Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

HP’s New World Order according to Leo Apotheker

Posted by Mark Smith on Mar 22, 2011 7:26:33 AM

The new CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Leo Apotheker, has unveiled his vision of the future in the consumer and enterprise markets. His announcement carried some suspense after interviews in which he said “HP has lost its soul” and added that he will “get rid of cynics” inside HP who try to undercut his mission. Now Leo has defined what his company calls Everybody On, which is described as “seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world.” He intends that HP will reposition itself in providing a new generation of cloud services to interconnect its software and technology assets. HP of course is no small technology provider, with over $125 billion in revenue and a predominantly legacy and acquired software business worth over $6 billion. I want to provide some analysis of HP’s announcements in the context of what I see as the coming business technology innovations of this decade. My view overlaps with the HP vision. HP is expanding the territory of its business,  focusing less on the enterprise software business of database, middleware and applications and more on the management and security of cloud services and software.

Read More

Topics: Social Media, Sustainability, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), HP, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

SAS Institute: The Multi-Billion Dollar Business Analytics Supplier

Posted by Mark Smith on Mar 14, 2011 10:21:42 PM

The just-concluded SAS Institute analyst summit (Twitter: #SASSB) provided the annual update on the company’s performance, strategy, products and customers. My analysis of last year’s event talked about its continuation of its product roadmap to new customer acquisition and the broadening of its underlying platform, applications and vertical solutions. SAS is no small-time mover and shaker when it comes to the analytics industry; it extends from technology to tools and applications across industries, which adds up to $2.4 billion in revenue. SAS’s growth was worldwide, with Canada and Asia-Pacific delivering the largest percentage revenue growth and Europe, Middle East and Africa representing the largest revenue for the company at more than $1 billion in revenue; U.S. revenue came in slightly lower.

Read More

Topics: SAS, Social Media, Fraud, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Information Technology, Mobility, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Risk, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Aquire Brings Fresh Face to Workforce Analytics

Posted by Mark Smith on Mar 10, 2011 8:31:09 AM

The state of the economy has intensified scrutiny of organizations’ people assets, and so we’re seeing new dialogues about human capital management. Deriving full value from the people in a workforce requires more than just HR managing annual performance reviews or occasional scrutiny of the compensation processes for increases to merit pay or incremental incentives. Investing wisely in workforce-related processes requires assessment and optimization  using analytics that can provide a lens on the past but more importantly can provide visibility into forward-looking results. This renewed focus on improving the workforce analytics fits with the findings of our recent benchmark on workforce analytics, which shows that workforce analytics are important to 89 percent of organizations. But using them efficiently and effectively is no easy task since spreadsheets are used in 62 percent of organizations.

Read More

Topics: Learning, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Performance, Business Analytics, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Mobility, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

SAS Institute: The Multi-Billion Dollar Business Analytics Supplier

Posted by Mark Smith on Mar 9, 2011 8:47:05 PM

The just-concluded SAS Institute analyst summit (Twitter: #SASSB) provided the annual update on the company’s performance, strategy, products and customers. My analysis of last year’s event talked about its continuation of its product roadmap to new customer acquisition and the broadening of its underlying platform, applications and vertical solutions. SAS is no small-time mover and shaker when it comes to the analytics industry; it extends from technology to tools and applications across industries, which adds up to $2.4 billion in revenue. SAS’s growth was worldwide, with Canada and Asia-Pacific delivering the largest percentage revenue growth and Europe, Middle East and Africa representing the largest revenue for the company at more than $1 billion in revenue; U.S. revenue came in slightly lower.

Read More

Topics: SAS, Social Media, Fraud, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Technology, CIO, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Information Technology, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Risk, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Human Concepts Brings Workforce Analytics and Mobility to the Cloud

Posted by Mark Smith on Mar 3, 2011 1:50:21 PM

Recently Human Concepts sold its personal organizational structure software OrgPlus to Administaff . Since it retains other products with the OrgPlus name, this step might seem puzzling, but it makes sense in terms of the company’s developing product strategy. The sale also frees Human Concepts to focus on organizations with more than 1,000 employees, where growth is more readily available. Human Concepts is experienced in the workforce management market; its customer and partner Zentiva Group won our firm’s 2010 Leadership Award in HR and Workforce Management. Late last year Human Concepts unveiled a new workforce analytics technology tool called Workforce Monitor. It uses the organizational chart as an analytical tool for more than display or monitoring of information – it can provide workforce analytics and planning to serve the needs not only of HR but of line-of-business management and analysts. The product does not just retrofit the limited capabilities of spreadsheets and presentations widely used for analytics, planning and publishing of workforce information. This is a valuable advance; our benchmark research in workforce analytics found that spreadsheets are used universally or regularly in 96 percent of HR organizations but that 39 percent of organizations are not satisfied with their technology and information is not actionable in more than half of organizations.

Read More

Topics: Learning, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Performance, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)