to IBM everything now has to be “smart,” and its latest announcement heralding smarter commerce addresses customer-related activities. I find it interesting, as I have been researching for some time about the need for a smarter agent desktop and smarter Web self-service. My perspective, derived from observations in my research, is that companies need to focus on effectiveness in providing positive customer experiences rather than today’s almost exclusive focus on efficiency in...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Experience,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Call Center,
Commerce,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM
When I entered the human capital management space over a decade ago, the Internet had just started to transform the way companies recruit, hire and manage their workforces. Since then the technological transformations have been astounding: Social media, mobile devices and cloud computing are just a few. And although every talent acquisition and talent management system available today is about getting users to the short list of qualified applicants faster and more accurately and managing all...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Learning,
Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
The new CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Leo Apotheker, has unveiled his vision of the future in the consumer and enterprise markets. His announcement carried some suspense after interviews in which he said “HP has lost its soul” and added that he will “get rid of cynics” inside HP who try to undercut his mission. Now Leo has defined what his company calls Everybody On, which is described as “seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world.” He intends that HP will reposition itself in...
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Topics:
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 Mobility,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
HP,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
The business intelligence (BI) technology market is undergoing a revolution. I’ve been working in this segment for 20 years, and it is and has been an exciting market in which to work, but its dynamic nature can be daunting to organizations trying to evaluate, purchase and deploy BI to improve their business processes. And despite the advances our benchmark research shows high levels of dissatisfaction with and immaturity in BI capabilities within organizations.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
One of the many interesting findings that came out of Ventana Research’s comprehensive benchmark research on business analytics was partly buried in an analysis of maturity groups. The Maturity Index of our research benchmarks classifies organizations at four maturity levels (from bottom to top, Tactical, Advanced, Strategic and Innovative) in each of four categories: People, Process, Information and Technology. We’ve conducted more than 100 benchmarks during the past seven years, covering...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Business Technology Innovation,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
In today’s competitive environment, people working in collaboration can make the difference between a company’s success or failure. But hitting “reply to all” on an e-mail chain isn’t the kind of collaboration I’m talking about. Neither is managing your employee and business communications with cups connected by string and Ouija boards.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Learning,
Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
I recently attended SAS Institute’s annual analyst conference. My colleague covered the multibillion-dollar company’s strategy and the event. Now I want to look into some of the details of SAS’s products for business analytics and how they are supported with business intelligence (BI), and information management. Although SAS is not a publicly traded company and therefore is not required to make the financial disclosures that others are, the company revealed numerous financial statistics....
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Topics:
SAS,
Social Media,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Collaboration,
Enterprise Software,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence
The hospitality industry has a complex structure. It is highly fragmented, with many small operations but also a significant number of global companies. Moreover, a property can be managed by one company (the brand name over the door) yet owned by another, which might be a one-off local real-estate partnership or a larger-scale owner of multiple sites. The consumer side of hospitality has its own challenges as well, resulting from the dramatic shifts brought about by the Internet in how people...
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Hospitality,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Information Management,
Infor
The just-concluded SAS Institute analyst summit (Twitter: #SASSB) provided the annual update on the company’s performance, strategy, products and customers. My analysis of last year’s event talked about its continuation of its product roadmap to new customer acquisition and the broadening of its underlying platform, applications and vertical solutions. SAS is no small-time mover and shaker when it comes to the analytics industry; it extends from technology to tools and applications across...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAS,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Fraud,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Risk
The state of the economy has intensified scrutiny of organizations’ people assets, and so we’re seeing new dialogues about human capital management. Deriving full value from the people in a workforce requires more than just HR managing annual performance reviews or occasional scrutiny of the compensation processes for increases to merit pay or incremental incentives. Investing wisely in workforce-related processes requires assessment and optimization using analytics that can provide a lens on...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Learning,
Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
Hello there! Starting this week, I’m part of the best independent research team in the business – the Ventana Research team – and I couldn’t be more thrilled. As the song goes, “What a long, strange trip it’s been” to get here.
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Topics:
Human Capital Management,
Learning,
Performance,
Recruiting,
Onboarding,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Hiring,
Talent Management,
Workforce Performance Management
The just-concluded SAS Institute analyst summit (Twitter: #SASSB) provided the annual update on the company’s performance, strategy, products and customers. My analysis of last year’s event talked about its continuation of its product roadmap to new customer acquisition and the broadening of its underlying platform, applications and vertical solutions. SAS is no small-time mover and shaker when it comes to the analytics industry; it extends from technology to tools and applications across...
Read More
Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAS,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Fraud,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Collaboration,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Risk
Recently Human Concepts sold its personal organizational structure software OrgPlus to Administaff . Since it retains other products with the OrgPlus name, this step might seem puzzling, but it makes sense in terms of the company’s developing product strategy. The sale also frees Human Concepts to focus on organizations with more than 1,000 employees, where growth is more readily available. Human Concepts is experienced in the workforce management market; its customer and partner Zentiva Group...
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Topics:
Learning,
Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
Last week SAP launched the 4.0 Release of its Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information Management products in conjunction with the New York City stop on its “SAP Run Better Tour”. My colleague Mark Smith has already covered the announcement in the context of some of today’s major technology trends. In this post, I’ll focus on the specifics of the product announcements.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Collaboration,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
Taxes are a big expense for most companies, profitable or not. Many larger and midsize companies must traverse a complex and constantly shifting landscape of tax rules, rates, and jurisdictions. I’ve previously written about the need for corporations to manage their taxes more intelligently, and that that may require someone in the tax department who understands both the department’s functional requirements and what information technology can do to improve those functions. Today I am going to...
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Topics:
Tax,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
Corporate Finance,
Financial Performance Management
SAP has reached a critical milestone in launching version 4 of its business intelligence (BI) and enterprise information management (EIM) product suite from its SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. These offerings, currently in final beta testing, will be released as a collection of software products by midyear.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Collaboration,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance
The talent management software market has and continues to consolidate dramatically through acquisitions. The trend is to bring together processes and applications for hiring, onboarding, performance assessment, compensation, succession planning and analytics. As the race continues to attract customers and users by presenting the most integrated suite of applications, a new market segment has evolved in the shadows and is now taking the stage in talent management. Talent Technology, a vendor in...
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Topics:
Human Capital Management,
Learning,
Performance,
Recruiting,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Hiring,
Talent Generation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
To manage taxes more intelligently tax departments need to focus more on execution than compliance. I’ll confess that this observation is based on informal rather than rigorous research, so I’ll leave it up to individuals that work in these departments and in the finance function generally to consider whether this applies to their company.
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Topics:
Tax,
Business Performance,
CFO,
Corporate Finance,
Financial Performance Management
The technology analyst industry has ended its barrage of exuberant predictions for the new year. After digesting all of these commentaries (some were a challenge, I admit), we need to stop our predicting and instead start a discussion about what all of us ought to be doing. From my perspective, that should be an annual statement of direction, what we here call the research agenda. I have decided it is time to remind all of us what this important activity is and why it is really important to see...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Market Research,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Industry Analyst
People who perform the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) function in the finance organization put together and update the budgets and forecasts. In many companies, the “A” portion of this activity gets short shrift. That’s because the mechanical process of pulling together and collating the data takes up so much time that very little remains for analysis. The result is that planning and budgeting is a less useful business tool than it could be. Improving FP&A can give executives and...
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Topics:
FP&A,
Finance Analytics,
Financial Applications,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
finance,
Integrated Business Planning
The sun is shining and the birds are singing here in the Bay Area; in other climes, they aren’t. In recent years, I’m pleased to report, I’ve been spared having to deal with weather challenges in getting to the office. That’s in part because snow, sleet and hail aren’t a normal part of our weather here, but also in part because our physical office is a less important part of our operations than has ever been the case, so I can more often do my work from home.
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Topics:
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Operational Intelligence,
Business
I have written before about enterprise risk management, which is an essential piece of both performance management and corporate governance. Every aspect of business entails risk. Everyone who makes a business decision is – whether consciously or not – making trade-offs between risk and reward. Assessing risk is tricky in business because it means different things to different people depending on where they work and their specific role in an organization. From a broad view, risk management...
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Topics:
Governance,
GRC,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
compliance
Social media, the newest channel of communication across the Internet, is increasingly being used to influence, but also to deliver advice and research. I wrote about this revolution last year (See: “The Social Media Revolution in Industry Analyst Community”), reporting on the transformation that is underway and the work of our firm along with Altimeter Group and dozens of other active industry analysts. While some industry analysts are aggressively engaged in social media, using Twitter and...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Market Research,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
Industry Analyst
I recently commented on why I believe companies must manage taxes more intelligently. One dimension of this is optimizing tax risk exposure. Most corporate tax codes are notoriously complex and at times ambiguous, leaving room for companies to interpret their application. These interpretations fall on a scale of “conservative” to “aggressive,” in which companies weigh the risk of penalties and other negative outcomes against that of paying more taxes than necessary. It strikes me that few of...
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Topics:
Tax,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
Financial Performance Management
The new year started off with a bang in the human capital management software market as SumTotal Systems acquired GeoLearning, a leading learning management system (LMS) software vendor.
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Topics:
Learning,
Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
SumTotal Systems,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
In a very quiet and very subtle move, Callidus Software (NASDAQ: CALD) has offered to purchase the assets of ForceLogix for about $3.75 million. This sales applications software company provides sales coaching software to help sales managers realize the full value of their sales representatives. In 2010, Callidus Software entered into an OEM agreement to embed ForceLogix within a new offering called Sales Coaching; it clearly concluded that the opportunity to expose the application to further...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Sales Coaching,
Sales Effectiveness,
Sales Operations,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Workforce Performance,
Callidus Software,
Sales Performance Management
Wall Street has many leading indicators to work with, some serious – such as housing starts and the purchasing managers’ index – and some done a bit tongue-in-cheek. One of the latter is the Super Bowl Indicator, which says that if a team from the original National Football League wins the game, the market will be up for the year, but if an old American Football League team wins it, the market will be down. The amazing thing is that so far this heuristic has an accuracy rate better than 75%! On...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management
One of the prominent salesforce.com partners on display at the recent Dreamforce in San Francisco was FinancialForce.com. It’s one of a growing list of providers of in-the-cloud accounting and finance packages built on the Force.com platform. Like other of these accounting vendors (such as Compiere, Intacct, Netsuite and - to some extent and eventually– Workday), it aims principally at companies that have outgrown entry-level accounting software such as Intuit’s QuickBooks. (I covered the...
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Topics:
ERP,
Financial Applications,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
finance
At the SAP Global Influencer Summit (Twitter #SAPSummit) that I just assessed the company addressed, among many other things, its SAP CRM vision and recent advances. SAP has shifted its focus from standard customer relationship management (CRM) to the customer lines of business where professionals increasingly see that the enterprise customer experience should span channels and processes in marketing, sales and customer service. SAP now is focusing on specializing its applications for a...
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Topics:
SAP,
Customer Experience,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
CRM
No one has seemed to notice that in the last several months, Hewlett-Packard has quietly made changes to its participation in the enterprise software market; this will significantly change HP’s value for CIOs and IT organizations in regards to business intelligence (BI) technologies.
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Topics:
Data Warehousing,
IT Performance,
IT Research,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Enterprise Software,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
HP,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
HP Neoview
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) “Interactive Data” initiative continues to progress forward. Thus far, some 1,500 corporations have filed their financial information using XBRL tags to facilitate review and analysis, of which almost 400 have had done detailed tagging of their footnotes. By June 2011 all public companies will have to provide an XBRL-tagged, interactive version of their financial statements. As I’ve noted in the past, I think companies should find ways to...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
XBRL,
IT Performance,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
Corporate Finance,
Financial Performance Management
At its annual user conference in Las Vegas, Kronos unveiled the next stage of its approach to workforce management to its customers and partners, showing an aggressively confident posture after completing its fiscal year 2010 with revenue increased 9 percent to $741 million. Kronos is the largest provider of workforce management systems for time and attendance, scheduling, absence tracking, hiring and workforce analytics. Kronos offers the software in several delivery options: through...
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Topics:
Human Capital,
Human Resources Management,
Kronos,
Mobile Applications,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Management
Ventana Research has just announced its Value Index for Financial Performance Management (FPM) for 2010. Our value indexes are user-focused assessments of how well software vendors and packages enable companies to improve their execution of core processes. This one is designed to help businesses, especially the finance organization, evaluate the FPM software suites offered by major vendors in the context of their specific needs. Ventana Research defines financial performance management as the...
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Topics:
ERP,
Office of Finance,
Financial Applications,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Financial Performance,
Business Planning,
CFO,
finance,
Corporate Finance,
Financial Performance Management
Mobile computing isn’t new anymore. The capabilities of smartphones, among other things, enable businesses to run applications across an enterprise and workers to collaborate across business and social networks. In this endeavor Microsoft was early to market with its Windows CE devices that provided e-mail and Web browsing to phones. For the first years it was a low-level battle among Microsoft, RIM Blackberry and Palm as well as Nokia devices that were used mostly in Europe. In the last few...
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Topics:
Microsoft,
Mobile,
Mobile Applications,
Mobile Technology,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Mobility,
Digital Technology
At its annual user conference in Boston, Saba provided insights to industry analysts on its progress over the last year and its direction for 2011. Best known for its learning management system (LMS), collaboration and more recently its talent management applications, Saba now has more than 19 million users in 1,400 customer organizations that are mostly in the public sector, have 5,000 or more employees and are based in North America, although it operates in 28 languages in 195 countries. Now...
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Topics:
Human Capital,
Human Resources Management,
Learning,
Mobile Applications,
Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Saba,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
At its 2010 user conference in Miami, Plateau Systems reviewed for analysts its progress in the market for talent management software. Plateau has a unified platform and suite of applications that cover learning, compensation, job performance and analytics. The company’s financials have been steadily growing as more customers adopt its platform and show good year-to-year growth in its applications that are rented through software as a service (SaaS). Plateau claims that its SaaS business has...
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Topics:
Learning,
Performance,
Plateau,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
For the past couple of years I’ve been asserting that most larger companies (those with 1,000 or employees) need to adopt a new approach to using software to handle their taxes comprehensively, both the direct sort (income taxes) and the indirect variety (sales and use taxes as well as value-added or goods and services taxes). This is a necessary response to an emerging challenge from more competent and determined tax enforcement by governments worldwide. It will require corporations to make...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Enterprise Tax,
Tax Software,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
Corporate Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
International Finance
IBM announced it has acquired Clarity Systems, a Toronto-based vendor of performance management software and consulting. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. (My most recent blog and analysis about Clarity Systems can be found here. The acquisition fills an important hole in the IBM Cognos applications portfolio, as Clarity FSR is a leading application for automating and managing the close-to-report cycle. This capability has become essential for companies that are required to file financial...
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Topics:
Clarity Systems,
Financial Close,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Management
SuccessFactors is known for applications in performance and talent management but has been working to expand its portfolio more broadly into business. This year the company expanded its focus to workforce analytics with the acquisition of Inform, which I assessed. I have assessed that Inform needed to improve the usability of its tools to compete better which is now more easily possible with a new acquisition.
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Topics:
Human Capital Management,
SuccessFactors,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Talent Management
The annual HR Technology conference in Chicago provided a glimpse into the activities of HR organizations and their technology investments. It was a busy event with large attendance and much movement between sessions and the exhibit floor as attendees sought to learn more about the technology and what it can do for them. As always event organizers presented a large number of awards and announcements on the latest in technology for managing the workforce. The months leading up to the event saw...
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Topics:
Human Capital Management,
Business Performance,
Workforce Performance,
HRMS,
Talent Management
With its FXR offering, Longview Solutions becomes the latest entrant into the market for software that automates the close-to-report cycle. Addressing the steps in the accounting cycle after the books are closed, the product assembles this accounting data, data from other sources (for example, management data such as a business segment breakout of revenues and operating profits or nonaccounting data such as the amount of real estate owned or leased), and the written commentary that accompanies...
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Topics:
Financial Close,
LongView,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Financial Performance Management
At its annual conference Oracle OpenWorld this year Oracle flexed its muscles as a technology giant. The company has been steadily growing through acquisitions to expand its database, middleware and applications, and the recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems gives it a way to sell hardware for servers and storage. This momentum is enabling Oracle to develop new streams of revenue, which were on display at OpenWorld in offerings such as a new generation of appliances from Oracle Exalogic for...
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Topics:
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Enterprise Software,
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology
As part of its recent IBM Business Analytics Industry Analyst Summit, I participated in a demonstration of IBM Business Analytics Workshop, a simulation that the company uses to demonstrate the capabilities of its performance management software. Rather than offering a canned demo or a Microsoft PowerPoint deck, the workshop gives a team of individuals from a company a reasonably realistic interactive experience of using the software for a purpose. The group starts with a set of financial goals...
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance
Ecology and economy are two words with the same root. Similarly, the focus on sustainability in business has two sorts of "green" impacts: on the environment and (if you do it right) on the bottom line. Perillon has an on-demand and cloud computing-based solution for companies that want to manage their double-green sustainability efforts more effectively. Perillon Workspace Suite offers "sustainability performance management" for organizations in energy and environmental management. It delivers...
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Topics:
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Perillon,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Management
With the ongoing spate of mergers and acquisitions in the software industry, I’d like to offer some perspective on what these acquisitions mean to software-purchasing organizations. Think of the software industry as a thriving ecosystem, with large software companies at the top of the food chain. Small companies are formed and, if they have an interesting idea and some good marketing, they grow. The really good ones may continue to grow and be independent, but most of the good ideas eventually...
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Topics:
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Enterprise Software,
Information Technology
Here’s a big shout-out to the Ventana Research community. I’m happy to be here. I think it would be appropriate to introduce myself and tell you a little bit about why I’m here and what I hope to accomplish as a member of the Ventana Research team.
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Topics:
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Enterprise Software,
Information Technology
Oracle unveiled its Fusion Financials applications at its latest OpenWorld confab as part of its broader Fusion Applications announcement. The software will be generally available shortly. Beyond it being the approach to bringing together the disparate ERP/Financial applications the company owns (E-Business Suite/Oracle Applications, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards), Oracle Fusion Financials rethinks the architecture on which the software is built consistent with the longer-term business software...
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Topics:
Financial Close,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Oracle,
Financial Performance Management
At Oracle OpenWorld this week the company announced its next generation of business applications call Oracle Fusion Applications , which Larry Ellison touted in his closing day keynote at last year's conference, as I noted then. Oracle's head of strategy, Gretchen Alarcon, and head of development, Clive Swan, presented the introduction to one of the seven Fusion families, Human Capital Management, and afterward many sessions provided depth on the product. Though this application suite is not...
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Topics:
Human Capital Management,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Talent Management,
Workforce Performance Management
The market for talent management software continues to consolidate as SumTotal will acquire Softscape to bring together a combination of customers, people and products that reaches more than 25 million users and 1,800 customers globally. This purchase follows three other recent ones: ADP acquiring Workscape, Kenexa acquiring salary.com and Taleo acquiring Learn.com. The result is fewer but stronger software companies providing applications that enable human resources departments and others in...
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Topics:
Human Capital Management,
Softscape,
Business Performance,
Workforce Performance,
HRMS,
SumTotal Systems,
Talent Management
IBM has announced its intention to acquire OpenPages, a privately held, Massachusetts-based software company focused on governance, risk and compliance (GRC). I noted that after the deal finishes, the business will reside within IBM’s analytics group rather than in document management; this arrangement signals IBM’s intention to integrate its collaboration and communications around performance management (and achieve a fusion of text and data) and sharpen the ability of OpenPages to get an...
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Topics:
GRC,
Open Pages,
Operational Management,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Financial Performance,
Financial Management
Actuate has announced a major new version of its software called ActuateOne. Its technology is integrated in a single platform and set of tools for performance management, analytics, business intelligence (BI) and information applications; the product can be managed on-premises or in the cloud and is accessible via mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone and iPad. Actuate has been in the BI market since the 1990s; this release counts as version 11, which by itself represents a significant...
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Topics:
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Information Management
On Tuesday in Silicon Valley, SAP introduced its latest business software: business analytics applications for specific vertical industries. The event was kicked off by SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, who demonstrated the simplicity of the applications on an Apple iPad, which has become the demonstration system of choice for SAP as well as a tool it provides for its sales force. Bill and EVP of Business Analytics Keith Costello provided a glimpse of the applications’ capabilities as part of the...
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Topics:
SAP,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Information Management
On Wednesday, September 9, 2010 the massive marketing machine called salesforce.com rolled into London to stage its 2010 Cloudforce event at the Royal Festival Hall. The clout of CEO Mark Benioff and his team in the IT industry was evident in the fact that at short notice they could postpone the event by a day and still get about 3,000 attendees, stage a massive partner show and put on a keynote speech and side events that kept the attendees busy and informed about latest developments with...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Operational Performance,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance,
Customer Service,
CRM