It should be no surprise for those who work in sales that increasing outcomes collectively is not always easy. Sales teams and individuals work under pressure to perform at high levels, selling more than they did in the previous period or more than the person who previously had responsibility for a territory. Today’s economic and competitive environments demand that everyone work not just faster but smarter in their sales efforts. To excel in this environment requires not just wise use of time but prioritization of the activities and tasks that contribute to achieving the quota and forecast. In the past, sales organizations often resisted adopting new technology, but it’s time for them to realize that tools are available to facilitate better sales performance. As I outlined in the overview of our business and technology research agenda for this year, the sales department has a ripe opportunity to get smarter in how it operates. This is the essential point of our research practice in sales applications and technology: Our methodical benchmark research examines applications and technology best practices and benefits for sales organizations, and we assess the vendors and products in this market through our Value Index ratings. We will start 2014 with the latest release of our Value Index on Sales Performance Management, which will help sales management evaluate products to assist in improving performance of the organization.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Sales,
Social Media,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Compensation,
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Sales Performance Management,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
SFA
Businesses are always looking for ways to grow and to streamline their operations. These two goals can come into conflict because as organizations become larger it becomes more complicated to be agile and efficient. To help them understand and modify their processes, businesses can derive insights from analytics applied to their data. Today that data is available not only in the enterprise and cloud computing environments but also from the Internet. To collect, process and analyze it all is a challenge, one that an increasing number of organizations are meeting through the use of big data technologies. The resulting insights can help them make strategic business decisions such as where to focus efforts and how to engage with customers. At Ventana Research we have been working hard to understand the advancing technology that supports big data and its value through information optimization and bring clarity to the industry through our research and analysis of trends and products. There are many opinions about big data and fixation on the attributes of it through the V’s (volume, variety and velocity) and how to use it, often biased toward one technology or vendor; our research and analysis of the entire market cuts through the noise to provide not just facts but insights on best practices and methods to apply this technology to business problems.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Social Media,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
CIO,
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),
Information Optimization,
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM),
Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
With much fanfare and a rarely seen introduction by CEO Ginni Rometty, IBM launched IBM Watson as a new business unit focused on cognitive computing technology and solutions, now being led by Senior Vice President Mike Rhodin. The announcement is summarized here:. Until now IBM Watson was important but had neither this stature in IBM’s organizational structure nor enough investment to support what the company proclaims is the third phase of computing. As IBM tells it, computing paradigms began with the century-old tabular computing, followed by the age of programmatic computing, in which IBM developed many products and advancements. The third phase is cognitive computing, an area in which the company has invested significantly to advance its technology. IBM has been on this journey for some time, long before the IBM Watson system beat humans on Jeopardy!. Its machine-learning efforts started with the IBM 704 and computer checkers in the 1950s, followed by decades of utilizing the computing power of the IBM 360 mainframe, the IBM AS/400, the IBM RS/6000 and even IBM XT computers in the 1980s. Now IBM Watson is focused on reaching the full potential of cognitive computing.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Social Media,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Cognitive Computing,
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Discovery,
Exploration,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
IBM Watson,
Information Applications (IA),
Information Management (IM),
IT Performance Management (ITPM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM),
Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
Greetings, everyone, and best wishes for a great start to 2014. In this new year, utilizing best practices and skills learned in 2013 will be critical for optimizing the use of efforts to support both business and IT. In 2013 many organizations made progress in balancing technology decisions across business and IT as the lines of business continued to take leading roles in investment and prioritization. Major investments were made in business applications using software as a service, business analytics and mobile computing applications. In some other areas of innovation, particularly big data and social collaboration, deployments are just beginning to happen and a significant amount of projects are in experimental and proof of concept than enterprise use.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Social Media,
Market Research,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Intelligence,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Location Intelligence,
Operational Intelligence,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CFO,
COO,
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),
Technology,
Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
