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Mobile App Analyzes Best Customer Service Options
May 1, 2012Nice Systems says its Mobile Reach application helps customers identify the best options for assistance in completing self-service transactions.
Yammer Positions Its Social Software as Intranet Replacement
April 24, 2012Yammer enhances search and content sharing capabilities in its latest software release. It also announced integration with Microsoft's Dynamics CRM application.
SugarCRM Credits Open Source for Growth, Intros Software Updates
April 24, 2012SugarCRM integrates the open source Lucene search engine into the latest version of its software to offer users a Google-like search experience. An executive says open source figures strongly into the company's growth.
eXo Software Promises Social Intranets Made Simple
April 19, 2012Company says the cloud-based service integrates social business and enterprise collaboration features in an on-demand offering.
Cloud Plans Getting More Cohesive
April 19, 2012A new study from Saugatuck Technology suggests organizations are taking a more cohesive approach to purchasing and deploying cloud-based software.
10gen Aims to Increase Enterprise Adoption of MongoDB NoSQL Database
April 17, 201210gen, the lead commercial sponsor behind MongoDB, last week announced two partnerships designed to help get the open source NoSQL database on the radars of companies looking for solutions to their Big Data challenges.
Genesys Links Mobile Apps with Contact Center Agents
April 17, 2012Genesys Mobile Engagement helps companies offer improved service to the growing numbers of consumers using their smartphones for customer service and support.
arcplan Enterprise 7.2 Ready for Big Data
April 9, 2012The new release from arcplan supports in-memory appliances used to analyze Big Data from SAP and Kognitio and also offers enhanced multi-tenancy to provide a foundation for cloud-based business intelligence.
inContact Refreshes Cloud Contact Center Software
April 6, 2012New features aim to break down communication silos in the call center and streamline workflow to enhance agent effectiveness and boost customer satisfaction.
SugarCRM Completes $33M Financing Round
April 5, 2012Provider of open source CRM applications hopes cash infusion will help it add more enterprise customers in 2012. It turned in a strong performance in 2011, achieving 67 percent top-line billings growth and adding more than 2,700 new customers.
Sonoma Partners Introduces Mobile Dynamics CRM App for iPad
April 5, 2012Customizable Mobile Sales Kit application offers integration with Microsoft's SharePoint and built-in analytics for field sales teams.
Bluewolf, Bunchball Partner to Help Businesses Become Social Enterprises
April 4, 2012Everyone knows how to use Twitter, right? Not necessarily, so consulting firm Bluewolf created an offering using Bunchball's gamification technology to teach employees how to get business results with social media.
SAP Expanding Predictive Analytics Strategy
April 3, 2012SAP plans to soon release BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis Software, a tool for predictive modeling and advanced visualization. It's currently available through SAP's Ramp-Up program.
IBM Stresses Simplification with DB2 Update
April 3, 2012IBM's DB2 10, available April 30, uses automation to perform some of the more mundane data management tasks so IT professionals can focus on more strategic data duties.
Aktana Launches New Name, New Sales Intelligence Software
April 2, 2012Application features a sales suggestion engine that delivers context-aware recommendations on which prospects to visit, which products to pitch and other information for sales reps in the field.
Host Analytics Intros Business Intelligence Tool for Finance Pros
March 30, 2012Provider of cloud-based corporate performance management software says the tool provides self-service reporting and dashboarding capabilities.
Big Data Pros Are Made, Not Born
March 29, 2012IBM, Hortonworks and Cloudera are among the companies providing training to help people hone their Big Data skills.
Knowledge Workers Find Sales Analytics Lacking
March 28, 2012A new survey finds just 19 percent of knowledge workers are happy with the analytics capabilities of their sales force automation software.
Web Chat, Speech Analytics Hottest Contact Center Technologies for 2012
March 27, 2012Web chat and speech analytics will be the two fastest-growing contact center technologies this year, according to Contact Babel research.
SAS Introduces Visual Analytics for Big Data
March 23, 2012In a demonstration of its new data exploration and visualization solution, SAS took pains to differentiate what it calls high-performance analytics from simple business intelligence.
Nucleus Research: Social, Mobile CRM Boost Sales Productivity
March 21, 2012According to a new Nucleus Research report, adding social features and mobile access to CRM applications increased the productivity of sales people by 26.4 percent. Beyond productivity, social and mobile can help align CRM with broader corporate objectives.
Axeda Integrates M2M Data with SAP CRM, ERP
March 19, 2012Axeda Corporation's alliance with SAP Gold Certified Partner GlobalSoft Solutions enables SAP customers to utilize machine-to-machine data across the enterprise.
Zendesk Analytics Tool Helps Companies Understand 'Silent' Customers
March 15, 2012The provider of help desk software says its new analytics feature gives companies direct visibility into how customers use self-service content. This insight can help them optimize their self-service strategies.
SAP Performance Management, Meet HANA
March 13, 2012SAP says its BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application will be the first enterprise performance management app to support its HANA-powered NetWeaver Business Warehouse component.
Infor Connects ERP with Salesforce.com CRM
March 12, 2012The Inforce Everywhere application, built on Salesforce's Force.com platform, keeps core CRM data in sync with data from ERP, offering what Infor calls "a 360-degree view" of customers
NetBase Adds New Capabilities to Social Media Monitoring Software
March 12, 2012NetBase, a social media monitoring specialist that has a sales partnership with SAP AG, is introducing several new solutions for its multi-lingual ESI Platform at this week's SXSW event.
Five Mistakes That Can Wreck Your BPM Project
March 8, 2012Noting that business process management initiatives can be "fraught with challenges," Gartner cautions companies to avoid five common BPM pitfalls.
Jive Targets Social CRM Market with Customer Service Solution
March 8, 2012The social software company says a key differentiator for its solution is the ability to support both external customer communities and internal communities where customer service agents can share expertise and collaborate to resolve customer issues.
FinancialForce.com Offers New Collaborative Capabilities in Accounting Software
March 8, 2012Do finance professionals want to collaborate? FinancialForce.com is betting on it, by adding social features to the latest update of its accounting software.
SAS Jumps on Hadoop Bandwagon
March 6, 2012SAS is now including Hadoop support in its Enterprise Data Integration Server, with SAS SVP Jim Davis saying SAS "helps enterprises pull value from Hadoop deployments using minimal resources."
SAP Offering More Cloud Choices
March 6, 2012The software giant announced a slew of new features for its Business ByDesign suite and a new multi-tenant version of its Business One software that it expects will appeal to companies at the smaller end of the SMB scale.
Demand for CRM Developers on the Rise
March 2, 2012One recruiting firm says its CRM job candidates typically field multiple offers and often land a position in a single day.
Backupify Offers 'Snapshots,' Piece of Mind for Salesforce.com Data
March 2, 2012Service is designed to allay fears of moving data to the cloud by protecting against data loss and corruption due to user error or third-party application integration.
MarkLogic Latest to Join Ranks of Hortonworks Hadoop Partners
March 1, 2012Partnership integrates MarkLogic’s operational database with Hortonworks' Hadoop-powered data platform.
Alteryx Adds New Features to 'Desktop-to-Cloud' Analytics Software
February 29, 2012Alteryx Strategic Analytics 7.0 adds enterprise cloud connectors, an Apache Hive connector that integrates data from Apache Hadoop, and native integration of the R programming language for predictive analytics.
Latest Version of OpenERP Includes Social Features
February 24, 2012Provider of open source enterprise management software says new release adds 85 applications.
Visible Technologies Updates Enterprise Social CRM Platform, Adds Solution for SMBs
February 23, 2012A social performance dashboard that presents data and metrics from multiple sources is among the new features.
Companies Still Challenged by ERP Implementations
February 22, 2012The bad news: According to a Panorama Consulting study based on ERP implementations completed in 2011, 54 percent of companies said their ERP projects took longer than expected and 56 percent spent more than expected. The good news: That's an improvement over last year's study.
Oracle Enhances Enterprise Healthcare Analytics with Data Integration Feature
February 22, 2012The software giant says its Healthcare Analytics Data Integration consolidates, integrates, validates and loads source data from clinical, financial, administrative and research systems into Oracle's healthcare data model.
Getting Started with Workforce Analytics
February 17, 2012Carl C. Hoffmann, one of three authors of “Calculating Success: How the New Workplace Analytics Will Revitalize Your Organization,” discusses using workforce analytics to promote knowledge sharing and also shares six key steps for introducing workforce analytics to an organization.
Persistent Systems Rolls out Analytics Software Optimized for IBM Big Data Platform
February 16, 2012Email analytics and social media analytics solutions run on top of IBM’s InfoSphere BigInsights platform.
SAP, Oracle Face Off in Human Capital Management Showdown
February 15, 2012Both SAP and Oracle recently acquired providers of software-as-a-service human capital management solutions, setting the stage for a big battle in the cloud. What does this mean for customers of both companies, and for the HCM space in general?
Nimble Gets More Social With New Version of Contact Management Software
February 14, 2012Social CRM provider Nimble has added several new features to its contact management software, including social discovery, dynamic engagement and marketing integration.
Pegasystems Updates CPM Software With Social, Mobile Features
February 13, 2012Pegasystems has always taken a process-oriented approach to CRM. Now it’s making social and mobile a key part of its approach as well.
Fine Tuning Your Workforce with Analytics
February 13, 2012As part of the red-hot human capital management market, workforce analytics is gaining attention from executives looking to derive competitive advantage from their workforces.
Five Mobile Business Intelligence Blunders You Won't Want to Make
February 7, 2012Organizations need to be aware of some common pitfalls that can really wreck a mobile business intelligence initiative.
Social Adds New Twist to Customer Service, Support
February 6, 2012Consumers increasingly expect companies to provide a consistent user experience across emerging channels like social as well as traditional ones like the call center. This will be a challenge for companies that keep their data, business processes and best practices in departmental silos.
Microsoft Offers CRM on Any Device with Latest Dynamics Update
February 6, 2012The latest update of Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM software offers native clients on Windows Phone 7, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry platforms.
NetSuite Q4 Earnings Show Move Upmarket for SaaS ERP
February 3, 2012NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson attributed a significant amount of 2011’s revenue growth to the SaaS ERP provider’s business with larger companies. In the fourth quarter, NetSuite saw a 43 percent increase in deals worth more than $100,000.
Cloud9 Wants to Take Spreadsheets Out of Sales Forecasting
February 1, 2012Cloud9’s new Intelligent Forecasting Suite integrates with CRM systems to record changes to CRM data and analyzes the data to identify historical patterns of success and failure.
TrackVia Rolls Out New Build-Your-Own App Features
February 1, 2012Cloud-based database provider TrackVia adds more collaboration and reporting functionality to its online application builder, which it says allows users to create and deploy their own apps to track and manage projects and data.
Contest Highlights R Language's Big Data Analysis Power
January 25, 2012Revolution Analytics, a commercial provider of software, services and support for the open source R language, awarded $20,000 to contestants in an event designed to highlight the business usefulness of R.
Infor Introduces Mobile Platform
January 23, 2012The Infor10 Motion platform is built on the Infor10 ION framework and thus offers the ability to connect to back-office systems like ERP and CRM. The first two applications built on the platform, Infor10 Road Warrior and Infor ION ActivityDeck, are available through Apple’s iTunes store.
Enkata Updates Architecture for Big Data
January 20, 2012The provider of cloud-based customer experience analytics and workforce optimization software is using Hadoop and other emerging technologies to help its clients enjoy business intelligence benefits from Big Data.
Arcplan Updates Collaborative Business Intelligence Software
January 19, 2012Version 2.0 of the Engage solution for collaborative business intelligence is integrated with arcplan Spotlight, a self-service tool that allows users to search for information and perform ad-hoc analyses, then save results in personalized widgets.
Former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra Keeps Disrupting, at Salesforce.com
January 17, 2012Vivek Kundra, the first-ever federal CIO, has joined Salesforce.com as its executive vice president of emerging markets. Based on his title, it seems likely Kundra will help Salesforce broaden its market reach beyond North America.
Birst Wants to Democratize Big Data
January 12, 2012Partnership with ParAccel brings Big Data within financial reach of smaller companies.
BPM Gets Out of the Back Office
January 11, 2012Business process management practitioners say their clients are beginning to use BPM not just to streamline their back-office processes, but also to improve their customer-facing processes.
Tangerine Software Tool Adds Business Intelligence Capabilities to Sage ERP X3
January 10, 2012Systems integrator says Nectari supports real-time access from Microsoft Excel to Sage ERP X3 and other data sources.
VC Funds Flowing to Social CRM Companies
January 6, 2012This time it’s Lithium Technologies that attracted venture capital. It raised $53.4 million in a Series D funding round led by New Enterprise Associates. Other investors include SAP Ventures, the VC arm of German software giant SAP.
Social CRM Provider Nimble Attracts Big-name Investors for Seed Round
January 5, 2012Nimble gets $1 million in seed funding from investors including Mark Cuban, Don Dodge, Jason Calacanis and Dharmesh Shah.
Infor Gearing Up for Growth in 2012
January 3, 2012ERP provider reports 17 percent growth in licenses in 2011. New innovation center positions it for more growth in 2012, says its CEO.
GlobalOne Goes Vertical with Cloud CRM Solutions for Financial Services
December 19, 2011Vendor wants to help financial services companies take advantage of cloud-based social and mobile CRM capabilities by offering solutions targeted to specific verticals like asset management.
Birst Aims for Analytics Sweet Spot with In-Memory Database
December 14, 2011Vendor says in-memory database offers data analysis capabilities of more costly enterprise solutions in a smaller and more affordable footprint.
SAP Makes Social Analysis Play with NetBase Agreement
December 12, 2011SAP is selling NetBase’s social media analytics software and examining opportunities to integrate it with SAP applications, including CRM, business intelligence and ERP solutions.
ERP No Longer Application End-all, Be-All
December 9, 2011Computer Economics’ Frank Scavo says companies are beginning to think of ERP in a new way, as a foundation for innovation.
Oracle Updates JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools
December 8, 2011Oracle stresses its commitment to existing product lines with refresh of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools.
CRM Going Social, Mobile
December 7, 2011Major vendors like SAP and Salesforce.com are betting mobile and social technologies will be a prominent part of CRM strategies in 2012.
Salesforce Makes Mobile Move
December 5, 2011Salesforce.com makes it easy for iOS, Android users to get mobile apps via its AppExchange.
Business Intelligence is Going Mobile
November 28, 2011In a new report, Howard Dresner says the future is mobile business intelligence, collaboration and the cloud.
Mobile Business Intelligence: Slow Start, Bright Future
November 8, 2011A new survey says mobile business intelligence use could soar in the next year. Will it?
Rocky Economy Drives Interest in Work Force Analytics
September 6, 2011Back in July I wrote a post suggesting CIOs could provide business value by working with human resources professionals. HR is a largely untapped opportunity for CIOs, because HR has been slow to adopt software that can be used to improve employee recruitment, onboarding, performance management, training and other key HR functions.
Shift from Reporting to Analysis Requires Asking the Right Questions
August 25, 2011It used to be so much simpler to hire a data analyst. You looked for someone who knew how to take data that had been loaded into and then extracted from a data warehouse and produced reports based on that data.
SAP Looks to Partners for Mobility Boost
July 27, 2011I've been hitting the tablet angle for business intelligence pretty hard, writing about it several times in the past few weeks. But that's because so many companies are demanding it and vendors are rolling it out.
HUD's CIO Understands Importance of Data
July 21, 2011In May, I wrote about how data-driven decision making was far from a mainstream practice despite its obvious benefits. A growing number of CIOs, however, appear to be recognizing the possibilities for creating value through better use of all the data most organizations are collecting.
Starbucks Brews up Business Case for Mobile BI
July 7, 2011It's only been a few weeks since I wrote about the growing buzz for mobile business intelligence, particularly when it's delivered via tablets. I shared BI expert Howard Dresner's opinion that iPads and other tablets, which are popular with executives, offer a great way to expose them to the potential of business intelligence.
BI Should Be BMOC -- Big Major on Campus -- in College
June 21, 2011The need for more BI education comes out strongly in a State of Business Intelligence survey conducted by the BeyeNETWORK and Saint Joseph�s University.
Shared BI Responsibility Leads to Success
June 3, 2011I love a story about a successful deployment of business intelligence. (Who doesn't?) So I enjoyed reading about Station Casinos' installation of a real-time enterprise data warehouse with BI reporting that it uses for customer gaming and guest interaction data at its 18 properties.
Oracle Gets Actionable with Retail Analytics
May 25, 2011Lots of organizations want business intelligence to be not just about collecting data and creating reports, but about directly facilitating operational improvements.
Accountability Is Key to Data Governance
May 17, 2011As I wrote last week, citing a recent study by the MIT Sloan School of Management's Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, there's a growing awareness that companies can derive real value from data.
Data-driven Decisions a Best Practice, but Still Not Mainstream
May 13, 2011Technology itself provides few game-changing benefits. It's all in how organizations apply technology to improve their business processes. Business intelligence is a case in point.
Microsoft Opens up Its Business Intelligence
May 6, 2011Remember when Microsoft had a reputation as an "anti-open" software company that zealously guarded its proprietary code?
BI Getting More Social
April 28, 2011I've long thought that business intelligence and social technologies were made for each other. Last January I wrote about BI and mashups, noting mashups not only make it easier for users to work with disparate data but also to share their insights with coworkers.
Gartner: BI Spending Grows 13.4 Percent in 2010
April 21, 2011It seems companies turn to business intelligence to give them a competitive edge in a still-shaky economy. Enough of them did it last year to drive a healthy increase in BI spending.
MicroStrategy Software Update Promotes Insight-as-a-Service
April 19, 2011I think the whole "as a service" phrase has jumped the shark as I was quick to tell a Verizon representative who recently walked me through the company's unified communications-as-a-service offering. "Nice solution, but change the name. The whole 'as-a-service' thing is over," I told him.
Dresner Survey Shows 'Above Average' Take on BI
March 29, 2011In a post I wrote as 2010 was drawing to a close, I noted that a year-end wrap-up piece on TDWI named "insurgent" business intelligence, an approach that minimizes IT involvement, as one of the five top BI trends for the year.
Considerations for Mobile Business Intelligence
March 16, 2011Mobile business intelligence is something every organization should at least be thinking about, considering that influential industry analyst Howard Dresner recently predicted mobile will become "fundamentally the new platform for business intelligence."
Bad BI Can Send Projects Off the Rails
February 22, 2011I've got a working list of eight factors that can derail IT projects. Bruce Benson recently offered a list of five bad project practices on his Project Management Tools That Work blog, all of which involve how organizations collect and manage their data.
Keys to a Successful BI Competency Center
February 8, 2011A business intelligence best practice pretty much everyone can agree on is establishing a BI competency center (BICC). While competency centers are a good idea for any enterprise software initiative, they are especially important for BI because both BI technologies and business objectives for them are evolving so rapidly.
Data Visualization and Getting Users out of BI Rut
February 4, 2011Ever read an annual report without a pie graph? Me either. That's because most companies recognize the value of using visuals to break up reams of dry data and spotlight significant trends in a way that's accessible to users.
Does BI Need More Integrated Analytics?
January 24, 2011It's not unusual for people to use the terms "business intelligence" and "business analytics" interchangeably. But now with a debate brewing over whether analytics should become a standard part of BI offerings, it seems like a good time to clarify the differences between the two.
End User at Center of BI Trends for 2011
January 13, 2011As I wrote recently, there's a growing sense that business intelligence just isn't cutting it for a lot of folks, leading to a trend TDWI recently dubbed "insurgent" BI. As TDWI noted, a slew of emerging vendors including Bis2 Inc., WhereScape Inc., Kapow Inc. and Expressor Software Corp. are introducing solutions designed to be deployed with minimal assistance from IT.
Smart Spending Boosts BI Performance
January 7, 2011Sometimes an IT budget that's too big is as bad as one that's too small. IT pros with lots of dough have the luxury of buying more hardware to solve their infrastructure ills. The result (sometimes, though certainly not always) is they may not pay enough attention to building a solid business intelligence architecture and following sound operational procedures.
BI 'Insurgence' the Big Story of 2010
December 28, 2010As the year draws to a close, it's time for all of those "looking back at the trends of the prior year" stories.
What is Future of HP's Neoview?
December 23, 2010Earlier this month, longtime HP observer Mark Smith, CEO and EVP of Ventana Research, wrote that HP may be planning to abandon its Neoview business, by ceasing product development and sales and marketing efforts for the data warehousing technology.
Would Business Intelligence by Another Name Be Better?
December 16, 2010I must confess, I get tired of all the effort put into trying to define nebulous IT terms like "cloud computing." Thus my initial response to a post by Rob Collie on the =powerpivot(pro) blog, in which he suggests it might be time to rename traditional business intelligence, was an eye roll.
Cookie Cutter Approach to BI Won't Cut It
December 8, 2010With all of the new business intelligence tools and technologies available, it doesn't make sense to use a single approach to BI.
A Little Forethought Makes a Lot of Difference in Business Intelligence Projects
November 30, 2010With all of the advances in business intelligence and data analysis, a significant number of business decisions aren't based on data.
Will Developers Help Drive Open Source Business Intelligence?
November 8, 2010Actuate, sponsor of the open source business intelligence project BIRT and a provider of commercial BI software based on BIRT, last week announced the project has surpassed 10 million downloads.
BI a Bright Spot in 2011 Hiring Plans
November 1, 2010If there's a bright spot in IT staffing for 2011, it's in business intelligence, an area identified by the Corporate Executive Board as likely to be a big focus for companies in the next year.
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