Market Perspectives

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We are happy to share some insights about Maxio drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

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.

We are happy to share some insights about Ordway drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

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.

We are happy to share some insights about OneBill drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about FastSpring drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Recurly drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

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.

We are happy to share some insights about RecVue drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about CloudSense drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about LogiSense drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

In recent years, organizations have leaned into automation as a way to improve customer service operations. Automation in any process is a key stepping-stone to a higher level of efficiency needed to help balance the high costs of mass personalized service against its revenue benefits. One of the key players in this space is Uniphore, a software vendor specializing in service automation.

We are happy to share some insights about NetSuite drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Vindicia drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Chargebee drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Aria Systems drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Zuora drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Zoho drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Conga drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Gotransverse drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Salesforce drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Certinia, formerly FinancialForce, drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about BillingPlatform drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Microsoft quietly entered the contact center market in 2022, building on steady development of support tools and the acquisition of Nuance to offer a modern, digital-first, contact-center-in-the-cloud suite called the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform. This comes at a time when the market for contact center operational systems is in flux due to shifts in how consumers behave and the advancement of core technologies that disrupt traditional ways of doing business. Vendors in the space increasingly need to rely on broad platforms that support tools like artificial intelligence (AI), workflow automation and customer data management, in addition to traditional interaction handling. This has raised the stakes for legacy contact center vendors and opened the door to newer, larger entrants like Microsoft, Zoom and Amazon.

We are happy to share some insights about Paylocity drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Infor drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about HiBob drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about PeopleFluent drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about UKG drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Twilio is a technology provider in the cloud communication and customer engagement industries. Founded in 2008, the company has grown to serve over 190,000 customers worldwide, including large enterprises in technology, healthcare, finance and retail. Twilio's platform enables organizations to communicate with customers across various channels, including voice, text, email and video.

We are happy to share some insights about Ceridian drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

PROS is an award-winning provider of artificial intelligence-powered pricing and revenue management software applications. The PROS platform is designed to help organizations optimize pricing and revenue management capabilities. The platform uses AI and machine learning to analyze large amounts of data and provide businesses with insights into pricing trends, customer behavior and market dynamics. With this information, organizations can make data-driven pricing decisions that maximize revenue and profitability.  

We are happy to share some insights about Workday drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Salary.com drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Unit4 drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Payscale drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

The use of technology to manage source-to-pay as an end-to-end process beginning with vendor selection has grown significantly over the past five years. (Procure-to-pay is a related process that begins after vendor selection and P2P is a commonly used abbreviation covering both.) Organizations are looking to increase efficiency while promoting greater effectiveness by strategically taking early payment discounts, having more immediate and deeper insight into spend to achieve greater control and optimizing supplier relationships. Traditional, paper-based and manual P2P processes are too disjointed, inefficient and time-consuming, preventing many from achieving savings, such as processing invoices soon enough to make early payment discounts practical, reducing duplicative spend and negotiating and then realizing volume purchase discounts.

Contentsquare is a digital experience analytics platform provider that helps organizations understand and optimize a customer’s digital journey. The company's platform provides customer behavior analysis, experience optimization and personalization, all of which help businesses improve digital experiences.

We are happy to share some insights about beqom drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Cegid Group drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about ADP drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about D2L drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Total Compensation Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Axonify drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

The management and effectiveness of work is a priority for every organization, but the technology in use may not be helpful in reaching these goals. Challenges in outdated work management tools can arise when projects switch hands between various roles and departments, resulting in tasks and dependencies being transitioned without full information on items like deadlines and resources. Basic methods, such as assigning tasks via email, cannot be tracked, analyzed or viewed by other workers. By tracking assignments systematically in a dedicated application, even the smallest task can be evaluated to assess for necessary changes and influence on objectives. Work management is defined by Ventana Research as a unified process to plan and execute work with activities and tasks using the allocated resources available to ensure efficient execution of tasks and increase worker productivity.

We are happy to share some insights about insightsoftware drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about 360Learning drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

The use of technology to manage procure-to-pay as an end-to-end process has grown significantly over the past five years as organizations look to increase efficiency while promoting greater effectiveness. Beyond efficiency gains, benefits include strategically maximizing early payment discounts, having more immediate and deeper insight into spend to achieve greater control and optimizing supplier relationships. The related and often interchangeable term, source-to-pay, views the process starting one step earlier with vendor selection. Traditional paper-based and manual P2P processes are too disjointed, inefficient and time-consuming, preventing many from achieving savings, such as processing invoices soon enough to benefit from early payment discounts, reducing duplicative spend and negotiating and realizing volume purchase discounts. Finance organizations are increasingly recognizing the value of P2P automation as part of broader digital finance initiatives, which is why we have included P2P in the 2023 Ventana Research market agenda for Office of Finance.

We are happy to share some insights about Precisely drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Workday drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Degreed drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Sales Layer drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Absorb LMS, drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Perfion drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Today, technology has the ability to significantly increase the efficiency with which organizations handle expenditures while simultaneously containing costs, increasing controls and improving visibility into where the money is going. Procure-to-pay software enables organizations to manage the end-to-end process of requesting, procuring, receiving and paying for goods and services. The related and often interchangeable category of source-to-pay software begins with the process of securing the vendor. Both approaches are part of the 2023 Ventana Research market agenda for Office of Finance.

We are happy to share some insights about Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about IBM from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about CrossKnowledge drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Contentserv drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Bluestone PIM drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Adobe drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Pimcore drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Docebo drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Viamedici drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about PeopleFluent drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Stibo Systems drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about CornerStone OnDemand drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Learning Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about inriver drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Syndigo drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Salsify drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Akeneo drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Informatica drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Product Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

For organizations, opportunities for career growth and education are important to attract and retain workers as well as essential to address skill gaps. This emphasis on skills and learning has led to workers focusing on reskilling and upskilling. Traditionally, workers would need to return to a technical or trade school or university for more education; however, companies such as Skillsoft now offer a means to learn while working. With advances in e-learning, it is now possible for people to reskill and upskill at work to improve engagement and create their own career paths. Skillsoft markets itself as being designed to address the skills gap.

Economic uncertainty has organizations focused on sustained, profitable growth. Ensuring profitability is more complex, however, with mixed-revenue models like subscriptions and usage-based offers. Omnichannel selling brings different costs, and margin is typically examined as a post-sale event when it’s too late to influence profit.

Organizations that have a distributed, remote and hybrid workforce are expected to adapt to a faster pace in completing tasks and resources that are ever changing in availability. With priorities for projects constantly changing and workers transferring to different organizations, it is critical to provide an accessible and productive work experience. A clear and adaptable work plan with defined tasks and activities is the first step to enable effective collaboration, not only between team members but across departments. Organizations looking to optimize work planning should consider adopting a work management platform, defined by Ventana Research as a unified process to plan and execute work with activities and tasks using the allocated resources available.

The past few years have seen major changes in how organizations try to attract new talent. Previously, organizations would place advertisements in a newspaper, but with the rise of the internet, businesses have more options than ever to reach candidates. Unfortunately, with so many job boards and advertising channels, qualified candidates might miss relevant ads. This has created an opportunity for vendors like Appcast to maximize data analytics and artificial intelligence for more effective recruitment marketing.

We are happy to share some insights about Redis drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about DataStax drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Precisely drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Neo4j drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about HubSpot drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Cockroach Labs drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Alvaria drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Long a leader in subscription management, Zuora has been deliberately targeting larger enterprise customers over the past couple of years with a more complete offering. Adding to the ability to scale to serve the enterprise market, Zuora has also built robust support for hybrid revenue models, reflecting the desire of organizations to enable mixed-revenue models that accommodate one-time, consumption- and milestone-based sales as well as the needs of omnichannel selling, including self-service. Stephen Hurrell, Research Director leading Office of Revenue, articulated about the importance of supporting a mixed-revenue model and the need for organizations to integrate and automate their processes and systems in this perspective.

We are happy to share some insights about Snowflake drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Qualtrics drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about EDB drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Cisco drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being integrated into software applications related to the contact center and customer support. Its development is changing many of the operational processes around self-service, agent management and interaction analytics. AI has tremendous versatility, and new use cases continue to emerge as the technology improves. AI and machine learning have become instrumental in how contact centers and other customer-adjacent teams build more unified customer experience processes and enhance workforce productivity. In fact, we assert that by 2025, three-quarters of organizations that deploy worker-focused intelligent virtual assistants will benefit from new levels of agent engagement and lower attrition.

We are happy to share some insights about PingCAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Freshworks drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SingleStore drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Amdocs drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Databricks drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about ServiceNow drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Speech analytics systems are designed to automatically analyze and extract meaning and insights from spoken language. These systems use technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to analyze and understand spoken language, and are becoming increasingly sophisticated and effective at handling a wide range of languages and accents. Speech analytics supports a variety of applications, including customer service, market research and language processing.

We are happy to share some insights about MariaDB drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Avaya drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Cloudera drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Genesys drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about MongoDB drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Zendesk drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Micro Focus drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

In today's market, businesses are facing increased competition and pressure to grow revenue. This is especially true for organizations operating in industries that have been disrupted by technology, such as media, entertainment, retail and travel. In this environment, it is essential for businesses to have a clear understanding of revenue streams and be able to quickly and effectively adjust pricing and sales strategies to capitalize on new opportunities and mitigate risks.

We are happy to share some insights about Google drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SugarCRM drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

The topic of artificial intelligence using machine learning (AI/ML) used to conjure up images of PhDs in white lab coats using massive computers to solve arcane problems, but today’s technology is packaged to be used effectively by those not trained in data science to address daily chores more efficiently. AI will be valuable to finance departments in five general areas: forecasting and planning, analytics, task supervision, recommendations and automated commentary. Although the payoff from throwing massive brain power at solving difficult problems can be significant, AI also has the potential to create value by automating repetitive processes or augmenting human involvement to gain efficiency while improving performance.

We are happy to share some insights about Couchbase drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Sprinklr drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Amazon Web Services drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Content Guru drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Actian drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Emplifi drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Adobe drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Teradata drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Microsoft drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about NICE drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about InterSystems drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Verint drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Workers and customers are interacting across a variety of channels as cloud digital communications continue to expand with new potential for every organization. Phone, email, text, video and messaging are some of the ways people communicate in, and outside of, an organization. Implementing contemporary technology can improve day-to-day conversations to increase customer satisfaction and decrease employee turnover rates.

We are happy to share some insights about Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Zoho drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We are happy to share some insights about Salesforce drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Ventana Research analysts participate in many meetings throughout the year to learn about software vendors’ plans and product updates. We recently attended a meeting with SugarCRM to learn about its new management and direction. Founded in 2004 as an open-source project, the company has recently focused on becoming a full-service customer relationship management vendor.

We are happy to share some insights about IBM drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

The workforce has gone through several major shifts in the past three years. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a transformation from working in an office to often hybrid or totally remote work. In what has been described as the Great Resignation, employees – often feeling unappreciated by their employers – resigned in droves. Organizations have taken several measures to deal with these challenges, including updating human capital management software.

Many small to midsize manufacturing and product-centric organizations have struggled with the limitations imposed by on-premises platforms designed for an unrelated industry or subvertical. Others try to cobble together processes and data from multiple systems and spreadsheets. While these organizations have many of the same requirements as larger enterprises, resources are not comparable, especially for technology support. Purpose-built software can meet specific industry requirements while streamlining processes. A cloud deployment is particularly attractive for rapidly growing organizations because resources can remain focused on operations rather than managing technology, minimizing administrative overhead.

The customer experience (CX) market is made up of a very diverse array of point solutions and suites designed to solve very specific but interlocking problems. They all focus on the difficulty organizations have in communicating effectively with their customers, either in response to customer inquiries or for proactive outreach purposes. Customer contacts have changed a great deal in the last decade; they now take place in fits and starts, on various channels, and are overseen by people across departments, not all of whom have the same agenda.

The ever-evolving hybrid workforce requires cloud communication tools that meet the needs of digital businesses. This transition has forced organizations to reevaluate existing digital communication services to ensure they meet the demands of today’s workers and customers.

Every year, billions of digital interactions occur online. Artificial intelligence and machine learning become smarter. Organizations find new ways to efficiently handle customers and requests using automated self-service and the underlying technology it runs on: conversational AI. What used to be a niche capability is now at the forefront of today’s chatbot and automated customer service agent. To keep up with the rising usage of digital channels and interactions, organizations must enable intelligent self-service to enhance and provide a great customer experience.

The corporate workforce has been scattered into all types of work environments, from the comfort of a formal home office to cubicles in a glass building. These new options were inevitably created by the 2019 COVID pandemic. As a result, organizations have struggled to accommodate the digital communications needs of the now-established hybrid workforce to ensure seamless operations and business continuity. Organizations that want a comprehensive approach to digital communications will need to employ software that can meet the needs of workers who choose to work remotely or in-person, to promote inclusivity in the workplace culture.

Contact center infrastructure is continuing to shift to the cloud, and with it comes more innovation and more agent capabilities. Increased customer service expectations require faster response through a variety of channels. Agent interactions have also become more complex as automated self-service applications complete most of the simple interactions agents would otherwise support. Plus, agents are increasingly empowered to make proactive decisions to help customers, and must synthesize more information coming from multiple sources. That they have to do so in real time, often from home without peers or supervisors around to give them guidance, adds to the challenge. This evolution to more complex tasks means agents require better support from contact center technology.

It has been many years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects have continued to impact the workforce. And organizations have not only had to deal with changes to their location (on-site, hybrid or fully remote) but also with the changing landscape of the workforce. The Great Resignation has led to greater challenges within organizations in terms of retention and attracting the right talent. Organizations facing this litany of new dilemmas can benefit from HCM software to address these challenges.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Digital Leadership Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that contribute to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

Even when all workers are based in the same location under the same legal codes, local payroll can be complicated. When you consider the added complications of different states or even countries, the idea of global payroll can seem very complicated, as discussed in a recent perspective.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

Sales leadership and operations teams can ensure their most effective outcomes by properly managing territories, quotas and incentives. In that journey, sales teams struggle to reach their full potential if they do not orchestrate their efforts and optimize every week and month of the year. The need for immediate access to up-to-date information shared by sales professionals, managers, operations teams and leadership is critical to meet everyone’s expectations. Unfortunately, most sales organizations are operating with a disparate set of tools and legacy applications that do not facilitate selling based upon territories or quotas and lack management visibility for potential incentives.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to the organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are still affecting the market as organizations look to focus on business continuity for future operations and to fulfill the requirements of a hybrid workforce. Organizations must meet the expectations of the workforce and customers who require digital communication that is straightforward and easily available to provide engagement and sufficient experience in using the technology. Digital communication software allows organizations to facilitate collaboration between the workforce and customers, ensuring that operational challenges are tackled any moment of the day or even in catastrophic events.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

While the billing software provider market is well-established and mature, a new breed of vendors has emerged. These applications address billing but, more importantly, enable organizations to adopt advanced digital business models, maximizing existing investments in front- and back-office systems.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The necessity to empower people within an organization to be most effective and highly impactful is no easy task and is central to what business and HR leaders seek to enable. At the core of this mission is understanding the motivations of individuals who are eager to gain new skills that help their career growth while also supporting their current expected performance. Managing and motivating skills development require content and learning methods that align to the role and responsibility of the individual. Necessary steps in talent management include moving beyond a traditional learning management system (LMS) approach and creating learning experiences that are assembled from existing and new content, as well as from third-party providers, and are aligned to the individual’s needs.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

Large corporations were the first to benefit from computers, but the cloud and availability of affordable, easy-to-use software has levelled the playing field for small and midsize organizations (SMBs). Software can significantly enhance organizational effectiveness by streamlining interactions with customers and employees, supporting collaboration within departments and across the enterprise, and promote efficiency by reducing the administrative burdens of record keeping and increasing visibility into its performance and financial health. Compared to manual systems, including paper records and desktop spreadsheets, modern software enables organizations to grow and scale with agility while minimizing the administrative overhead, a key to long-term success.

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Digital Leadership Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that contribute significantly to improved efficiency, productivity and the performance of their organization. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

The customer expectation for simple communication accessible via any device is not a new concept that emerged from the pandemic but a precept that, in addition to a positive customer experience, ensures business continuity and resilience across the workforce. Customer experiences are impacted by the quality of communication between workers, and organizations should reevaluate current systems to provide adequate customer service.

Whether changing companies or career paths, working professionals are switching jobs more than ever before. Uncertainty, lack of opportunity and volatility play a role in this churn. Today’s workers often feel more like replaceable cogs in a machine than team members with career advancement potential. Job security also suffers in the face of market swings and volatile black swan events. Employee retention is a challenge in the best of times, but the labor shift that escalated with the pandemic prompted workers to reassess their relationships – not only with their employer but their career, leading many to leave positions that organizations have struggled to fill.

Organizations are reevaluating digital communication platforms to meet the demands of a more resilient hybrid and mobile workforce. Outdated and disjointed communication software can cause delays in projects, impacting use of resources, costs, profitability and customer satisfaction. All organizations should adopt software that meets the digital standards of today’s workforce.

Data-driven product information management ensures that supply chain data is consistent, standardized and accessible across the organization. Many businesses, however, lack consistency and unification when managing data, with the greatest barrier being the ability to achieve a single version of the truth, according to our Data Governance Benchmark Research.

While there are a large variety of tools that play a role in helping organizations manage customer experiences (CX), there is a consensus emerging that applications controlling customer data should take center stage. Many organizations face the challenge of consolidating fragmented data that comes from siloed sources into a coherent view of the entire customer life cycle. To address this challenge, vendors from multiple market segments are coalescing around the customer data platform (CDP) as the coordinating system of inter-departmental CX practices. CDPs were originally developed for marketing use cases but are now being more widely adopted by service departments and contact centers. For some vendors, like ActionIQ, the CDP has become the central element in a platform that extends outward to put customer data at the disposal of multiple applications by ingesting and cleaning it.

The potential of the workforce relies on the ability of team members to efficiently communicate and share information with one another and external customers, partners and suppliers. Disjointed communication leads to halts in projects and overall growth potential. A digital platform tailored to an organization’s needs will allow workers to effectively complete tasks and provide the resilience needed for organizations to thrive in any situation.

Historically, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has obscured pay gaps and hindered the transparency of workplace wages. In today’s tight labor market, workers have choices in where they work, and are demanding equal pay for equal work. The goal of pay equity is to create workplaces that inspire loyalty, enthusiasm and trust by establishing an environment of transparency and equitable opportunity, ensuring fairness. The challenge for organizations is determining how to properly conduct bias-free pay equity analysis, including finding the right technology and identifying someone in HR to oversee pay equity on an ongoing basis.

Technology for managing contact centers is transforming quickly due to innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). It is also splintering into multiple market segments that overlap: Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), conversational AI (which is a modern form of self-service), cross-functional analytics, and integrations with tools for sales and marketing users. For buying organizations, it can be hard to identify exactly which vendors and market segments serve specific needs. For example, a business that needs a chatbot can go to dozens of suppliers with varying degrees of specialization, and with different approaches to the underlying business problems creating the need in the first place.

Organizations are looking for ways to enhance their tools for both internal and external communications. Several unified communications (UC) companies are now producing platforms that combine UC with contact center functionality, with varying degrees of underlying integration. Building up those contact center components is a way for some firms to differentiate their offerings, with some vendors trying to make the contact center platform more of a business toolkit, tying it to the back office. Dialpad is among the companies taking this approach, notably by building out its use cases for artificial intelligence (AI), as well as building an underlying automation toolset and continuing to develop its analytics offering.

The practical advancement of artificial intelligence is being realized by embedding it into applications across human capital management processes. Using AI to generate personalization enables workflows for managers to make quicker and better decisions, ranging from talent acquisition to engaging candidates to become more effective workers. The challenge for organizations is to find applications that use AI to support daily tasks of workers and HR teams, advancing the talent of the organization. Aside from finding the right software, organizations must also identify technology vendors that are equipped to properly train users for successful adoption. Companies like Phenom not only use AI for optimizing talent experiences to hire, develop and retain people into the workforce, but employ AI to change how talent is empowered to be talent.

While total compensation is not an area that can be handled by a one-size-fits-all solution, many companies lack dedicated compensation software. According to Ventana Research, many HR departments are not equipped to manage sophisticated programs that extend beyond the annual review process. Even among HR departments that do acknowledge the importance of total compensation management (TCM), many rely on outdated systems such as spreadsheets. The use of spreadsheets rather than dedicated compensation management software is a mistake though, considering only 15% of organizations that rely on spreadsheets can report that they do have errors. In the current environment, it is critical that organizations attract and retain productive members of the workforce. A key component of retention and recruitment is ensuring that appropriate compensation exists so employees feel like they are valued by the organization. One organization that is trying to address this issue by creating dedicated TCM software is beqom.

Contact centers are investing in a wealth of new ideas for better assisting their agents. These include engagement tools, better knowledge management and a more robust hiring pipeline and retention strategies. Also, a rising theme from many contact center users and providers is the availability of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies. Ventana Research asserts that by 2026, three-quarters of organizations will have expanded the stakeholders influencing customer experience software buying decisions resulting in greater accountability and better resource allocation. This suggests that contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) vendors need to be able to express the value of contact center tech more broadly, including the ability to boost customer acquisition, loyalty, value, and other outcome-based key performance indicators (KPIs).

Data is moving to the cloud. And as cloud applications are adopted, it means that many critical sources of data for analytics now, or soon will, live in the cloud. In fact, nearly nine in 10 participants in our research (89%) reported that they plan to use cloud-based analytics deployments, and the overwhelming majority of organizations (86%) expect that most of their data will eventually be in the cloud. But, as organizations look to embed analytics and reporting into their applications, they face many hurdles including high infrastructure costs, lack of domain-specific expertise and roadblocks that appear when scaling.

The current sales cycle software space is one of complexity. Business-to-business sales across all industries are becoming more complex and require more care in their management. The rise of the subscription economy is one example contributing to this complexity. Buyers are not just buying one product at a time, but rather could be buying multiple products over different periods of time, with renewals on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.

Contact centers are undergoing a radical reshuffling of the workforce, partly because the pandemic shifted agents to remote work. But the trends were in place to reorganize the world of work long before the pandemic. Digital contact channels, which are gaining popularity, require workers that are better informed and capable of handling more complex and interdependent interactions and processes. That’s changing the nature of training, management and even process design between departments. Organizations have to provide agents with appropriate tools to collaborate and communicate with peers and supervisors, and also with peers in the back office who participate in all sorts of customer-facing or customer-adjacent processes. It is also important to provide supervisors with visibility into agent activity. That means extending existing coaching and evaluation methods, and Ventana Research believes that by 2025, 9 in ten organizations will have deployed agent management systems with features specifically built to provide supervisors the ability to manage and coach agents working from home.

Ensuring continuous collaboration and digital communication across an organization advances its ability to engage workers and maintain workforce resilience and readiness. Achieving this goal requires a platform that enables business operations to continue under any circumstance.

Contact center technology is moving to the cloud at a slow but consistent pace. That has allowed the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) segment to grow steadily, opening the door to many different approaches for managing the infrastructure needed to serve customers. Some vendors try to include everything under the sun in their offerings to appeal to the widest possible market. Others, like 3CLogic, are taking a more surgical approach, focusing on specific aspects of the call-handling process that reflect each vendor’s expertise.

The hybrid work model is being adopted as the standard for organizations after the pandemic unveiled the weak foundation of conventional business operations. More workers are now performing tasks both in the office and remotely. This, however, can lead to disorganized communication between peers. Workers feel secluded from each other. Additionally, existing methods and tools for collaboration and communication have not been effective in addressing more pressing work demands. Organizations need to consider if their current communications system is meeting the needs of their workforce, what we call digital communications. Microsoft’s communications platform, Microsoft Teams, aims to connect workers to foster collaboration, regardless of their work location.

Remote and hybrid work environments are prevailing in enterprises, regardless of size. The pandemic caused long-lasting disruption in traditional business operations, requiring organizations to rethink digital communication inside and outside the workplace. The expectation today is that a digital communications platform will meet the unique needs of an organization. Teams must be equipped with cloud-based technology that is easily accessible and enables business communication, such as chat with messaging and video meetings to occur with anyone, anywhere and at any time. A secure and reliable digital communications platform can enhance the quality of collaboration and the service offered to customers and to that point we have published a perspective. To that end, Zoho has created an integrated suite, Zoho Workplace, which provides a unified digital communications platform and tools in a unified experience.

Marketing and Customer Experience (CX) are typically treated as separate business functions or, in some cases, poorly connected. But there is a growing effort to (effectively) conjoin these areas as organizations are discovering that these departments and processes are more successful if they work together to facilitate/promote a unified approach to the customer life cycle.

With the increasing exodus from on-premises solutions, organizations are migrating towards cloud computing for data analytics. Cloud computing supports rapid growth, collaborative analysis and real-time insights without requiring large capital investments in IT infrastructure. A cloud-based approach to analytics can help organizations be more agile and responsive to opportunities in the market.

Organizations that use technology for work management have a competitive advantage over those without collaborative, digital systems. However, existing work management technology may not be sufficient to keep up with the rate of digital work that is being performed.

Data lakes began to emerge 10 years ago in response to the desire for analytic data platforms that could economically store and process large volumes of raw data. These platforms access data from multiple operational applications in a variety of formats to be queried by multiple business departments for