Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

The Weak Link in Data Governance? Analytics

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 30, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Data governance is a hot topic these days. In fact, we are conducting benchmark research on the subject here. With increasing regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), organizations face more external oversight of their data governance practices. The risk of significant fines associated with these and other regulations, coupled with organizations’ internal compliance requirements, has brought more attention to data governance practices. We anticipate through 2023, three-quarters of Chief Data Officers’ primary concerns will be governing the privacy and security of their organization’s data.

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Topics: Analytics, Data Governance, Data, Digital Technology

The Transformation of Account-Based Marketing for Revenue Optimization

Posted by Keith Dawson on Sep 29, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Account-based marketing (ABM) serves as a model for how a complex manual activity can be improved and automated. That does not mean it always goes well. ABM is a practice that many B2B marketers swear by, but it can be very difficult to get a technology-enhanced ABM program up and running.

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Topics: Marketing, Marketing Performance Management, Product Information Management, Digital Marketing, intelligent marketing, Digital Experience Platform, Conversational Marketing

Collibra Brings Effective Data Governance to Line-of-Business

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 28, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Collibra is a data governance software company that offers tools for metadata management and data cataloging. The software enables organizations to find data quickly, identify its source and assure its integrity. Line-of-business workers can use it to create, review and update the organization's policies on different data assets. Collibra’s software uses a microservice architecture and open application programming interfaces to connect to various data ecosystems. Its data intelligence cloud platform can automatically classify data from various sources such as online transaction processing databases, master repositories and Excel files without moving the data, so the information assets stay protected.

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Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Information Management, Data, data lakes, AI and Machine Learning

The Pandemic Heightens Need for Agent Management

Posted by Keith Dawson on Sep 24, 2021 3:00:00 AM

The primary effect of the pandemic on agent/workforce management beginning in 2020 was a rush to re-site and re-equip contact centers and agents. This was achieved with a surprising speed and smoothness industrywide. But once achieved on a “temporary” or “emergency” basis, it became clear that this shift was going to be semi-permanent. Even if the majority of the agent population moves back into standard centers, there is now a consensus that some portion of the workforce will work from home. As a result, the industry’s vendors have focused their messaging and short-term roadmaps on enhancing workforce engagement, or what we call agent management. These include promoting tools for measurement, management, and supervisory tools like mobile interfaces into workforce systems.

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Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, agent management

Sisu Optimizes Analytics with Machine Learning for Actions & Decisions

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 23, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Sisu Data is an analytics platform for structured data that uses machine learning and statistical analysis to automatically monitor changes in data sets and surface explanations. It can prioritize facts based on their impact and provide a detailed, interpretable context to refine and support conclusions. The product features fact boards, annotations and the ability to share facts and analysis across teams. Data teams and analysts start by creating common definitions of key performance indicators, which Sisu then utilizes to automatically test thousands of hypotheses to identify differences between groups.

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Topics: business intelligence, embedded analytics, Analytics, Collaboration, Data, AI and Machine Learning

BillingPlatform Bolsters the Rise of Subscription Services

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on Sep 22, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Subscription management and billing services help organizations offer unique benefits and enhance delivery to customers. By making services more personalized, organizations can acquire – and retain – more customers.

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Topics: Sales, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, natural language processing, AI and Machine Learning, revenue and lease accounting, continuous supply chain, Subscription Management, partner management, digital finance, Process Mining, Streaming Analytics, supplier relationship management

Managing Price Inflation Effectively with Technology

Posted by Robert Kugel on Sep 21, 2021 3:00:00 AM

A looming challenge for companies in the developed world is price inflation, an issue periodically fretted over – but not experienced at a macroeconomic level in most developed economies – over the past four decades. Price inflation has been a frequent bugaboo that never emerged because of persistent disinflationary forces in the world economy over the past forty years. It remains to be seen to what extent recent price rises are persistent or transitory but “what if?” was the most important phrase organizations used in 2020. What if this time it really is different?

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Topics: Office of Finance, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Uniphore Automates Intelligent Conversations

Posted by Keith Dawson on Sep 16, 2021 4:00:00 AM

Customer support operations increasingly rely on automation and complex workflow processes to reduce costs and improve experiences. Automation also allows organizations to make their service processes richer, incorporating information and staff from back offices, for example, or embedding conversational tools into contact center processes.

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Topics: Customer Experience, embedded analytics, Analytics, Contact Center, natural language processing, AI and Machine Learning, agent management, Customer Experience Management, Field Service, Process Mining, Streaming Analytics, customer service and support

Rapidminer Platform Supports Entire Data Science Lifecycle

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 16, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Rapidminer is a visual enterprise data science platform that includes data extraction, data mining, deep learning, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) and predictive analytics. It can support AI/ML processes with data preparation, model validation, results visualization and model optimization. Rapidminer Studio is its visual workflow designer for the creation of predictive models. It offers more than 1,500 algorithms and functions in their library, along with templates, for common use cases including customer churn, predictive maintenance and fraud detection. It has a drag and drop visual interface and can connect to databases, enterprise data warehouses, data lakes, cloud storage, business applications and social media. The platform also supports push-down processing for data prep and ETL inside databases to minimize data movement and optimize performance.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Preparation, Data, data lakes, AI and Machine Learning

Workforce Planning: Seizing the Moment Strategically

Posted by Ventana Research on Sep 15, 2021 12:00:00 AM

It’s no secret that many large organizations operate in a somewhat insular and siloed manner. This dynamic applies to corporate functions where value-creation from taking advantage of operational synergies could otherwise be quite significant. Historically, human resources and finance departments, for example, were among the operating areas known to closely collaborate only when absolutely necessary. Actually, the 1992 book, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," comes to mind when I reflect back on how I needed to navigate around a lack of integrated HR/finance data and processes when I was a global HR practitioner, especially since this was often exacerbated by the use of stereotypes like "people/people vs. numbers/people." The combination of these factors clearly created a sense of disconnectedness between the two groups. And having different definitions for commonly used business terms — like headcount and labor costs — as well as different methods for measuring and reporting on these items didn’t make the situation more manageable. But that wasn’t the whole enchilada of operational challenges when linking HR and finance: You also had to account for different processing and reporting cycles and cutoff dates, which often created hours of agonizing reconciliation work for the respective teams.

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Topics: Human Capital Management, Talent Management, Workforce Management, Total Compensation Management

Revenue Management Maximizes Partner and Reseller Subscriptions

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on Sep 15, 2021 12:00:00 AM

Among the many digital economy trends written about in recent years, one of the most significant has been the adoption of a subscription business model. For organizations with a business model that also includes reselling third-party products and services, this shift to subscription services adds complications and potential challenges.

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Topics: Customer Experience, Product Information Management, Price and Revenue Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Subscription Management

Essential Technology for Continuous Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on Sep 14, 2021 12:00:00 AM

As a result of the rapidly changing business landscape in 2020 and the need to quickly – and intelligently – change business plans and budgets, many more companies have been deciding to adopt a continuous planning approach to be able to add speed and flexibility. Transforming how organizations plan and budget has become a top-of-mind issue for CFO and even CEOs. Ventana Research has been advocating what we call continuous planning to improve organizational performance. In this multimedia Analyst Perspective, SVP and Research Director Robert Kugel discusses three important technologies necessary for continuous planning – technologies that can substantially enhance the effectiveness of the FP&A organization.

HubSpot Video
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Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, budget, CFO, financial planning

Confluent Helps Organizations Tackle Streaming Data

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 9, 2021 3:00:00 AM

Confluent Platform is a streaming platform built by the original creators of Apache Kafka. It enables organizations to organize and manage streaming data from various sources. Confluent launched its IPO in June this year and raised $828 million to further expand its business. Confluent Platform was brought to several public cloud vendor marketplaces last year as Confluent Cloud. The offering is currently available in Azure, AWS, and GCP marketplaces. Furthermore, the company strengthened its partnership with Microsoft at the beginning of this year, establishing Confluent Cloud as a fully managed Apache Kafka service directly available on Microsoft Azure. Azure customers can access the extensive library of pre-built connectors, a unified billing model with options to use Azure committed spend on Confluent Cloud, and deeper integrations with Azure services.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data, AI and Machine Learning

Subscription Automation Enables a Better Subscriber Experience

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on Sep 8, 2021 3:00:00 AM

A subscription business model and an exceptional customer experience are equal priorities for many organizations. Much has been written about both: Subscription and usage services are considered the business model for the digital age, and a great customer experience is how organizations acquire and retain customers. I believe that by 2024, the category of subscription management software will emerge with a suite of applications and platform supporting the subscriber experience through the complete customer lifecycle to drive operational effectiveness.

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Topics: Customer Experience, Subscription Management

Expert.ai Earns 2021 Digital Innovation Award for Digital Technology

Posted by Mark Smith on Sep 7, 2021 3:00:00 AM

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

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Topics: Customer Experience, Analytics, Internet of Things, Digital Technology, blockchain, natural language processing, Awards, Conversational Computing, AI and Machine Learning, collaborative computing, mobile computing, extended reality

ConverSight.ai Earns 2021 Digital Innovation Award

Posted by Mark Smith on Sep 2, 2021 3:00:00 AM

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

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Topics: Continuous Planning, Analytics, Product Information Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, Conversational Computing, AI and Machine Learning, collaborative computing, continuous supply chain, work experience management

Informatica Earns Data Digital Innovation Award for 2021

Posted by David Menninger on Sep 1, 2021 3:00:00 AM

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

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Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Information Management, Data, Digital Technology, blockchain, data lakes, AI and Machine Learning

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