In enterprise technology, as in consumer technology, it’s tempting to buy first and sort out all the details for making it work later. Thus, many marketing organizations that have been investing in technologies that help them communicate with consumers via…
Open source ERP provider OpenERP, which announced a new name and a $10 million round of funding earlier this year, has released digital marketing software that enables small companies to better compete with larger competitors. The marketing apps are the…
by Pedro Cardoso, BackOffice Associates At last year’s Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Summit, the failure rate of BI and analytics projects was estimated at 70 percent-plus worldwide. While disconcerting, sadly this is nothing new and represents a failure rate that…
Data visualization is not new. During a recent International Institute for Analytics (IIA) webinar, Bill Franks, chief analytics officer for Teradata and author of several books including Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave and the forthcoming The Analytics Revolution, shared…
IT organizations have long used IT service management (ITSM) systems and the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework to improve service quality by streamlining, standardizing and automating processes. Some companies are looking to achieve similar gains by expanding their use…
While CIOs are bullish on business intelligence, other C-level executives are not quite as enthused. And end users are even less satisfied with business intelligence. At least some of that dissatisfaction is because users do not tend to appreciate BI…
Stability, security, scalability: For years, these were the primary criteria companies used in selecting enterprise software. Usability, if considered at all, was given short shrift. That is beginning to change, however, with the dawning realization that users who do not…
In Macy’s latest annual report, the company refers to itself as an “omni-channel retail organization operating stores and websites.” It also no longer breaks out its sales by channel. While this shift represents an improvement over a not-so-distant past in…
Clarabridge, a provider of customer experience management (CEM) software, is rolling out Clarabridge Speech, a speech analytics solution made possible through its partnership with Voci, a provider of hardware-accelerated speech recognition technology. The new solution makes it possible for contact…
Yahoo has been widely credited with helping create the Big Data phenomenon by popularizing the open source Hadoop data processing platform. So it’s no wonder that dozens of Yahoo alumni have gone on to found companies that are considered stars…
Interest in in-memory database technology is picking up, thanks to the speed with which it can retrieve data when compared to traditional disk-based systems. SAP introduced its in-memory HANA database management system in late 2010 and had the market largely…
Earlier this year Logi analytics rolled out Logi Vision, software designed to make data discovery accessible to “regular” business users. Today it rolled out the first major update, Logi Vision 1.3, with new features including an activity stream modeled on…
It can feel like a little like executive overload, with companies adding emerging roles like chief digital officer and chief customer officer to the more traditional ranks of chief executive officers, chief financial officers and chief operating officers. As more…
By Gregory Horvath, KPMG LLP Automation is a hot topic, and something we’re all coming to expect in our personal lives — from our homes, banks and retailers — and now inside our workplace. A new report issued by KPMG…
Big Data is the new Big Man on Campus. As the New York Times reports, schools offering data science programs include Columbia, the University of San Francisco, Stanford, New York University, Northwestern, Syracuse, the University of California at Irvine, George…
As we noted last week, adoption of enterprise social software does not appear to be keeping up with investment levels. Adoption is obviously key to attaining a return on investment, so we asked several experts for their advice on getting…
By Rob Hammond, Syniverse Now that we are in the second half of 2014, I’ve been reflecting on a busy year of travel and come to the conclusion that our industry has a dysfunctional relationship with the mobile app. My…
Investment in enterprise social software appears to be picking up. Frost & Sullivan recently reported that subscriptions for such software grew nearly 30 percent from 2012 to 2013 and predicted the number of enterprise social subscriptions would hit 535 million…
Is Tibco for sale? The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones both published reports that it is, which led to a 7.5 percent increase in its stock price yesterday. CNBC analyst Herb Greenberg believes HP and IBM are among the…
Sometimes you have to listen to your gut. That’s a sentiment you don’t often hear in today’s data-driven environment. But that doesn’t mean instinct shouldn’t play a role in product strategy, said Andy Byrne, founder and CEO of Clari, a…
By Steve Brykman, Propelics Many organizations still use pen and paper as the preferred platform for many, if not all, of their mobile processes. Budget-focused clients reticent to adopt a digital format for their most oft-used processes frequently tell us:…
Qlik, a provider of data discovery software, introduced a free version of its data visualization application called Qlik Sense Desktop. The app makes business intelligence accessible to non-technical users by employing a drag-and-drop interface that allows users to create interactive…
Many sales teams continue to eschew analytics software and use Excel spreadsheets for their sales forecasting and trend reporting. Host Analytics, a provider of cloud-based enterprise performance management software, hopes to change that with a new application called Host Analytics…
The PowerPoint presentation is a fixture of corporate life. So it’s no surprise that third-party vendors create products designed to help companies derive more value from Microsoft’s popular software. Earlier this month SAVO Group introduced Sales Presentation Pro, an application…
By Adam Marchick, CEO, Kahuna Push notifications today are like Hotmail in 1999. Mobile marketers and developers know they are onto something, but they are not always sure how to optimize for success. A critical part of mobile marketing success…
With enterprises looking for new ways to use data to gain competitive advantage, database design is now more important than ever. Here are some best practices that will result in a well-designed database. Focus on the data, not the application…
Contact centers have long recorded customer telephone calls in an effort to improve agent performance and increase customer satisfaction. But this strategy has become less effective as a growing amount of information comes from emerging channels like Twitter and online…
Startups are not for the faint of heart. That is not a problem for Michael DeFranco, founder and CEO of Lua, a young company that provides real-time communications software. Inspired by his Hawaiian heritage, DeFranco took the company’s name from…
There is no shortage of startups in the burgeoning fields of Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT). In fact, the proliferation of startups may make it tough for companies to determine which ones have solutions that can help…
By Natalia Dykyj, Vocus Marketing automation holds the promise to solve a lot of the pain that marketers live with on a daily basis. Once marketers make the leap into automation though, they sometimes end up using only a few…
Mobile ERP has been on the enterprise radar for a while now, with experts telling us companies will begin to adopt it in significant numbers. In our list of top 8 ERP trends for 2014, for example, Panorama Consulting Managing…
It’s no secret that applications are exploding in the enterprise, especially mobile apps. A recent Fiberlink survey revealed that 60 percent of mobile devices being managed by enterprises had 25-99 applications. In discussing the results of the survey with Enterprise…
Salesforce.com offers customer support options in its Sales Cloud and its Service Cloud, as can be seen in this explanatory blog post by Salesforce partner akaCRM. Both, however, are likely a bit too complex for smaller companies. For them, Salesforce…
By Glenn Gruber, Propelics We recently heard the news about Virgin Atlantic piloting Apple’s iBeacon location-aware technology. Mobile is transforming many industries, travel as much as any. The out-of-home and often unfamiliar nature of travel makes it an almost perfect…
Nearly a year after launching a “behavior lab” aimed at helping it better address the needs of enterprises, Badgeville, a provider of gamification software, is introducing Badgeville for Communities, a solution for adding game, reputation and social mechanics to community…
Co-browsing offers customers an experience similar to screen sharing except it remains in the browser and does not share information other than the page being browsed. Pegasystems is investing in this technology by purchasing Profeatable Corporation, a startup that makes…
Many folks believe the enterprise mobility trend has left IT organizations vainly struggling to contain rogue mobile devices packed full of malware, questionable content and who-knows-what-else. The reality is more mundane – and should comfort CIOs and other executives, said…
Adoption of business technology is often slower than expected. That’s been the case for enterprise social networking, which vendors have been pushing for going on a decade now. Despite interest in leveraging social technology to boost collaboration and productivity in…
By Rob Howard When people utilize social business tools and technology, they expect to find an ideal experience on any device they use, be it a smartphone, tablet or laptop. As a company, you must be prepared to provide optimal…
While most organizations are eager to get Big Data projects off the ground, early adopters are running into hurdles. According to the QuinStreet Enterprise 2014 Big Data Outlook, more than half of early Big Data adopters cited challenges with existing…
A stint as an analyst at a venture capital firm showed Robert Moore he didn’t want a career in finance. Instead, he wanted to build his own company. And his work at Insight Venture Partners convinced him and co-worker Jake…
Adobe has long been a fixture in marketing departments, thanks to its popular Photoshop photo-editing software and its Portable Document format (PDF), which many enterprises use for whitepapers, press releases and the like. But while it’s long been a favorite…
Contact center software provider Genesys has formed an alliance with Zendesk to integrate its cloud contact center solution with the Zendesk customer service platform. The development relationship spans all of the Genesys Customer Experience Platform editions. The combined product will…
Enterprise adoption of mobility appears strong, judging from results of a Good Techology survey that found a 54 percent growth in companies’ use of mobile apps in the fourth quarter of 2013. So it’s not surprising that a growing number…
IntelliResponse, a provider of enterprise virtual agent technology, has launched OFFERS, software that presents real-time, customized promotions to customers during a customer service interaction. After a customer asks a question online and receives an answer from a virtual agent, OFFERS delivers…
TouchCommerce is rolling out TouchConnect, software for contact centers that steers customers off the traditional call channels via online engagement and guides them to self-service. This helps call center operations improve next call prevention (NCP), increase customer loyalty and improve customer…
By Priya Singh, Information Builders All companies struggle to manage the cyclical data quality process. A majority of organizations use only a fraction of their enterprise information to gain the kind of actionable insight needed to facilitate superior business performance.…
Big Data is not just within the purview of big companies. That’s the takeaway of new research from Competitive Edge Research Reports. The firm’s study, which was commissioned by Dell, found that 41 percent of midsize companies are already involved…
A 2012 poll found that 80 percent of consumers would cease doing business with a company following a bad experience with an interactive voice response (IVR) system. It’s no wonder IVR doesn’t get any love from consumers. For every well-done…
Florida-based Fanhub has rolled out a social CRM system that introduces follows, comments, @mentions and notifications into sales, support and case management, promising enhanced collaboration among coworkers. According to the company’s website, the software was designed by employees of parent…