We are pleased to announce the general availability of DataConnect 12.2. This release furthers our commitment to making it easy for our integration customers to connect, transform, and analyze data. With this release, customers will now have a faster path to the cloud using the Actian Data Platform to deploy existing integrations to cloud-based…
Ensuring a hassle-free cloud migration takes a lot of planning and working with the right vendor. While you have specific goals that you want to achieve by moving to the cloud, you can also benefit the business by thinking about how you want to expand and optimize the cloud once you’ve migrated. For example,…
If you haven’t already seen Astrid Eira’s article in FinancesOnline, “14 Supply Chain Trends for 2022/2023: New Predictions To Watch Out For”, I highly recommend it for insights into current supply chain developments and challenges. Eira identifies analytics as the top technology priority in the supply chain industry, with 62% of organizations reporting limited…
Defining exceptional service Organizations always aim to give their customers the best experiences. There are several interpretations of what constitutes good and excellent service, and sometimes these terms are used interchangeably. However, many companies fail to achieve exceptional service because they do not understand their customers. Delivering any level of service requires that we…
Competition for customers is more intense than ever. And landing customers is only half the battle. Keeping them happy is the other half. Creating customers for life entails nurturing relationships and predicting changing needs, or risk losing customers to competitors. Innovative marketers understand the importance of knowing their customers so they can meet their…
The key to a successful marketing campaign is to reach customers at the right place, at the right time, with the right message. Traditional market segmentation used in campaigns aggregates prospective buyers into groups with common needs. Marketers hope that customers in the same segment will respond similarly to a marketing promotion. But will…
With a myriad of customer experience (CX) tools available today, enterprises are flooded with options when it comes to the services they use to interact with customers. The challenge for businesses is sifting through the many data silos that these tools create. While CX tools are helpful for efficiency, they can create organizational blind…
Conceptually, data integration sounds like a simple task: taking data from multiple sources and combining them to help inform business decision-making. This idea has existed since enterprises have been using datasets. However, as data continues exploding in both volume and complexity, enterprises can no longer rely on manual integration processes. Instead, they must use…
Abraham Lincoln might easily have been discussing data preparation steps for analytics when he said, “If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 sharpening my axe.” Spending 75% of the allotted time on preparation may seem like a lot. But in fact, most industry observers report that data…
Everyone in an organization makes decisions every day. They go through the process of identifying that a decision needs to be made, then gather data and relevant information from various sources to identify the choices that they can make. By Analyzing the data and other considerations based on their experience, they can make a…
In a year dominated by the dark cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tragedies that ensued, we seem to be ending on a hopeful note. We saw the incredible power of human ingenuity, as not one but several vaccines have been developed at breakneck speed, surpassing even the most optimistic of expectations. We…
What is innovation? Innovation is doing something new that does not currently exist or something new that improves efficiency, effectiveness, cost, and/or creates a competitive advantage. A new method, process, product, or service can be considered an innovation. This also includes the integration of different markets with the utilization of a new product that…
Defining Exceptional Service Organizations always aim to give their customers the best experiences. There are several interpretations of what constitutes good and excellent service, and sometimes these terms are used interchangeably. However, many companies fail at achieving exceptional service because they do not understand their customers. Delivering any level of service requires that we…
Systems thinking and the organization There are many ways to describe system thinking. We can say system thinking is a way of viewing or thinking about a system in terms of structure, patterns, cycles, and data exchanges. System thinking can also be thought of as a way of integrating a person into organizational flows…
A few months ago, companies went into crisis mode, globally – figuring out how to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, most organizations have overcome the initial shock and disruption and figured out how to adapt their workforce and business processes for a remote-work environment. When this started, the hope was that COVID-19…
Are you still doing point-to-point integrations between your IT applications? If you are, please stop. It makes life difficult for your IT support staff, increases your overhead costs, and makes it harder for you to be agile and to evolve your integrations as business needs change. Instead, consider whether this is the right time…
