Data.
Not opinion.

Analytical Platforms 2024

Analytical Platforms are integrated technology environments that include all needed functionality to support multiple analytical or BI use cases, including data engineering, data catalog, self-service BI, data science and machine learning, embedded BI or analytics, and cloud support.

Our 4th annual Analytical Platforms Report reflects a dynamic landscape where the conversation around platforms gained considerable momentum. In this edition, we delve into the critical question facing many organizations today: whether to adopt a single-vendor technology platform that offers a comprehensive suite of core analytical and BI capabilities, or to pursue a “best-of-breed” approach that combines specialized solutions from multiple providers. This decision is increasingly pivotal as organizations work to consolidate resources, streamline analytics operations, and ensure scalability.

2024-11-13

Sales Performance Management 2024

Sales performance management (SPM) enables the sales organization to develop plans and manage and analyze performance for staffing, revenue, and territories, among other areas. SPM includes sales planning and sales analytics.

Dresner Advisory’s 7th annual report examines end user behaviors around SPM adoption, budgets, and overall success, analyzed by organization size, geography, and other attributes. The report scores the importance of the main areas of SPM including features, integrations, and technologies, as reported by end user respondents. According to the report, adoption of SPM is highest in sales, finance, and marketing with broader functional broader functional adoption growing over the past several years. Rolling sales forecasts, account segmentation and scoring, and predictive sales forecasting are the top three SPM features.

2024-10-31

Financial Consolidation, Close Management, and Reporting 2024

The 2024 Financial Consolidation, Close Management, and Financial Reporting Market Study, is part of the Wisdom of Crowds® series of research. Financial consolidation systems combine and aggregate financial data from multiple operating entities to produce an overall consolidated financial view of the group's operations.

The 2024 study examines current usage, priorities, and objectives and includes a new analysis of why organizations implement FCCR software, thus helping data leaders understand how these solutions are a vital component of a BI and analytics strategy. The study shows an increase in FCCR adoption among younger organizations, and priority ratings by younger organizations increased across all aspects of FCCR, an indication that younger organizations are leveraging FCCR to help manage growth.

2024-10-17

Make BI Tool Consolidation a Priority in 2025

he pace of BI tool consolidation projects increased in recent years and now sits at an all-time high level, with 36 percent of organizations reporting plans to consolidate business intelligence (BI) tools. Organizations reporting high degrees of success in their BI initiatives more frequently plan and successfully execute BI tools consolidations.

By promoting and guiding their organizations through refinement of their portfolios of BI tools, data leaders can reduce costs and deliver greater returns from BI investments. Although organizations most frequently cite cost reduction and ease-of-use improvements as the main drivers for this work, our most recent data show additional drivers increasingly present, including alignment with strategic direction or corporate standards, improved functionality, and desire to remove unused shelfware. The latter represents the fastest-growing driver of tool consolidation in the last year.

2024-12-20

To Enable More Value Creation, Embrace the Right Use of Spreadsheets

Ask any of your business analysts—even the broader user community at large—and the vast majority will consider spreadsheets essential to do their jobs. Despite decades of trying to marginalize spreadsheets, their use remains very high (at 85 percent). Data leaders who take a hard line on curtailing the use of spreadsheets in their data and analytics estate (and even cast them as “necessary evil”) will soon discover that, like the game “Whac-A-Mole,” spreadsheets will pop up all over the place—even in places they didn’t exist before.

Any strategic data and analytics plan requires a thorough understanding of the value of spreadsheets in business operations. Data leaders need to realize that perceptions about spreadsheets tend to be relative—that is, one person’s “tactical” use of spreadsheets just as easily may be another person’s “strategic” requirement. As such, data and business leaders will require a meeting of the minds that encompasses their potentially conflicting points of view.

2024-12-12

BI Tools Longevity Data Show Right Fit, Better Skills, and More Experience Lead to Greater BI Success

Data leaders and their teams historically emphasized “getting the right tools” in place and then judging whether business intelligence (BI) tools work well for their organizations. Although tool choice matters, data leaders increasingly realize more important factors also contribute to enabling BI success. Organizations that stick with their chosen tools and focus on growing skills and experience with them tend to be more successful than those that are impatient, blame the tools for lack of success, and constantly seek tools that are a “better fit.”

Incumbent BI tools on average have been in an organization for at least three to five years, with longevity of in-place tools increasing over time. Since 2020, more organizations report tools in place for more than three years, and fewer of them indicate tools in place for less than three years. These data indicate that more data leaders and their teams realize that BI success does not come from tools alone. They retain tools longer while spending more time and resources on the “softer” drivers of BI success—including skills, experience, and data literacy.

2024-12-05

Vena vs. Workday EPM

This special report examines the offerings and positioning of two major players in the EPM market: Vena Solutions (Vena) and Workday Adaptive Planning (Workday) and compares them on key aspects such as usability, integration capabilities, performance, scalability, and support. The goal is to provide a clear understanding of how each platform meets the needs of modern enterprises and supports their overall performance management initiatives.

2024-10-31

Anaplan vs. Pigment EPM

This special report examines the offerings and positioning of two major players in the EPM market: Anaplan and Pigment and compares them on key aspects such as usability, integration capabilities, performance, scalability, and support. The goal is to provide a clear understanding of how each platform meets the needs of modern enterprises and supports their overall performance management initiatives.

2024-10-15