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New Productiv App Procurement Hub Takes the Friction out of Procuring Software

Productiv-Saas Management Made Simple

Solution replaces frustrating, complex manual activities with automation and data-driven collaboration, making it easier for stakeholders to align on software and services intake and renewal decisions

  • Now companies can transform siloed, disconnected software procurement processes into automated, customizable workflows within minutes – and avoid up to $275K in license costs annually1

  • According to a recent Total Economic Impact study, Productiv turned incomplete purchasing and renewal data into a single source of truth, allowing teams to align and decrease time spent on renewal preparation by 65% in year one, by 70% in year two, and by 75% in year three2

  • Additionally, customers used insights based on benchmarks, vendor intelligence, app usage data and license recommendations to negotiate confidently and minimize risk– and save over $130K annually3

Productiv, the leader in SaaS management, unveiled the App Procurement Hub, an add-on to the company’s SaaS Intelligence™ Platform. Generally available now, the new module provides a frictionless software procurement experience at a time when businesses are struggling with hundreds of applications, dozens of cross-functional stakeholders and more complex portfolio rationalization decisions.

Procurement, finance and IT teams are under tremendous pressure to optimize software spend and eliminate waste while also driving higher value during purchases and renewals. But existing approaches of spreadsheets, meetings and one-off online conversations no longer work at scale or meet the needs of the modern procurement leader because they don’t align the right people at the right time to make data-led decisions. On average, seven disconnected tools are used to support procurement decisions and existing ERPs have hard-to-use capabilities that make it difficult and costly to drive software intake and renewals across an organization. Meanwhile, 6-10 employees are involved in each purchasing and renewal decision, making collaboration more complex across hundreds of applications and services. Organizations are increasing business risk due to missing assessments of vendors – and can also miss out on up to 30% in cost savings because they don’t have benchmark prices for their apps.

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The Productiv App Procurement Hub automates software procurement processes effectively and consistently with ease. Unlike other solutions, the new App Procurement Hub makes it stress-free for companies to orchestrate data-driven intake and renewal reviews and approvals across stakeholders in multiple departments as well as negotiate renewals confidently and minimize risk with data and insights.

Key capabilities of the App Procurement Hub include:

  • Workflow builder: This no-code workflow builder enables companies to easily create workflow templates for intakes, renewals and other processes – something that otherwise could take months for IT to prioritize and implement – without the need for expensive licensing in other tools. Workflows can be integrated with ticketing, contract management, ERP and vendor assessment systems.
  • App renewal requests: Unlike other solutions, this capability helps companies review app usage and license recommendations to understand how an app and licenses are currently being used so stakeholders from multiple departments can align on renewals, discussions and decisions. Unique pricing benchmarks by app and license SKU help application owners know whether they are paying more or less than their peers for licenses.
  • Two-way Integration with Slack: In an industry first, the App Procurement Hub allows stakeholders to better align around notifying, collaborating and discussing application purchases or renewals in Slack channels – which is how many teams work together today. A dedicated Slack channel is automatically created when the app renewal is initiated and two-way updates between Slack and Productiv keep discussions, documents and task statuses in sync, all of which are stored in Productiv for future reference.
  • App intake requests: This customizable intake form and integration with Productiv AppCenter streamlines the intake request process and saves time when managing, tracking and fulfilling requests for new software and services. The App Procurement Hub also provides pricing benchmarks by app and license SKU to better understand what’s a good price.
  • Vendor risk assessments: A new risk assessments feature provides a central location for vendor business health data, security, privacy and compliance questionnaires and vendor-related documents and internal intelligence, such as previous issues raised by employees or missed service-level agreement (SLA) targets.

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“Buying and renewing software never stops – but it’s a stressful process. We’ve heard from many businesses that procuring software is broken, causing unnecessary friction for the teams who are responsible for purchasing decisions,” said Alok Ojha, chief product officer of Productiv. “Our App Procurement Hub changes the game by enabling companies to easily automate procurement processes, align stakeholders around trusted data and better negotiate using our unique insights with usage data, recommendations, benchmarks and vendor intelligence.”

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KINEXON Named a Visionary in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services

Company’s technology is transforming operations in automotive, manufacturing, aerospace, and beyond

KINEXON, a leading and innovative provider of automation solutions and location services, announced it has been recognized by Gartner as a Visionary in the Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services. The evaluation was based on specific criteria that analyzed the company’s overall completeness of vision and ability to execute. This is KINEXON’s first-time appearance on the Magic Quadrant.

KINEXON provides an end-to-end indoor location solution that captures, optimizes, and automates operations in automotive, manufacturing, aerospace, and more. Global customers, including BMW and Continental, rely on KINEXON’s product suite for production-critical operations. The company’s open cloud platform provides comprehensive no-code/low-code configurations and intuitive analytics modules. It is designed to identify bottlenecks, automate operations, and address a variety of related use cases – including order tracking, management of mobile robot fleets, tool control and more.

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“We believe this recognition acknowledges our ambition to pioneer the next generation of connected and automated operations. It recognizes our continuous efforts to drive the efficiency and sustainability of our customers,” said Dr. Oliver Trinchera, Co-Founder and CEO of KINEXON. “KINEXON is transforming manufacturing in a way that delivers actionable insights for a fast ROI for our customers, which include some of the most prominent and forward-thinking companies in the world.”

Gartner Magic Quadrants are a culmination of rigorous, fact-based research in specific markets, providing a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the providers in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Providers are positioned into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. The research enables you to get the most from market analysis in alignment with your unique business and technology needs.

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Loopio Announces the Addition of Neetu Toor as First General Counsel

Neetu Toor’s appointment comes as Loopio enters its next stage of growth

Loopio, the leading response management software company, announced that it has named Neetu Toor as its first General Counsel, effective February 27, 2023. Toor joins Loopio on the heels of a milestone year for the company, expanding its customer base to over 1,400 world-leading organizations.

Most recently serving as Senior Director of Legal Services and acting Data Privacy Officer at Caseware International Inc., Toor brings 10 years of senior legal experience to the company, specializing in providing counsel and leadership to high-growth private technology companies. She offers a stellar track record of advising management on matters including corporate and commercial transitions, litigation, corporate governance, and regulatory and compliance.

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“Neetu is an incredibly talented attorney, and her proven experience providing counsel to fast-growing companies makes her a great addition to the Loopio team,” says Stephanie Ratza, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Loopio. “Her strategic thinking and progressive legal leadership will be instrumental to driving results for the company as we scale the business and build on the strong foundation that’s been established.”

In this role, Toor will lead and help scale the company’s legal function and provide legal counsel across all matters related to Loopio’s business, ethics and compliance, data privacy governance, and enterprise risk management.

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“I am excited and honored to join the Loopio team as its first General Counsel,” says Toor. “The company’s employee-first culture and the opportunity to play a part in the next stage of growth was an incredibly appealing combination, and I look forward to building on its strong momentum into 2023 and beyond.”

The company has significantly bolstered its leadership team since 2020, with the addition of Greg Elliott as Vice President (VP) of Customer Experience, Rick Smolen as Senior Vice President (SVP) of Sales, Ratza as CFO, Bobbi Alexandrova as SVP of Software Development, and the promotion of Justin Peimani to VP of Strategic Partnerships.

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XY Retail Launches XY Edge to Deliver Fast-Paced Connectivity and Offline Point-Of-Sale Capabilities

XY Retail is a unified, omnichannel-commerce solution focused on improving the customer experience for its clients. Faster checkout times and the ability to support sales and returns while offline or in remote locations can lead to increased customer satisfaction and prevent losing a sale to downtime. Although 87 percent of sales still happen in-store, only 37 percent of retailers have implemented technology such as Wi-Fi within stores. This lack of up-to-date technology can have profound implications for retailers in today’s connected environment.

“XY was built with those standards in mind. If you need to be able to offer service in a boutique location with spotty internet access, you’ll have everything you need offline – from essential product information to customer loyalty programs.”

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During offline mode, XY Edge does not store credit card information on the platform but instead uses PCI-compliant payment partners and gateways to process different payment options. Users will complete a transaction offline on the XY system, and the data automatically syncs when the POS device comes back online, whether the customer paid with a credit card, an in-store gift card, or a voucher.

“We understand how difficult it can be for retail to keep up with the high expectations of luxury consumers,” said Susan Jeffers, CEO of XY Retail. “XY was built with those standards in mind. If you need to be able to offer service in a boutique location with spotty internet access, you’ll have everything you need offline – from essential product information to customer loyalty programs.”

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XY Retail, the global commerce solution helping retailers streamline omnichannel operations and foster the strongest, most meaningful, and most profitable relationships with their customers, today announced the launch of XY Edge. XY’s latest product delivers a seamless service that can operate through network outages and process sales faster without downtime

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Aeyon Awarded $18.5 Million U.S. Army Contract To Support PM IVAS With Robotic Process Automation

AGA - Aeyon

Aeyon will leverage its Robotic Operations Center of Excellence (ROCoE) to deliver a scalable, automation-first approach to acquiring, deploying and managing integrated Soldier systems

Aeyon, which delivers advanced strategies and digital transformation for critical national security and civilian agency missions, has been awarded a 5-year, $18.5 million contract to provide Robotic Process Automation (RPA) services to United States Army, PEO Soldier, PM Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS).

By automating core PM IVAS processes that support the various products, program leaders can more rapidly access data, accelerate technology delivery to Soldiers, and generate cost and efficiency gains by freeing resources to focus on high value operations. Aeyon will apply processes developed and tested within its Robotic Operations Center of Excellence (ROCoE), which is dedicated to the ideation, governance, and management of Intelligent Automation solutions for customer deployment.

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“Our success in intelligent automation and track record supporting PM IVAS with data analytics and business intelligence positions Aeyon to deliver comprehensive and operationally realistic automations”

“Our success in intelligent automation and track record supporting PM IVAS with data analytics and business intelligence positions Aeyon to deliver comprehensive and operationally realistic automations,” said Pat Collins, Chief Growth Officer, Aeyon. “This contract is precisely the type of opportunity our Centers of Excellence are built for: combining innovative solutions with subject matter experts’ knowledge base to create forward-thinking, best-value automated solutions and, importantly, demonstrates a proven approach that can scale up and down to meet services’ needs from the PdM to the PEO.”

Under the terms of the contract, Aeyon will design and implement RPA solutions to improve process efficiency and data sharing to support actionable cost, schedule, and IVAS performance activities. The objective is to systematically automate dozens of processes, prioritizing those that will yield the greatest positive impact. Use cases within PM IVAS that can benefit from Robotic Process Automation include: gathering critical data from units where PM IVAS products are fielded, supply and demand tracking activities, new equipment training, reporting and analysis notifications, and project management activities.

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Immuta Secures Strategic Investment from ServiceNow as Global Expansion Continues

Immuta Announces $90 Million in Series D Funding | Business Wire

Strategic funding, product enhancements, and new key executives empower Immuta to meet growing data security demands

Immuta, a data security leader, announced an additional strategic investment to its Series E funding round from ServiceNow. This investment comes at a time of immense growth for Immuta and its Data Security Platform SaaS offering, which saw annual recurring revenue increase by 200% over the last fiscal year. With this investment, Immuta will continue growing its cloud offering as demand for comprehensive data security soars in the US, as well as the EMEA and APJ regions.

Building upon Immuta’s continued growth in 2022, the company will continue to leverage its funding to accelerate product innovation as it expands its Data Security Platform. The funding will also be used to deepen strategic partnerships within the cloud data ecosystem and strengthen its commitment to customer success.

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“ServiceNow is committed to investing in leading technologies that drive secure digital transformation outcomes,” said Lou Fiorello, vice president and general manager of security products at ServiceNow. “Immuta has proven itself to be a clear leader in data security and we see Immuta’s product innovation and platform as enablers for organizations to maximize the value of their cloud investments.”

“Immuta built excellent momentum in 2022 and continued to establish itself as a leading SaaS solution for data security over the past year,” said Matthew Carroll, CEO, Immuta. “I’m proud of our continued growth on all fronts – financial, partnerships, employees, customers, products, and geographies – as it illustrates our tried and true product, innovative teams, enthusiastic customer support, and strong company culture. This momentum, fueled by additional funding from ServiceNow, will help launch Immuta into our next phase of growth and meet the growing data security demands we’re seeing from our customers.”

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LINGA Appoints Daymion Phelps to Vice President of Sales

LINGA POS System

LINGA Taps Retail POS Sales Leader to Grow Sales Efforts

LINGA rOS, the all-in-one cloud-based restaurant operating system provider, has appointed Daymion Phelps as the new Vice President of Sales.

Phelps brings more than 20 years of retail automation solution sales and consulting experience to LINGA with a deep background in the Point-of-Sale, SaaS and Payment Solutions industries. Daymion was most recently the Director of Sales for Heartland Retail, where she focused on providing point-of-sale solutions to growing small business, mid-market and enterprise retailers. Phelps’ professional software sales career began with Radiant Systems (a division of NCR) and led to Microsoft Retail solutions and Springboard Retail.

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Phelps has been featured as a webinar guest speaker with publications in RIS News and Startup Nation, where she has focused on translating retailers’ operational requirements into software automation. She earned her MBA from The Crummer School of Business at Rollins College. She also has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Florida.

Daymion will lead the direct-to-market LINGA sales team and directly support the efforts to sell LINGA rOS in the restaurant and retail markets.

“We are thrilled to bring Daymion into our organization,” says Onur Haytac, LINGA’s founder and chief executive officer. “She will bring incredible expertise to her new role, and I am sure she will serve as a thought leader for her team and the employees she will directly oversee.” continued Haytac.

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Appian Names Mark Dillon Senior Vice President, Global Partners Organization

Industry veteran to drive ecosystem growth

Appian announced the appointment of Mark Dillon to the position of Senior Vice President, Global Partners Organization. Mark is responsible for the continued growth and development of Appian’s world-class partner program and ecosystem. His focus includes both global and regional partnerships to help support Appian’s growth objectives and meet global demand for the Appian Platform.

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Mark comes to Appian with more than 25 years of experience in building high velocity partner organizations. He most recently served as Senior Vice President of Global Partners and International at Quickbase, running global partnerships and International direct sales. Mark was also previously Vice President of Global Partners and Channels at Omniture, where he led the company’s worldwide partner and channel strategy. Prior to that, Mark held leadership roles at several leading technology companies, including Adobe and Domo. He has received industry honors including CRN’s “Channel Chief” Award for his work while at Omniture. Mark is a graduate of Marquette University.

“I am excited to join the Appian team and help continue Appian’s growth trajectory through global partner program excellence,” said Mr. Dillon. “Appian is defining the future of business process automation, and I look forward to working with our partners to help organizations around the world realize the full benefits of the Appian Platform.”

Mr. Dillon reports to Appian Chief Revenue Officer Chris Jones. Mr. Jones added, “Mark is a fantastic addition to our team and the best choice to lead the expansion and deepening of our partner ecosystem relationships. Mark’s deep experience in building and managing successful partner programs will be a tremendous asset to Appian.”

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Ser.vi Worldwide and United Robotics Group to Unveil Solution to Hospitality Staffing Shortage at International Restaurant & Foodservice Show March 5-7 in New York City

Ser.vi Worldwide, a leading provider of QR ordering solutions for restaurants, and the leading innovator in robotics technology United Robotics Group, will introduce innovative technologies designed to enhance dining experience for patrons and efficiencies for staff at the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show of New York (IRFS) March 5-7 at Javits Center.

At the show attendees can enjoy a convenient food and beverage experience, while seated in the four stages and theaters in the show hall. In the past, attendees would have to wait in long lines to pay and receive their food. Now they’ll be able to order and pay with their phones via Ser.vi and Plato. United Robotics Group’s service cobiot will deliver directly to their table.

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“United Robotics Group Inc. is thrilled to showcase Plato, the mobile serving cobiot, as a solution to bring any establishment instant ROI by driving foot traffic, increasing customer retention and helping establishments that are experiencing staff shortages,” says Logan Ripley, VP of Sales, Hospitality, United Robotics Group.

United Robotics Group’s recent launch of Plato, a friendly, cutting-edge hospitality cobiot, is designed to optimize workflow for increased efficiency and drive sales. Plato enables restaurants and hotels to streamline their operations while pro viding top service to customers.

“Ser.vi works with traditional human service staff, but to further save on labor costs, Plato is an affordable option,” said Sal Iozzia, CEO, Ser.vi Worldwide.

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By combining their respective expertise, United Robotics Group and Ser.vi Worldwide aim to revolutionize how restaurants and hotels serve their customers. With Ser.vi’s high quality, mobile restaurant menu that takes orders, payments, and automatically prints tickets in the kitchen or bar, restaurants can save up to 60% on front of house staff costs while alleviating workload. With Plato’s 88-lb payload and autonomous mobile base, this collaboration is an end-to-end solution that streamlines operations and delivers a superior guest experience.

“We’re excited to allow restaurant owners and decision makers the ability to try our new way of ordering and payment at the show,” said Rashelle Rule, COO of Ser.vi.

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Rossum Publishes World’s Largest Research Dataset and Benchmark to Accelerate Scientific Progress in Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)

Groundbreaking DocILE dataset and benchmark to elevate what’s possible with AI-enabled data extraction

Rossum, the pioneer in cloud-native Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), announced that it published the world’s largest research dataset to accelerate scientific progress in business document information extraction (IE). Large datasets are crucial to improving and measuring how AI models perform, which is why the groundbreaking DocILE (Document Information Localization and Extraction) benchmark is so important. It is the world’s largest collection of business documents for the most practical information extraction tasks in IDP. Rossum’s R&D efforts continue to focus on delivering faster and more accurate document information extraction methods, so customers can minimize slow, tedious, and error prone manual document processing.

“This is an important milestone because it advances IDP research as a whole, where everyone can now develop and test more advanced algorithms on a benchmark of challenging and highly practical tasks,” said Milan Šulc, Ph.D., Head of Rossum’s AI Labs. “The new dataset will increase accuracy levels in document information extraction by accelerating research in areas such as novel machine learning architectures and training objectives. This will ultimately lead to global optimization of business communication and workflows, further increasing the amount of the time saved for our customers.”

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Datasets and benchmarks as it relates to business document IE are very rare because such documents often contain sensitive information and are legally protected. DocILE is addressing this issue by building a benchmark composed of documents from two public data sources: UCSF Industry Documents Library and Public Inspection Files (PIF). The dataset consists of more than a hundred thousand documents – real or synthetically generated (6,700 annotated business documents and 100,000 synthetically generated documents) – with labels for practical IE tasks. Additionally, it comes with a large dataset of approximately a million unlabeled documents that can be used for unsupervised learning.

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The DocILE benchmark was created as a cooperation of researchers from Rossum, Czech Technical University in Prague, University of La Rochelle, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. It follows the peer-reviewed position paper Business Document Information Extraction: Towards Practical Benchmarks, presented by Rossum’s AI Labs at the recent CLEF 2022 conference.

The benchmark is hosted as a competition at ICDAR 2023, the largest research conference on document analysis, and as a CLEF 2023 lab – see the lab teaser (arXiv preprint, accepted to ECIR 2023). Rossum sponsors the competition with a prize pool of $9000 to attract open-source contributions. To find out more about the dataset, download the detailed dataset paper (arXiv preprint). By utilizing real-world business documents, the research community can focus on advances that will have a large impact on how businesses operate globally.

While Rossum continues to lead the IDP market with its AI and machine learning capabilities, this technology is rapidly evolving. It is paramount that any company focused on AI must consistently research its next technological expansions. Utilizing the new dataset will enable ongoing innovation within the IDP field.

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