Endeavor to Acquire NeuLion Inc in $250 Million All-Cash Deal

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March 27, 2018

eClincher Integrates With Google My Business

Industry First Advances the Most Comprehensive Platform to Manage Online Presence

eClincher, the platform to manage and promote identity and engagement across the Internet, is the first social media management solution to integrate Google My Business. This joins other major social media and web applications, streamlining comprehensive management of business and organizational Internet presence more than ever.

Gilad Salamander

“Integrating with Google My Business is a key advance because it is a powerful way to boost search results, and to interact with customers and online prospects. We use our own platform to engage with customers, and we are the first to integrate Google My Business because we understand its power to help businesses meet their goals,” says eClincher CEO and co-founder Gilad Salamander.

Also Read: Lucidchart Integrates with Google Hangouts Chat to Extend Collaboration with G Suite

Capabilities of this Google My Business integration include:

Publish and schedule events: When users are publishing to a Google My Business account, an eClicher button labeled “Add Event/Button” appears. Users can add events, including title, start and end times, and messaging, directly to their Google My Business page.
Publish and schedule posts: Using the “Add Event/Button” option, users can add buttons along with a message to their Google My Business page. The button options include Book, Order Online, Buy, Learn More, Sign Up and Get Offer.
View and reply to reviews: By going to the Inbox page on eClincher, users can view and reply to reviews that come to their Google My Business accounts.
Manage multiple locations across: Google My Business, from one eClincher account

eClincher’s one-stop platform saves business owners and social media professionals hours of time managing their Google My Business, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube and other Internet service accounts. Advantages include comprehensive presence wherever customers prefer to be, automation that optimizes post timing and content, strategic consistency in messaging, and rapid responsiveness to incoming communications.

Key Takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2018

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March 27, 2018

Key Takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2018

CenturyLink Shares Its Perspective on Industry Drivers for the UC&C Market at Enterprise Connect 2018

CenturyLink highlighted its expanded voice and unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) capabilities at Enterprise Connect 2018. During the conference, CenturyLink thought leaders shared insights into the industry shifts driving how businesses approach UC&C strategies.

Also Read: Decibel Launches New Digital Experience Intelligence Scoring Capability

Key takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2018:

Digital Transformation: Leveraging cloud-based UC&C to enhance customer experiences, elevate operational effectiveness and support the evolving mobility needs of a global workforce requires an agile communications infrastructure. Enterprises engaged in digital transformation initiatives are looking to providers to help them transform their legacy environments to more secure and integrated cloud-based solutions with end-to-end support.
Legacy Investments: With the digital movement accelerating and technologies continuing to evolve, customers can choose from many technologies and applications. Customers are looking for providers to help them maximize current IT investments while identifying opportunities to integrate new technology into existing ecosystems.
Customer Experience: With changing project demands, globally distributed workforces, and employees using multiple devices, today’s businesses need simple UC&C solutions with sophisticated capabilities to stay competitive. In order to take advantage of what these UC&C solutions can offer, businesses need providers that can integrate a wide range of services and deliver a streamlined experience across all platforms.

Also Read: Columbus Launches SaaS ECommerce Solution for B2B and B2C Organizations

CenturyLink is the second largest US communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world’s best networking company by solving customers’ increased demand for reliable and secure connections. The company also serves as its customers’ trusted partner, helping them manage an increased network and IT complexity and providing managed network and cyber security solutions that help protect their business.

Decibel Launches New Digital Experience Intelligence Scoring Capability

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March 27, 2018

Decibel Launches New Digital Experience Intelligence Scoring Capability

Digital Experience Intelligence Platform Offers Unique Capability to Quantify Multiple Facets of Online Experience

Decibel, the leader in digital experience intelligence innovation for enterprise businesses, has announced the launch of its Digital Experience Intelligence platform at this week’s Adobe Summit. The platform uses a new dataset and machine learning to automatically score the quality of digital customer experience. This intelligence is designed to help marketers further maximize opportunities to improve experiences across every digital touchpoint.

Decibel, formerly known as Decibel Insight, provides real-time intelligence that enables businesses to measure and improve online customer experiences — at scale.

Poor Digital Experience Cost US Businesses $62 Billion in 2016

According to Forbes, poor digital experience cost US businesses $62 billion in 2016. Users expect a flawless experience, and brand loyalty suffers if any part of the online transaction is not seamless. Though businesses recognize the importance of mitigating pain points, they are still struggling to improve their offering when the nature of ‘experience’ is so elusive and relying on secondary research to gain customer insight is insufficient.

Digital Experience Score: The Crux of Digital Experience Intelligence Platform

Experience is subjective, personal and qualitative in nature. This makes it difficult to quantify, especially online, where visibility into how customers behave is obscured by a transaction that takes place remotely on a personal device. Decibel has developed a unique ability to understand digital body language and objectively establish user state of mind. It is the first time that qualitative customer insight has been available at a quantitative scale.

Built on a flexible, fast, open API, Decibel makes it easy to integrate and export smart experience data to enrich your entire stack or model in-house.

The cornerstone of the Digital Experience Intelligence platform is the Digital Experience Score (DXS^®). This innovative scoring system uses the new dataset to calculate a comprehensive metric which accurately and objectively measures customer experience on websites and apps. The DXS looks at key aspects of visitor interactions, including engagement, navigation, forms, technical performance and frustration, and rolls them into a singular score that businesses can use to understand and benchmark digital experience.

DXS Is a Complement to Traditional Net Promotor Score

The DXS is a complement to traditional Net Promotor Score (NPS) methodologies used by many brands and builds on what NPS offers. The DXS improves on previous capabilities by allowing brands to understand the digital behavior and experience of every customer, not only those who give feedback or respond to a survey, providing a complete picture and empowering businesses to measure change and flag issues.

Key assets of Decibel’s Digital Experience Intelligence platform include —

Collect – Website and native app experience data; modern, flexible, fast API data
Enrich – Comprehensive set of smarter experience metrics
Measure – Experience score for each interaction type
Analyze – Automatic surfacing of specific user behavior and unusual experiences
Activate – API for fast integration with other technologies and external sources

This launch comes on the heels of a year of tremendous growth for Decibel, which has recently culminated in a rebrand. In 2017, the company doubled its employee headcount across its London, Boston, and Denver offices and closed a $9 million Series A round, with funds raised to scale the business and innovate technology, such as the Digital Experience Intelligence platform. To further support its growing footprint and bolster its technical prowess, the company will look to make several executive appointments in 2018.

More Details on the Integration with Adobe Experience Cloud

Another major win has been Decibel’s deepened relationship and integration with Adobe Experience Cloud. Decibel and Adobe customers benefit from the ability to conduct scalable behavioral reporting linked to Adobe Analytics, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud. This provides an enriched view of visitor experience and a deep understanding of the behavioral cause-and-effect behind website performance.

Today, Adobe also announced enhancements to Adobe Cloud Platform, the Experience System of Record, to provide a complete, real-time view of consumers along their journeys. Decibel will continue to collaborate with Adobe to ensure joint customers deliver the best experiences possible to their customers by leveraging a truly unified profile.

DXS Component Breaks Through the Barriers Pervasive with NPS

Ben Harris, the CEO at Decibel, said, “Brands recognize that high-quality experiences build long-term value in loyal customers, but are realizing that they don’t have measures needed to manage and optimize it. Digital Experience Intelligence uses our understanding of what happens between clicks to proactively feed enriched intelligence on each visitor, website, and app into marketing stacks to enable meaningful personalization. The DXS component breaks through the barriers pervasive with NPS to give executives a more reliable way to quantify experience and track team performance.”

Amit Ahuja, Vice President, Adobe Experience Cloud Partners and Ecosystem Innovation, Adobe, said, “Delivering amazing customer experiences is paramount for successful brands today. We’ve had a great collaboration with Decibel over the last year and look forward to helping our shared clients drive even more powerful, data-driven experiences for their customers.”

Decibel’s Digital Experience Intelligence Platform Captures Unique Experience Data

Pioneering the world’s first technology designed specifically to quantify experiences, Decibel’s Digital Experience Intelligence platform captures unique experience data, enriched by machine learning, to reveal digital body language, understand user state of mind and pinpoint problem areas on your website, web applications and native apps.

The go-to, universal metric for measuring experiences online, the Digital Experience Score (DXS^®), automatically rates the quality of experiences and can be segmented across your entire digital offering, and audience for immediate insight into where the biggest wins lie. This intelligence powers best-in-class forensic tools that allow digital teams to investigate exactly how and where to optimize for better experiences.

Yello Mobile Plans to Solidify Its Leadership Position in the Blockchain Market

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March 27, 2018

Achieving Growth Through Innovation by Leveraging Its Blockchain Infrastructure to FinTech, AdTech, O2O, Healthcare, and Media Commerce Businesses

Yello Mobile, South Korea’s tech startup unicorn, plans to renew its corporate identity by switching its name to Yello and expanding its market presence in the Blockchain Market.

The brand renewal to “Yello” signifies the company’s new vision and endeavors at expanding its presence in a new business area in earnest to lead the digital transformation.

Also Read: TV May Affect the Brain But Influencer Marketing Affects the Heart

It aims to achieve service innovation through applying blockchain technology in its core businesses: FinTech (Financial Technology), AdTech (Advertisement Technology), O2O (Online-Offline Commerce), Healthcare, and Media Commerce.

In preparation, Yello laid the foundation for the swift response to rapidly-evolving blockchain and advanced relevant world-class technology and expertise mainly with its blockchain specialists, DAYLI Financial Group and DAYLI Blockchain.

Also Read: AI Evolves … and Organizations that Manage Digital Content Benefit

DAYLI Financial Group is one of the subsidiaries of Yello, with three core divisions; digital currency trading platform Coinone, blockchain specialist DAYLI Intelligence, and global top 20 public blockchain ICON.

With a great emphasis on blockchain technology development and investment, and ICO advisory services as core business areas in the short term, DAYLI Blockchain is laying out a joint project with the DAYLI Financial Group under the goal of the establishment of Cypto IB, which will offer a variety of financial services from advisory services for ICO, M&A, and investment to other financial services such as issuance of derivatives, circulation, and asset management

“Yello will be a true leader in the era of digital transformation by increasing its presence in new businesses via blockchain technology. We will accelerate growth momentum and solidify the foundation for growth by reinforcing our competitiveness in new business areas,” said Sanghyuk Lee, CEO, Yello.

Martech Veteran Will Spendlove Joins Conga as VP of Product Marketing

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March 27, 2018

Martech Veteran Will Spendlove Joins Conga as VP of Product Marketing

Former VP of Product Marketing For Salesforce CPQ Will Lead Conga

Conga, a global leader in Intelligent Document Automation, announced that cloud marketing veteran Will Spendlove has joined them as the company’s vice president of product marketing. Spendlove joins Conga from Salesforce, where he most recently led the go-to-market efforts for Salesforce CPQ and Billing products.

Will’s expertise in creating an engaging customer experience and driving high-growth products will support Conga’s commitment to deliver the world’s #1 intelligent document platform.

Conga is a Salesforce Platinum ISV Partner.

At the time of this announcement, Bob DeSantis, COO, Conga, said, “Will joins Conga at a critical time in our journey, as we build momentum and accelerate our roadmap. Will is a game changer. His extensive experience in CPQ and Salesforce will play an instrumental role in Conga’s next growth stage.”

Will added, “Today’s businesses expect a seamless experience when interacting with their customers, employees and business partners, Conga empowers businesses to create, collaborate, deliver and manage documents, and measure engagement throughout the entire document lifecycle. As VP of Product Marketing, I look forward to helping deliver one of the most flexible, feature-rich document solutions in the market.”

It’s official! I’m excited to formally announce my role as vice president of product marketing at @getconga, where I’ll oversee product roadmap and help direct overall strategy. Learn about my role, our team and the company in today’s announcement: https://t.co/hsb5LVgK6r

— Will Spendlove (@wspendlove) March 26, 2018

Currently, Conga provides Intelligent Document Automation solutions to help businesses optimize their CRM investments. The Conga Suite, which includes Conga Composer, Conga Contracts, Conga ActionGrid, and Conga Sign, simplifies and automates data, documents, contracts, signing, and reporting.

During Spendlove’s career at Salesforce, he oversaw product marketing for the CPQ and Billing product lines, and also served as Head of Product Marketing for Remedyforce, an IT Help Desk built in partnership with BMC Software and Salesforce.

Prior to joining Salesforce, Spendlove worked at OpenText and Symantec where he led the product marketing and sales enablement teams. He holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in business administration from the Eccles School of Management at the University of Utah.

Adobe Summit Update: Adobe Advertising Cloud Gets “Creative”

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March 27, 2018

Adobe Summit Update: Adobe Advertising Cloud Gets “Creative”

New Self-Serve Platform from Adobe Puts Marketers in the Driver’s Seat

At the ongoing Adobe Summit, Adobe announced enhancements to their Advertising Cloud. This includes several additions to the Adobe Advertising Cloud, part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, designed to remedy these issues. Advancements announced at the Adobe Summit include Adobe’s new Advertising Cloud Creative and an expanded integration with Adobe Analytics Cloud. This announcement follows Adobe and Microsoft announcing their expansion into the Chinese technology market.

At the time of this announcement at the Adobe Summit, Keith Eadie, Vice President and General Manager of Adobe Advertising Cloud, said, “We are tearing down the walls between creative, data and media in a way only Adobe can make possible. Many marketers today still struggle to deliver relevant advertising messages to their customers. We’re making it easy for brands to deliver well-designed, personalized advertising to consumers who may currently ignore their ads.”

Self-Serving Platform to Empower Adobe Customers to Work with Creative Assets

Marketers continue to be challenged by siloed creative and media processes as well as disparate systems and platforms. By adding new features to the Advertising Cloud, Adobe customers can take ‘Creative’ assets, optimize/target their display advertising across ad sizes and make simple changes to their ads themselves without needing to go back to their agency or re-trafficking. Creative assets that are designed in Adobe Creative Cloud will be automatically available in the Advertising Cloud Creative.

Adobe’s new Advertising Cloud Creative is a self-serve platform that significantly expands Adobe’s Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) offering by giving marketers control over basic design elements—including advertising copy and assets used in display ads—to allow for the rapid roll-out of new messaging and design without the painful and expensive steps of re-trafficking or starting the design process over from scratch.

New Features on Adobe Advertising Cloud Now Powered by AI/ML

A native integration with the Adobe Experience Cloud Device Co-op provides Advertising Cloud customers with a trusted, independent device graph to better reach consumers regardless of what device they are on. Other additions will help make advertising a more connected experience, including seamless attribution measurement (the ability to link ads bought through Advertising Cloud to business outcomes like purchases, measured by Adobe Analytics) as well as the ability to leverage brand metrics in the demand-side platform (DSP) to inform media buying decisions.

In addition, the Advertising Cloud now includes features powered by Adobe Sensei, the company’s advanced AI and machine learning framework, to optimize the relevance and performance of search, display and video ads across all screens.

Currently, Adobe Advertising Cloud is the industry’s first end-to-end, independent platform for managing advertising across traditional TV and new-age digital formats. By focusing on brand safety, improving transparency and leveraging the full power of the Adobe Creative Cloud and the Adobe Experience Cloud, the platform enables advertisers to gain greater control of their global advertising spend and achieve their business objectives.

Cognizant Named Adobe’s 2017 Delivery Quality Partner of the Year

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March 27, 2018

Cognizant Named Adobe's 2017 Delivery Quality Partner of the Year

Cognizant Interactive Showcasing Expanded Relationship and New Digital Marketing Solutions at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas

Cognizant recently announced that it has been named “2017 Delivery Quality Partner of the Year” by Adobe, the global leader in digital marketing solutions. The award was presented at the ongoing Adobe Summit, the premier annual conference for digital marketing professionals now underway in Las Vegas.

Cognizant was recognized by Adobe for its commitment to exceptional customer service on joint deployments of large digital transformation projects for clients across industries.

Also Read: SaaS Startup Paperflite Secures $400K Seed Funding; to Strengthen Presence in the US

Cognizant and Adobe have expanded their multi-year relationship in recent months through the Adobe Cognizant Experience (ACE) Program. ACE provides a framework for joint investment and development of industry-specific solutions that will initially be introduced in healthcare, life sciences and financial services.

Donna Tuths

“We are committed to partnering with clients to deliver experiences that matter – experiences that shift our clients’ position in the market. Core to this commitment is execution excellence, delivering at the highest level of quality every time, which is why this recognition means so much to us,” said Donna Tuths, Senior Vice President, Cognizant.

Also Read: Tech Giants to Attend Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) Conference 2018

Solutions being developed through the ACE collaboration — and previewed at Adobe Summit — include a healthcare-specific digital marketing platform with personalization for payers and providers; integrated functionality to support processes related to medical, legal and regulatory (MLR) compliance in the life sciences industry; and integration of Adobe Experience Cloud with banking applications to provide richer, more seamless experiences across a wide variety of consumer banking services.

Jay Dettling

Jay Dettling, Vice President, Global Partners, Adobe, added, “We are thrilled to honor Cognizant as the Delivery Quality Partner of the Year. The level of engagement between Adobe and Cognizant in our joint clients has been outstanding, and is evidence of the commitment we both have to drive transformative digital outcomes.”

Hoodoo Digital to Showcase Products for Adobe Experience Manager at Adobe Summit 2018

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March 27, 2018

Hoodoo Digital to Showcase Products for Adobe Experience Manager at Adobe Summit 2018

Hoodoo Unveils New AEM Products and DevOps Approach to ‘Reinventing Adobe Experience Manager Implementation’

Hoodoo Digital, a premier provider of Adobe Experience Manager products and solutions, will be sponsoring Adobe Summit 2018. After a year of building a team of the industry’s most experienced AEM Architects and DevOps engineers, Hoodoo will use Adobe Summit to showcase their suite of technology solutions that enable a new paradigm for success with Adobe Experience Manager.

Kem Elbrader

Co-founders Kem Elbrader and Andy Wakefield started Hoodoo with the vision of transforming the technologies that drive digital experiences. Andy is very optimistic about Hoodoo’s potential to make an impact: “The human experience is being greatly defined by our interactions in the digital world and we see enormous opportunity for improvement.” Kem and Andy previously worked together as executives for Axis41 as chief software architect and vice president of technology respectively, where they built a large Adobe technology practice that was successfully acquired in 2016. During their time at Axis41, they built reputations as thought leaders in enterprise technology, specifically in regards to the Adobe Experience Cloud.

Also Read: Adobe Flies High, Named As Leader In Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms

Andy Wakefield

Over the past two decades, Kem and Andy guided many organizations through digital transformations including premier brands such as Stanford, Sony and Adobe. After Adobe acquired Day Software, Kem and Andy helped Adobe transition many of their corporate properties over to the newly acquired experience platform and established themselves as experts in Adobe Experience Manager (formerly CQ). They have continued over the past seven years to lead and architect many successful Experience Cloud implementations. During that time, they have uncovered several inefficiencies and opportunities to disrupt the space. Kem summarized their approach: “We’re taking our previous experience and reinventing AEM implementations by creating lighter weight teams composed of deeper expertise, more effective processes and using a more modern set of tooling.”

Also Read: Adobe Set to Redefine Retail Customer Experience with New Omnichannel Marketing Capabilities

At Adobe Summit 2018, they will unveil their suite of technology solutions specifically targeted at improving Adobe Experience Manager solutions.

The first pillar of Hoodoo’s strategy is to work with forward-thinking technology vendors to strengthen the Adobe ecosystem by making AEM Connectors. They have already deployed solutions in partnership with Workfront, uStudio and Fastly to provide solutions for work management, media distribution and edge content delivery.

Next, Hoodoo has embraced the philosophy of atomic design and has developed an AEM implementation methodology that incorporates design systems as a primary deliverable. Kem described this approach as “the missing link between design teams and implementation teams,” and proclaimed, “This is the part of our process that goes beyond nuts and bolts and transforms our customer experience.”

Also Read: Tracking First Joins Adobe Exchange Partner Program to Enhance Data Governance and Reporting

Finally, Kem noted that at Summit they will be heavily promoting their Automated DevOps platform AEM Cloud. AEM Cloud utilizes Kubernetes to create a full-suite platform to support Adobe Experience Manager that can be deployed on any of the public clouds (i.e., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure) or a corporate private cloud (VMWare). AEM Cloud provides toolsets and optimizing development, operations, security, quality assurance and production support. Andy explained AEM Cloud as “finally solving the biggest problems we have continually encountered in AEM implementations.”

Hoodoo Digital brings simplicity to the complexity of AEM implementations. Using an optimized implementation process and a suite of software tools, Hoodoo delivers solutions that use the latest features of AEM and provide a highly effective way for marketing teams to accomplish their daily goals.

Zoho Revamps Zoho Creator; Adds Mobile App Creation to its Low-Code App Building Platform

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March 27, 2018

Zoho Revamps Zoho Creator; Adds New Mobile App Creation

Mobile App Creator, Page Creator, Workflow Creator and More Empower Citizen Developers to Create Powerful Web and Mobile Apps

In a major announcement, Zoho, the maker of Zoho CRM, has announced an update to its low-code application building platform, Zoho Creator. The latest version, dubbed Creator 5, has significantly enhanced and refined the core functionality of the platform, including its Mobile App Creator, Page Creator, Form Creator, Report Creator and Workflow Creator modules. Currently, Zoho Creator 5 is available immediately for all new users.

Existing users will be migrated to the new version in phases over the next few months. Zoho One customers will be able to deploy their Creator apps through the Zoho One Admin Panel.

Zoho Creator: A Mobile App Builder for Those With No Formal Programming and Deployment Experience

The latest Zoho launch also introduced the ability to design and develop native custom mobile apps alongside web applications. To simplify deployment for larger organizations, apps built on Zoho Creator can now also be managed through the Zoho One Admin Panel, a unified interface that governs the company’s full flagship suite of applications.

At the time of this announcement, Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho Corp, said, “Over the last 12 years, the Zoho Creator platform has enabled citizen developers to design and deploy over two million custom applications. Having refined our low-code, no-code approach to app development, Zoho Creator has become the app builder for those of us with no formal programming and deployment experience.

With this update, we are raising the bar yet again by enabling mobile app creation for both smartphones and tablets, no programming skills required. On top of this, all two million existing Zoho Creator applications are now automatically mobile-enabled.”

Raju added, “Think about that for a second. Web applications built on Zoho Creator 12 years ago—before mobile operating systems like iOS or Android even existed—are automatically mobile-enabled and ready for deployment on smartphones and tablets with no effort on the user’s end.”

Highlights of Zoho Creator 5

Mobile App Creator

This new addition allows users to effortlessly create powerful mobile applications for both iOS and Android, optimized for both smartphones and tablets. Existing applications built on Zoho Creator are automatically mobile-enabled.

Users can re-brand these mobile apps, enable location-based data input, customize layouts, actions, and gestures, and use their device camera and microphone to enter data. Users can then publish these custom apps on App Store and Google Play Store, or deploy them within their organizations through Mobile Device Management (MDM) platforms.

Page Creator

This new module allows users to quickly create custom, interactive pages, and dashboards simply by dragging and dropping pre-built design elements like buttons, charts, panels, and widgets into the page builder interface. With this, users can easily collate data from various sources on a single page.

Even with Creator’s new drag-and-drop functionality, users with more extensive programming experience can still create pages using HTML and CSS. Pages can also be completely customized for mobile devices.

Form Creator

The new Form Creator offers a multitude of input options by supporting advanced fields such as the geo-coded address field (which marks the location on a map), pre-built full name field (containing both first and last names), audio field, and video field. Users can also customize their web, smartphone, and tablet apps with mobile-optimized form layouts and themes.

In addition, Form Creator now includes over 100 customizable templates specific to various business verticals.

Report Creator

With new reporting options like Kanban view, Timeline view and Maps view, users can display their data in multiple ways. These reports can pull related information from other Creator apps, providing users with context for better data processing. All reports are customizable for smaller screens, and custom actions can be triggered with common mobile gestures—such as swiping and long-pressing—making mobile apps feel truly native.

Workflow Creator

The new Workflow Creator brings a drag-and-drop interface to automation. This eliminates the need to write code when automating simple tasks like approvals, schedules, or instant email, SMS, and push notifications.

For advanced workflows like data integration and custom actions to update information, users can take advantage of Deluge, Zoho’s in-house programming language.

Apart from offering enhanced core features, Creator 5 strengthens the entire platform with the following updates —

– App Deck

The new App Deck includes over 50 pre-built, ready-to-use web and mobile apps that can be customized by businesses to suit their needs. App Deck has a wide variety of applications that cover everything from standard business processes, such as like sales, orders, and expenses, to industry-specific implementations, such as logistics, real estate, education and nonprofits.

– Unified Database

Historically, data stored within applications has been siloed. To get around this, businesses have had to spend time and money building integrations if they want to share data across applications. With Creator 5, all custom apps built on the platform are treated as a single virtual database, enabling seamless integration, data lookup, and reporting across applications. This capability is also extended to other Zoho applications such as Zoho CRM and third-party cloud applications like QuickBooks.

– Zoho One Integration

Applications built on Zoho Creator can now be deployed to users, groups, and departments through the Zoho One Admin Panel, just as users would deploy any other Zoho product. Custom Zoho Creator applications respect access permissions defined in Zoho One, making their deployment within the organization easy and smooth.

Raju said, “This is one of the biggest releases for Zoho Creator. From enabling users to create mobile apps without having to write a single line of code to completely customizing applications, Creator 5 removes the complexity of app development by providing an easy-to-use interface to create powerful custom applications. The best low-code application building platform just got even better.”

Currently, Zoho provides OS for back-office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools, Zoho is one of the world’s most prolific software companies. In 2017, Zoho introduced the revolutionary Zoho One, an integrated suite of applications for the entire business.

Marketing Tech Hub Firm CEO Robert Gryn Joins Forbes Technology Council

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March 27, 2018

Marketing Tech Hub Firm CEO Robert Gryn Joins Forbes Technology Council

Forbes Technology Council Is an Invitation-Only Community for World-Class CIOs, CTOs and Technology Executives

Codewise, a leading provider of ad exchange and ad measurement and optimization platforms, recognized by the Financial Times as the 2nd fastest growing company in Europe, announced that its CEO and founder Robert Gryn has been accepted into the Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.

Gryn joins other Forbes Technology Council members, who are hand-selected, to become part of a curated network of successful peers and get access to a variety of exclusive benefits and resources, including the opportunity to submit thought leadership articles and short tips on industry-related topics for publishing on Forbes.com.

Also Read: Codewise appoints John Malatesta as Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer and Excom Member

Forbes Councils combines an innovative, high-touch approach to community management perfected by the team behind Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) with the extensive resources and global reach of Forbes. As a result, Forbes Council members get access to the people, benefits, and expertise they need to grow their businesses — and a dedicated member concierge who acts as an extension of their own team, providing personalized one-on-one support.

“I’m honored to join the Forbes Technology Council. I look forward to working with other members of the Council and sharing my experience and advice with my fellow entrepreneurs, both accomplished and aspiring, via such an outstanding platform as Forbes. As our company continues to revolutionize and reinvent the AdTech industry, I am confident that our expertise and insights will be instrumental to many professionals and companies striving to succeed in this dynamic and highly competitive space,” said Gryn.

Also Read: The Remaining Barriers to OTT Advertising’s Boom

Scott Gerber

“We are honored to welcome Robert Gryn into the community. Our mission with Forbes Councils is to curate successful professionals from every industry, creating a vetted, social capital-driven network that helps every member make an even greater impact on the business world,” said Scott Gerber, founder, Forbes Councils.

ZoomInfo to Host Third Annual Growth Acceleration Summit June 18-20 in Boston

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March 27, 2018

ZoomInfo to Host Third Annual Growth Acceleration Summit June 18-20 in Boston

B2B Sales and Marketing Conference to Feature 25-Plus Industry Headliners, Networking, and Exclusive Look Inside ZoomInfo 2.0

Zoom Information (ZoomInfo), the world’s leading corporate contact database announced its third annual Growth Acceleration Summit, the B2B sales, and marketing event of the year.

The B2B sales and marketing summit takes place June 18-20 at the InterContinental Boston, 510 Atlantic Ave. The conference is open to sales and marketing professionals in the software, technology, and B2B services sectors. The event’s theme explores how to improve alignment to drive productivity of sales and marketing teams—to ultimately facilitate growth acceleration. A new track, Inside ZoomInfo 2.0, will help teams better integrate new features, and will feature ZoomInfo customer strategies and exciting success stories.

Also Read: Adobe Summit Update: Adobe and Microsoft Extend Global Partnership To China

Featured presenters include some of the industry’s most influential sales and marketing leaders, such as Jay Baer (Convince & Convert); Neil Patel (Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics); Tiffani Bova (Salesforce); Keenan (A Sales Guy, Inc.); and Grant Cardone (international sales training expert). General session speakers include thought leaders Jay Acunzo, Trish Bertuzzi, Michael Brenner, Mark Schafer, Lori Richardson, Dave Gerhardt, Forrester and SiriusDecisions analysts, and many more.

Also Read: ZoomInfo Announces Compliance with the Forthcoming GDPR

Among additional highlights are a VIP dinner, evening networking receptions, live entertainment, a celebrity-opening keynote, and ZoomInfo’s presentation of B2B Growth Acceleration Awards celebrating sales and marketing all-stars.

Jay Acunzo

“In just a few years, the team at ZoomInfo has created a truly top-notch event. The speaker lineup and the great experience speaks volumes about them,” said Jay Acunzo, Host, Unthinkable Podcast.

Jay Baer

“I speak all over the world, and the collection of leaders at the Growth Acceleration Summit is truly extraordinary. I’m honored to be part of the 2018 edition, and cannot wait to teach attendees the power of Talk Triggers to grow their businesses,” said Jay Baer, Founder, Convince & Convert.

Columbus Launches SaaS ECommerce Solution for B2B and B2C Organizations

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March 27, 2018

Columbus Launches Software-As-A-Service ECommerce Solution for B2B and B2C Organisations

Organisations Can Now Quickly Deploy a New ECommerce Site in Just a Few Weeks Using Pre-Built Templates

Columbus, the global digital business services provider, has announced the launch of a new Software-as-a-Service eCommerce platform for B2B and B2C organizations. Columbus eCommerce integrates with existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 enterprise software to enable businesses of all sizes with retail distribution networks to quickly set up a dynamic and mobile-enabled online marketplace. The solution’s pre-built B2C functionality allows B2B businesses to extend their current operations to cater for B2C customers.

Also Read: TeleSign SMS Messaging Integrates with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing

The eCommerce web solution, delivered via the Microsoft Azure cloud, is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365. As a result, it can be fully configured and deployed in weeks without disruption to ongoing business operations or extra hardware requirements. The dynamic solution significantly reduces the time and effort required to set up and manage an eCommerce platform and allows business customers to search for stock, place orders via a PC, tablet or smartphone and access the correct product and pricing data based on individual contractual agreements.

For organizations which sell partially or exclusively to individual consumers, Columbus eCommerce also supports the fast implementation of a consumer-oriented online store. The solution can be scaled as capacity and customer-base grow, with new B2B and B2C capabilities easily deployed through simplified plug-in technology to support changing business needs. It is available for a single, fixed monthly fee, covering software, services, and infrastructure.

Also Read: SBS Group to Launch SalesConnect 365, a New Solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Mary Hunter

“Decision-makers in B2B retail are often faced with a customer base that spans organizations of multiple sizes, each with different pricing models and purchasing power. With B2B retail slightly behind the digital curve of B2C, those decision-makers are having to deal with aging processes such as selling via phone, email, legacy websites and even over-the-counter sales. The in-house Columbus team has drawn on their 100-plus years of experience to bring eCommerce and ERP under one roof, helping businesses embrace digital disruption, streamline their sales process and ultimately drive revenue,” said Mary Hunter, Managing Director, Columbus UK.

Mark Bennigsen

“The eCommerce solution combines rich B2B functionalities such as integration to data analytics with a customer-focused design that’s ideal for B2C too. It’s easy to deploy, integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and, due to its plug-in-based architecture, takes almost half the time usually required to implement and customize an eCommerce site. Columbus eCommerce meets the demand for affordable, friction-free deployment of a modern web presence,” said Mark Bennigsen, Service Delivery Director, Columbus UK.

Companies With Secure Email to Gain Unlimited Free Brand Impressions to Drive Increased Digital Commerce

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March 27, 2018

Companies With Secure Email to Gain Unlimited Free Brand Impressions to Drive Increased Digital Commerce

New BIMI Standard Puts Company Logos on Authentic Email Messages, Increasing Trust

Agari, a leading cybersecurity company, announced the first pilot of an online brand standard developed with major email providers Comcast, Google, Microsoft and Oath (Yahoo, AOL) that will offer companies the opportunity to display brand logos for free, increase trust with their customers, and ultimately lead to more revenue by increasing response rates and engagement.

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is a standard way for brands to publish their logos online. It allows logos to be easily incorporated into messaging and social media applications. BIMI does this with built-in protections that safeguard the brand, application providers and consumers from impersonation attempts.

Also Read: Scrapping Email: How Millennials are Changing Workforce Communication

Under the draft BIMI standard, email applications display the sending company’s brand logo alongside authenticated emails in the inbox list and within emails themselves. BIMI-sourced logos appear on screen real estate controlled by the email application, not in the body of the email, making them more visible to the user and preventing cybercriminals from faking the brand indicator.

Torsten Reinert

“Groupon relies on social media, messaging applications and emails to help local businesses attract and retain customers. By increasing consumer confidence in the authenticity of our messages, we believe BIMI will increase response rates, magnifying the power and reach of our marketing efforts,” said Torsten Reinert, Senior Manager Messaging Delivery, Groupon.

The first email platform to begin pilot testing based on the standard will be Oath’s Yahoo Mail. By next week, users of Yahoo Mail’s mobile, web and desktop applications will start seeing logos for companies participating in the pilot, which will soon include Aetna, Agari, Groupon, SparkPost and other large brands in the financial services, airline and technology industries.

Also Read: Have Your Best Email Marketing Year Ever by Focusing on Engagement

Marcel Becker

“This is a win-win situation; the brand has better exposure, better control of their logo, higher engagement on the consumer side, it’s more secure and Yahoo can authenticate emails in our system,” said Marcel Becker, Director of Product Management for Oath, the Verizon company that owns Yahoo and AOL.

BIMI logos aren’t just for email. They can be incorporated into any internet-based communications service including social media apps, online services, messaging services and more. It is being developed as an open standard available to any company wishing to implement it, without licensing fees.

“Protecting the privacy and information security of customers is central to Aetna’s mission,” said Jim Routh, Chief Security Officer, Aetna, adding, “By showing our customers which emails and other messages they can trust, we believe brand indicators will make it easier to communicate with our customers while making them more resistant to phishing and other fraudulent emails.”

Also Read: Google AMP for Gmail: A Marketer’s View

Email platforms like Yahoo will display BIMI logos only for senders whose internet domains are authenticated via the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) standard. Domain owners will need to add BIMI instructions to their DNS (Domain Name System) records, including the URL for the location of the file containing the logo. When the standard is complete and fully implemented, domain owners will need to use a trusted third-party authority to verify ownership of the brand and logo.

Ravi Khatod

Ravi Khatod, CEO, Agari, explained, “Progressive businesses recognize that the right security enables their highest-revenue digital initiatives. BIMI is a clear example of moving cybersecurity from the cost to the benefits column, exposing millions of users to brand logos every day.”

While it is expected to increase email security and reduce phishing, BIMI is first and foremost a publishing standard designed to enable the safe distribution of brand logos and trademarked identities on the internet.

Also Read: Is Your Company Domain Vulnerable To Email Impersonation?

BIMI offers strong benefits to CMOs and marketing organizations, including:

It will provide brands with billions of free brand impressions.
It will let brands publish (and thus control) their logos themselves, ending cumbersome manual coordination with internet application providers to update logos.
Updates to the brand logo will be picked up automatically by email and mobile app platforms.
Different brand logos may be used in email associated with different product lines, specified for different groups of customers or changed seasonally.
It has safeguards to prevent impersonation attempts, meaning the brand is shown only when associated with communication that is actually authenticated as being from your business.

The BIMI open standard is being developed by the Authindicators Working Group, chaired by an Agari official. Many of the working group’s members, including Agari, pioneered the development of the DMARC email authentication standard from 2010 to 2013 to stop phishing attacks. In October 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered federal agencies with .gov email domains to fully implement strict DMARC policies by October 2018. BIMI is the next big development in email authentication, providing businesses an economic incentive to authenticate their mail.

Why Contact Centers Are Critical to Omnichannel Marketing Strategies

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Nour Addine Ayyoub

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March 27, 2018

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Why Contact Centers Are Critical to Omnichannel Marketing Strategies

The on-demand economy has conditioned consumers to feel entitled to a product or a service at the click of a button. Not only do we want what we want, when we want it (now), we also expect brands to provide excellent and consistent customer experiences at every point of engagement. Whether you’re visiting an e-commerce website or a brick and mortar location, or you receive a targeted email or a telemarketing call, the most successful businesses are those that provide exceptional and customized experiences regardless of the channel or scale.

Also Read: Build, Train And Deploy: How AI Chatbots Can Transform the Customer Experience

Contact Centers Reach a Standstill

On one hand, advancements in marketing analytics have enabled companies to tailor online messages and experiences to customers based on their preferences at a global scale – a feat that Amazon has excelled in (in its fourth-quarter earnings, Amazon reported a 30 percent increase in net revenue to $60.5 billion). While companies make positive strides toward providing a consistent omnichannel customer experience across all marketing channels, contact centers have often been neglected by marketers, as well as legacy vendors that have been slow to evolve their technology to accommodate the needs of today’s digital businesses.

We always hear about telemarketing nightmare experiences. Whether it’s around unhappy customers being routed from agent to agent and having to endlessly repeat themselves, the frustration of dealing with incompetent contact center agents that can’t provide solutions, unpredictable and long wait times, unprofessional agents and/or unsolicited telemarketing calls, it’s clear why consumers are doubtful of this channel, and a wonder why companies haven’t worked to rectify the complaints surrounding contact centers – especially given the fact that they aren’t going anywhere.

In fact, in a survey Google conducted to understand consumer attitudes, the survey found that respondents prefer calls over online messaging because 59 percent want a quick answer and 57 percent want to talk to a real person.

Also Read: What Every Sales Leader Should Know About Conversation Intelligence Technology

Democratizing Contact Centers to Refresh Marketing Arsenals

The reality is that contact centers are a critical part of doing business across a variety of industries, and it’s important to prioritize them if the goal is to provide good customer service through a truly omnichannel experience.

To further complicate matters, consumers tend to be suspicious of businesses that don’t provide a way to contact them, whether it’s over the phone, email, chat, etc. By giving customers the option to connect with company representatives on the channel of their choice, you enable them to discuss complex issues that would otherwise be difficult to navigate – in turn providing valuable and positive omnichannel customer service.

Marketers with limited resources are often under the impression that deploying a contact center is out of their budget. As a result, they completely forgo including them in their marketing strategies. With the days of traditional brick and mortar contact centers behind us, marketers now have access to next-generation, cloud-based contact center solutions that offer consumption-based pricing and deploys in minutes – a perfect fit for a marketing team of 2 or 200.

Also Read: 7 Tactics Every Digital Marketer Should Learn to Love in 2018

Tips to Consider When Selecting Contact Center Software

Consumption-based offerings with no monthly fees or contracts ensure flexibility for organizations – allowing them to use the technology because they find it valuable vs getting locked in through binding contracts
A 100 percent cloud-based software that enables agents to work remotely ensures flexibility and cost savings that would have otherwise have been allocated to managing the physical contact center
Machine learning and AI capabilities that leverage data from agent call outcomes, customer satisfaction scores and interaction data ensures customers are matched to the right agent at the right time, based on past customer experience, business value and agent–customer compatibility
A single communication platform that manages and monitors all of your customer interactions, whatever the channel, ensures that all agents have access to the same information – freeing callers from having to repeat themselves
Seamless integration and interoperability with existing infrastructures and tools, including CRM databases, ensure speedy deployment

In a world that’s inundated with businesses all fighting for your attention, it’s more important than ever for organizations to cater to customers through exceptional customer service and customized experiences, regardless of the channel.

Also Read: The Most Effective Way to Sell, Backed by Science

TechBytes with Jordan Cardonick, Director, Analytics and Decision Support, Merkle

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March 27, 2018

Jordan Cardonick
Director, Analytics and Decision Support, Merkle

Marketers have to stay focused on personalization, segmentation, optimization, and automation at various stages of the customer lifecycle. It all starts with the ‘truth’ in data and then measuring it over time. To dig deeper into how Merkle tackles data performance, and the use of AI/ML in data modeling/data mining, we spoke to their Director of Analytics and Decision Support, Jordan Cardonick.

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Tell us about your role at Merkle and the team/technology you handle.

I manage data and oversee analytics to ensure the financial success of our clients’ media campaigns. I’m responsible for helping clients evolve their KPI selection and data enablement by managing multiple teams that deliver day-to-day analyses, forecasting and scenario planning, budget and financial management, and marketing insights.

How would you segment data based on the contemporary marketing and sales demands?

Given that Merkle’s focus is primarily from a media lens, we develop segmentation around the various attributes of media campaigns, which may include standard elements of audience attributes. We use this information to guide our media optimization and insights, recommending more efficient ways to manage that media moving forward. Additional common segmentations include things like brand vs. nonbrand, creative size, geo publisher, and client generated segments like product/service offering and customer type.

At Merkle, how do you verify the authenticity of data? How does it fit into data orchestration platforms?

Data is the foundation of what we do at Merkle. There is a high level of scrutiny placed on ensuring that data is properly loaded, maintained, stored, and protected. For as much access to digital data that we have, we are not able to dictate how platforms attribute/characterize data. The best example of this was in the early days of the internet: Most data generated by AOL was centralized to its main server farm despite actual customers locations. So even now, if a device type or geo may be wrong, we need to still play by the Googles and Bings of the world’s rules. Based on rules, we determine the best strategy to target and manage data when the platforms don’t conform to one another.

How would you define personalization, segmentation, optimization, and automation at various stages of the customer lifecycle? How do you manage customer experiences at each level of this journey?

The answer is in the goals and objectives of the client and what that brand hopes to accomplish at each level; and what access to data there is at each step. For instance, at the awareness stage, we may segment to find new audiences vs. look-alikes of the people who eventually buy. Building automation around look-alikes for the model and optimizing around those qualities and engagements is then more traditional and streamlined. For net new characteristics of potential buyers, i.e., selling a new product to a current market or entering a new market with current products, we may need to design a long-term test or longitudinal study to see what the downstream impact of that is. This makes automation and even personalization difficult because we don’t know what quite to expect yet.

Why should brands leverage data optimization software for marketing campaigns?

I recommend companies stay away from pre-built software that is ‘out of the box’ at first because it may not consider all of the nuances of that business or in the data itself. Out-of-the-box software packages work well once you have an initial foundation and understand your data. I do suggest software like Tableau or Python that facilitate data analysis if there is a proper team in place to do so.

How do you leverage AI/ML and data science at Merkle? Which AI companies are you particularly interested in?

While AI/ML in their current iteration are areas that we are continuing to refine and develop services around, these elements have been key to our business in recent years. We’ve built our own bidding technology that considers many characteristics, rules, and models to populate the engines with the right bid at the right time. Modeling and mining the data are crucial to helping us uncover opportunities and efficiencies for the campaigns that we are managing. Companies like Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft are so interesting to follow in terms of the potential future for AI, but there are a lot of companies that are doing cool work like Uber and the self-driving cars and all the cool behind-the-scenes work that Netflix does to promote what shows I might want to watch.

What is the one message for 2018-2022 that you want to share with other analysts and researchers in the marketing and sales technology industry?

Data is going to continue to explode and come from all sorts of places. Don’t get overwhelmed by all of it — just make sure you take a step back and think about the “so what” before diving in.

Thanks for chatting with us, Jordan.
Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com

Innovid Appoints Industry Veteran Tim Braz as Senior VP of Sales

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March 27, 2018

Innovid Appoints Industry Veteran Tim Braz as Senior Vice President of Sales

As Global Video Marketing Platform Continues Its Growth, Tim Braz to Increase Value and Engagement across Connected TV and Data-Driven Video Solutions for Brands

Innovid, the world’s leading video marketing platform, recently announced the appointment of Tim Braz, the newest member of the Innovid management team, who will serve as senior vice president of sales. As Innovid expands its global footprint and helps more brands implement data-driven video marketing, Braz will be responsible for creating additional value for existing customers and securing new client accounts. With deep expertise in digital marketing, Braz is well positioned to help connect brands with their customers in more personalized, engaging ways, particularly in the high-growth areas of data-driven video and connected TV.

Tim Braz

Braz brings more than two decades of technology sales expertise for brands and agencies to his new role at Innovid. Most recently, Braz served as senior vice president of North American sales for digital marketing platform Ignition One, where he managed the national sales team. Prior to that, Braz served as Adobe’s vice president, Eastern Region, Financial Services and Latin America, where he worked closely with brand marketers, supporting client growth and introducing new cloud products.

Also Read: Tapad and Innovid Partner to Enhance Cross-Device Video Personalization

“Innovid’s leadership in helping brands create, deliver and measure data-driven video experiences across all screens and channels is vitally important in today’s advertising landscape,” said Braz, adding, “I look forward to helping our established customers grow their digital video ROI through increased interactivity, personalization and engagement, as well as supporting new global brands looking to build stronger relationships with their customers through data and video.”

Beth-Ann Eason

Beth-Ann Eason, president of Innovid, added, “Tim’s laser-focus on customer satisfaction and success couldn’t be a better fit for Innovid’s mission and company culture. Data-driven video has become increasingly important for our current and prospective customers, and Tim’s consultative experience with brands will enable us to help them achieve more effective video marketing.”

Interview with Alastair MacLeod, CEO, Teralytics

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March 27, 2018

[vc_wp_text]“Telecom data is inclusive data and thus, the only source of information that captures the movements of the entire population.”[/vc_wp_text]

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/367adg” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastair-macleod-0514213/”]

Tell us about your role and how you got here? What led you to join Teralytics?

I’ve historically run telecom and data businesses, but I’ve never worked in the big data analytics space. After meeting the founders and witnessing their enthusiasm for changing the world, I became interested in the company.

Being surrounded by young, bright people determined to make a difference and change the world is an inspiring place. We worked together for a couple of months and then began talking about making it permanent. It’s a great company, a great bunch of people, and a fascinating time to be working here. There’s so much change and we’re right at the heart of it.

How do you define your ‘Ideal Customer’? How can B2B technology companies benefit from your mobility data and supporting technologies?

Teralytics is sitting at the confluence of huge changes in how people live and how society operates. As new technology and transportation services come along, the way people move is changing. We’re at the crossroads among governments who need to procure the infrastructure for people to move, traditional transport providers who must adapt to the changes and new mobility service providers who are upsetting the applecart with flexible, user-oriented transportation. It’s vital that all three of these groups understands how and where people move and why they chose one travel option over the other.

The only way you can get a truly holistic view is with information that originates through telecom data and here Teralytics is the world leader. Telecom data is inclusive data and thus, the only source of information that captures the movements of the entire population. Historically it’s been very hard to understand this data, but Teralytics is pioneering a new way to draw insights from this data, using the most advanced AI technology around.

How is mobility detection technology evolving with the new crop of data touch-points?

In Teralytics’ space, there are three main drivers related to new data touch points. The first is regulatory changes such as the increasing pressure on data privacy. For instance, the upcoming GDPR framework will allow significantly less intrusion into users’ GPS data. This is expected to be a one-way trend globally. Second, mobile operating system providers in the private sector such as Apple and Google are changing their policies regarding which apps can access which data. Teralytics provides aggregated insights sourced from anonymized mobile networks data that isn’t affected by these trends. Finally, we’re just at the beginning of the proliferation of new technologies — such as 5G connectivity — that will change the landscape in a completely different way. The AI technology we use and our resulting insights are enhanced as the cell density increases (as will happen with 5G). So we’ll see an improvement in geolocation precision and richer insights which will bring about new uses to mobile networks, based location insights that aren’t available today.

How do you see digital experience platforms evolving with the maturity of AI/ML and voice? What challenges do you foresee marketers will face? How do you prepare for an AI-centric ecosystem as a business leader?

In our space, the certain outcome as AI and Machine Learning matures is that getting from A to B will cease to be a task and instead it will be a mobile space where you continue your mobile life. Mobility is part of the context of digital experience platforms.

From the purveyor of the digital experience platforms, it’s another place to target you and as the consumer of the experience, it’s another place to get consume a digital experience. The first challenge is that marketers have got to figure out how they’re going to tackle that new paradigm and capture the opportunity.

At Teralytics, how do you help companies transform customer relationships through the digital landscape?

We help automotive and mobility services companies first understand how their entire customer base is moving and interacting with their products and services, be it cars, ride-sharing services, etc. Our insights help them understand the rationale of their customers when they choose one travel option over the other. We also help them build solutions based on a deep understanding of the needs of their entire target population, not just the ones using their services already.

How should B2B marketers leverage customer data and content marketing for better reach and targeting?

Take Uber or Lyft as an example, their marketers currently only understand their own customer base from the data they collect through their apps. Marketers should aim to analyze the most representative data, showing them customer behavior beyond their own user base by partnering with companies like Teralytics, that can provide them with the understanding of the wider population. The same goes for the automotive industry, which is currently undergoing the paradigm shift from selling cars to selling mobility services.

How do you bring together people and inspire them to work with technology at Teralytics?

Teralytics is the archetype of the post-evolved system, so we don’t face this challenge. We operate across three continents and four countries and we don’t even notice it. We’re used to working across long distances and we’re comfortable having meetings with people across a 12-hour time zone.

The technology isn’t something we need to adapt to, but it’s just how we work and how we live. We already are cutting edge with our technology and live the way other companies will live as they become more tech-centric.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

My smartphone. On average, I’m on the move 3 to 5 days per week and my phone is basically my office in my pocket wherever I go. If I lose my laptop or my tablet or my briefcase, I can cope with it. I just need one credit card, my passport, and my smartphone.

What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?

I make sure to turn off all my notifications for at least an hour a day and get some work done.

What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

I have a couple of bespoke news feeds that are sector-specific and I read the Financial Times, The Economist and Twitter. For fiction, I’m currently reading a book called “Sirens” by Joseph Knox. For non-fiction, I’m reading the “Master Algorithm” by Pedro Domingo.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

You should marry that girl.

Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable

Thank you Alastair! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

Also Read: TechBytes with Robin Williamson, VP Engineering, Teralytics

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Alastair” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68ab84-4b62″]

Alastair MacLeod specializes in leading Big data & machine learning, data/information services firms, and fixed & mobile telcos. He has been a CEO/MD of companies have seen significant business growth, with P&Ls rising from sub $100m to more than $1bn.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Teralytics” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68ab84-4b62″]

teralytics

The better we understand the way we move, the better we can build cities, mobility services and transportation systems to meet our needs. Teralytics offers the most advanced insights on human mobility based on cutting edge data science, proprietary machine learning algorithms and deep technology, capturing billions of signals every day from cell towers and other unique sources. We work with leading telecom companies and data partners around the globe to capture information about people’s geographical locations, movement habits and demographics; all completely anonymized and aggregated. We believe in unlocking the power of data to change the cities we live in, solve real-world business problems, enhance people’s lives, and ultimately benefit the world.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]

[mnky_heading title=”MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmartechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com%2Fcategory%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]

The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.

Univonix Showcases SaaS to Accelerate Digital Transformation with Microsoft Teams at Enterprise Connect 2018

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March 27, 2018

Univonix Showcases SaaS to Accelerate Digital Transformation with Microsoft Teams at Enterprise Connect 2018

Univonix Migrate Is an Automation Tool That Helps Reduce Time, Cost, Complexity, and Risk

Univonix, announced at Enterprise Connect 2018, enhancements to Univonix Migrate, enabling customers to evaluate, plan and migrate legacy communication systems (e.g. Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, Siemens, Alcatel Lucent etc.) to Microsoft Teams.

Efrat Greenberg

“Univonix is excited to add support for Microsoft Teams to its migration readiness and automation tools. Microsoft Teams is evolving as the primary service for Intelligent Communications in Office 365. We are pleased to help customers looking to retire their legacy telephony system, a fast, reliable and cost-effective route to achieve smarter calling experiences with Microsoft Teams,” said Efrat Greenberg, Vice President Business Development & Sales, Univonix.

Also Read: Avaya Confirms Sabio CX Leadership with First Full Avaya Oceana Accreditation

Univonix Migrate is an automation tool that helps reduce time, cost, complexity, and risk associated with telephony migrations, from IP PBX to Microsoft Skype for Business and Teams.

Hosted on Microsoft Azure, Univonix Migrate offers the ability to deliver the migration for all users and sites remotely, with a low entry cost and enterprise-grade security & compliance.

Also Read: Adobe and Microsoft Expand Strategic Partnership to Drive E-Signatures and Collaboration Among Teams in the Cloud

Univonix Migrate has a track record of delivering:

50% Cost & Time Savings
Increased Data Accuracy
Seamless Telephony Migration
Easier End-user Adoption
Reduced Post-migration IT Support
Enterprise Connect takes place in Orlando, Florida March 12 -15. Attendees are invited to visit Univonix at
booth #736 to get a firsthand look at the company’s assessment and migration automation solutions for
Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.

Univonix was founded in 2014 by a passionate team of Unified Communications and VoIP veterans, Skype for Business and Cisco Unified Call Manager experts, seeking to provide simpler solutions to common problems in the market today.

Adobe Summit Update: Adobe and Microsoft Extend Global Partnership To China

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March 26, 2018