ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Future of CRM has Sales Engagement Potential

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 26 September 2023

Customer relationship management systems have been around since Tom Siebel created one while working at Oracle in the late ‘80s and then monetized it founding Siebel Systems that eventually was bought by Oracle. When Salesforce launched its “No Software” slogan in the early 2000s, CRM moved to the cloud, but the concept was still based on a object model centered around an opportunity that... Read More

Topics: Office of Revenue

Generative AI Helps Sales in Practical Ways

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 16 August 2023

Having worked at a start-up during the first wave of artificial intelligence (AI) that was predicted to revolutionize sales in the mid-2010s, I guess I am a natural skeptic when it comes to new claims about how AI will change sales forever. In the mid-2010s, vendors were using machine learning (ML) models trained on sets of historical opportunity data that represented closed won and closed lost... Read More

Topics: Digital Commerce, Office of Revenue

The Buyers Guide for RPM Classifies and Rates Vendors

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 09 August 2023

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, a research and assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Revenue Performance Management Ventana Research Buyers Guide: 2023 is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Market Observations from the Revenue Performance Management Buyers Guide

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 08 August 2023

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Revenue Performance Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market has advanced since our assessment one year ago. In many organizations, the sales department is being superseded by revenue teams. These revenue teams support a super-set of traditional sales functions that include not only those involved in... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Salesforce Adds Generative AI to Enhance Digital Commerce

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 26 July 2023

While I do not have an MBA, I have a very academic degree in economics and three decades of experience in different facets of business. Why is this important or relevant? Well, an entire industry has sprung up to promote the latest business ideas, the adoption of which will, supposedly, if not guarantee success, improve the probability of success in any endeavor. And while some of these ideas... Read More

Topics: Digital Commerce, Office of Revenue

Why Incentive Compensation Is Right for More Than Sales

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 21 June 2023

A lot has changed in business over the past ten years. The rise of e-commerce and omnichannel buying and engagement, the increasing digitization of the economy and the broader adoption of pricing and revenue models such as subscription and usage. And these are all having an impact on how business leaders need to think about their organizations. One of the more significant changes has been an... Read More

Topics: Payroll Management, Total Compensation Management, Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

PROS Brings Intelligent Pricing Applications to Market

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 15 June 2023

PROS has been in business since 1985, but over the past 10 years, the company has transformed itself from being primarily a vendor of on-premises price optimization software supporting the airline industry to providing a cloud-based set of applications that use data and artificial intelligence (AI) to aid in price determination. PROS also offers a scalable configure, price, quote (CPQ)... Read More

Topics: Digital Commerce, Office of Revenue

Planning Matters to Sales and Revenue Performance Management

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 08 June 2023

While many vendors have focused on developing new technologies and features to improve sales execution through more personalized and targeted sales enablement, lead and sales opportunity progress tracking and scoring, manager coaching and conversational intelligence, it seems that sales and revenue teams are realizing that this is not, in and of itself, enough to arrest the decline in quota... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Why Pricing Should Matter for Everyone

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 06 June 2023

I wrote last year about how interest in pricing management is now expanding from the traditional use cases in industries such as manufacturing and chemicals. In part, this has been helped by technology changes that are allowing vendors to offer the advantages of pricing optimization and management without the “science project” approach, which has previously convinced many that the returns did not... Read More

Topics: Office of Revenue

The Subscription Management Value Index Classifies and Rates Vendors

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 01 May 2023

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, Office of Revenue

Subscription Management Market Dynamics for Buyers on Contracting and Analytics

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 28 April 2023

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Subscription Management, I want to share some of my observations about an important component of subscription management: Contract management. Whether the contract life cycle is managed within the system or, more likely, is digitally represented within, any changes to orders, subscription plans or contract terms should be seamlessly... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, Office of Revenue

Subscription Management Market Observations for Buyers

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 27 April 2023

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Subscription Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market is evolving. The era of subscriptions has transformed the way businesses operate and consumers engage with services across every industry. Organizations are increasingly adopting a digital approach to selling goods and services, wherein customers... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, Office of Revenue

Conga Propels a Revenue-Focused Revolution

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 24 April 2023

Conga is part of our Office of Revenue market coverage and I recently attended the 2023 Conga Connect conference held in Orlando during April of 2023. The conference was the public reveal of a new Conga, with significant announcements in three main areas. First was the overall positioning within a self-designated category of revenue life cycle management. Secondly was the first public revealing... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, Office of Revenue

Reclaim the Value in Your CRM System

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 02 March 2023

I have been involved with customer relationship management for over 15 years, and although that is not as long as the category has been around, it does coincide with an era where companies and commentators are calling into question the application’s effectiveness. To counter this perception, both CRM vendors and complementary third-party “add-ons” have developed new functionality that aims to... Read More

Topics: Office of Revenue

Why Configure, Price & Quote Should Be Important to Sales

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 18 January 2023

Configure, price and quote (CPQ) software has been traditionally viewed as a specialist outpost of software, almost exclusively B2B and predominately used in manufacturing or specialty chemicals or other industries where there were large variants of similar products that required careful configuration, pricing and ultimately generating a quote that could be forwarded to a prospective customer for... Read More

Topics: Office of Revenue

2023 Market Agenda: Digitalization Evolves for Business Revitalization

Posted by Mark Smith on 06 January 2023

Ventana Research has announced its market agenda for 2023, continuing a 20-year tradition of credibility and trust in our objective efforts to educate and guide the technology market. Our research and insights are backed by our expertise and independence, as we do not share our Market Agenda or our market research – including analyst and market perspectives – with any external party before it is... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Office of Finance, Analytics, Data, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, Office of Revenue

Enable Sales to Engage and Sell with Technology

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 03 January 2023

Those of us who have worked in or alongside sales teams have observed that many sales fundamentals have changed over the years. Yet, in many ways, they have not. One essential that has not changed is sales enablement. How do you onboard salespeople and quickly bring them up to speed? Or, how do you introduce new products and services so the sales team is conversant and knowledgeable about them?... Read More

Topics: Office of Revenue

The Business and Technology Trends for 2023 and Beyond

Posted by Mark Smith on 13 December 2022

The technology industry has established itself as a pivotal force in its ability to help organizations become more intelligent and automated. But doing so has required a journey of epic proportions for most organizations that have had to endure a transition of competencies and skills that was, in many places, transitioned to consulting firms who were hired appropriately to manage changes.... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Office of Finance, Analytics, Data, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, Office of Revenue

Partner Ecosystem Success Relies on Targeted Technology

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 17 November 2022

The idea of partnerships in business is most definitely not new. Wholesaling through distributors and retailers is centuries old. For some industries, their entire model is selling and servicing through partners. Think auto parts, and the auto part stores visible in most neighborhoods. But what is new is that partnerships are moving beyond this reseller model towards product partnerships, where a... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, partner management, Office of Revenue

Revenue Operations Guides the Modern Revenue Organization

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 27 October 2022

The topic of revenue operations has been extensively covered recently, not least by vendors extolling the virtues of their particular offering. But as with much of the software industry, vendors often see the market through the lens of their current product capabilities rather than what is necessarily needed. With the rise of the mixed-revenue model that includes subscription and usage pricing as... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue