Posts Tagged ‘Analytics’

How to Select Integration Partners, the DMA Way

April 14th, 2010

dykeh

Just a quick post following the Computerworld SaaScon 2010 conference in Santa Clara recently …

I was very pleased by the extremely bullish outlook on cloud computing voiced at SaaSCon, especially by representatives from some of the larger companies. More than one speaker indicated that the market has reached a tipping point, where the maturity of services and software offered, combined with the current economic climate, are making the cloud much more attractive to large companies. Some, like Bob Sala, CEO of Distribution Marketing Advantage, stressed that moving to the cloud is now a strategic imperative. (more…)

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Highlights from the 2010 Pacific Crest Technology Conference : SaaS as a Catalyst for Business Intelligence and Analytics

February 27th, 2010

qgallivan

This week I was on a panel discussing the growing state of Cloud Computing and the SaaS BI market.  The panel consisted of moderator Nabil Elsheshai, Senior Analyst of Information Management Software and IT Services at Pacific Crest along with Bill Soward, CEO of Adaptive Planning; Brian Gentile, CEO of Jaspersoft; Scott Weiner, CTO of Cloud9, and myself.  I want to share some key themes and observations from the event particularly because they set the tone for the next evolution of BI.

The criteria IT uses to buy BI has shifted, resulting in a new approach to BI decision-making. The era of high risk, complex and time consuming implementations is giving way to a new era of quick BI wins defined by specific business use-cases that are implemented in days, not months or years, with no CAPEX spending and extremely fast time-to-value. At PivotLink we’re seeing this shift in buying criteria being driven by both IT and the line of business.  IT needs to deliver a faster turnaround on BI solutions for high priority business projects and do so with limited resources. SaaS BI is a perfect augmentation strategy for legacy BI implementations. By enabling IT to better support the business with highly secure, easy-to-use tools and right-time data – all  without breaking the bank or bringing on new resources - SaaS BI is the best tool for these high value quick BI wins!

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Interesting Outcomes from the TDWI Conference in Orlando

November 11th, 2009

terie

There were a few interesting outcomes from the TDWI conference last week in Orlando, Fl. Noticeably it had a much higher attendance than the spring conference – a sure sign organizations are looking at BI to guide them out of the recession and manage in the new normal. Judging from the number of visitors we had at the PivotLink booth, I’d say that people are eager to learn about new ways to deploy analytic capabilities more broadly in their organizations; either leveraging existing data warehouse initiatives or rapidly adding business analytic tools without the traditional overhead and costs.

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Analytics Offerings at Salesforce.com Dreamforce

November 11th, 2009

Ajay Dawar

As we look ahead to Dreamforce 2009 next week, I wanted to share some experiences and recommendations for those seeking to augment their SFA deployments with sales analytics. Having interfaced with the Sales divisions of over 200 B2B companies while at Siebel, LucidEra and PivotLink, I thought you may find the following observations pertinent:

1. Analytic requirements should be part of your SFA deployment

Thinking ahead to how your analytics needs will look 1-year out from your SFA deployment will help you get your business processes and data quality issues addressed up front. I remember distinctly seeing this best practice executed by a Fortune 500 CIO. He defined very well his analytic requirements and created a usage analytics dashboard to make sure all SFA users were diligently populating the key fields with the right data to help future reporting. His team was then able to quickly take action to gain insight into their business, and take action to drive results.

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Dynamic Insight and Decision-making Becomes the “New Normal”

November 5th, 2009

qgallivan

As companies continue to focus on managing costs and capital in these challenging economic times, the need to turn reams of data into actionable business insight has never been more imperative. Business leaders are now challenged to get more productivity from the same or fewer amounts of people resources as well as manage inventories and demand forecasting to the highest level of accuracy. As companies plan growth strategies to take advantage of the future economic recovery, their efforts will be guided by dynamic, granular insight from across the business. Using that information to make decisions at the speed of business will become the “new normal” in a post-recession economy.

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