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        ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

        Business process reengineering (BPR) was a consulting fashion in the early 1990s that spurred many companies to purchase their first ERP systems. BPR proposes a fundamental redesign of core business processes to achieve substantial improvements in market and customer responsiveness, productivity, cycle times and quality. Those early ERP systems provided a platform to manage cross-functional business processes with much greater flexibility and efficiency than had been possible in the past,...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, lease and tax accounting

        Customer service and support (CSS) is a term with two meanings. Most generally, it refers to the functions of a contact center in handling post-sales customer inquiries that require some effort or action on the part of the business. More specifically, it refers to the elements of the software stack that facilitate those operations, primarily case tracking and trouble ticketing.

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        Topics: Customer Experience, Analytics, Contact Center, agent management, AI & Machine Learning

        Ventana Research defines intercompany financial management as a discipline for structuring and handling transactions within a corporation and between its legal entities. IFM is designed to maximize staff efficiency and accounting accuracy while optimizing tax exposure, minimizing tax leakage and ensuring consistent tax and regulatory compliance. Today, IFM is an obscure topic, but I assert that by 2025, one-half of organizations with 10,000 or more employees will have implemented intercompany...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Revenue, robotic finance, lease and tax accounting

        The objectives of zero-based budgeting are well aligned with what I call integrated business planning, a technology-enabled approach to managing the forward-looking activities of a corporation including forecasting, planning and budgeting. IBP enables every business unit to plan their business in a way that makes sense to them but also makes the numbers in those plans available for company-wide planning, budgeting analysis and reporting. IBP combines operational planning and financial budgeting...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, robotic finance, Predictive Planning

        Subscription pricing models are no longer new. Many companies have experience with this pricing model even if there has not been complete adoption across their entire product and service offerings. Companies that use this model, or have spent time looking at the approach, understand the approach of a recurring revenue stream based on a repeating flat fee.

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        Topics: Performance Management, Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Commerce, Predictive Planning, Subscription Management

        Alation recently announced the release of its 2021.1 version, introducing new data governance capabilities, enhancements in search and discovery through data domains, and extended connector and query coverage for data sources. Alation’s new federated authentication enables users to query cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Snowflake, Tableau and more, using a single sign-on. The release also includes a Search application programming interface that allows for the integration of Alation...

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        Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Preparation, Data, Information Management (IM), AI & Machine Learning

        Unit4’s Financial Planning and Analysis (formerly Prevero) is a planning and budgeting application designed for the requirements of midsize corporations and the public sector. These organizations are challenged in buying software because they have almost all the requirements of larger enterprises but have a smaller budget and limited technical resources.

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        Topics: Office of Finance, embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Technology, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Predictive Planning, collaborative computing, AI & Machine Learning

        Financial consolidation software assists companies in executing their accounting close process - especially those that use multiple ERP systems or have multiple legal entities - and with other characteristics that can complicate the process such as keeping books in multiple currencies. Not every midsize company needs consolidation software because many find their ERP (or financial management) software satisfies their needs. Our Office of Finance research finds that just 5% of midsize companies...

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        Topics: Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

        Everyone talks about data quality, as they should. Our research shows that improving the quality of information is the top benefit of data preparation activities. Data quality efforts are focused on clean data. Yes, clean data is important. but so is bad data. To be more accurate, the original data as recorded by an organization’s various devices and systems is important.

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        Topics: Data Governance, Data Preparation, Data, Information Management (IM), data lakes

        There is a sea change happening in the Human Capital Management systems market. Historically, the predominant orientation of human resources departments has been about mission and goals from an employer’s perspective, spanning areas such as regulatory compliance, workforce costs, efficiency and effectiveness levels, and actions needed to improve skills and overall impact. This rather one-sided focus is now in the rearview mirror of many successful organizations. There’s a new orientation or...

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        Topics: Human Capital Management, Learning Management, Workforce Management, Total Compensation Management, employee experience, candidate engagement, Continuous Payroll

        There are many software components that facilitate contact center operations. Historically, the industry has relied, in part, on niche or best-of-breed applications but this is shifting in favor of broadly integrated suites or ecosystems. When we look at CX trends beyond the contact center, the shift is even more pronounced, with the bundling/collection of applications from martech to CRM-incorporating software that were formerly/previously purchased separately.

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        Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management, marketing sales

        Observed both here and elsewhere, average sales quota attainments appear to be in an exorable decline. As I discussed in my recent Analyst Perspective, "The Art and Science of Sales from the 'Inside Out'," vendors of sales technology have reacted to this by adding a slew of new functionality including the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to be a game changer for sales. One can argue that this use of AI is still relatively immature having been generally available only since 2014, but...

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        Topics: Sales, Human Capital Management, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Sales Performance Management, candidate engagement, sales enablement, AI & Machine Learning

        The joining forces of two sizable companies, in this case totaling over 12,000 employees, can be expected to elevate both business risk and business opportunity. The risk side of the ledger typically impacts employees and customers. Employees become distracted or have their productivity dip until they know exactly how they will be impacted and what is changing, or even leaving voluntarily. Similarly, a segment of existing and potential customers view a merger as a net positive down the road but...

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        Topics: Human Capital Management, Learning Management, Workforce Management, Total Compensation Management, employee experience, candidate engagement, Continuous Payroll

        Machine learning is valuable for organizations, but it can be hard to deploy. Our Machine Learning Dynamic Insights research identifies that not having enough skilled resources and difficulty building and maintaining ML systems are pressing challenges organizations face in applying ML. Traditional ML model development is resource-intensive, requiring significant domain knowledge and time to produce and compare dozens of models. And as the number of ML models grow, their management becomes...

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        Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Data, AI & Machine Learning

        As I have discussed in my Analyst Perspective, The Art of Sales, from the Inside Out, the challenges facing direct sales leaders are not going away. Declining quota attainment, lack of visibility into deal health and difficulty in forecasting quarterly sales remain a challenge for sales leaders, resulting in a continuing reduction in duration of tenure.

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        Topics: Sales, Analytics, Sales Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, sales enablement, AI & Machine Learning

        Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a catch-all term that refers to the collection of customer feedback in various formats. Sometimes this feedback is in the form of quick surveys or reactions to questions like, "Did I resolve your issue today?" or "Would you recommend our service to a friend?" Alternatively, it can be derived from less specific but more numerous data signals that span multiple interactions or across a customer base. Most businesses make an effort to capture some customer feedback.

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        Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Contact Center, agent management, AI & Machine Learning
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        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@ventanaresearch.com

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