ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives | Financial Performance (14)

Business Planning Benchmark Shows No Improvement in How Companies Plan and Budget

Posted by Robert Kugel on 13 November 2012

Organizations engage in a range of forward-looking activities. Sales organizations have pipelines to forecast sales. Manufacturing organizations set and reset demand plans and near-term production schedules, often in response to longer-term production plans that determine what they will make and where and how they will make it. Logistics people plan inbound and outbound shipments. Marketing...

Topics: Big Data, Planning, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Office of Finance, Reporting, Budgeting, driver-based, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning

Using Maturity Assessments to Improve Performance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 October 2012

The idea of devising and using maturity assessments to improve business performance has been a staple of management, functional and strategic consultants for decades. It’s based on two unassailable principles. One is the general assertion that companies differ in their ability to do anything along a range from nonexistent to advanced. The second is that at any time it’s possible for a...

Topics: Performance Management, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Customer Experience, Governance, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, benchmark, FPM

IBM Cognos Insight Focuses on Discovery and Exploratory Analytics

Posted by ISG Software Research on 30 October 2012

IBM’s Information on Demand conference last week took over the fifth-largest conference venue in the country at the Mandalay Bay and Resort Convention Center in Las Vegas. During the keynote at the end of day one, IBM demonstrated its Cognos portfolio, a family of products that helped IBM earn a ranking of Hot in our 2012 Business Intelligence Value Index.

Topics: discovery tools, exploratory analytics, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Operational Intelligence, Cognos, cognos enterprise, cognos express, cognos insight

The Red Hot Business Intelligence Vendors for 2012 Revealed in Value Index

Posted by Mark Smith on 25 October 2012

Ventana Research has just released the 2012 Value Index for Business Intelligence, in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this software category for almost a decade. Our latest benchmark research in business intelligence found that new technology advancements in business intelligence are critical to its future; more than two-thirds...

Topics: Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Pentaho, QlikView, Sales Performance, SAP, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, IT Performance, Jaspersoft, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), IBM, InetSoft, Information Applications, Information Builders, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Oracle, Tibco, Workforce Performance, arcplan, LogiXML, Spago Solutions

SAP Takes Business and Finance Mobile Using SAP HANA

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 October 2012

SAP has inaugurated a new series of business applications it calls Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) OnDemand as a cloud-based subscription service. The applications are part of SAP’s EPM version 10 suite, which it introduced last year. It’s a first step in what is likely to be a portfolio of general-purpose, lightweight and relatively low-cost apps designed to be used on mobile devices....

Topics: Big Data, Performance Management, Sales Performance, SAP, Supply Chain Performance, Office of Finance, expense, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, Business Applications, FPM, HANA

Oracle Fusion Financials: Boring is Cool

Posted by Robert Kugel on 16 October 2012

There weren’t any headlines (or even many tweets) about Oracle Fusion Financials emanating from this year’s Oracle OpenWorld (#OOW12) conference. Maybe that’s by design, because it’s not in Oracle’s best interest to kick up a lot of dust about ERP migration. The financial applications software market is mature, and market share leaders such as Oracle have less interest in getting customers to...

Topics: Performance Management, ERP, Office of Finance, financial, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Oracle, Workday, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft

In HR Technology, Social and Mobile Are Hot and Becoming Business Necessity

Posted by Mark Smith on 10 October 2012

This week I’m at the 2012 HR Technology Conference (Twitter: #HRTechConf) where the scene is more than cool – it is hip. In the past several years technology for human resources – now more often called human capital management – has transformed from administrative software to applications anyone in the workforce can use to access information about their company, job, goals, performance, pay,...

Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Human Capital Management, Mobile Technology, Social Collaboration, Operational Performance, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, HR, Talent Management

Putting XBRL to Work in the Mortgage Market

Posted by Robert Kugel on 09 October 2012

Unless you have some combination of a very strong credit rating, a high income-to-debt payment ratio and a relatively low loan-to-value ratio, it’s not especially easy to refinance a mortgage these days. That’s a shame, because there are plenty of people who have stayed current in meeting their credit obligations and whose mortgages are comfortably below current market value who could benefit...

Topics: Office of Finance, XBRL, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Financial Performance, finance, capital markets

Industry Exposé: Technology Vendors Skew Analysts and Influencers

Posted by Mark Smith on 05 October 2012

In my more than a decade of writing on the trends and direction of the technology industry, occasionally I have talked about the dark side of technology industry analysts. In that vein, I wrote about the diminishing science of research in technology analyst firms, which has impacted the quality of the analysis and advice given by analysts. It built on my previous post on Why Bad Research Could...

Topics: Big Data, Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Market Research, Research, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, CMO, Industry Analyst, Influencers, Technology Vendors

Cloud Computing Challenges On-Premises for Software Preference

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 October 2012

Salesforce.com’s recent Dreamforce user conference got me wondering about how far the market for cloud-based software has come. To answer that question, I looked to our own research. For the past several years Ventana Research has routinely asked participants in its benchmark research what preference, if any, they have for deploying software they use to support the activity we are benchmarking....

Topics: SaaS, Sales, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Supply Chain Performance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, Software

Encountering New Bottlenecks with Oracle’s Breakthrough Technology

Posted by Robert Kugel on 03 October 2012

Two key themes that emerged from Larry Ellison’s Sunday night keynote at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld were faster processing speed and cheaper storage. An underlying purpose to these themes was to assert the importance of Oracle’s strategic vertical integration of hardware and software with the acquisitions of Sun. I try to view technology keynotes like this from the perspective of a practical...

Topics: Big Data, Customer Experience, executive, IT Performance, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Data Management, Financial Performance, In-Memory Computing, Information Management, Business Process Management, Data, FPM

Informatica Goes Heiler for PIM and Product Information Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 02 October 2012

Informatica is a Hot vendor when it comes to our Value Index for Data Integration. When it comes to meeting the business need for consistent and high-quality product information, Informatica just raised its prospects with its announced takeover of Heiler Software. Until now, Informatica has lacked a product information management (PIM) offering. Germany-based Heiler Software, whose presence has...

Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, MDM, PIM, Operational Performance, Business Performance, CIO, Customer & Contact Center, Data Governance, Financial Performance, Information Management, Product Information Management

How Effective Is Your Company’s Planning for Long-Term Investing?

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 September 2012

Effective capital planning and capital investment are vital to a company’s long-term success. The choices a company makes – how much to invest and in which facilities or projects – have a profound effect on its long-term success. For that reason, companies take pains to ensure that these decisions support their long-term strategies and are made as rationally as possible. Because Ventana Research...

Topics: Planning, Office of Finance, Reporting, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Financial Performance, finance, capital budget, capital spending, FPM

Workforce Analytics Does Not Require Big Data – Yet!

Posted by ISG Software Research on 27 September 2012

Exactly what is the relationship between workforce analytics and big data? Most of the use cases for big data seem to revolve around marketing, social media and customer service initiatives where unstructured data sources reveal big value. Our research into big data analytics suggests a prime benefit of big data is in the ability to retain and analyze larger amounts of data and to increase the...

Topics: Big Data, Human Capital Management, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance

Salesforce Struggles to Deliver on the Dream of Analytics

Posted by Mark Smith on 21 September 2012

I was at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference this week to hear about the latest advancements from the cloud computing software giant. Salesforce has helped revolutionize cloud computing for business, and its social media and collaborative technologies help advance business processes in sales, customer service and improve the interactions between employees, partners and customers. Salesforce...

Topics: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, QlikView, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Social Media, Gooddata, SnapLogic, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, InetSoft, Information Applications, Information Management, KXEN, Operational Intelligence, Cloud9 Analytics, Domo, Information Builder iway, Roambi

Salesforce Helps Midsize Company Dreams Come True

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 September 2012

I cover the meat-and-potatoes aspects of corporate computing. I also pay attention to the special needs of midsize companies (by our definition, those with between 100 and 999 employees), which are unlike those of either small business or large corporations. After attending this year’s Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com’s annual user meeting held this week in San Francisco, I can appreciate...

Topics: Sales, Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Social Media, ERP, Office of Finance, CRM customer service, SMB, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Dreamforce, finance, Security, FPM

Are You Dreaming Social? Salesforce Is!

Posted by Mark Smith on 18 September 2012

The annual Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (Twitter: #DF12), just underway, may be the largest software conference ever, with attendance, physically and on the Internet, expected to be 90,000. Certainly, as one of the largest software events of 2012, this conference will be heavily covered via social media, while under the roof of the Moscone Center and surrounding hotels Salesforce will be...

Topics: Sales Performance, Salesforce.com, Supply Chain Performance, Research, SFDC, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Information Applications, Information Management, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, Dreamforce

Oracle Presents a Taleo Future for Human Capital Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 17 September 2012

I attended Taleo World to see how well Oracle is integrating Taleo after acquiring the company in 2012. I assessed the announcement by Oracle earlier this year; it was clear then that Oracle needed to make this acquisition to boost its cloud computing and talent management efforts. In the three-hour keynote session, a business overview and software demonstrations indicated what Oracle has in...

Topics: Social Media, Human Capital Management, Recruiting, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Oracle, Workforce Performance, HireVue, Hiring, HR, JobVite, Talemetry, Taleo

Look Who’s Hot in Data Integration for 2012

Posted by Mark Smith on 07 September 2012

Ventana Research has just released the 2012 Value Index for Data Integration, in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this software category for almost a decade. Our latest benchmark research in information management found that data integration is a critical component of information management strategies, according to 55 percent of...

Topics: Big Data, Master Data Management, Microsoft, Pentaho, Sales Performance, SAP, SAS, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Talend, SnapLogic, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Data Governance, Data Integration, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), IBM, Informatica, Information Applications, Information Builders, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Oracle, Workforce Performance, Syncsort

Rethinking Budgeting for 2013

Posted by Robert Kugel on 07 September 2012

Budget season is about to open at most companies that operate on a calendar year, so this is probably as good a time as any to rethink the process. Almost all companies will undertake the construction of a budget this year the same way they did it last year, despite widespread complaints that it is a monumental waste of time. One major reason why budgeting never changes is that it isn’t important...

Topics: Big Data, Planning, Sales Performance, Office of Finance, Reporting, Budgeting, Controller, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Compensation, cash management, FPM, Integrated Business Planning