Analyst Perspectives

Ventana Research has announced its market agenda for 2021, continuing the tradition of transparency in our efforts to educate and guide the technology market but also our independence as we do not share our market agenda or analyst perspectives with any external party. Each year, we proudly formulate our market agenda that is not biased by clients or the technology industry, focusing on education rather than the prospect of consulting or software revenue. We review and refine our plan...

The post-pandemic world will see much returned to normal, but there will also be change. For businesses that faced shutdowns, these changes will include higher taxes to pay for the costs of mitigating the economic impact, and the loss of tax revenue. In addition to imposing higher tax rates, some governments will strive to raise revenue by accelerating their adoption of digital technologies to enhance compliance. Taxes are the largest single expenditure for most corporations, both taxes on...

The industry is making huge strides with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). There is more data available to analyze. Analytics vendors have made it easier to build and deploy models, and AI/ML is being embedded into many types of applications. Organizations are realizing the value that AI/ML provides and there are now millions of professionals with AI or ML in their title or job description. AI/ML is even being used to make many aspects of itself easier. Organizations that...

BlackLine recently held its first virtual user conference, Beyond the Black, where it detailed numerous additions and enhancements to its applications. Of note was the launch of BlackLine Cash Application, an accounts receivable (AR) processing software based on software originally developed by recently acquired Rimilia. The new application fits the company's product strategy of providing accounting departments with software that automates time-consuming repetitive tasks and substantially...

In the context of planning, budgeting and benchmarking, external data includes information about the world outside an organization such as economic and market statistics, competitors and customers. Today, a comprehensive set of external data is a “nice to have” item in most organizations, but that’s likely to change. External data is necessary for useful and accurate business-focused planning and budgeting, and for performance benchmarking. It is also essential for the effective applications of...

The contact center has long represented the starting point for customer experience initiatives. Now, however, most organizations are finding that they need to invest beyond this singular point of engagement. When organizations look at customer experience holistically, they see the need to incorporate the perspectives of people in other departments and channels of customer engagement. These diverse new points of view come with an interest in deploying CX technology that also meets their needs....

Data is becoming more valuable and more important to organizations. At the same time, organizations have become more disciplined about the data on which they rely to ensure it is robust, accurate and governed properly. Without data integrity, organizations cannot trust the information produced by their data processes, and will be discouraged from using that data, resulting in inefficiencies and reduced effectiveness.

Organizations are dealing with exponentially increasing data that ranges broadly from customer-generated information, financial transactions, edge-generated data and even operational IT server logs. A combination of complex data lake and data warehouse capabilities are required to leverage this data. Our research shows that nearly three-quarters of organizations deploy both data lakes and data warehouses but are using a variety of approaches which can be cumbersome. A single platform that can...

Businesses are transforming their organizations, building a data culture and deploying sophisticated analytics more broadly than ever. However, the process of using data and analytics is not always easy. The necessary tools are often separate, but our research shows organizations prefer an integrated environment. In our Data Preparation Benchmark Research, we found that 41% of participants use Analytics and Business Intelligence tools for data preparation.

Traditional on-premises data processing solutions have led to a hugely complex and expensive set of data silos where IT spends more time managing the infrastructure than extracting value from the data. Big data architectures have attempted to solve the problem with large pools of cost-effective storage, but in doing so have often created on-premises management and administration challenges. These challenges of acquiring, installing and maintaining large clusters of computing resources gave rise...