Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers’ consumer-centric pricing and promotions strategies and Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

Part 2 of this blog post series analyzed some common retailers’ practices and explained some of the frequently used vernacular. Then the post went into the building blocks of pricing optimization, starting with setting optimal initial (everyday or base) prices.

Part 3 of this blog post series will analyze the two other building blocks of pricing optimization: promotions and markdowns. Then, the article will go into the next generation of pricing optimization according to JDA: “Lifetime Pricing.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the first part of this blog, I mentioned that sentiment analysis measures the polarity of opinion—positive, negative, or neutral—regarding a subject, a product, a service, etc.
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Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers’ consumer-centric pricing and promotion strategies and Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

To recap Part 1: due to the phenomenon of the “cross-elasticity” of demand, retailers may want to consider whether promoting an item would result in increased sales volume and, if so, whether that increase would represent incremental revenue or merely cannibalize sales of other items. Retailers have to be able to compare items on promotion against the entire department, product category, and subcategory. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Wikipedia, “social media is online content created for people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.” These days, networking is very different than it was in the past. A lot of social media services like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, personal blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other types of media content generate big volumes of data. But more importantly, people contribute to the creation of this data by chatting, expressing ideas, or making personal and business relations online. They also contribute to the way social media information is organized and published on the Web. Today, these massive volumes of data are the objects of study and analysis. In a sense, there is already an effort to measure the quantitative and qualitative aspects of this kind of data.
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Many midsized companies have to deal with a very particular problem: the need of a true business intelligence (BI) solution, while having to select and deploy one within a tight budget. On September 29, 2009, IBM Cognos announced the launch of Cognos Express, a new product specially designed to meet the needs of the midsized market. Of course, here at TEC, we took the time to give it a try. We downloaded the trial, and got our hands on this brand new BI tool.
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Part 1 of this blog series depicted the differences and some subtle similarities between the well-established enterprise applications giant SAP and up-and-coming vendor Endeca Technologies. The post ended with the new fundamentals for the future of enterprise applications that were outlined at the Endeca Discover 2009 conference.

Part 2 of this blog series explored how SAP is adapting to the new fundamentals outlined in Part 1, especially with respect to the notion of BT or “business technology,” which denotes a pervasive technology in use by casual users and end users alike, increasingly managed outside the direct control of IT departments. I also explained the architecture of the recently unveiled SAP BusinessObjects Explorer product.

Part 3 continues with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer’s traits and areas for improvement, especially in terms of the user experience.  Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series depicted the differences and some subtle similarities between the well-established enterprise applications giant, SAP, and up-and-coming vendor Endeca Technologies. The article ended with the new fundamentals for the future of enterprise applications that were outlined at the Endeca Discover 2009 conference.

Part 2 of this blog series explores how SAP is adapting to the new fundamentals outlined in Part 1, especially to the notion of “BT” or “business technology,” which denotes a pervasive technology in use by casual and end-users, increasingly managed outside the direct control of IT departments. Read the rest of this entry »

SAP AG and Endeca Technologies might not appear to have much in common at first glance, other than occasional partnering in some joint opportunities, and perhaps that SAP Ventures owns a piece of privately held Endeca. In the world of home appliances, SAP would be analogous to a tried-and-true refrigerator, but with the most advanced features in the market, such as a built-in TV set.

Such an appliance stores important food (i.e., data and transactions) and provides some important basic information and entertainment (i.e., news reports) to nearly 90,000 customers in over 120 countries. Indeed, SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software, offering enterprise applications and services to companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries for nearly four decades. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, IBM gave me a sneak peek of its new business analytics software tool for midsized clients. The name of the new product is Cognos Express, and IBM’s press release says it’s an “all-in-one business intelligence and planning solution designed specifically for midsized clients.”
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It’s always good to remember that science and technology follow general laws, and that those laws are inviolable. This is especially true when it comes to Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
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Part 1 of this blog series outlined Epicor 9 (aka Epicor ERP [evaluate this product]), Epicor Software’s next-generation converged product suite. A similar feat has yet to be accomplished even by mighty Oracle within Oracle Fusion Applications.

The article also discussed Epicor’s accompanying “Protect, Extend, and Converge” strategy for providing customers with  a migration path choice on their own timetable and convenience. The article then continued on by digging deeper and explaining a number of enabling technologies and concepts within Epicor 9, starting with Epicor BPM (Business Process Management).

Part 2 of this blog series analyzes the major enabling concepts and technologies within the product, such as Epicor ICE 2.0, which is based on Epicor True SOA™, and includes the Epicor Everywhere Framework™. The article also digs deeper into the suite’s built-in business intelligence (BI) and enterprise performance management (EPM) capabilities. Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post, Give BI to the Masses, I wrote about the strategies that have been implemented in some companies to empower more and more users to use business intelligence (BI) tools as part of their regular daily tasks.

This extends not only to decision makers and to those in charge of knowledge management,  but also to company-wide use. This has the potential to generate very different types of strategies; and thus (as with all innovations) will create the need to address other issues. Inevitably, it will also mean there are new requirements to be managed, including new data sources, and new or modified business processes and strategies. There will certainly be more people involved in the BI/business process management (BPM) processes of the organization. From a business perspective, this represents a great change. Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s business intelligence (BI) industry—despite the search for better, more suitable, and more advanced technology for BI applications—there is a special interest in finding the “true usability” of BI applications. This is to say, users want BI to be not only faster and better, but also easier. And finally, they want its use to be extended to a wide number of people: the search is on for a real mass use.
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Part 1 of this blog series outlined the trend of enterprise applications vendors’ attempts to win their users’ hearts and minds (as well as wallets) via more intuitive and appealing user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. What that means is that users can now more quickly obtain all of the relevant information they need in a personalized way, with drill-downs and other slick navigational Web 2.0 gadgets.

For users, personalized screens and forms provide immediate access to issues that require immediate action or reassurance that situations are under control. Such intuitive UI allows users to diagnose the most critical business situations they face and immediately drill into the source transactional systems to get the data they need and decide on appropriate actions.

The analysis then focused on Infor and its Open SOA framework, which is the enabling linchpin for the vendor’s delivery of next-generation interoperable value-adding solutions. About two years ago, Infor espoused its so-called “Three E’s” strategy (“Enrich, Extend & Evolve”) to deliver agile and adaptive software components on top of the Infor Open SOA platform. Read the rest of this entry »

If you search for business performance management (BPM) on Google, you’ll get around 700,000 results. Out of this huge number of results, you will presumably refer to a popular source—Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, BPM is “a set of processes that help organizations optimize their business performance.” The same source affirms that some people see it as the next generation of business intelligence (BI). Both of these explanations—unfortunately—lack clarity.
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