The new year started off with a bang in the human capital management software market as SumTotal Systems acquired GeoLearning, a leading learning management system (LMS) software vendor.
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Topics:
Learning,
Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
Workforce Performance,
Compensation,
SumTotal Systems,
Talent Management,
Workforce Analytics
Cloud computing is having an increasingly large influence over the IT landscape. It’s likely that, whether you realize it or not, corporate data exists has and or is migrating outside the walls of your organization. Recent research by Ventana Research shows that in areas such as customer services, sales, workforce or human capital management, software as a service (SaaS) or cloud-based applications increasingly are being accepted and adopted. In our benchmark research on business intelligence...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Data Integration,
Information Management,
Workforce Performance
In a very quiet and very subtle move, Callidus Software (NASDAQ: CALD) has offered to purchase the assets of ForceLogix for about $3.75 million. This sales applications software company provides sales coaching software to help sales managers realize the full value of their sales representatives. In 2010, Callidus Software entered into an OEM agreement to embed ForceLogix within a new offering called Sales Coaching; it clearly concluded that the opportunity to expose the application to further...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Sales Coaching,
Sales Effectiveness,
Sales Operations,
Operational Performance,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Financial Performance,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Workforce Performance,
Callidus Software,
Sales Performance Management
Contact centers face a number of challenges beyond simply answering customer calls. Among them are improving customer satisfaction, increasing the number of calls resolved at the first attempt and ensuring agents comply with regulations. But chief among these, my research into contact center analytics shows, is the mandate to reduce the average length of time it takes to complete calls.
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Topics:
Customer Experience,
Nexidia,
Operational Performance,
Customer & Contact Center,
Call Center,
Cisco,
Contact Center,
CRM
Wall Street has many leading indicators to work with, some serious – such as housing starts and the purchasing managers’ index – and some done a bit tongue-in-cheek. One of the latter is the Super Bowl Indicator, which says that if a team from the original National Football League wins the game, the market will be up for the year, but if an old American Football League team wins it, the market will be down. The amazing thing is that so far this heuristic has an accuracy rate better than 75%! On...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
IT Performance,
Operational Performance,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
Financial Performance,
Information Management
At the 2010 Dreamforce conference (Twitter #df10) in San Francisco, about 18,000 people gathered to learn about the latest in salesforce.com’s applications and technology. Attendees from sales organizations might have been looking for some depth on the next generation of applications to support their sales processes or what the vendor will do to help sales managers manage, sales reps sell products and sales operations support it all. Certainly it’s reasonable for a sales force automation (SFA)...
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Topics:
Sales,
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer Service
SAP is in the process of acquiring certain financial disclosure management software assets from cundus, a German provider of BI and performance management software. SAP will be buying cundus’ Financial Statement Factory and informationCollector, which together manage the collaborative creation and editing of financial and management reports using both structured and unstructured information. SAP expects to complete the deal by the end of 2010.
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Topics:
ERP,
Financial Applications,
Uncategorized,
CFO,
finance,
Financial Performance Management
One of the prominent salesforce.com partners on display at the recent Dreamforce in San Francisco was FinancialForce.com. It’s one of a growing list of providers of in-the-cloud accounting and finance packages built on the Force.com platform. Like other of these accounting vendors (such as Compiere, Intacct, Netsuite and - to some extent and eventually– Workday), it aims principally at companies that have outgrown entry-level accounting software such as Intuit’s QuickBooks. (I covered the...
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Topics:
ERP,
Financial Applications,
Business Performance,
Cloud Computing,
Financial Performance,
CFO,
finance
Last week I attended salesforce.com’s Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco (Twitter #DF10). As a user of salesforce applications for the last four years in my previous positions, I was familiar with its analytic capabilities, or lack thereof. Certainly you can accomplish simple reporting and produce dashboards displaying salesforce data, which is adequate for narrowly focused reporting and analysis. However, as a user I was underwhelmed. For example, there are no built-in capabilities...
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Topics:
Sales,
Salesforce.com,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Customer Service,
Uncategorized
At the SAP Global Influencer Summit (Twitter #SAPSummit) that I just assessed the company addressed, among many other things, its SAP CRM vision and recent advances. SAP has shifted its focus from standard customer relationship management (CRM) to the customer lines of business where professionals increasingly see that the enterprise customer experience should span channels and processes in marketing, sales and customer service. SAP now is focusing on specializing its applications for a...
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Topics:
SAP,
Customer Experience,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Performance,
CIO,
Customer & Contact Center,
Enterprise Software,
CRM