ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives | Operational Performance (34)

Infopia Launches Retail Analytics for E-Business

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The rapid evolution of business on the Internet has dramatically changed many organizations’ strategies for growth and profitability, especially those in the retail sector. I have written about the importance of analytics overall and in retail, but many companies are maturing slowly in using them to analyze electronic business and commerce. Data derived from analytics can enable them to manage... Read More

Topics: Retail Analytics, Operational Performance, Commerce, InfoPia

Operational Intelligence Gets Boost from eg solutions

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The market for operational intelligence (OI) has grown as organizations realize the importance of having information in real time and in the right context. To accomplish this requires that operational data is processed as it happens, commonly by being packaged into what are called events and made available through technologies for complex event processing or event monitoring. Operational... Read More

Topics: Operational Performance, Complex Event Processing, Operational Intelligence, eg Solutions

Maxager Figures What it Costs for Improved Profitability

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

Activity Based Costing (ABC) is one several popular techniques to apply marginal cost analysis to arrive at a more accurate measure of a product’s true economic cost. It became popular in the United States starting in the 1980s (earlier in Germany) as it became clear to many that traditional cost accounting techniques do not reflect the true, economic cost of production in complex, multi-product... Read More

Topics: Supply Chain Performance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Cost Management, Maxager, Profitability

Vitria Adds Operational Intelligence to Customer Experience Management

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

In my writing and speaking, I try to avoid “market babble,” which numbs ordinary readers with technology buzzwords and three-letter acronyms. Lately I have been accused of overusing the phrase “interaction-handling processes,” which some people have taken as an instance of market-speak. So I’ll explain what I mean by it. It has to do with contact center agents – or customer service... Read More

Topics: Vitria, Operational Performance, Complex Event Processing, Operational Intelligence

Agent Performance Management Is Important to the Customer Experience

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

My research into Customer Experience Management shows that four of the top five factors that influence a customer’s experience in dealing with a contact center relate to agents: their attitudes, understanding of the customer’s issue, ability to resolve issues the first time and general knowledge (third on the list was average queue times). The research also shows that the largest volumes of... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Operational Performance, Analytics

IBM Antes Up for Marketing Applications by Acquiring Unica

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

In a second move indicating its seriousness about competing in the market for marketing software, IBM announced its offer to acquire publicly traded Unica Corp. Unica is one of the larger providers in this space, with more than $100 million in annual revenue and 1,500 customers worldwide. Its success in very large marketing organizations, including brand-name customers Best Buy, Marriott and IBM... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Marketing Automation, Operational Performance, CRM, Unica

Integrating Strategic Planning With Jonova

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

I’ve focused attention of integrated business planning for the past several years as our benchmark research on business planning and other related topics consistently finds companies are not getting enough of a return on the considerable amount of time and effort they spend on budgeting and planning. Moreover, the current economic climate makes substantive contingency planning more important than... Read More

Topics: Jonova, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning

HP Scandal Reflects on Enterprise Software Issue

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The recent turmoil at Hewlett-Packard that went public with news of the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd is only superficially about the facts of the scandal or the question of who will be the new CEO, sexy as those issues may be. What it really shines a light on is the performance of the company itself. I wrote earlier this year (See: “HP Takes Technology Portfolio to the Clouds with New Growth... Read More

Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, HP, Information Management, Information Technology

Knowlagent Increases Agent Effectiveness

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

My benchmark research into agent performance management (APM) found that the number-one objective of companies trying to improve the handling of customer interactions was to utilize agents more effectively; this also was their top objective in creating agents’ work schedules. In the latter case, the research uncovered a primary reason for difficulties in achieving this objective: Only 36 percent... Read More

Topics: Knowlagent, Operational Performance, Analytics, Call Center

CallCopy Emerges as a Player in Agent Performance Management

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

Last year I carried out research to discover how companies manage their workforces in handling customer interactions; I investigated their best practices, technologies being used and priorities for the future. The findings led me to define agent performance management (APM) as an extension of what other observers call workforce optimization; APM includes call routing, call recording, quality... Read More

Topics: Call Copy, Operational Performance, Analytics, Call Center

Infor Launches Innovative E-mail Management

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

On August 2, Infor launched its next generation of products for customer relationship management (CRM), which are built on its Interaction Advisor that in May I called “its CEM surprise.” At the time it was clear that Interaction Advisor was a platform on which Infor could build a series of innovative products. I didn’t expect the first of them to be just around the corner. Central to the... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Marketing Automation, Operational Performance, CRM, Infor

Contingency Planning, Now More than Ever

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

It turns out that some consumer goods manufacturers and retailers are having a hard time finding space on container ships and even finding containers to ship in. This has driven up the cost of shipping these items and at times resulted in deliveries arriving too late for scheduled promotions or seasonal demand peaks. This, during a time of constrained consumer spending in North America and Europe... Read More

Topics: Planning, Budgeting, IBP, Operational Performance, Financial Performance

Will Cloud Computing Finally Bring Innovation to the Contact Center?

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

I have been associated with the contact center industry for more than 20 years, first as a systems integrator building centers and more recently covering it as an analyst with Ventana Research. From this experience I have distilled three major observations: that centers are dominated by technology, that they change very slowly and that performance is largely judged by the average handling time... Read More

Topics: Operational Performance, Cloud Computing, Contact Center

Adapting and Planning Your Way Out of the Recession

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

Anyone who has had to regularly produce a written business forecast that goes out more than a couple of months understand all too well Yogi Berra’s famous observation: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Certainly the economic events of the past two years have regularly made forecasts obsolete in a very short period of time. Using the wisdom of crowds can help the... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Planning, IBP, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance

SAS Helps Companies Make Sense of Social Media Comments

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

I often read and hear today that social media is the new channel for marketing and customer service channel and also that companies must improve customer satisfaction to survive (I agree with the second proposition). Several observers have put the two ideas together and concluded that in the future all marketing and customer service will happen through social media – that I don’t agree with. My... Read More

Topics: Social Media, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, CRM

Infor24 Makes Applications Simpler To Acquire and Integrate

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The advent of cloud computing and renting of applications has provided another realm of opportunity for applications software vendors. Infor, which already is the third-largest in the world, is taking advantage of it. Infor announced Infor24, an initiative to bring its role-based applications into the cloud. It will use the Infor ION platform that supports other new Infor applications, including... Read More

Topics: Supply Chain Performance, Enterprise Applications, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Infor

IBM Innovates in Call-Routing for Agent Performance

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

One often-cited approach to improving the performance of contact centers and customer service agents is skills-based routing. This involves tagging data about the skills of individual agents – for example, languages spoken, training courses passed or the ability to handle well a particular type of call – and using a call-routing system to deliver calls to an extension where an agent with the... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Call Routing, Operational Performance, IBM

Research Finds New Adoption and Interest in Mobile Business Intelligence

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The demand for access to business information and applications through mobile technologies such as the Apple iPhone and iPad, devices running Google Android or using RIM Blackberry is surging as consumer preferences and behavior spill over into the business workforce. The massive growth of adoption of these technologies around the world as consumers seek instant access to information has many... Read More

Topics: Mobile, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Mobility, Digital Technology

IBM’s Advances Business Analytics and Optimization in First Year

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

At its Business Analytics and Optimization (BAO) analyst summit in Washington, D.C., IBM provided direction on the state of its software and services in this category of business technology. This annual event goes back to 2005 when IBM started making BAO-related software acquisitions in earnest. I have written before about IBM’s focus on analytics and optimization (See: “IBM Fuses New Generation... Read More

Topics: Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, IBM

Sales Compensation Easier To Manage with Varicent 7

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

To help sales teams to maximize their value to the company, sales operations and management must find the right balance of compensation and incentives to motivate them to achieve their quotas. To do this requires the ability to design compensation plans that take into consideration products, territories and accounts and of course the number of customers and prospects. Sales managers also need... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Sales Compensation, Operational Performance, Sales Performance Management, Varicent