Investing wisely in sales-related people and processes is a key to business success. In 2012, helping sales staff perform at their highest levels should be a top priority for management. That may take some effort, according to our benchmark research, which indicates that only 14 percent of sales organizations operate at the highest level of innovation and competitiveness. In recent years, most organizations merely discussed moving beyond using only their sales force automation application and...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Planning,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
assets,
Learning,
Office of Finance,
Performance,
Reporting,
Sales Compensation,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
channel,
coaching,
commission,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
I attended the Alteryx user conference called Inspire 2012 (Twitter: #Inspire12) in Denver this week. This fairly new analytics software company has been gaining customers in a range of brand-name organizations such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Supervalu, U.S. Cellular and VF Corp. The company focuses on meeting the needs of analysts across the business analytic spectrum including a geographic and location context for simplifying the analytic tasks and processes for the needs of business at the...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
R,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
alteryx,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Data
Now finishing our first decade of providing research and education for business and IT professionals, we at Ventana Research have learned what it takes to improve the value of processes and performance in many industries. This is no easy task; it requires thorough and wide-ranging research on the best (and worst) practices that organizations need to understand as they try to increase their competency and effectiveness – and our firm is committed to that work. For 2012 we are moving forward from...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Market Research,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
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,
Industry Analyst
Even in this recessionary economy Informatica has been defying spending constraints. At its annual analyst summit (Twitter #INFAAnalyst) the company unveiled its growth strategies. Informatica has more than 4,500 customers for data integration and information management and now is turning its attention to the data in social media networks. Our firm has already identified social media as a key technology that businesses must embrace over the next decade to improve competitiveness or just keep...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Market Research,
Social Media Intelligence,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Integration,
Mobility,
CMO
In all the years I have spent building contact centers and tracking this market, from both business and technology perspectives many things have not changed. Center managers are still under pressure to drive down costs, customers generally are not satisfied with the way their interactions are handled (perhaps less so), and organizations still aren’t making the most of customer interactions. However, as noted in my predictions for 2012, I am expecting more rapid change in the next couple of...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
A few months ago, I evaluated Zeacom CommunicationsCenter (ZCC), which provides a multichannel contact center that is integrated closely with business process automation. This allows organizations to build a contact center tied to their interaction-handling processes and deliver any form of interaction to the person most qualified to handle it. At the time of my review, the product ran alongside products from the likes of Avaya, Cisco and NEC, and was resold and supported by the partner...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Zeacom
The products of Enkata have generally been designed for what Ventana Research terms performance management for customer service and call centers, including applications connected to agent performance management (quality monitoring, coaching, training and related analytics) and operational performance analytics based on transactional, structured data. Recently Enkata has taken a new direction with its branding (“changing the customer experience”) and has been filling out its portfolio of...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Callminer,
Enkata,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Workforce Management,
OpenSpan
Business analytics and big data are common topics of conversation in the business and information technology markets, but these technologies are only building blocks to help businesses manage performance. Entering the conversation is Actuate, which for years has had a performance management division that provides software for managing progress toward objectives through a variety of analytic and action-focused techniques. The company has announced release of a promising new generation of its...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Performance Analytics,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance
Revolution Analytics recently announced the winners of its “Applications of R in Business” contest. Revolution Analytics has built a business around supporting R, an open source statistical software package, and extending it with features it licenses to customers. I served as a judge in the contest. Since I was in the midst of analyzing the data for our predictive analytics benchmark research, I was interested to see how the contestants applied predictive analytics techniques to specific...
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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
When it comes to technology, debates about whether a particular name suits its category are rampant. Here is a link to one such argument about the term “big data” from Curt Monash, an analyst whom I respect a great deal. This debate rages in the Twittersphere also, as in this comment from Neil Raden, another analyst I respect, suggesting that “big data is a marketing term … imprecise by design.” Another term I’ve encountered resistance to recently is “predictive analytics.” See: (“Revolution...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
The stakes have never been higher for suppliers of interactive business intelligence. Our benchmark research on business analytics finds that businesses overwhelmingly (89% of participants) want simpler analytics and metrics, and usability (57%) and functionality (47%) are the two most important evaluation criteria according to our Value Index vendor and product assessment methodology. In addition our business analytics research, 38 percent said that accessing analytics and metrics via mobile...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Mobility,
Oracle
MicroStrategy, one of the largest independent vendors of business intelligence (BI) software, recently held its annual user conference, which I attended with some of my colleagues and more than 2,000 other attendees. At this year’s event, the company emphasized four key themes: mobility, cloud computing, big data and social media. In this post, I’ll assess what MicroStrategy is doing in each of the first three areas. My colleague, Mark Smith, covered MicroStrategy’s social intelligence efforts...
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Topics:
Big Data,
MicroStrategy,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
Ventana Research believes that to provide excellent customer experiences it is necessary to understand what customers want and their likely behaviors, and one direct way to achieve this is by collecting and analyzing customer feedback. The challenge for organizations in this regard is that most customers are reluctant to complete surveys unless they are provided at an appropriate time, in an easy-to-use format and through the channel of their choice. Confirmit’s Horizons products support...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Confirmit
I attended the annual MicroStrategy World in Miami to check on the progress this company known for business intelligence (BI) software has made in expanding into a mobile platform and tools company that also announced a new version of its products. While MicroStrategy’s efforts in mobile BI and cloud computing are ahead of its competitors in the BI industry, they’re not its only expansion points for enterprise software.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Market Research,
Social Media Intelligence,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Mobility,
CMO
We recently published the results of our benchmark research on Big Data to complement the previously published benchmark research on Hadoop and Information Management. Ventana Research undertook this research to acquire real-world information about levels of maturity, trends and best practices in organizations’ use of large-scale data management systems now commonly called Big Data. The results are illuminating.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance
There is a lot of talk today in customer service circles about the “voice of the customer” (VOC). For some people it means speech analytics (literally the voice of the customer), some others use it as an equivalent to the “360-degree view” of the customer, and for others it is about customer feedback. At Ventana Research we take a broader view and define VOC as reports and analysis that include as much customer information as possible. It should draw data from all available customer sources and...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Workforce Management
Clarabridge is an established vendor of text analytics products, which it sells both directly to the market and indirectly through an extensive set of partnerships with companies such as MicroStrategy, IBM Cognos and Verint. Recently it has been marketing its applications under the category of customer experience management (CEM). To me, CEM is about personalizing and influencing the customer experience while an interaction is in progress. Organizations cannot do this without the right...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Clarabridge,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
My colleague Mark Smith and I recently chatted with executives of Tidemark, a company in the early stages of providing business analytics for decision-makers. It has a roster of experienced executive talent and solid financial backing. There’s a strategic link with Workday that reflects a common background at the operational and investor levels. As it gets rolling, Tidemark is targeting large and very companies as customers for its cloud-based system for analyzing data. It can automate alerts...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Master Data Management,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
GRC,
Budgeting,
Risk Analytics,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Governance,
Data Integration,
Financial Performance,
In-Memory Computing,
Information Management,
Mobility,
Workforce Performance,
Risk,
Workday,
Financial Performance Management,
Integrated Business Planning,
Strata+Hadoop
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
While we will wait until January to publish our recommendations for the new year, we can digest the lessons learned in 2011 within the technology markets and with Ventana Research right now. That’s appropriate, since we at Ventana Research are committed to helping you with solid information and education. We help thousands of organizations make a better, faster, safer, smarter and more cost-effective environment for leveraging technology to its fullest extent. Our benchmark research worldwide...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Market Research,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Information Applications,
Information Management,
Information Technology,
Location Intelligence,
Mobility,
Operational Intelligence,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
Industry Analyst,
Technology
Management decision-making typically involves a three-step process of inform, analyze and act. In the earliest days of what came to be known as business intelligence, developers created decision support systems that provided information and analytics to help executives and high-level managers choose the best course of action. Working with numbers rather than gut instinct still is viewed as a best practice. After all, a pilot who doesn’t trust his or her instruments is heading for an accident.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
closed loop,
contingency planning,
driver-based,
driver-based planning,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
In-memory,
Workforce Performance,
best pracices,
business value,
cash management,
challenge,
financial planning
Rather than make predictions for 2012, which are everywhere right now, I want to look back at some of the surprising events of 2011. I think it’s worth considering what happened that wasn’t expected and what these things might tell us about the information technology market. Here, in no particular order, are the most important ones I see.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
Salesforce.com made a surprising announcement of its agreement to acquire Rypple, a software company that defines its product as a social goals application. I call this a surprise because although Salesforce has been extending its reach beyond sales and customer service to IT in providing a platform, tools and a database for building applications and storing data in the cloud, until now it has not entered directly into other lines of business. After its annual Dreamforce conference last summer,
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
SAP,
Supply Chain Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Marketing,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Chatter,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Information Management,
Oracle,
Workforce Performance,
Business Applications,
CFO,
COO,
CRM,
HR,
SalesCloud,
Service Cloud,
SFA,
Talent Management,
Digital Technology
Cloud-based systems have arrived as an option for how organizations source their IT systems, now and in the future. Proponents of the cloud – of which I am one – will tell you they have several major advantages over conventional on-premises systems. They require little upfront capital expenditure; the major costs come as a monthly “rental” charge for using the service rather than an annual license; they are less demanding on in-house resources; they are quicker, easier and less risky to...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I attended the annual SAP Influencer Summit (Twitter #SAPSummit), at which executives from SAP meet with analysts and customers from around the world to discuss the company’s direction. Pointing out that in 2012 SAP will reach its 40th anniversary of operations, chief communications officer Hubertus Kulpus and chief marketing officer Jonathan Becher kicked off the summit, then passed the microphones to co-CEO Jim Hagemann-Snabe and CTO Vishal Sikka for overviews of the business and technology...
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
SAP,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Human Capital Management,
Smart Phones,
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,
Business Applications,
CFO,
COO,
CRM,
HR,
Sybase,
Tablets,
Talent Management,
Digital Technology
Collaborative and mobile technologies continue to influence business intelligence (BI) software products. The recent release of Yellowfin 6 embraces these innovations in a visually appealing, end-user-oriented BI product. Yellowfin is an independent BI software vendor based in Australia that was recently recognized, along with its customer Macquarie University, as a Ventana Leadership Award winner for the use of location–based aspects of its technology for effective planning and student...
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Yellowfin
The old proverb “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” applies well to the management of customer relationships. If business technology vendors are to be believed, managing customer relationships involves – indeed, is driven by – software.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics
NICE Systems last week announced an agreement to acquire Merced Systems, a provider of business applications for customer service and sales organizations. This acquisition slipped by with little fanfare, but it marks a significant milestone for NICE, a major provider of applications and technology for call centers and a player in their evolution into multichannel contact centers. Building on a good 2010, as my colleague Richard Snow noted, NICE expects to reach almost $800 million of revenue in...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Marketing,
Merced Systems,
NICE Systems,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Compensation,
Sales Force Automation,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
CFO,
CMO,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I thought of writing a note on this topic when multinational corporations started to withdraw their deposits from eurozone banks, but the pessimism that event engendered was short-lived. Now, as the monetary crisis deepens in Europe, it’s perhaps time to ask what your company would do if parts of its financial system implodes. You may think that your company will not be affected because it doesn’t do business with the eurozone. Or you may believe that it’s unlikely to happen and therefore not...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
contingency planning,
crisis,
driver-based,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
best pracices,
business value,
cash management,
challenge,
financial planning
Doing one’s homework is vital in buying business software. However, unless you’re replacing a relatively simple application, it’s hard to know exactly what to evaluate. Indeed, if people in a company given this task don’t have experience in using a specific type of business application or don’t understand how new or improved functionality will help execute business processes better, they may do a poor job of assessing the available alternatives. Third-party consultants may be helpful, but their...
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Zilliant,
Model N,
Navetti,
Nomis Solutions,
PROS Pricing,
Servigistics,
Signal Demand,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Oracle,
Vendavo,
Price Optimization,
Profitability,
Software,
Vistaar Technologies
Actuate, which develops commercial versions of the open source Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) technology, recently held a one-day event in London. My colleague Mark Smith covers Actuate’s products, but I was impressed by the simplicity of the company’s message, the core of which is that the ActuateOne suite of products allows companies to extract data from multiple data sources, use one product to analyze it and present the results in multiple formats in response to individual user...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Tibco recently introduced Spotfire 4.0, the most recent version of its interactive discovery and business intelligence (BI) tool. Spotfire comes at BI through visualization. It uses in-memory processing and good user interface design to develop highly interactive displays of data. Version 4.0 attempts to enhance Spotfire’s dashboard capabilities and offers integration with enterprise collaboration tools. The former capabilities are necessary to broaden Spotfire’s appeal and applicability for...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Spotfire,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Chatter,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Dashboards,
Financial Performance,
Tibco,
Twitter,
Workforce Performance
Cloudera’s recent Hadoop World 2011 event confirmed that the world of big data is getting even bigger. As I wrote of last year’s event, Hadoop, the open source large-scale data processing technology, has gone mainstream. And while 75% of the audience attended this year for the first time and so may not have realized the breadth of Hadoop’s acceptance, statistics announced in the opening keynote show widespread use of it. Mike Olson, Cloudera CEO, reported that the event was sold out, with 1,400...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Datameer,
MapR,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloudera,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Hortonworks,
Informatica HParser,
Karmasphere,
NetApp,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
It never ceases to amaze me, when you ask people what their business objectives are and how they are measured, how often the two have little in common. This has been the case consistently in the research I have carried out over the last eight years into customer service and contact center performance. The main objective for contact centers is to improve customer satisfaction, but the key performance metric is average call-handling time. Despite hours of contemplation and discussions with...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
For years building a call center was technically challenging as it typically involved integrating proprietary products from multiple vendors. Although more vendors now offer integrated solutions, even these can difficult to administer and use because of variable user interfaces and gaps in the integration. These challenges become harder as companies expand their contact centers to support multiple communication channels and agents of several kinds dispersed over multiple locations.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Zeacom
IBM’s Information on Demand (IOD) event showcased its products for both information management and business intelligence. I’ve covered the information management aspects of IOD in a separate post. In this post I’ll look at the business intelligence aspects. Earlier this year IBM made predictive analytics a major focus of its Business Analytics analyst summit, an event that often foreshadows the IOD messages. In addition to predictive analytics, IBM emphasized both large-scale “big” data and a...
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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
IBM made more than two dozen announcements in conjunction with its recent Information on Demand (IOD) event. In this post I’ll address the impact of IOD from an information management perspective and in a separate post shortly from an analytics perspective. Trying to organize the mass of information IBM brought forth at IOD 2011, I group the announcements into three general categories of enhancements and extensions to InfoSphere, big data (which is technically part of InfoSphere) and databases.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
Informatica recently introduced HParser, an expansion of its capabilities for working with Hadoop data sources. Beginning with Version 9.1, introduced earlier this year, Informatica’s flagship product has been able to access data stored in HDFS as either a source or a target for information management processes. However, it could not manipulate or transform the data within the Hadoop environment. With this announcement, Informatica starts to bring its data transformation capabilities to Hadoop.
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Topics:
Big Data,
MapReduce,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Integration,
Financial Performance,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
It has been a busy year for relationships among vendors in the contact center market and despite tough economic times, it doesn’t look like things are slowing down. For example, early this year Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 to strengthen its position as a supplier for what it calls “the social enterprise.” This is not a term I particularly like, but there is no doubt CEOs are interested in understanding what customers are saying about them on social media, and so this looks like a smart move....
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
[Vendor references]
Throughout this year we have seen more vendors begin to offer a contact center in the cloud. The latestis Transera, which offers an integrated set of products that focuses on enabling interactions for customer service agents. It has four main groups of products: operations management, agent management, media and call management, and routing and queuing.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Transera
QlikTech recently introduced QlikView 11, the latest version of its business intelligence (BI) software, which emphasizes new collaboration features as well as enhancements to its user interface. In an about-face, though, in its approach to mobile access, the company has moved away from its native iPad application to a browser-based app using HTML5 technology.
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Topics:
Mobile,
QlikView,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Technology
I had a chance to review the results of an interesting new global study of chief marketing officers (CMOs) by IBM, and I want to comment on some of its findings. Adding to the pressures facing the CMO today are new challenges in brand promotion and the growing impact of consumer sentiment expressed in several channels, including social media. The research found these to be the top two concerns in marketing and that 65 percent of organizations are not prepared to deal with them. My...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Market Research,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Business Technology,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
CMO,
Demand Generation
Cloud computing offers companies opportunity to innovate in the ways their contact centers handle customer interactions. Systems vendors have been gradually moving call and other interaction management to the cloud, along with some of the core applications required to operate a contact center such as call recording, workforce management and analytics. Interactive Intelligence is one of the front runners in this market with its Customer Interaction Center. To approach potential customers that...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Interactive Intelligence,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I find that customer experience management (CEM) means different things to people. Recently I attended a seminar organized by Rapide, a U.K. technology vendor that specializes in helping companies improve their interactions with customers. The seminar included talks from speakers I don’t normally associate with CEM, and they opened up a new perspective that revolves around a concept I first explored while working at Price Waterhouse Consulting: Moments of Truth.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Rapide,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
In a move that may indicate the beginning of a new wave of activity in the business intelligence (BI) market, Oracle has announced its intention to acquire Endeca. Founded in 1999, Endeca originally focused on search capabilities for online commerce. Users selected a product attribute, and the software automatically revised the remaining selection criteria based on products matching the previous selection. We have been covering Endeca as part of the BI and information applications marketing....
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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,
Information Applications,
Workforce Performance
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Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Teradata,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Technology
Oracle made several announcements at its recent Open World event demonstrates its strengths in the business computing market but also that it is standing on the shoulders of giants. The company has developed the expertise, processes and market share to scale out the ideas and innovations of others. Don’t get me wrong: That statement is not an indictment. Large organizations often have challenges with innovation. They are not as nimble as their smaller competitors. On the other hand, small...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
NoSQL,
Oracle,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop,
Digital Technology
I have spent the last two days at the U.K.’s largest contact center trade show, which this year moved to London Olympia from the NEC in Birmingham. While the overall number of visitors seemed to be down, some exhibitors told me there were more high-level attendees with serious intent to purchase.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
SAP,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Call Copy,
Enghouse interactive,
Enkata,
Genesys,
NewVoicemedia,
Nexidia,
ShoreTel,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Cisco,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Interactive Intelligence,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
and Verint,
cTalk Ltd,
Noble Systems,
Digital Technology
About 30 years ago, perhaps on this very day, I was sitting in front of an Apple II working on a VisiCalc spreadsheet. At the time, I don’t think I even knew who Steve Jobs was. I wasn’t in the software industry yet. I was working for a public accounting firm. The Apple II sat in a corner of the office “typing pool.” For those of you who don’t know what a typing pool was, there was no swimming involved – it was a group of full-time employees with dedicated equipment who did all the typing and...
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Visualization,
Workforce Performance
Oracle kicked off its Open World 2011 conference with the announcement ofExalytics, a new data warehouse appliance specifically for business intelligence (BI). Three years ago when Oracle introduced the Exadata product line it was based on hardware from Hewlett-Packard. Since then it has acquired Sun Microsystems and replaced the HP components in Exadata, assuming complete control over the hardware and software included in the appliance. Oracle also introduced two other appliance products:...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Exalytics,
Financial Performance,
Oracle,
Visualization,
Workforce Performance,
Digital Technology
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Interactive Intelligence,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Recently Verint announced its intent to acquire GMT, a provider of workforce management products. My initial reaction was that Verint was primarily interested in acquiring GMT’s customer base to extend its already large share of the workforce management market. In a briefing Verint confirmed this but said there are other reasons behind its move as well.
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Verint
NICE Systems has agreed to acquire Fizzback, a specialist vendor of customer feedback management software. On first read this appears to be another acquisition to gain market share, as NICE already provides a customer feedback tool; however, Fizzback’s customer base is much smaller than NICE’s, so this looks unlikely. Representatives of NICE explained to me that the acquisition is part of its long-term strategy to enhance its customer feedback management capabilities and to build a stronger...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
NICE Systems,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
This has been the year of the cloud for MicroStrategy. After ignoring early competition from cloud-based business intelligence (BI) providers, the company has jumped on the cloud BI bandwagon. At MicroStrategy Worldearly this year it announced a program called Cloud Intelligence and this summer introduced MicroStrategy Cloud, a complete BI platform with the option of using either IBM Netezza or ParAccel as the database and Informatica as the data integration environment. Now the company has...
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Topics:
MicroStrategy,
SaaS,
Sales Performance,
Software as a Service,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Visualization,
Workforce Performance
PivotLink introduced version 5 of its Business Intelligence (BI) product, which it delivers in the cloud computing environment and available through software as a service (SaaS) at its user conference. Demonstrating one of the unique benefits of providing it a SaaS approach, PivotLink did not require any of the attendees to request a download, get a new license file or do any type of software upgrade to receive the new version. It had already been done for them. One purpose of the conference...
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Topics:
Retail Analytics,
SaaS,
Sales Performance,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
Sales proposals can determine whether a deal is booked or lost. In most organizations the process of creating and delivering a proposal is manual and one-off, with many potential places for mistakes. This lack of rigor and efficiency impairs many organizations’ ability to leverage their resources. Proposal Software helps sales organizations with an application called PMAPS that addresses sales management and operations.
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CMO,
CRM,
DF11,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
Read More
Topics:
Big Data,
Data Warehousing,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Karmasphere,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
As he opened last week’s Cloudforce 2011 conference in London, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff declared that companies “must become social or die.” He reiterated the message in answer to a direct question I put to him during lunch with the media and analysts. I have heard several of his keynotes, and reviewed my colleague analysis from recent Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. and this one had a distinct change of emphasis. Benioff seems to feel that the cloud argument has been won, his...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Ventana Research’s benchmark research into agent performance management shows that most companies recognize the vital role contact center agents play in creating good customer experiences and thus good business outcomes. The research also shows that only the most mature companies have put in place processes and metrics that encourage behaviors that deliver such business outcomes. Furthermore, the research shows that companies are held back from adopting more customer-related metrics because...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Merced Systems,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Splunk may be one of the biggest software companies you’ve never heard of. I’ve been following the seven-year-old company for over six months now and recently attended its second annual user conference. Splunk focuses on analyzing large volumes of machine-generated data in underlying applications and systems, which includes application and system logs, network traffic, sensor data, click streams and other loosely structured information sources. Many of these “big data” sources are the same...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Machine data,
Operational Intelligence,
IT Performance Management (ITPM)
LinkedIn’s CRM experts group is hosting an active discussion about what are the top three CRM systems. Along with the blatant promotion of certain well-known products, you can’t fail to notice that the term means different things to people, and that systems gathered under this acronym may cover a range of capabilities. A closer examination of the discussion shows that a majority of discussion participants associate CRM with sales force automation, fewer with customer service and the fewest with...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Dovetail,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I recently participated in a panel discussion about the rise in the use of rolling forecasts in corporate planning. I’m not surprised by this trend; I have encouraged it. Ever since the financial crisis started three years ago, I’ve been writing that companies should rethink how they plan and budget to respond to increasing business volatility. Rolling forecasts are useful because they continually extend the formal planning horizon out more than a year rather than having it stop abruptly at the...
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Topics:
Big Data,
Performance Management,
Planning,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Office of Finance,
Budgeting,
IBP,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
COO,
Integrated Business Planning
At the Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) CEO Marc Benioff unveiled the latest evolution of the company’s strategy and supporting technology for cloud computing and mobile technologies. Its aim is to enable businesses to engage with customers and prospects via social media channels – what Salesforce calls the “social enterprise” – and empower employee and customer social networks to operate individually and together. Note I did not mention CRM, which doesn’t have a role in this...
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Topics:
Mobile,
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Sales Cloud,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Chatter,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CMO,
CRM,
DF11,
Sales Performance Management,
Service Cloud,
SFA
Even here in the U.K., we are well aware that Salesforce.com’s annual event Dreamforce is happening this week in San Francisco. Unfortunately I couldn’t be there, but a contingent of the Ventana Research team is there, and from what they are telling me it is quite a show. I have written before that Salesforce has the best marketing machine in the world, let alone the software industry, and it seems to have topped previous events. The company undoubtedly has changed the way many companies think...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Workforce Performance,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Sales organizations strive to maximize the performance of their staffs to meet quotas and revenue targets in an efficient manner. This focus is part of my agenda to help organizations innovate and maximize revenue in sales. To achieve this requires automation of various sales activities including compensation, incentives, quota development, territory optimization, channel management, analytics and planning. Varicent is focused on these aspects of sales, offering software deployable in three...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Force Automation,
Sales Operations,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
CMO,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA,
Varicent
Salesforce.com’s 2011 Dreamforce conference is under way. If you’re in sales and you use the company’s application, here’s how to gain the most value from your time at the conference.
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Marketo,
Merced Systems,
Qvidian,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Force Automation,
Sales Operations,
Zilliant,
Zyme Solutions,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Callidus Software,
Camelon Software,
CFO,
ChannelInsight,
Cloud9 Analytics,
CMO,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA,
Varicent,
Vendavo,
Xactly
In addressing the needs of their sales and operations teams to automate and improve performance, many organizations turn to providers of sales applications designed for specific activities. Many of these activities, including sales compensation, incentives, commissions, quotas, territories and others, Xactly has been delivering for years. This company is no newcomer to the market, with significant experience in meeting the needs of small to midsize sales organizations, and more recently...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
CMO,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA,
Xactly
Looking to make your sales force more effective by automating its operations? Merced Systems can provide the traction your sales team needs. The company has been providing applications for more than a decade to customer service and more recently sales organizations, helping both measure and manage performance. Several years ago Merced Systems made a substantial investment to expand to the sales organization with new applications and now offers analytics and reporting, compensation and...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Merced Systems,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Compensation,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
CMO,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
If you want to hit the booking and revenue targets required to operate a business, you have to manage your sales forecast and pipeline. Optimally you should be able to monitor and act upon them any day of the week and make adjustments whenever you need to. Unfortunately, most organizations have to wait until they finish their manual efforts at the end of the month or quarter, or they miss critical changes in deals and behavior because they rely only on reporting from their sales force...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Force Automation,
Sales Forecasting,
Sales Operations,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
Cloud9 Analytics,
CMO,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
In the past companies had two basic choices in how to provide call center services: internally or by outsourcing the service, typically to a company based where labor costs are low. Recently some companies have supplemented their in-company resources with home-based agents, and a growing number of providers offer outsourcing services in-country, for example, in North America. From a technology perspective as well, companies had two choices: on-premises or the outsourcer using its own...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
[Vendor references]
The largest cloud computing conference, Dreamforce 2011, operated by Salesforce.com, is now upon us. This year attendance is estimated to be over 40,000, and there will be more technology- and developer-focused attendees and dialogue than marketing material. Unlike past years, I expect marketing professionals to be a small percentage of attendees, so I thought I would offer them a guide through the circus of activities at the conference.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
ExactTarget,
HubSpot,
Manticore Technology,
Marketing,
Marketing Automation,
Marketing Planning,
Marketo,
Pardot,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
IBM,
CFO,
CMO,
CRM,
Demand Generation,
Eloqua,
SFA,
Unica,
Digital Technology
Qvidian entered the market for applications in sales performance management in 2011. The company, formed from the merger of The Sant Corp. and Kadient, has introduced a new suite of applications for proposals and playbooks that sales departments should examine if they’re looking to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. These applications are part of what we at Ventana Research call a sales performance management blueprint that helps optimize sales related activities and processes.
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Marketing,
Revenue Performance,
Sales Force Automation,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
CFO,
CMO,
CRM,
Sales Performance Management,
SFA
We cite collaboration as one of five key technology influences on the business intelligence (BI) market, and I get many questions about collaboration and BI from end users and vendors alike. The rise of social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter has raised awareness of collaborative platforms and created a critical mass of participants, which is a necessary ingredient for successful collaboration. However, I have to point out that consumer-oriented social media tools do not provide all...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Mobility,
Business Performance,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance
In preparation for conducting a benchmark research study on predictive analytics, I’ve been speaking with vendors in this market segment to gather background. One of them is Opera Solutions, which I was not familiar with despite having worked in predictive analytics for more than 10 years. I was surprised to learn the company claims to be generating $100 million in revenue annually. Founded in 2004, Opera provides predictive analytics as a service, employing a staff of approximately 150 data...
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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
Just when it seemed that Hewlett-Packard’s new management team led by CEO Leo Apotheker had a growing and solidifying technology agenda that included mobile computing, yesterday it all changed.
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Sustainability,
Google,
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,
HP Touchpad,
Digital Technology
I recently attended Teradata’s Third-Party Influencers Meeting (Twitter Hashtag #TD3PI) in Las Vegas where the company updated industry analysts and consultants on upcoming product plans and the status of two product lines it added via acquisition in the past year. Randy Lea, Teradata’s VP of product management and marketing, provided a company overview recapping highlights and defining the corporate strategy building on its work in 2010 that my colleague assessed. Teradata focuses on three...
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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
In the past year various vendors have begun to offer some or all of the systems required to build and run a contact center through a cloud-based service. I recently came across another one, Echopass, which has a different operating model than I am used to. Its core services are provided by products from two vendors that as yet don’t provide their products in the cloud: Genesys, which supplies call routing, intelligent front-door and intelligent back-office workflow, and Verint for workforce...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Echopass,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Envision is an established provider of workforce optimization (WFO) products and last year was rated a “Hot” vendor in the Ventana Research Value Index for Agent Performance Management (APM). Its suite of products includes recording, quality monitoring, workforce management, coaching, e-learning, performance management and speech analytics. The WFO market is now quite competitive, and along with other vendors, Envision recently announced some product improvements. As well as a number of...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Envision,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
It has taken me a long time to recognize that companies function through a series of processes, mostly executed by people (employees) and supported by information and systems. I was familiar with process maps that show activities happening in sequence and branches caused by certain conditions, but these were mainly paper exercises; my working assumption was that people “just get on with things.” But looking closely reveals that getting on with things happens in processes. To help make this...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
OpenConnect
Vitria is one of a small group of vendors offering a type of analytics called operational intelligence. The term is not widely known, although Ventana Research has defined and tracked this market for many years and researched. We define operational intelligence (OI) as “a set of event-centered information and analytics processes operating across the network that enable people to take effective actions and make better decisions.” For its part Vitria defines OI as “a new type of real-time,...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Vitria,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Salesforce.com (SFDC) brought five customers to a recent U.K. analyst event to talk about how they used different SFDC services to solve what turned out to be down-to-earth business issues. SFDC of course would have us believe that moving to the cloud is the only way to purchase IT systems (in its parlance, services) and that it has all the services to solve any issue concerning CRM, sales management, customer service, contact center, social media or software development. Only individual users...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Salesforce.com,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
I’m no great fan of three-letter acronyms, so I wondered what KANA Software means by positioning itself as the leader in service experience management (SEM), which is a term I had not heard. I have thought of KANA as a CRM vendor, but through a program of internal development and two acquisitions, it has transformed itself into something quite different. The acquisition of Lagan in 2010 added additional CRM functionality, enterprise case management and a track record of providing solutions to...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Kana,
Lagan,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Overtone
About a year ago I wrote that CallCopy had emerged as a major vendor of agent performance management (APM) software. Ventana Research has updated its definition of APM to mean the people, processes, information and systems involved in effectively managing the entire workforce that handles customer interactions, and this includes interaction recording, quality monitoring, workforce management, training, coaching, incentive management , agent-related analytics and performance management. Our...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Call Copy,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management
Verint recently announced that it has acquired Vovici,a vendor of enterprise feedback management systems. In light of the fact that Verint was recently rated the top vendor in the Ventana Research Value Index for Customer Feedback Management, at first it seemed odd that the company would buy another that offers a very similar product. In this situation the business driver often is to gain market share, with the net effect being that customers are left with fewer choices. Looking deeper reveals...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Verint,
Vovici
In my research area, a lot is said and written these days about optimizing the customer experience. Some say it is done by improving key performance metrics such as customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS) and customer effort score (CES). Others say customer experience management (CEM) is the “new CRM”; some think it is part of a multichannel service strategy, and for others it is as simple as managing social media. In my view it takes all of these, and other efforts, to optimize...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Cicero,
Cincom,
MarketTools,
ResponseTek,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Upstream Works,
Confirmit,
OpenSpan,
Verint
SnapLogic, a cloud-based data integration vendor, has extended its product linewith new data quality capabilities. This is worth comment because SnapLogic sits at the intersection of two recent trends in information management.
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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,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance
If you look at the SAS Institute home page it appears easy to identify what it does – “the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market.” My colleague recently assessed them as the multi-billion dollar business analytics supplier which I would agree. However, at the company’s recent analyst event I learned that this description only skims the surface of what it really does; even SAS CMO Jim Davis said he couldn’t be...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
SAS,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics
In the customer service and contact center markets we used to talk about phone calls, letters, faxes and email; now we talk about “communications,” “interactions,” “contacts” and “touch points.”These four terms are used almost interchangeably to talk generally about actions involving customers and can include all forms of communication – calls, documents (letters, email, forms and surveys), website visits, text messages, instant message (chat) sessions and social media – over all types of...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics
I stopped into the Yahoo Hadoop Summit (Twitter: #HadoopSummit) to see how far the open source Hadoop technology has progressed. This open source community has been advancing for years with support from Internet titans like Yahoo, eBay and Facebook. Hadoop, as my colleague David Menninger has written, is now ready to play a large role as organizations try to cope with data on a large scale and solidify their information management agenda.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
Jacada was one of the first vendors to provide a unified desktop for contact centers. It simplified the agent’s desktop by replacing several application views with a single view that better followed customer conversations. It also interfaced between those applications so agents didn’t have to worry about which fields to update, where to find data or how many applications they had to use. The unified desktop also enabled agents to address customer issues more efficiently.
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Topics:
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Voice of the Customer,
Jacada,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM
For months the speculation was rampant, and now the rumors have proven to be true. Yahoo has officially announced that it will become a player in the emerging Hadoop market. Hadoop provides distributed computing capabilities that enable organizations to process very large amounts of data quickly. Backed by Yahoo and Benchmark Capital, a new entity called Hortonworks has formed around a team from Yahoo that consists of more than 20 key architects of and contributors to the Apache Hadoop project....
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Supply Chain Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Strata+Hadoop
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
While the contact center business is not the most dynamic market, it is undergoing more changes than I have ever seen. One of the biggest changes is coming about because of cloud computing. This trend was led by salesforce.com, and the impact is now being felt in the contact center market as more vendors start to provide a “contact center in the cloud.” I recently wrote about inContact , one of the first vendors to provide a full contact center in the cloud. Recently inContact announced an...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Data Management,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
InContact,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Management,
Siemens Enterprise Communications
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
Providing good customer service has never been easy, but today it’s more challenging than ever, because of three factors. First is the growing overlap between marketing, sales and customer service. This is driven by customers’ increased expectations about the quality of customer service, the consistency of responses they receive during interactions and privacy legislation that limits companies’ collection and use of customer information and unsolicited contact. These circumstances put pressure...
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Topics:
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Operational Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Voice of the Customer Interactive Intelligence
My research into customer analytics shows three important things: Text analytics are at the early adopter stage; companies still use spreadsheets as their main tool for analysis; and to move companies away from spreadsheets vendors must offer tools that are as easy to use as spreadsheets. That’s no easy task, given the huge volume and varied types of text data companies are generating and the complexity of analyzing unstructured text. However, the research also indicates that this challenge...
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Topics:
Predictive Analytics,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Mobility,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics