Ventana Research is happy to share insights gleaned from the latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2022 Revenue Performance Management (RPM) Value Index is the distillation of a year of market and product research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal to vendors supporting the spectrum of...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Price and Revenue Management,
sales enablement,
Revenue Performance Management
The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.
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Topics:
Customer Experience,
Human Capital Management,
Marketing,
Office of Finance,
Voice of the Customer,
Continuous Planning,
embedded analytics,
Learning Management,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Collaboration,
Data Governance,
Data Preparation,
Information Management,
Internet of Things,
Business Planning,
Contact Center,
Data,
Product Information Management,
Sales Performance Management,
Workforce Management,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Technology,
Digital Marketing,
Digital Commerce,
Operations & Supply Chain,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
Revenue,
blockchain,
natural language processing,
data lakes,
Total Compensation Management,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning,
employee experience,
candidate engagement,
Conversational Computing,
Continuous Payroll,
collaborative computing,
mobile computing,
continuous supply chain,
Subscription Management,
agent management,
extended reality,
intelligent marketing,
sales enablement,
work experience management,
robotic automation,
AI and Machine Learning,
lease and tax accounting
As mentioned in my Analyst Perspective, Revenue Performance Management: Leadership and Operations for Optimal Outcomes, there is continuing pressure on sales leaders to deliver against sales targets in increasingly competitive markets. Among the various levers that sales leadership can use to support these efforts, are applications and processes that best position sales teams to achieve targets, such as planning and allocating territories, establishing quotas and devising incentive compensation...
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Topics:
Sales,
Analytics,
Sales Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
Observed both here and elsewhere, average sales quota attainments appear to be in an exorable decline. As I discussed in my recent Analyst Perspective, "The Art and Science of Sales from the 'Inside Out'," vendors of sales technology have reacted to this by adding a slew of new functionality including the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to be a game changer for sales. One can argue that this use of AI is still relatively immature having been generally available only since 2014, but...
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Topics:
Sales,
Human Capital Management,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Sales Performance Management,
candidate engagement,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
As I have discussed in my Analyst Perspective, The Art of Sales, from the Inside Out, the challenges facing direct sales leaders are not going away. Declining quota attainment, lack of visibility into deal health and difficulty in forecasting quarterly sales remain a challenge for sales leaders, resulting in a continuing reduction in duration of tenure.
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Topics:
Sales,
Analytics,
Sales Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
The modern contact center relies heavily on software that enables agents to perform multiple complex tasks while simultaneously managing the customer-facing side of interactions. This has allowed CRM vendors to build tools, such as agent desktop interfaces, that control virtually all aspects of the service environment.
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Topics:
Sales,
Customer Experience,
Voice of the Customer,
Contact Center,
Sales Performance Management,
Workforce Management,
agent management,
sales enablement
There is no doubt that the pandemic has accelerated the existing need for new technology that can help sales professionals do their jobs well in this quickly evolving market. In addition, market trends are driving the need for functionality that is aimed at the front-line sales professional and the manager, highlighting the demand for tools that can help arrest the decline in quota attainment, as well as helping salespeople supplement their traditional focus on sales quotas with activities such...
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Topics:
Sales,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Internet of Things,
Sales Performance Management,
natural language processing,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
The current pandemic has disrupted many of the traditional sales methods used by field-sales organizations to engage, and sell to, buyers. In an effort to provide help, many vendors have recently announced new features that focus less on the management of sales organizations and more on tools to help salespeople sell. This has been coupled with a renewed interest in using data to help with the science, alongside the art, of selling, as referenced in my AP: The Art and Science of Sales from the...
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Topics:
Sales,
Analytics,
Data,
Product Information Management,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Digital Technology,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
True leadership is the ability to motivate sales organizations to perform at their best. But the demand to do so requires the support of an orchestrated process and tools designed to help sales teams work in a directed manner that can help attain quotas through compensation plans. To manage quotas and resources and optimize sales compensation, everyone in the sales organization, from managers to selling professionals, needs unified and planful sales leadership and operations.
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance Management,
intelligent sales,
sales enablement
Although historically there has been a hard divide between what are colloquially called “Inside and Field Sales,” changes over the last 10 years have narrowed the distinction. The pandemic has only accelerated the path to unifying sales activities commonly performed to engage buyers and customers. Characterized by a very disciplined and controlled endeavor, inside sales teams have been heavier users of technology. This has enabled more productive engagement including emails and calls, as well...
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Topics:
Sales,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Collaboration,
Internet of Things,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
natural language processing,
intelligent sales,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency and productivity in the processes and the performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations that advance business and IT.
Read More
Topics:
Sales,
Marketing,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Sales Performance Management,
Digital Technology,
intelligent marketing,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
The last decade has seen exponential growth amongst subscription-based business models. Pioneered in the B2C market with cloud-based SaaS offerings, the last decade has seen exponential growth in the share of the economy that is now subscription based. Increasingly, this modern business model is permeating throughout more traditional style industries and companies. But regardless of whether a company is natively subscription based, or is transitioning, maintaining this growth requires...
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Topics:
Sales,
Customer Experience,
Office of Finance,
Voice of the Customer,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Collaboration,
Internet of Things,
Contact Center,
Product Information Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Commerce,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
natural language processing,
robotic finance,
revenue and lease accounting,
Subscription Management,
agent management,
intelligent sales,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
Subscription-based business models have seen exponential growth over the last decade. The growth of this recurring revenue business model, where a subscriber commits to repeatedly pay for a good or device for a fixed or indefinite timeline, has been caused by the shift from the one-time selling of physical products to selling digital services on a subscription basis. The first phase of this transformation was led by “digitally native” organizations, typically B2C, that have only ever offered...
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Topics:
Sales,
Customer Experience,
Office of Finance,
Voice of the Customer,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Collaboration,
Internet of Things,
Contact Center,
Product Information Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Commerce,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
natural language processing,
robotic finance,
revenue and lease accounting,
Subscription Management,
agent management,
intelligent sales,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
I’m very excited to announce to my network as well as the ever-expanding Ventana Research community that I’m now directing Ventana Research’s Office of Sales practice. The focus is to guide and educate sales and business professionals on the selling applications and technology including digital commerce, price and revenue management, product information management, sales enablement, sales performance management and subscription management. While these are the main topics of our Office of Sales...
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Topics:
Sales,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Collaboration,
Data,
Product Information Management,
Sales Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Technology,
Work and Resource Management,
Conversational Computing,
collaborative computing,
mobile computing,
intelligent sales,
sales enablement,
AI and Machine Learning
Sales plays a lead role in the revenue and growth of every organization. Whether the selling is direct or indirect, what happens in the sales department has ramifications that are perilous to underestimate. The imperative to maintain business continuity becomes painfully clear in a global pandemic, and that imperative demands that organizations cultivate sales excellence. This effort should start with leadership and engage sales operations, management and professionals with the objective of...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Sales Operations,
Business Continuity,
CFO,
Sales Performance Management,
sales enablement
Configure, price and quote (CPQ) software has been around for decades. Lately, I’ve been using the term “Dynamic CPQ” to apply to a variant of this software category that explicitly aims to produce a quote that optimizes the trade-off between the profitability of a deal and the probability of closing a sale. Dynamic CPQ software is a hybrid of price and revenue optimization (PRO) software and CPQ, providing companies with the ability to better execute their market share and pricing strategies....
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Topics:
Customer Experience,
Office of Finance,
Data Preparation,
Information Management,
Sales Performance Management,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
robotic finance,
revenue and lease accounting,
sales enablement