Press Releases

SAN RAMON, CA, March 20, 2012 – Ventana Research has released its newest benchmark research, “Trends in Developing the Fast, Clean Close: Refining Financial Processes and Systems for Best Execution.”

Completing the accounting cycle quickly and accurately is essential for any finance organization. Not only is this a good indicator of efficiency, but also the speed in which books are closed has a number of ramifications. It can affect how rapidly a company is able to prepare data management...

San Ramon, Calif. – March 13, 2012 – Ventana Research is set to begin new benchmark research on the current state and maturity of product information management.

As products are added to retail and distributor networks and to catalogs and also web and mobile commerce sites, additional product information must be created, referenced and managed efficiently, which is where product information management comes into play. Competitive pressures require that the product information presented to...

San Ramon, Calif. – March 8, 2012 – Ventana Research is set to begin new benchmark research on the current state and maturity of business planning.

Planning is an essential part of all organizations. Especially in challenging economic environments, planning can make a big difference in how well companies perform. Every part of a business has a plan. There are sales plans, production plans, R&D plans, financial plans and so on, but they are almost always loosely connected. Consequently, when...

San Ramon, Calif. – March 7, 2012 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research, “Predictive Analytics: Improving Performance by Making the Future More Visible,” finds that in organizations that have deployed predictive analytics, over two-thirds are satisfied (45 percent) or very satisfied (21 percent) with their use of predictive analytics.

SAN RAMON, CA, February 24, 2011 – Ventana Research has delivered its research and educational agenda for 2012.  The firm is set to cover the dramatically changing technology revolution for business and IT, while helping businesses utilize every investment and resource as effectively as possible.

Ventana Research had a very aggressive year in 2011, completing over 21 benchmark research studies and releasing research on topics including Hadoop, Business Analytics, Data in the Cloud and Contact...

San Ramon, Calif. – February 23, 2012 – Ventana Research has released its latest Benchmark Research, “In Pursuit of Excellent Customer Relationships: Achieving maturity in managing the customer experience,” assessing the maturity of organizations’ ability to manage customer relationships.

The CRM field has dramatically changed how organizations manage relationships across multiple channels, and a whole new field of business processes and technologies has been developed to help organizations...

San Ramon, Calif. – January 23, 2012 – Ventana Research is not just in attendance at this week’s MicroStrategy World, January 23-26 in Miami, but also exhibiting to help educate buyers on a variety of issues ranging from trends like Big Data, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing, Collaboration and Mobility, to the basics of business intelligence and information management.

Ventana Research CEO & Chief Research Officer Mark Smith, recently ranked the #1 industry analyst in enterprise software...

San Ramon, Calif. – February 16, 2012 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that just 15 percent of technology businesses have the highest Innovative level of maturity in their use of analytics, despite being part of the industry that has the more direct knowledge of the technology to advance people, process and information readiness in an organization.

With business people in the technology sector under increasing pressure to operate more efficiently and make better decisions,...

San Ramon, Calif. – January 19, 2012 – Ventana Research has released its latest Benchmark Research, The Challenge of Big Data, concerning the management of large-scale data management and processing.

Organizations of all sizes and from across all industries have found themselves being deluged by an increasing and never-ending amount of data, coming from a variety of sources. Organizations are also capturing data at a deeper level of detail and keeping more history than ever before. Together,...

San Ramon, Calif. – January 18, 2012 – Ventana Research, the leading business technology research and advisory services firm providing advice and research to business and IT professionals, has established a research and education partnership with KDnuggets, the data mining community’s top resource for data mining and analytics news, jobs, courses, data and more.

Ventana Research and KDnuggets are partnering to survey the state of predictive analytics to better understand the business benefits...

SAN RAMON, CA, January 12, 2011 – Ventana Research is set to commence new benchmark research and provide education on customer feedback management.

The most objective way of understanding the customer experience is by collecting and analyzing feedback. The output from such analysis can be used to improve customer satisfaction across any channel of interaction from marketing and sales to customer services and contact centers. To deliver the best possible customer experience requires the...

San Ramon, Calif. – January 11, 2012 – Ventana Research’s newest benchmark research and education, Business Analytics in Government, finds that stale, outdated, and inaccurate data plague government efforts in use of analytics.

This in-depth benchmark research on business analytics, the latest from the leading business technology research firm, assessed the maturity and competency of organizations at every level in government. Ventana Research undertook this benchmark research to acquire...

SAN RAMON, CA, January 10, 2011 – Ventana Research is set to commence new benchmark research and provide education on Next-Generation Workforce Management.

Ventana Research finds traditional workforce management is evolving from just a time and attendance centered world to a new form of next-generation workforce management, which requires, among many things, collaborative and mobile tools for workers and managers. Traditional administrative-focused workforce management processes have a...

San Ramon, Calif. – January 6, 2012 – Ventana Research has released its latest Benchmark Research – Sales on the Cutting Edge – Improving the Business of Sales to Maximize Revenue. The research investigates sales, which is the line of business department and function, which is the operational pulse of almost every organization. This research was compared and contrasted with a benchmark Ventana Research conducted in 2008 to uncover ways in which sales has evolved or digressed and examination...

San Ramon, Calif. – January 5, 2012 – Ventana Research has promoted industry veteran Alan S. Kay to Senior Vice President of Research Management.

Alan, who recently celebrated his sixth anniversary with Ventana Research, formerly served as Vice President of Research Management. In his new position, Alan will continue his management role and growth of the development, publication, accessibility, delivery and syndication of Ventana Research’s educational research spanning its industry...

San Ramon, Calif. – December 20, 2011 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that although telecommunications organizations are ahead of most other vertical industries in their use of analytics, many of these organizations still have opportunity for significant improvement. 

With telecommunication business people under increasing pressure to operate more efficiently and make better decisions, it is important they comprehend the full potential of business analytics and how to...

SAN RAMON, CA, December 15, 2011 – Ventana Research is launching new benchmark research and education on Customer Relationship Maturity. While excellent customer interaction and service has traditionally been a hallmark of successful companies, today, an organization's success increasingly depends on the effectiveness of its customer related processes across all departments from marketing and sales to call centers and service. 

Because customer satisfaction has become a key business driver,...

San Ramon, Calif. – December 2, 2011 – Ventana Research has announced the results of the 6th annual 2011 Leadership Awards. The Leadership Awards recognize the technology vendors and their customers that have most effectively achieved success through using people, processes, information and technology and applying best practices within specific business and technology categories.

The Leadership Awards distinguishes pioneers and leaders – organizations and individuals that exemplify the...

San Ramon, Calif. – November 30, 2011 – Ventana Research has released new research on the state of contact centers in the cloud. These cutting-edge business technology deployments provide customer interactions and service across the Internet.  This research details the level of adoption, trends and best practices in organizations’ use of cloud computing-based contact center systems.

Thanks to the Internet, additional customer contact channels have been introduced in recent years to make it...

San Ramon, Calif. – November 22, 2011 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that while insurance companies are advancing in their ability to apply analytics, there is still significant room for improvement in their analytics processes and technology. Insurance companies, under more pressure than ever to operate efficiently and make the right decisions regarding customers, policies and claims that can optimize the full potential from business analytics to be effective.

This...

San Ramon, Calif. – November 18, 2011 – New research from Ventana Research finds that social media is an essential part of organizations’ recruiting practices.  While many organizations realize the importance of social media in regard to recruiting and talent management, most organizations have just scratched the surface of what is possible through integrating it into their hiring processes.

This in-depth benchmark research from Ventana Research, the leading business technology research...

San Ramon, Calif. – October 31, 2011 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that education organizations are making some progress in their use of business analytics, but spreadsheet use and inaccurate data, among other things, keep them from harnessing the full potential of analytics. The education industry is under increasing pressure to operate more efficiently and make better decisions, and it is vital these organizations comprehend the full potential of business analytics...

San Ramon, Calif. – October 28, 2011 – Ventana Research is launching new governance, risk and compliance benchmark research to identify, explore and quantify the ways in which finance, line-of-business operations and IT departments in companies each approaches and executes its specific governance, risk and compliance policies and processes.

While governance, risk and compliance (GRC) are longstanding business issues, the “GRC Software” category is a relatively new categorization of technology...

San Ramon, Calif. – October 24, 2011 –The Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) has named Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer at Ventana Research as its top 2011 Software Industry Analyst of the Year (http://analystrelations.org/2011/10/21/iiar-analyst-of-the-year-winners-2011-announced/#more-3306). Smith was nominated by analyst and influencer relations and marketing professionals across the industry, placing him ahead of analysts from industry giants such as Gartner, Inc....

San Ramon, Calif. – October 19, 2011 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that consumer goods businesses are beginning to mature their competencies in the key areas of people, processes and information and technology, but need more business attention to improve significantly.

Business employees, managers, and executives, under mounting pressure to operate more efficiently and make better decisions, are always looking for improved ways to analyze information in order to predict...

San Ramon, Calif. – October 14, 2011 – Research completed by Ventana Research shows that customer service executives and managers can optimize agents’ time by adopting new approaches and supporting systems that can quickly collect and analyze large volumes of data.

Contact center executives and managers are under pressure to provide the best possible customer service while staying within tight operational budgets. This task is increasingly difficult at a time when call centers are receiving...

San Ramon, Calif. — October 12, 2011 — Ventana Research is launching new information management benchmark research to identify trends, market opportunities and organizational requirements associated with information management technologies and processes.

The importance of information management has risen dramatically in the past few years. As the sheer volume of information being processed continues to increase, it becomes more difficult to ensure consistency and quality while at the same...

San Ramon, Calif. – October 3, 2011 – Talent management has a lot of potential. It can deliver the ability to recruit and retain talent and make workers and managers work together effectively. Yet even the most sophisticated HR organizations haven’t filled the gaps in unifying the talent management processes, let alone helping organizations achieve the level of workforce performance desired. With so many business technology advancements in collaboration, mobility, social media, analytics and...

San Ramon, Calif. – September 30, 2011 – New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds retail organizations that take a focused approach to each element of their operations can support improvement in the key areas of people, processes, information and technology to optimize retailer performance.

With retail organizations under increasing pressure to operate more efficiently and make better decisions, it is imperative that they avoid a general approach to business analytics and instead...

San Ramon, Calif. — September 15, 2011 —The uncertainty of customer behavior and variability in availability and cost of goods and services along with the massive amount of under-utilized business data has peaked the business world’s interest in the use of predictive analytics. Organizations are looking to harness the use of volumes of data from transactions and the Internet to provide statistics, better forecasting and optimization to stay ahead of the curve and competition. Ventana Research...

San Ramon, Calif.- September 14, 2011 – Ever increasing regulatory requirements coupled with increasing pressure to deliver best patient care has caused the healthcare industry to rethink their approach to using business analytics. New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that organizations who take a focused approach to each element of their operations, which vary from finance and administration to operations and billing to the patient care delivered, and to doctors and other...

San Ramon, Calif.- September 13, 2011 – First of its kind benchmark research just completed from Ventana Research shows organizations are adopting cloud computing and cloud-based software at a rapid pace. The research show that nearly 20 percent of organizations are already using it and 40 percent more plan to deploy it in the next 12 months. Using cloud computing allows organizations to rent and access applications easily and then have data created and stored underneath. While easy to get...

San Ramon, Calif.- September 1, 2011 – Mobility computing technologies like smart phones and tablets are here to stay. What was emerging technology is now real technology with applications that operate on them and are taking their rightful place in the business world. Mobility has become mainstream and necessary to create a flexible and agile workforce and to roll out new applications quickly. Mobility combing with cloud computing can be used to access and use applications and tools within...

San Ramon, Calif.- August 31, 2011 –Contact Centers are facing a wave of new challenges. With social media and self-service channels becoming a common method of interacting with customers, the need to support a multi-channel customer contact center is now greater than ever. With that need has come a proliferation of new multi-channel contact center technology choices. Many companies are opting for cloud based computing models. Cloud-based contact centers have advantages to be sure. They can...

San Ramon, Calif.- August 30, 2011 – Sales force automation has reached it’s potential. It can deliver the ability to automate the development of sales opportunities with related accounts, contacts and interaction, sufficient but not enough. With increasing pressures for sales to achieve revenue targets, companies have deployed sales force automation (SFA) in the cloud at a rapid pace. Yet even the most sophisticated SFA solutions haven’t filled the gaps in managing processes and performance...

San Ramon, Calif.- August 10, 2011 – The pressure to deliver a great customer experience, deliver services efficiently and maximize profitability in the services sector has fueled the need for companies to harness and use data more wisely to remain agile and competitive. New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that companies need to use business analytics to help them reach new markets, create new opportunities and make decisions that will guide them to success. 

San Ramon, Calif.- August 2, 2011 – Newly completed benchmark research from Ventana Research shows organizations are paying more attention to managing the effectiveness of their workforce through total compensation management. The new research, which builds on the industry’s first benchmark in 2008, shows that companies have been steadily investing in total compensation management systems instead of the previously used piece-meal approach but the research also indicates there is still much...

San Ramon, Calif. — July 28, 2011 — Finance executives are always looking for ways to close their books faster. Completing the accounting cycle quickly and accurately is a good indicator of efficiency in a finance organization. In most organizations, though, a complex set of issues impedes achieving a fast, errorless close. Ventana Research is studying how organizations close their books, what obstructs the process and how financial executives can move toward a fast, clean close and then...

San Ramon, Calif.- July 26, 2011 – Continued fluctuation in the market coupled with ever changing regulatory requirements has caused explosive growth of information in the banking and financial services industry. New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that companies that turn to focused business analytics to help them maintain market competitiveness and manage today’s vastly greater information flows, operate more efficiently and make smarter decisions.

San Ramon, Calif. — July 20, 2011 — In the face of the mainstreaming of social media, companies have begun to explore the use of these channels as a way to access pools of talent. LinkedIn and Facebook alone have a combined estimated membership of more than 800 million users, and the social media wave doesn’t stop there: Twitter has moved to the forefront as a way to hold 140 character “conversations,” and Google+ is emerging as a player. As these and other emerging channels gain users,...

San Ramon, Calif. — July 15, 2011 — Organizations that manage sales are facing intensified pressure to find new ways to streamline the revenue pipeline and processes associated with it. Ventana Research is launching new benchmark research to help. This newest research from the leading business research, analysis and advisory services firm will explore what steps companies are taking to streamline and improve the sales process, reduce risk and uncertainty and improve revenue flow. The research...

San Ramon, Calif.- July 14, 2011 – To stay competitive, manufacturing companies have sharpened their use of analytics to help them harness today’s torrents of information, new benchmark research from Ventana Research finds. The research for the first time quantifies the extent to which analytics enable them to operate more efficiently, improve business visibility and support faster, more effective decision-making.

San Ramon, Calif. — July 08, 2011 — Ventana Research today is announcing that the 2011 Leadership Awards are open for submissions. These prestigious annual awards recognize organizations and individuals that have achieved notable success in business. These fifth annual Leadership Awards once again will acknowledge significant accomplishments in using people, processes, information and technology and applying best practices to attain superior performance. They recognize business pioneers and...

San Ramon, Calif.- June 29, 2011 – Newly conducted benchmark research from Ventana Research shows organizations are recognizing that addressing big data needs requires new approaches to data and information management. New processes and new technologies have begun to take hold, as have the beginnings of a set of best practices. In particular, Hadoop is emerging in fore-front as a solution for managing large-scale data. The research findings indicate that Hadoop is already being used in one...

San Ramon, Calif.- June 28, 2011 – To maintain and improve their market competitiveness, small and midsized businesses are turning to focused analytics that help them manage today’s vastly greater information flows, operate more efficiently and make better decisions, new benchmark research from Ventana Research finds.

For these businesses the most important categories of metrics are financial (identified by 64% of participants), cost (62%) and operational (53%). However, the research...

San Ramon, Calif. – June 23, 2011 – Ventana Research, Inc., the leading business technology research and advisory services firm providing advice and research to the human capital management market, has established a research and education partnership with HRmarketer.com, the nation’s most popular provider of on demand marketing software and services for companies targeting human resource departments and other B2B decision makers.

PLEASANTON, Calif.- March 11, 2011 - Contact centers are in desperate need of technology transformation to meet the demands of their customers and agents, according to the largest benchmark research ever done on the state of the contact centers worldwide. This landmark research from Ventana Research, which is based on input from almost 500 contact centers in all industry sectors, makes clear for the first time the little-understood challenges faced by management, agents and customers in...

PLEASANTON, Calif. - March 9, 2011 - Ventana Research today released its 2011 Value Index for Customer Experience Management: Customer Feedback Management, the latest in a new category of quantified, research-based Indexes on technology vendors and products. This new Value Index provides guidance that will enable organizations to ascertain the value of applications for addressing the needs of gaining feedback from customers to determine levels of satisfaction to overall customer experience....

PLEASANTON, Calif. - February 28, 2011 - Ventana Research today released its 2011 Value Index for Customer Experience Management: Agent Desktop, the latest in a new category of quantified, research-based Indexes on technology vendors and products. This new Value Index provides guidance that will enable organizations to ascertain the value of applications for addressing the needs of contact center agents in their interactions with customers. Using the Value Index, businesses and the customer...

PLEASANTON, Calif.- February 25th, 2011 - The largest benchmark research ever done on business analytics establishes for the first time that analytics has become the new engine for business competitiveness and profitability. This landmark research from Ventana Research, which involved input from more than 2,850 organizations, makes clear for the first time the little-understood role of business analytics in the success and failure of businesses.