Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

Total Compensation Is Hot in Human Capital Management

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 29, 2012 11:17:50 AM

We have just released our 2012 Value Index for Total Compensation Management (TCM), in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this category for many years, and our latest benchmark research in total compensation management found some improvement among applications in a field where many organizations still use outdated applications to manage an area with large financial and human capital impacts.

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Topics: Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Peoplefluent, SuccessFactors, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Excentive, Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, Sales Performance Management (SPM), SumTotal Systems, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), TCM, Value Index, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

The Mandate for Social Collaboration in Business

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 28, 2012 12:32:09 PM

It is hard to avoid seeing the impact of social media on our daily work, from marketing and sales to customer service. Consumers and customers can interact on the Internet to share their experiences and opinions often and easily, but internally we in business are still operating in the era of electronic mail and phone calls. Fortunately, that archaic state is changing. A new generation of technologies called social collaboration has evolved from social media to adapt to business needs. These technologies include broadcasting like Twitter, posting to digital walls like Facebook, discussion forums and online communities, and chat-based interactions, all used in a secure manner by an organization’s workforce. Since social collaboration is about people interacting for a common purpose across processes, using it for human capital management makes a lot of sense.

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Topics: Social Media, HCM, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Social Collaboration, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, IT Performance Management (ITPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Talent Management, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Globoforce Engages Employees with Social Recognition

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 27, 2012 2:34:07 PM

The use of social collaboration to support human capital management is increasing as the need to engage talent becomes a higher priority in organizations. In particular, those that have a growing population of workers from the millennial generation see social media as a primary means of communication. Social collaboration is growing in acceptance – 58 percent of organizations now permit it, according to our benchmark research on social collaboration and human capital management (HCM). For many organizations, this opens up communication with employees that goes well beyond electronic mail.

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Topics: Big Data, Social Media, Sustainability, Globoforce, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Social Collaboration, Social Recognition, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Business Performance Management (BPM), 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)

Get Sales Applications That Make You Smarter and More Engaged

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 27, 2012 2:10:45 PM

It’s clear that sales organizations need to be efficient, but many are unaware of critical applications they could deploy to establish sales excellence. In my recent analysis, “Sales Organizations Need a Swift Technology Kick”, I outlined why sales departments have to look beyond using sales force automation (SFA) and spreadsheets andexamine dedicated applications for improving productivity and effectiveness. Our benchmark research in sales applications found a new set of application priorities in sales organizations that you should assess to determine how well your sales efforts match up to others’. Also, in most cases, we found the prioritization and needs of sales organizations are not aligned, resulting in wasted time and likely creating a lack of access to accurate information for sales management and operations.

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Topics: Big Data, Sales, Social Media, Sustainability, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Sales Forecasting, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Location Intelligence, 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), SFA, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Pitney Bowes is Transforming Customer Communications

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 25, 2012 11:19:40 AM

Pitney Bowes (PB) opened its annual technology summit (Twitter: #TechSummit12) with a review of its organizational assets and its rich history of engineering hardware and systems for physical and now digital delivery of communications. The multibillion-dollar technology giant is transforming itself to address the digital needs of business for interaction with consumers. It also is working to transform how business communications and interactions work across all channels. Handling new media interactions using Facebook, Twitter, e-commerce and mobile technologies are critical to managing communications in a consistent manner and improving the customer experience.

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Topics: Big Data, Social Media, Customer Analytics, Customer Communications, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Pitney Bowes, Portrait Software, Volly, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM)

IBM Advances Predictive Analytics for Decision Management

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 22, 2012 12:42:17 PM

At its Business Analytics Analyst Summit (Twitter: #IBMBAS12) this week, IBM unveiled its new release of analytics software for decision management. Over the last 25 years decision support systems have transformed into decision management, in which analytics, rules and optimization methods help organizations use information to guide optimal outcomes. IBM has experience and technology in these areas, most of it acquired, to apply to specific organizational needs in vertical industries. In addition, IBM has advanced its information management technologies to support big data and predictive analytics in operational environments. Its stream- and event-processing technology helps speed routing and analysis of information across business processes. Each of these are critical for supporting decision management technology needs for business processes.

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Topics: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, IBM, Business Performance Management (BPM), Business Process Management, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Decision Management, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Hortonworks Leads a Fast and Growing Herd of Hadoop

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 22, 2012 12:04:22 PM

Hadoop, the big-data technology, has transformed businesses’ ability to cost-effectively store and process large volumes of data for analysis. Numerous companies have invested in supporting Hadoop, and some produce commercial versions of the open source technology. At last year’s Hadoop Summit Hortonworks had just started to establish itself as one of these providers. Now, at the 2012 Hadoop Summit, with a new CEO, Rob Bearden, a new head of marketing, John Kreisa, and other hires, it is moving fast to advance its Hadoop momentum.

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Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Hortonworks, Information Applications (IA), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Teradata Aster, Strata+Hadoop

Planview Helps Direct Business and IT Portfolios to Optimal Outcomes

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 20, 2012 11:55:26 AM

Business has been getting smarter about using technology for analyzing processes and optimizing outcomes, but still has much room for improvement when it comes to operational management. Traditional project management has advanced to encompass financial and operational planning, including prioritization toward goals and expected outcomes, creating the concept of portfolio management. In essence, optimizing the use of people and processes associated with products and services along with supporting technology is what portfolio management is all about. Unfortunately, many organizations that use personal productivity tools do not realize that email, presentations and spreadsheets are not efficient or effective  tools for these purposes compared to adopting applications designed for them.

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Topics: Operational Performance Management (OPM), Portfolio Management, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), CFO, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Enterprise Revolution of Predictive Analytics with Version 6

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 15, 2012 11:40:58 AM

In our benchmark research in predictive analytics we’ve uncovered some intriguing tools for taking advantage of big data in the enterprise. Revolution Analytics, which we analyzed earlier this year, this month introduced its 6.0 release. Revolution extends the open source statistical programming language R with capabilities you would expect out of enterprise software. The company has grown substantially over the last several years and has an impressive list of more than a hundred customers in both the private and public sectors. Revolution partners with database and data integration providers such as Talend and Informatica and business intelligence providers who want to connect to more advanced level of analytics. Revolution can operate across a range of big data architectures, including Hadoop, working with Cloudera and IBM as well as data warehouse appliances such as IBM Netezza and Teradata. This is a smart move, since predictive analytics is the second most important unavailable capability cited by big data deployments in to our benchmark research.

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Topics: Big Data, Linux, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Predictive, Revolution, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Business Performance Management (BPM), Data Mining, Strata+Hadoop

Teradata Aster Standardizes Access to Hadoop with SQL-H

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 13, 2012 1:10:11 PM

Using Hadoop just got easier, thanks to Teradata’s introduction of SQL-H, a new query interface to analyze data from Hadoop.  Most Hadoop access methods require preprocessing and staging of data from the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) using technologies such as MapReduce. These approaches require new skills and technologies, introducing more time and costs for users, which offset the benefits of Hadoop, which according to our big data benchmark research include increasing the speed of analysis. Teradata has announced support for SQL-H not only for its own Aster Database 5.0, which it expects to release in the third quarter, but also supporting the commercial version of Hadoop through Hortonworks.

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Topics: Big Data, Teradata, SQL-H, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Hortonworks, Information Management, Data, Information Management (IM), Strata+Hadoop

SuccessFactors Connects People with New Applications

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 8, 2012 12:16:59 PM

I attended SuccessConnect (Twitter: #sconnect), the annual SuccessFactors conference, to hear the latest from this talent management applications company. A lot has changed for the formerly independent company since it acquired Plateau less than a year ago and Jobs2Web. In turn, earlier this year SAP acquired SuccessFactors to expand its cloud computing business. Its recently outlined expansion as part of SAP’s overall cloud computing strategy is beginning to take shape.

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Topics: Social Media, HCM, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Performance, Recruiting, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

New Generation of Big-Data Analytics with 1010data

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 8, 2012 11:18:08 AM

At first I thought 1010data just developed a faster data warehouse technology to be used with business intelligence tools. After a recent briefing, however, I learned  that it provides much more than a data warehouse; the product is a large-scale analytics server that empowers business analysts to work on big data, conducting for, example, market basket analysis or correlations of customer and product information. The software lets organizations retain and analyze more data and increase the speed of analysis, which our benchmark research on big data found to be the top two benefits of the technology for more than 70 percent of organizations.

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Topics: Big Data, Data Warehousing, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Predictive, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Information Management, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM)

Talemetry Finds and Verifies Candidates Better than Others

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 7, 2012 11:12:19 AM

Talent Technology software finds and verifies candidates for hire in organizations that use it, as I discussed in my analysis last year. The company’s newly announced product Talemetry Verify provides candidate screening and assessment to help recruiters and job seekers.

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Topics: Operational Performance Management (OPM), Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

Information Builders Advances Business Analytics and Big Data

Posted by Mark Smith on Jun 6, 2012 1:06:29 PM

More than 1,000 people attended the 32nd annual Information Builders Summit conference this week to learn about the company’s advances in big data, business analytics, cloud computing, mobile technology and social media, which CEO and founder Gerald Cohen announced and demonstrated during his keynote address. With WebFOCUS version 8, Information Builders has made significant strides in a range of technology areas to support analytics and visualization since my analysis after last year’s conference.

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Topics: Big Data, Mobile, Social Media, Sustainability, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Management, Location Intelligence, 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), Search, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM)