Analyst Perspectives

I wrote last year about how interest in pricing management is now expanding from the traditional use cases in industries such as manufacturing and chemicals. In part, this has been helped by technology changes that are allowing vendors to offer the advantages of pricing optimization and management without the “science project” approach, which has previously convinced many that the returns did not justify the disruption and time to value of traditional initiatives. All three parts of a typical...

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal to Office of Revenue vendors...

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Subscription Management, I want to share some of my observations about an important component of subscription management: Contract management.

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Subscription Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market is evolving. The era of subscriptions has transformed the way businesses operate and consumers engage with services across every industry. Organizations are increasingly adopting a digital approach to selling goods and services, wherein customers have the option to purchase through periodic subscription pricing or based on consumption, rather than...

Conga is part of our Office of Revenue market coverage and I recently attended the 2023 Conga Connect conference held in Orlando during April of 2023. The conference was the public reveal of a new Conga, with significant announcements in three main areas. First was the overall positioning within a self-designated category of revenue life cycle management. Secondly was the first public revealing of a new Conga platform. And finally, announcements of new partnerships were headlined by a...

I have been involved with customer relationship management for over 15 years, and although that is not as long as the category has been around, it does coincide with an era where companies and commentators are calling into question the application’s effectiveness. To counter this perception, both CRM vendors and complementary third-party “add-ons” have developed new functionality that aims to improve the “R” in CRM, especially as it relates to sales engagement. But much of this additional...

Configure, price and quote (CPQ) software has been traditionally viewed as a specialist outpost of software, almost exclusively B2B and predominately used in manufacturing or specialty chemicals or other industries where there were large variants of similar products that required careful configuration, pricing and ultimately generating a quote that could be forwarded to a prospective customer for consideration. But in recent years, this has changed, both in the number of vendors offering CPQ...

Ventana Research has announced its market agenda for 2023, continuing a 20-year tradition of credibility and trust in our objective efforts to educate and guide the technology market. Our research and insights are backed by our expertise and independence, as we do not share our Market Agenda or our market research – including analyst and market perspectives – with any external party before it is published. We continuously refine our Market Agenda throughout the year to ensure we offer the...

Those of us who have worked in or alongside sales teams have observed that many sales fundamentals have changed over the years. Yet, in many ways, they have not. One essential that has not changed is sales enablement. How do you onboard salespeople and quickly bring them up to speed? Or, how do you introduce new products and services so the sales team is conversant and knowledgeable about them? In years past, this would have happened at the head office or a regional office, with videos and...

The technology industry has established itself as a pivotal force in its ability to help organizations become more intelligent and automated. But doing so has required a journey of epic proportions for most organizations that have had to endure a transition of competencies and skills that was, in many places, transitioned to consulting firms who were hired appropriately to manage changes. Unfortunately, this step led, in many cases, to an extended focus on digital transformation rather than the...