Winners to Be Celebrated During Virtual Ceremony on December 8, 2021
CleverTap, a leading AI-powered customer lifecycle and user retention platform, was recently recognized with two Stevie® Awards in the 18th Annual International Business Awards®. Highly regarded by customers around the globe, CleverTap’s innovative mobile marketing platform was honored with a Gold Stevie® Award in the Startup of the Year Business Products Industries category and a Bronze Stevie® Award in the Tech Startup of the Year Software category.’
The International Business Awards are the world’s premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small – are eligible to submit nominations. The 2021 IBAs received entries from organizations in 63 nations and territories.
“We are thrilled to be awarded both a Gold Stevie® Award in the Startup of the Year category, and a Bronze Stevie® Award in the Tech Startup of the Year category.” said CEO and Co-Founder Sunil Thomas. “Since 2013, CleverTap has been solving problems within the ecmmerce industry for SMBs and enterprises alike. By utilizing real-time data analytics and behavioral assessment we have created innovative technology that connects with users on a personalized level. We are grateful for both of these awards and excited to see where the rest of the year takes us here at CleverTap.”
Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 260 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from June through early August.
Team GPS provides a centralized resource for MSPs to strategize, engage, and manage employees with a focus on people
IT By Design (ITBD), a Master Managed Services Provider (MSP), introduced Team GPS, a business operating system that centralizes the traditionally disparate tools for engaging and retaining customers and employees, generating greater satisfaction for both populations while driving higher profitability for MSP businesses.
ITBD, a market leader in delivering engineering talent and education to MSPs, leveraged its extensive industry experience and knowledge to fully develop its first platform in-house. The new offering addresses many vital areas pertinent specifically to employees, their job performance and satisfaction, and workplace culture. Team GPS is comprised of multiple components, including rewards and recognition, strategy and goals, and employee performance. The customer engagement component will be released first, followed by employee engagement.
Highlights of Team GPS include:
Resources to engage customers
Surveys to generate tactical feedback and align that data with employee performance management and professional development
Integration with Professional Services Automation (PSA) tools to turn data into actionable intelligence
Visibility into execution and impact of business goals with customers
Resources to engage employees
Surveys to generate feedback from staff and their supervisors and help a lign employee or team performance with organizational goals
Role-specific tested performance templates
Rewards and recognition component featuring gamification and personal recognition opportunities
“With Team GPS, we’re taking all of the existing tools to the next level by putting them into one central repository where MSPs can greatly benefit from the rich data that can now be easily mined,” said Sunny Kaila, chief executive officer for ITBD. “As a Master MSP, we have reached a level of operational expertise that affords us the competency and privilege to create these critical people-based resources for our peers. These tools will help them transform from a tech-centric mindset to a people-centric mindset, which is imperative for future success.”
Compelling Employee Feedback Earns Xevant New Certification
Xevant, the leader and creator of automated data analytics for pharmacy benefits organizations, announced its recent certification as a Great Place to Work® company. The Great Place to Work Certification is a badge of honor that validates the employee experience and great workplace culture organizations create for their people.
Achieving the Great Place to Work® Certification is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at Xevant. This year, 100% of employees said it’s a great place to work-41% higher than the average U.S. company. Xevant was thrilled to far exceed the required responses to earn the certification.
“We work hard to cultivate an environment that’s inclusive, communicative, and employee-driven,” said Brandon Newman, Xevant CEO. “Our team has been vital to our rapid and continued growth. I can’t express enough how appreciated they are and I’m truly humbled that they choose to lend their expertise and time to Xevant.”
Brands are now able to shorten their path to purchase significantly while accurately measuring the associated ROI
IZEA Worldwide, Inc., the premier provider of influencer marketing technology, data, and services for leading brands, is partnering with eCommerce technology provider, Multicart Solution, Inc., to provide clients with sales data from their influencer marketing campaigns and optimize the consumer path to purchase.
With Multicart, influencers’ social media content endorsing multiple products can be accompanied by single click access to the Multicart Digital Shelf, providing customers a seamless path to shop curated collections and a valuable conversion opportunity.
“As brands continue to drive engagement in social media, they will benefit from increasingly sophisticated ways to track and increase conversions,” says Sarah Nelson, Marketing and PR coordinator at Multicart. “Working together with IZEA, Multicart will enable low friction transactions and detailed performance and sales tracking while also keeping the consumer shopping experience integrated so followers can remain engaged in the content they love.”
Multicart technology can be leveraged across multiple channels for fully integrated campaigns with minimal technology effort. Brands can collaborate with influencers to push shoppable content across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and more. When partnering with Multicart, brands have access to a one-click checkout experience and decision-driving analytics.
“As an advocate and champion for content creators, IZEA continues to identify ways to help them engage with brands and monetize content,” says Tiffany Richardson, Director of Media & Partnerships at IZEA. “In addition to enhancing the consumer experience, partnering with Multicart allows us to provide our clients with actual sales data from our influencer campaigns which further proves our clients return on investment and the success of influencer marketing.”
Sports Broadcasters and Digital Publishers to Benefit from New Visualizations and Analytics Platforms Powered by Real-Time ShotTracker Data for the NCAA Basketball Season
Data Driven Sports (DDSports), the parent company of ShotTracker, unveiled an exciting suite of new products to support digital publishers and broadcasters in engaging and monetizing college basketball fans this upcoming season. Leveraging the ShotTracker’s unique, real-time player and ball tracking data, combined with automated content and analytics platforms, DDSports now offers three innovative products designed to efficiently increase sponsorable content for its clients:
Automated Visualizations – customizable graphics with sponsor integrations designed for easy publishing to broadcast/OTT, digital, social and in-venue signage.
Insights Engine – AI-powered trends and streaks to drive game storylines and data-driven sales campaigns.
3D Gamecast – animated ball and player graphics powered by real-time X-Y-Z location data, designed to allow out-of-market fans to watch their team live, and for all fans to relive exciting game moments.
The three new products will be available for all men’s and women’s games across top NCAA Division 1 conferences where ShotTracker is installed, and will include unique, data-driven brand activation capabilities. “Our goal is to provide turnkey solutions to leading sports broadcasters and digital publishers to make the integration of ShotTracker data as streamlined and seamless as feasible,” said Davyeon Ross, DDSports/ShotTracker Co-Founder and President. “We commit to innovating and creating digital products that drive new revenue while also streamlining the content production process.”
The three new products will be available for all men’s and women’s games across top NCAA Division 1 conferences where ShotTracker is installed, and will include unique, data-driven brand activation capabilities.
Automated Visualizations
Leveraging the robust ShotTracker Data API, and through its partnership with IMPACT, a leading automated visualization platform, ShotTracker data will come to life in dynamic graphics designed for use across broadcast/OTT, digital, social and in-venue signage. Graphics that once took hours to produce will now be automatically generated. Broadcast customers will have access to a user portal that will allow for design, data points and sponsor customizations. Product benefits include more content, lower production costs and greater advertising revenue.
Insights Engine
Realizing the increasing need to grab fans’ attention and keep them engaged, ShotTracker has partnered with Inside Edge, a leader in sports analytics, to develop a cutting-edge platform to produce instant insights from ShotTracker’s robust data set. Broadcasters and digital publishers will now have real-time access to unique streaks and trends that once took hours to manually derive. This innovative platform will not only drive engaging storylines for announcers and writers, but will also support high-value sponsor activations.
3D Gamecast
Since many fans do not have access to live game broadcasts, and because game highlight rights are often complex and limited, ShotTracker has developed a real-time visual representation of every second of game action for all ShotTracker-enabled men’s and women’s games across top NCAA Division I conferences. Fans will have the option to watch an entire game or to select key game moments. With ShotTracker’s X-Y-Z data stream, game action comes to life in a more engaging visual representation than the traditional 2D products in the marketplace. Developers can use ShotTracker’s Gamecast SDK to customize design as well as advertiser integrations.
100% of Executives Surveyed Describe “Nirvana” as Allowing Teams to do Higher Value Activities
FatTail, an enterprise advertising technology company built to power the premium market for publishers, unveiled new data that shows publishers continue to be burdened by manual and time-consuming processes, creating a distraction for highly skilled teams who should be more focused on incremental revenue opportunities.
Conducted in conjunction with Beeler.Tech, which focuses on connecting people, creating conversations, and bringing efficiency to digital media and ad tech, and CoLab Media Consulting, a specialist media consulting and market research business, the study surveyed senior revenue and ad operations professionals at leading publishers, to gain a deeper understanding of their thoughts on where technology can support greater internal efficiency while maintaining the human touch required to develop deeper advertiser relationships.
One of the key takeaways is that even with a shift to more “automated” buying channels, there is a high cost of delivery that materially impacts publisher margins.
83% of respondents from businesses 250MM+ / annum agreed that “nirvana” is best characterized as “allowing my team to do higher value activities.”
“Superior customer service doesn’t need to imply higher operating costs,” said FatTail CEO Doug Huntington. “It shouldn’t be a choice. The goal should be instantaneous information, same day processing, and near zero transaction costs.”
Reducing overhead is critical
In the third quarter of 2020, FatTail, CoLab and Beeler.Tech collected data from a group of more than 95 global publishers, whose combined annual revenues topped roughly $10 billion in 2019.
“When we interviewed respondents to discuss the transactional friction, the message was loud and clear,” said Rob Beeler, CEO & Founder of Beeler.Tech. “As an industry, we are paying highly skilled revenue leaders to do menial work that could be automated, distracting them from the strategic work that will help the company or industry move forward.”
60% of respondents agree ‘there is not enough time or resources to service customers in the way that they expect or that the business demands’
65% of respondents agree it is challenging to get information from siloed teams or systems
Creative management stands out as a pain point that is both highly time-consuming (36% of respondents agree) and challenging (of respondents 22% agree)
Less challenging but highly time-consuming are: client status (35% agree), client communication (31%) and campaign reporting (28%)
92% of respondents said that the majority of communication with their advertising partners occurs over email.
“Too often in our industry, campaigns are managed with high-touch administrative tasks that do not have a meaningful impact. Tools that allow our teams to focus on high-value tasks, are necessary for both our clients and employee retention,” said Ryan Whittington, SVP, American City Business Journals. “The ability to grow and scale our business without adding additional overhead is imperative to our future success.”
To solve these issues once and for all, FatTail believes self-service should be as much about direct access to information and automating intercompany workflow as it is about offering incremental revenue channels. By empowering advertisers with “do-it-yourself” tools, publishers can tackle the repeatable, “easy-to-automate” steps and significantly reduce transaction costs.
When asked about what plans to solve the customer support and service issues identified, 42% of publishers said, “there are other priorities requiring greater attention.” Outsourcing or limiting client expectations were seen as the second most popular way to address this pain point.
New online analysis tool enables organizations to easily see the value created by a modern, omnichannel CCM solution
Doxim, the leading customer communications management (CCM) and engagement technology provider serving financial and regulated markets, today announced the release of a comprehensive ROI analysis calculator for Customer Communication Management (CCM).
The calculator, developed in collaboration with Hobson & Company, a research firm focused on Return on Investment (ROI) studies, will allow companies to determine the real-world value of implementing a CCM solution, including increased efficiencies, reduced costs, and improved CX.
The online evaluation tool offers a complete ROI Calculator Report including the value that an organization can realize from any of the following sample efficiencies driven by a modern CCM solution:
Significant savings that result from reducing the number of printed documents and inserts by just 10%
The positive return on improving communication and customer satisfaction
Cost savings unlocked by working smarter and reducing the time spent on customer inquiries
The total value of implementing a CCM solution over 3 years
“In today’s competitive marketplace, companies are seeking innovative ways to reduce costs while improving customer experience and making life easier for staff members,” said Olga Zakharenkava, SVP Product Management. “Our ROI calculator will help companies predict the ways in which implementing CCM can increase efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction.”
In collaboration with Hobson and Company, Doxim has also recently produced a whitepaper, Driving ROI with a Comprehensive Customer Communication Management Platform, intended to help organizations build their business case through a thorough understanding of the benefits of implementing a comprehensive CCM solution. Says Zakharenkava, “In combination, this whitepaper and the ROI Calculator provide a comprehensive set of tools for your organization to evaluate the real value of investing into a modern CCM platform that helps you digitize your communications and improve efficiency. Please contact Doxim if you need support using these tools for your organization.”
Consumer Intelligence Start-up Partners with Leading Innovation Platform to Address Today’s Largest F&B Industry Challenges
Native.AI a real-time market and consumer intelligence provider for CPG companies – announced today its membership with MISTA, a global innovation community for the Food & Beverage (F&B) industry. Native is partnering with MISTA to accelerate product innovation, scale its platform and collaborate with like-minded companies to solve today’s largest F&B challenges.
“Thirty thousand new CPG brands launch each year. Differentiating requires a deep understanding of consumer and market needs”
MISTA’s ecosystem includes high-growth startups and established industry leaders across the CPG, Ingredients, Food Technology and Agriculture (Ag) Technology sectors such as Danone, Givaudan, Conagra Brands, Mars Inc., and Ingredion Inc. Native’s solution – which equips brands to understand changing customer preferences and create better products – provides members with a proven platform to collect, analyze and leverage consumer intelligence to create better and more sustainable products.
“Today’s consumers are rapidly changing the way they eat, shop and live,” said Scott May, global head of MISTA. “Native is helping brands stay ahead of trends by transforming how they listen to and act on feedback. The insights are being used to better enable companies to develop products that are customer centric, innovative and good for the planet. We’re looking forward to supporting Native’s growth and providing the team with the connections and resources needed to thrive.”
Native’s AI-powered platform uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to deliver real-time analysis of consumer feedback from Point of Sale (POS), e-commerce reviews, social media, smart labels and more. With a better understanding of first-party and third-party consumer feedback, brands can confidently optimize product attributes such as flavor, ingredients, price, packaging, sustainability and more to increase sales and market share.
“Thirty thousand new CPG brands launch each year. Differentiating requires a deep understanding of consumer and market needs,” said Frank Pica, co-founder and CEO of Native.AI. “Our mission at Native is to help brands create more personalized and successful products by listening to and understanding customers in real-time. We’re thrilled to join MISTA and look forward to sharing ideas, learning from our peers and collaborating to help create amazing consumer products.”
Virtual Meetup Features Discussions With Industry Encoding Experts
The Streaming Video Alliance (the Alliance), a global technical association developing solutions to address critical technical challenges in delivering a high-quality video experience at scale, is hosting the West Coast STREAMup today, August 31, 2021, from 12:00 to 1:30pm PT. The event is specifically scheduled to accommodate the streaming community on the West Coast for a “lunch and learn,” however it is open to all who would like to participate. The meetup is free of charge, thanks to member company sponsor ServiceNow.
“A monumental challenge is that much of encoding is a black box with carefully guarded secrets on how to fine tune algorithms, profiles, and more. In today’s STREAMup, encoding experts will explore several topics that are top of mind for the industry.”
“Encoding remains a complicated and controversial topic inside streaming, and there are many different perspectives on how to optimize encoding, decoding, and transcoding to improve the required bandwidth of high-quality delivery,” said Jason Thibeault, Executive Director at the Streaming Video Alliance. “A monumental challenge is that much of encoding is a black box with carefully guarded secrets on how to fine tune algorithms, profiles, and more. In today’s STREAMup, encoding experts will explore several topics that are top of mind for the industry.”
Jan De Cock of Synamedia presenting on “New Codecs & Standards: VVC, AV1 and Beyond.”
Xavier Ducloux of Harmonic presenting, “Super Resolution: Application of AI for Smarter Upscaling.”
Streaming Video Alliance Demonstrates Open Caching API Interoperability in Industry-First Testbed
The Alliance recently achieved a new industry milestone with its Open Caching Testbed Initiative, demonstrating the interoperability of the Alliance’s Open Caching APIs between multiple providers. With Disney Streaming acting as content origin, Broadpeak and Telefonica implemented several of the Open Caching specifications to demonstrate that the Open Caching concept and technology operate as intended and can connect caches from multiple entities involved in delivering streaming video content. This testbed also validates the Open Caching concept and the Alliance’s specifications.
Ex-Lucidworks Founder and CTO, AI Expert, Grant Ingersoll Joins SearchStax
SearchStax, a cloud-native search management platform, announced today the appointment of Grant Ingersoll, an expert in Search, NLP and AI, to its Advisory Board. Ingersoll is the former co-founder of Lucid and former CTO of Lucidworks, another search company.
Ingersoll has worked as a researcher, engineer, and leader in the commercial search space since 2007. Ingersoll has made substantial contributions of code and expertise to the open-source community since 2006. He has been particularly active with Apache Foundation’s Lucene, Solr, and Mahout projects, both as a committer and member of the Project Management Committee and continues to contribute to this day. Ingersoll is currently a popular public speaker, a podcast host, and CTO of the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
“I have known Grant for years and always admired the depth of his knowledge of search technology and his vision of the search industry,” said Sameer Maggon, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SearchStax. “With his unique expertise, Grant will have a critical role in helping guide SearchStax to the next level, on product, technology, and market landscape,” added Maggon.
“I am thrilled to work with Sameer and his amazing team,” said Ingersoll. “What sold me is SearchStax’s vision and execution,” he adds. “SearchStax is laser-focused on being best-in-class in making it easy to take away the pains that haunt many people in the search space. This includes, how to manage, run, and maintain a search stack year over year so that people can focus more on the problems that truly matter: using search to find and prioritize content for decision-making,” concludes Ingersoll.
Digital Campaign Drove 1,550% Lower Cost-Per-Action Than Benchmark
AdTheorent, Inc., a programmatic digital advertising leader using advanced machine learning technology and solutions to deliver real-world value for advertisers and marketers, and the Ad Council, a national nonprofit that mobilizes the energy and talents of the communications industry to make a measurable impact on the most critical social issues of today, today announced campaign results from the “Belonging Begins with Us” digital advertising campaign. The goal of the campaign was to promote inclusive communities and spread the “Belonging Begins with Us” message.
The Situation:
“Belonging Begins with Us” is a national campaign dedicated to fostering a more welcoming nation in which people feel that they belong, regardless of their background or where they were born. The campaign was designed to remind audiences that we all have the power to make others feel safe and welcome in our communities. The campaign PSAs feature a cover of the 1968 hit song “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” recorded by Lake Street Dive exclusively for the campaign. The song and powerful visuals remind audiences that everyone knows what it feels like to be left out – and for people who moved to this country, that feeling can last more than a moment. By highlighting this shared emotional experience, the campaign creative sparks empathy and builds stronger bonds between everyone who calls America home.
The Approach:
To drive awareness of the “Belonging Begins with Us” message among the target audience, AdTheorent ran a mix of video and display ad units to reach consumers across Connected TV, desktop and mobile devices. AdTheorent’s platform leveraged a custom CPA machine learning model fueled by non-individualized statistics and predictive targeting optimizations to identify and target consumers with the highest likelihood of completing the required actions – defined for CTV as video completes, and for display as people directed to engage with the campaign website. AdTheorent utilized myriad signals in the custom predictive CPA model such as ad position, publisher, geo-intelligence, non-individualized user device attributes, location, and CTV exposure to drive an efficient CPA. Additionally, AdTheorent utilized sequential targeting to reach consumers across devices and mediums, and frequency optimizations to encourage multiple engagements. Using conversion data from the target website (BelongingBeginswithUs.org) and from CTV engagement, predictive models optimized toward users most likely to take desired actions on the brand site and drive a high video completion rate.
The Results:
The campaign successfully drove viewership of the PSA video as well as site actions. Overall, AdTheorent’s donated inventory delivered a CPA of $.39 for a landing page visit which exceeded industry benchmarks by 1,550%. Additionally, AdTheorent’s CTV video completion rate was 98.57%.
AdTheorent’s data-driven platform identified targeting variables which yielded conversion lift, providing valuable insights for future flights of the campaign. Among a variety of campaign insights, mobile devices and desktops drove a stronger CPA than tablets. For mobile ads, the most efficient environment was the mobile web on Android devices and for desktop ads, the Chrome browser performed the best.
“AdTheorent’s ability to reach consumers most likely to take the desired campaign actions — using real-time predictive targeting signals that do not rely on personal or sensitive data — results in more efficient media serving and better campaign outcomes, while operating in a privacy-forward way,” said Katherine Pastre, SVP, Media Strategy and Outreach of the Ad Council. “For the ‘Belonging Begins with Us’ campaign, AdTheorent donated their strategic services and inventory to reach audiences most likely to engage without relying on user-specific profiles or individualized data. We are thrilled with the results of the campaign as it outperformed benchmarks and allowed us to reach more people with this important message.”
Gix Internet finished the first six months of 2021 with revenues of ~$ 16.4 million, Cortex Group Revenues for the first six months of 2021 amounted to ~$ 12.3 million
Medigus Ltd., a technology company engaged in advanced medical solutions, innovative internet technologies and electric vehicle and charging solutions, announced today that its affiliate Gix Internet (36.74% on a fully diluted bases) (TASE: GIX), a global marketing technology (MarTech) solutions company for online performance-based-marketing, announced that Gix Internet’s subsidiary, Gix Media signed a definitive agreement for the purchase of 70% at Cortex Group, an innovative media-tech company that has developed expertise in turning original content into a profit center through user traffic acquisition.
The acquisition of 70% of Cortex’s shares by Gix Media will be made for approximately $ 11 million, with the final amount to be determined on the closing date of the transaction.
Cortex was established in 2015 and has since been operating with great success in the field of online advertising. Cortex is an innovative media-tech company that has developed capabilities that enable the conversion of original content into a profit center by acquiring user traffic. Cortex’s business model is based on purchasing advertising space from publishers such as YAHOO, Outbrain, Google and more. Cortex employs about 17 people in its offices in Tel Aviv.
According to Cortex’s audited financial statements for the first half of 2021, its revenues amounted to ~$ 12.3 million, an increase of 52% compared to the corresponding period last year. Cortex’s operating profit for the first half of 2021 amounted to $ 1.3 million, an increase of 124% compared to the corresponding period last year. In addition, Cortex’s revenues for the period of the 12 months ended June 30, 2021 amounted to ~$ 27.5 million and operating profit amounted to ~$ 3.6 million.
According to the agreement signed with Cortex and its shareholders, in the first phase, Gix Media will purchase 70% of the fully diluted issued share capital of the company from the sellers. Subsequently, upon achieving certain mutually agreed upon milestones, Gix Media will purchase the balance of the shares from the sellers, such that by the beginning of 2025, it will become the owner of 100% of the fully diluted issued share capital of Cortex.
Gix Internet and Gix Media have signed a non-binding Memoranda of Understanding with a banking institute, to provide a credit line totaling up to $3.5 million and loans totaling approximately $7 million, which will be used, among other things, for the purpose of acquiring Cortex, subject to the completion of the transaction.
In addition, according to Gix Internet’s financial reports for the first six months of 2021, its revenues amounted to ~$ 16.4 million.
6sense, the market leading account engagement platform, today announced the acquisition of Fortella. The move combines Fortella’s AI-driven pipeline intelligence with the 6sense platform, adding essential pipeline planning, forecasting and measurement capabilities to further empower B2B marketing leaders to achieve their pipeline and revenue goals with greater predictability.
The addition of Fortella positions 6sense to build on its already robust suite of account engagement tools to deliver the most intelligent and comprehensive RevTech offering. 6sense customers will now have one integrated solution to plan goals, uncover demand, prioritize effort, engage accounts and buying teams, measure impact, and forecast pipeline creating a 360-degree feedback loop to optimize for growth.
Enterprise marketers can utilize these enhanced capabilities to reverse-engineer their revenue funnel and create a repeatable blueprint that maximizes pipeline performance. By increasing efficiencies and reducing the guesswork, the combined platform enables marketers to spend less time on process management and more time driving revenue impact.
Together, 6sense and Fortella reach across today’s marketing and sales data silos to align revenue teams around a predictable, unified methodology to achieve pipeline and revenue goals
Fortella’s powerful AI will enable 6sense customers to predict and generate detailed go-to-market pipeline plans by starting with their revenue goals and working backwards
Fortella’s AI-driven pipeline intelligence monitors progress towards goals, identifies gaps and provides early warning signals. Combined with the 6sense platform, it will recommend revenue generation tactics with the greatest impact to close the pipeline gaps.
Notable Quote References:
“The most successful organizations continually challenge themselves to uncover new ways of thinking and resources to accelerate insights and outperform the competition,” said Jazon Zintak, CEO of 6sense. “The integration of Fortella into the 6sense account engagement platform achieves this goal by giving customers a finely tuned navigation system for their revops engine, ensuring they reach their targets and venture beyond them, with greater efficiency and speed.”
“Every B2B organization must make plans for how they are going to predictably achieve their revenue goals. And must be able to measure their progress toward those goals, adjusting strategies and tactics as needed along the way. But for most, this is still a manual process informed largely by assumptions, disconnected data silos and best guesses,” said Rahul Sachdev, co-founder and CEO of Fortella. “The combination of 6sense and Fortella removes the uncertainty from these critical pipeline planning and forecasting functions to continue fueling the RevTech Revolution,” added Nimish Mehta, co-founder and Chairman of Fortella.
“Your board of directors and the leadership team don’t care about marketing activities. What they care about is what marketing is doing to drive pipeline. With the Fortella acquisition, that’s exactly what CMOs are getting: board-worthy pipeline planning and measurement capabilities,” said Latane Conant, Chief Market Officer at 6sense.
“6sense has been an important platform for improving sales and marketing execution and the Fortella product and team have helped us bridge the gap from counting leads to quantifying revenue. The two platforms coming together sets the stage for substantially more value for my teams,” said Urvish Vashi, Chief Operating Officer at HighRadius.
“This is a milestone moment for marketing leaders. Bringing these two platforms together just makes sense – and creates a powerful combination for revenue-focused teams. Every CMO wants to have confidence in their pipeline projections and know they’ve got the right plans in place to achieve,” said Andrew Leigh, Chief Marketing Officer at Copado.
SaaS marketing veteran to accelerate business growth, expand platform adoption and drive partner experience innovation for MSP tech leader
ConnectWise, the leading provider of software for technology solution providers (TSPs), today introduced Amy Lucia as chief marketing officer. Lucia brings over two decades of marketing leadership delivering exceptional outcomes in the Fortune 100 enterprise and SMB spaces.
Prior to ConnectWise, Lucia served as vice president of corporate marketing at Blackbaud (Nasdaq: BLKB) during a season when the brand rapidly catapulted to one of the 40th largest SaaS providers worldwide. She spent 11 years at Microsoft and served in various leadership roles across marketing and sales; including overseeing U.S. channel marketing supporting recruitment, enablement, and revenue generation across an ecosystem of nearly 400,000 partners. Lucia also served in non-governmental organization (NGO) leadership roles, including vice president of marketing for International Justice Mission (IJM) fighting slavery and human trafficking, and chief marketing officer for poverty alleviation NGO World Relief.
“ConnectWise is bullish about ushering the next season of growth and value creation for our partners; and bringing a proven and accomplished CMO onboard will ensure we effectively bring our unique, differentiated value proposition to the market,” said ConnectWise CEO Jason Magee. “Amy is the most partner experience-focused CMO you can ask for and the depth and breadth of her understanding of channel marketing and partner programs will be incredibly impactful in driving growth for our partners.”
Lucia has responsibility for ConnectWise’s global marketing function and brings diverse experience spanning over a dozen strategic marketing disciplines, sales, operations, and partner/customer experience. She is known for building high performing teams that bring these disciplines together and stand out for their excellence in execution.
“I’m thrilled to come back to a role serving the partner ecosystem that I have deeply admired and respected for many years,” said Lucia. “There is a massive opportunity to equip, empower and bring transformative value to TSPs and drive their growth as they support the SMB market, and there is no SaaS provider better positioned and more committed than ConnectWise to do this. The potential is limitless, and I want to personally thank the partners who have already welcomed me so warmly by sharing feedback, brainstorming and vision-casting with me.”
Lucia is a three-time Executive Mentor for the Fortune/U.S. State Department Women’s Mentoring Partnership and a part of the Fortune Most Powerful Women community. She is a member of ConnectWise’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and was a Founding Member of Blackbaud’s Global Diversity & Inclusion Council and Member of its Senior Women’s Leadership Council.
Leading enterprise search provider, Sinequa, announced today that financial services company BDO Netherlands has chosen Sinequa’s technology to accelerate its global expansion strategy. Sinequa’s platform will enable BDO employees to surface insights from the company’s content and data and deliver greater value to its clients. This will enable BDO Netherlands to go further, faster by facilitating rapid development of insight applications that improve decision making, increase productivity, accelerate innovation, and create competitive advantage.
Marcel Donkers, CIO at BDO Netherlands said: “Data drives everything we do, from informing our advisory services to engaging world-wide partners, employees and clients, to enabling our digital services. BDO sees a bright future with highly differentiated business solutions that create value for our clients and key stakeholders. The Sinequa platform goes well beyond traditional enterprise search and will be instrumental in taking BDO to its next level of maturity and sustained growth.”
BDO Netherlands is an independent member firm of BDO International Limited. With more than 2600 employees, it is the fastest-growing global audit and accounting network in the world, operating in 167 countries, and connecting over 90,000 people in 1,650 offices worldwide. As BDO Netherlands’s digital resources and services expand, it’s imperative that advisers can easily derive insights from vast amounts of structured data and unstructured content from across the organization.
BDO was looking for a comprehensive solution that could deliver capabilities for enterprise search. After a head-to-head comparison, BDO selected Sinequa due to its comprehensive cognitive search and analysis capabilities, complementary technologies for building powerful search-based insight applications, advanced Natural Language Processing including Dutch and German language support, and integration with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Office 365. The broad portfolio of connectors was also a major differentiator, with robust support for M-Files, a key application at BDO. Recognized as a leader in the Gartner 2021 Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines and The Forrester Wave™: Cognitive Search, Q3 2021, Sinequa enables companies like BDO to extract deep, relevant insights to operate more efficiently.
Stephane Kirchacker, Vice President, EMEA at Sinequa comments: “Like many of our world-class customers, BDO is a data-intensive organization that relies on insights from a broad range of sources to deliver superior services to its clients. Our work with BDO Netherlands exemplifies how Sinequa empowers leading organizations to extract greater value from their vast quantities of data more rapidly and efficiently than they would otherwise be able to. We are thrilled to be working with BDO to deliver the benefits of our powerful tool, from enabling more tailored services for clients, to aiding sustainable business growth.”
Enterprising criminals are selling direct access to cloud accounts
Lacework, the data-driven security platform for the cloud, released its quarterly cloud threat report, unveiling the new techniques and avenues cybercriminals are infiltrating to profit from businesses.
The rapid shift of applications and infrastructure to the cloud creates gaps in the security posture of organizations everywhere. This has increased the opportunities for cybercriminals to steal data, take advantage of an organization’s assets, and to gain illicit network access.
“It’s in enterprises’ best interest to start thinking of cybercriminals as business competitors,” said James Condon, Director of Research at Lacework. “Last year alone, cybercrime and ransomware attacks cost companies $4 billion in damages. As more companies shift to cloud environments, we’re seeing an increase in demand for stolen access to cloud accounts and evolving techniques from cybercriminals, making enterprises even more vulnerable to cloud threats.”
New research from Lacework Labs, the dedicated research team at Lacework that focuses on new threats and attack surface risks within the public cloud, sheds light on the crimeware and growing ransomware landscape in the face of new threat models and emerging cybersecurity challenges. Based on anonymized data across the Lacework platform from May 2021 – July 2021, key findings of the report include:
Initial Access Brokers (IABs) Expand to Cloud Accounts
As corporate infrastructure continues to expand to the cloud, so do opportunistic adversaries as they look to capitalize on the opportunity. Illicit access into cloud infrastructure of companies with valuable data/resources or wide-reaching access into other organizations offers attackers an incredible return on investment. In particular, Lacework Labs found Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure administrative accounts are gaining popularity in underground marketplaces.
Threat Actor Campaigns Continue to Evolve: Lacework Labs has observed a variety of malicious activity originating from known adversary groups and malware families. This section showcases those who continue evolving their operators as a valuable return on investment:
8220 Gang Botnet and Custom Miner: Lacework Labs recently found a new cluster of activity linked to an 8220 Gang adversary group campaign of infecting hosts, primarily through common cloud services, with a custom miner and IRC bot for further attacks and remote control. This cluster shows operations are evolving on many levels, including efforts of hiding botnet scale and mining profits.This is indicative of attacks growing in size.
TeamTNT Docker Image Compromise: The Lacework Labs team discovered threat actor TeamTNT backdooring legitimate Docker Images in a supply chain-like attack. Networks running the trusted image were unknowingly infected.
Developer teams need to be certain they know what’s in the image they pull. They need to validate the source or they could open a door to their environment.
Popular cloud relevant crimeware and actors:
Cpuminer, the open-source multi-algorithm miner, has been legitimately used for years. However, Lacework Labs observed an increase in its illicit use for cryptomining altcoins.
Monero and XMRig are the most common accounts for cryptomining against cloud resources, hence activity involving lesser-seen coins and tools may be more likely to go undetected.
Cloud services probing:
Lacework Labs captures a range of telemetry in both product deployments and custom honeypots, which allows the company to see trends relevant to cloud defense purposes. For these sources, many cloud-relevant applications are continually targeted, but Lacework found that AWS S3, SSH, Docker, SQL and Redis were by far the most targeted.
Based on the findings of this report, Lacework Labs recommends that defenders:
Ensure Docker sockets are not publicly exposed and appropriate firewall rules/ security groups and other network controls are in place. This will help to prevent unauthorized access to network services running in an organization.
Ensure the access policies you set via the console on S3 buckets are not being overridden by an automation tool. Frequent auditing of S3 policies and automation around S3 bucket creation can ensure data stays private.
RSG Media enables entertainment brands to manage metadata in one place with the launch of R3M.
RSG Media Systems has announced the beta launch of R3M designed to enable Operators, Platforms, Programmers, and Studios to manage the metadata associated to their content assets in one place. The descriptive metadata about these assets has grown increasingly important with the explosion of OTT platforms competing for subscribers. These platforms rely on robust metadata to drive personalization and recommendations.
RSG Media, creator of a range of widely adopted solutions for Media & Entertainment, already captures terabytes of metadata on behalf of their current customers “but it makes sense to make this static metadata more actionable,” said RSG Media’s CEO, Mukesh Sehgal. “Everyone is struggling to syndicate their metadata to various partners, in the right format. We are well positioned with our current product stack to make this process painless and enable full monetization of rights.”
Traditionally, metadata has been siloed by department, and it has been challenging to consolidate and syndicate the data. The industry has needed a product information management system that could meet the Media & Entertainment industry’s specific use cases. R3M enables entertainment brands to view their metadata to see what they currently own in one place, edit, and supplement, and which fields are legally compliant to use.
End-to-end podcast management platform compliant for podcast analytics and advertising metrics and measurement
Backtracks, the technology infrastructure platform for end-to-end podcast management, advertising and data analytics, announces today that it has been certified by the IAB Tech Lab. The platform is now Podcast Measurement compliant for analytics, advertising metrics and measurement. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and IAB Tech Lab are organizations for the advertising, media and marketing industries helping to set standards, measurement, and compliance guidelines. Using Backtracks podcast analytics and advertising measurement allows for advertisers and publishers to gather insights into listener engagement during ad play, including the percentage of ad completion along with analytics and reporting capabilities. This certification further confirms Backtracks’ safe and privacy-centric ad experience for consumers.
“Backtracks is dedicated to providing podcasters, advertisers and publishers in-depth analytics for their audio content,” says Jonathan Gill, CEO of Backtracks. “This measurement data allows users to decide what is and isn’t working in their audio content and advertising partners. The IAB Tech Lab certification of Backtracks podcast analytics and advertising measurement data ensures that brands and publishers are privy to the same actionable data points and a shared source of truth. The IAB Tech Lab certification will allow Backtracks to progress our vision of modernizing podcasting by adding advertising value and measurability.”
The podcast industry has grown tremendously during the pandemic with 59% of people saying they spend more time listening to podcasts than browsing social media. Due to this massive boom in podcast listenership, advertisers have begun to take notice of this highly engaged and loyal audience. Limited analytics has been an obstacle for advertisers looking to take advantage of the growing audio medium. Backtracks fills this space, making it easy for broadcasters to create the best possible ROI for advertisers and provide comprehensive analytics. The IAB Tech Lab certification will further facilitate strides in the audio and advertising industry, creating a more seamless and strategic experience for podcasters, publishers, and advertisers alike.
To achieve the podcast analytics and advertising data measurement practices accreditation, Backtracks was audited by the IAB Tech Lab for compliance with the IAB Tech Lab’s official podcast measurement technical guidelines. Backtracks adheres to the highest degree of advertising industry standards for data transparency, fraud detection and removal, and information security.
“IAB Tech Lab is proud to grant our podcast measurement certification to Backtracks,” says Shailley Singh, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Global Programs, IAB Tech Lab. “Backtracks will allow podcast advertisers to better understand and connect with audiences through transparent and IAB Tech Lab certified measurement of podcast data.”
As Big Data and AI Disrupt Industries, Leaders Will Have to Act Faster, Think Differently, Consider the Ethical Consequences, and Embrace Change to Compete in the 21st Century
Distinguished industry thought leader, Randy Bean, has introduced Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data-Driven Leadership in an Age of Disruption, Big Data, and AI, the story of the rise of Big Data and its impact – its disruptive power, the cultural challenges to becoming data-driven, the importance of data ethics, and the future of data-driven AI.
“We live in a world of explosive information growth, technology advancement, emergence of the Internet and social media, yet few fully grasp what it means to become ‘data-driven,'” said Bean. “My goal with this book is to dig deeper to help organizations understand why they must become data-driven to survive, and how we all have to ‘think different, ”be different,’ and ‘lead different’ to compete in the years ahead.”
The book is now available. It is essential reading, providing leaders, data professionals, and general readers with information and real-world examples explaining why data, science, and facts matter in the world in which we live. It also illustrates which strategies have succeeded and failed.
Randy Bean, author of new book Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data-Driven Leadership in an Age of Disruption, Big Data, and AI
What others have to say about Fail Fast, Learn Faster:
“Big Data is indeed crossing the chasm that separates early adopters from the mainstream of enterprise customers. As Randy Bean makes abundantly clear in Fail Fast, Learn Faster, this crossing is by no means smooth. Through a wonderful hoard of business anecdotes, he shows over and over again that the challenge of becoming a data-driven business has little to do with the Big Data itself, and is only marginally about mastering the technology needed to harness it. Rather, it is primarily about leadership teams finding forcing functions that can drive massive change in the roles, processes, and systems that make up their enterprise. For some the forcing function will be regulatory demands, for others a global market demanding draconian cost reductions, for others an emerging competitive threat from digital disrupters, and for still others, a mission to solve customer problems that cannot be addressed by conventional means. As a reader of Randy’s book, it is your job to determine the forcing function that will drive change through your organization and to draw upon his wealth of examples to navigate your way forward.”
GEOFFREY MOORE
Author of Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win
“Inspiring, terrifying, but always usefully instructive, Randy Bean even-handedly lays out the indisputable case for why every organization needs a ‘Big Data strategy,’ and what it takes to build and act on it. Filled with great firsthand examples, ‘profiles in courage,’ and learning about what has succeeded and failed, the book is true to its title as it takes you through the tough lessons, worthy risks, and core imperatives of life competing in the Big Data future. This is a book that should be required reading across C-suites and boards, because if they don’t read it, they will be overrun by those who did.”
DAVE EDELMAN
Former Chief Marketing Officer, Aetna; Former Lead, McKinsey’s Digital Marketing Practice
“In a whirlwind tour of real-world business cases, Randy Bean gives us an ironclad set of lessons: To benefit from the increasing deluge of data now available, businesses must first have a rational strategy for what they are trying to do, along with a practical plan for architecting the data management function, as well as a set of standards and practices for how they deal with the data. But most important, they must also be prepared to steer an often-resistant enterprise in what can be an entirely new direction, and this is where the fail fast/learn faster discipline is vital. If you want to learn faster yourself, then start with this book.”
Authors of The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time
“Randy Bean has written the quintessential book for organizations striving to become data-driven. While many books often cover the technology aspects of Big Data and AI, Bean uniquely strikes at the heart of why so few have been able to capitalize on their investments in data: culture and people. Bean covers the complex but critical topic of data and AI ethics. Fail Fast, Learn Faster is both inspiring and cautionary, weaving case studies, data, and best practices, making it a must-read for CEOs, CDOs, and all data and analytics leaders.”
CINDI HOWSON
Chief Data Strategy Officer, ThoughtSpot and Host of The Data Chief podcast
New Technology Combines Software and On-Demand Printers for Brands to Deliver Personalized Unboxing Experiences to Every Single Customer
UnDigital, a provider of personalized unboxing marketing technology, today unveiled a first-of-its-kind solution that turns e-Commerce packages into a fully targeted marketing channel with attribution. Through UnDigital’s combination of proprietary software and on-demand printers, brands can now personalize the unboxing experience with custom inserts and offers for every customer that opens a package and measure the results.
According to eMarketer, e-Commerce spend has accelerated due to the pandemic and is expected to surpass $5 trillion worldwide by the end of 2021. Innovative brands can now capitalize on this surge in online shopping by turning their packages into an effective, measurable marketing channel that boosts customer loyalty, satisfaction and order frequency. With UnDigital, each package that leaves a brand’s warehouse or third-party logistics provider includes an on-demand printed insert that is completely custom to the recipient. Use cases include loyalty acquisition programs, first order promotions, helpful tips on items ordered and more, and can feature exclusive offers, product recommendations or even automated “handwritten” notes.
“Package inserts were once static and pre-printed, and until now, did not provide the personalized brand experience that today’s consumers expect. Our technology takes something fairly old school to the digital age and allows brands to take advantage of the millions of packages being shipped out daily,” said Ryan Millman, founder and CEO of UnDigital. “Marketers can now customize their package insert campaigns with the same measurement capabilities they have grown accustomed to with digital advertising, and more importantly, connect with consumers on a personal level to stand out from competition.”
UnDigital supplies brands with the software to create, schedule and test these personalized unboxing campaigns and provides the on-demand printers for inside the brands’ fulfillment centers. The printers connect to the software to ensure the right customer receives the correct print, based on attributes and campaign objectives, at the moment the package is being shipped. Brands have access to a dashboard that allows them to track revenue per campaign, impression count, buyer behavior of users who received a targeted insert and more, enabling them to make real-time adjustments to optimize campaigns.
In a four-month testing period, one beauty brand saw an 8% increase in conversion rate, $3.21 additional revenue per impression and over $220,000 increase in direct profits by adding custom offers within packages – equating to nearly half a million dollars in annualized revenue from a relatively small testing group.
