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Enkata Expands Customer Analytics for a Better Customer Experience

Jill Ventana — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:19:35 GMT

Enkata Expands Customer Analytics for a Better Customer Experience 2012-02-02 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 m

Actuate Establishes Performance Analytics for Business Excellence

Jill Ventana — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:51:01 GMT

Actuate Establishes Performance Analytics for Business Excellence 2012-02-02 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 conversati

Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile: Hands-On Review Finds Shortfalls

Jill Ventana — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:08:45 GMT

Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile: Hands-On Review Finds Shortfalls 2012-01-31 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

Revolution Analytics Hosts Contest on Business Predicting the Future

Jill Ventana — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:51:43 GMT

Revolution Analytics Hosts Contest on Business Predicting the Future 2012-02-01 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

Technology Terminology: What’s in a Name?

Jill Ventana — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:37:32 GMT

Technology Terminology: What’s in a Name? 2012-02-01 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

The Big, Cloudy, Mobile and Social World of MicroStrategy

Jill Ventana — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:35:59 GMT

The Big, Cloudy, Mobile and Social World of MicroStrategy 2012-01-31 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

Confirmit Provides Customer Insights through Surveys

Jill Ventana — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:06:25 GMT

Confirmit Provides Customer Insights through Surveys 2012-01-31 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

MicroStrategy Infuses Social Media Intelligence into Marketing

Shyam Dutta — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:46:23 GMT

MicroStrategy Infuses Social Media Intelligence into Marketing 2012-01-27 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 v

Infor’s Management Outlines Corporate and Software Strategy

Jill Ventana — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:25:04 GMT

Infor’s Business and Software Strategy Changes Again 2012-01-16 I recently met with Infor’s management team, led by CEO Charles Phillips. Phillips joined Infor in October 2010 after leaving Oracle, taking several other executives with him, including Duncan Angove, now president of Infor, and Pat Murphy,

Big Data Is More than Hadoop

Jill Ventana — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:42:36 GMT

Big Data Is More than Hadoop 2012-01-25 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

Feedback Management Can Improve the Customer Experience

Jill Ventana — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:19:59 GMT

Feedback Management Can Improve the Customer Experience 2012-01-25 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

Some Ways To Get More Bang for Your IT Buck

Jill Ventana — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:07:04 GMT

Some Ways To Get More Bang for Your IT Buck 2012-01-25 One of the major issues IT executives face is how to charge their departmental costs back to each part of the business according to their usage. It’s a touchy issue that can be the source of end-user disenchantment with the performance and contribut

Vertex’s Tax Data Warehouse Matures

Jill Ventana — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:20:57 GMT

Vertex’s Tax Data Warehouse Matures 2012-01-20 I recently had a briefing from Vertex on its tax data warehouse (TDW), a key component of its tax technology platform Vertex Enterprise . The TDW concept has been around for decades, but the earliest versions were custom-built and hampered by the techn

Tidemark Reaches the Starting Gate

Jill Ventana — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:52:39 GMT

Tidemark Reaches the Starting Gate 2012-01-03 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 strateg

Reorganized Epicor Has Strategy for Competing

Jill Ventana — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:38:56 GMT

Reorganized Epicor Has Strategy for Competing 2012-01-19 I recently received an update from ERP software vendor Epicor , my first since it was acquired in May 2011 by Apax Partners , a private equity company, and simultaneously merged with Activant, an ERP and point-of-sale software company se

Clarabridge Advances Customer Experience Management

Jill Ventana — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:25:07 GMT

Clarabridge Advances Customer Experience Management 2012-01-13 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 Verin

Action-Oriented Analytics Can Help Manage Risk

Jill Ventana — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:33:59 GMT

Action-Oriented Analytics Can Help Manage Risk 2012-01-12 Risk has always been an integral part of business, but as I’ve noted, companies deal with risk with varying degrees of effectiveness . A complex, ongoing process, operational risk management identifies risks to support successful operations

Customer and Contact Center Management in 2012

Jill Ventana — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:30:50 GMT

Customer and Contact Center Management in 2012 2012-01-03 After reviewing the benchmark research I carried out during 2011 into customer and contact center analytics , the use of technology in contact centers and the adoption of cloud-based contact centers and systems , I have come up wit

Top Ten Best Practices Learned from 2011 Technology Market Chaos and Stupidity

Jill Ventana — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:02:55 GMT

Top Ten Best Practices Learned from 2011 Technology Market Chaos and Stupidity 2011-12-31 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

Today’s Companies Need Action-Oriented Information Technology Systems

Jill Ventana — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:08:39 GMT

Today’s Companies Need Action-Oriented Information Technology Systems 2011-12-29 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 provide