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Optoro and Locus Robotics Team Up to Deliver Fully Integrated, High-Volume End-to-End Reverse Logistics Solution

Strategic alliance comes on the heels of the annual peak in post-holiday retail return season to help retailers easily scale to efficiently meet growing returns demand while reducing costs

Optoro, Inc., the leading technology platform for retail returns and reverse logistics, and Locus Robotics, the leader in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for fulfillment warehouses and distribution centers, announce a strategic partnership to provide a fully integrated, robust, and highly scalable software and robotics automation solution for high-volume retail ecommerce returns processing.

Optoro’s returns technology platform seamlessly integrates with Locus’s industry-leading autonomous mobile robotics (AMR) solution to turn order returns – whose numbers typically increase substantially during the holiday season – into a strategic advantage. By using data science and real-time decision-making automation to determine the best path for each returned item, the technology-powered returns solutions can improve efficiency, maximize repurchases and recovery, reduce labor costs, and reduce environmental waste – allowing retailers to focus on forward fulfillment while offering the best customer experience.

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“Partnering with Locus enables us to deliver a proven robotics automation solution that is well positioned to meet the high throughput demands of today’s return centers,” said Amena Ali, Chief Executive Officer at Optoro. “Together, we can help retailers move inventory faster and more efficiently through the supply chain, cut costs, minimize their environmental impact, and improve the customer experience.”

Locus’s industry-leading robotics automation solution enables operators to easily manage large-scale AMR fleets to speed up returns processing, minimize restocking challenges, and lower labor costs by seamlessly scaling up and down whenever demand changes. The Locus solution delivers enterprise-level, large scale ecommerce automation that is ideal for high throughput, 24/7 operations, deployed in both single-level and multi-level mezzanine environments.

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“Returns and reverse logistics have historically been high-volume, high-cost functions that are typically quite complicated. We believe our partnership with Optoro will provide 3PLs, retailers, warehouse operators, and others a repeatable, efficient, and proven solution,” said Al Dekin, chief revenue officer at Locus Robotics. “During the recent peak season, Locus had several sites operating more than 500 LocusBots apiece, and dozens of others with more than 100 bots each. Our experience and success in deploying large fleets not only instills the confidence our customers require, but the speed at which we can deploy is equally critical.”

As ecommerce keeps growing, increased order volumes mean a corresponding increase in returns. According to the National Retail Federation, US retail returns totaled $816B in 2022, with ecommerce returns totaling $212B, both more than doubled their totals from 2019. From product returns to refurbishment and repairs, to recycling of packaged materials, and disposing of end-of-life products, reverse logistics involves many areas across the organization, including returns management, sales, finance, warehousing, logistics, recycling management, and environmental compliance. It is also a critical element of the customer experience.

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Barcoding, Inc. Hires Michael Tassinari as New Chief Revenue Officer

Barcoding Logo (PRNewsfoto/Barcoding, Inc.)

Tassinari will execute on growth strategies for the company across North America

Barcoding, Inc., the leader in efficiency, accuracy, and connectivity, announces the hiring of Michael Tassinari as the firm’s new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). In this role, Tassinari, a key member of the Barcoding leadership team, will be focused on growing relationships with customers and key partners, and driving growth strategies across North America.

As CRO of the supply chain automation and innovation company, Tassinari will measure and analyze revenue growth as Barcoding continues to expand its solution portfolio into areas like enterprise software, mobile worker experience, supply chain visibility, and automation (e.g., AMRs and AGVs).

Tassinari joins the Barcoding team with over 30 years of experience in IT sales and executive leadership. He was most recently the Senior Director of Data Center sales for Dell Technologies. Michael has experience leading sales teams across the both the federal and the enterprise/commercial markets, and he partnered closely with Dell’s federal customers to enable and accelerate their digital, their IT, and their workforce transformation efforts.

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Prior to this role, Michael was the Area sales manager for Dell EMC for the mid-Atlantic region focusing on Dell EMC’s largest Enterprise customers. His teams focused on helping customers modernize IT infrastructures including servers, storage, and data protection solutions.

Michael is a member of the Folds of Honor Foundation Board of Directors, the Richard J Fox Foundation Board of Directors, and the Maryland Golf and Country Club Board of Governors. He is a graduate of Saint Leo University with a B.S. in Business.

“We’re excited to see our team grow and know that Michael’s experience and leadership will be an incredible asset to our Barcoding team bringing scale to our customers, partners, employees and social communities.” said Shane Snyder, president at Barcoding. “As we continue to guide clients through this new era of supply chain modernization, we’re inspired by the creativity, energy, and experience Michael brings.”

“I am excited to join Barcoding as their new CRO at such a great time in the company’s growth path. Working together with Barcoding’s sales teams, customers, and our key partners, I believe we can truly grow our business for the betterment of our clients and our supply chain industry,” said Michael Tassinari.

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Saviynt unveils its EMEA Customer and Partner Award winners for 2022

Saviynt

Lloyds Banking Group, Maersk, Coop Norge, AXA, EY, Kocho, IPG Group and Span all honoured at Saviynt’s London Summit event

Saviynt, a leading provider of intelligent identity and access governance solutions, has announced the winners of its 2022 EMEA Customer and Partner Awards, recognising its most innovative enterprise customers and its highest performing strategic partners in the region. The award winners were unveiled at the company’s London Summit event held on 8 March 2023, which brought together partners and customers from across EMEA.

Lloyds Banking Group was named as Saviynt’s EMEA Customer of the Year, while Maersk received the EMEA Convergence Award, for its innovative deployment of the Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud (EIC) platform. AXA took the EMEA Innovation Award while Coop Norge received the EMEA Time-to-Value Award.

“Lloyds Banking Group, Maersk, AXA and Coop Norge are very deserved winners of the EMEA Saviynt Customers Awards,” said Szabi Vig, VP Customer Success EMEA, Saviynt. “They each have a clear vision to innovate, streamline and optimise their identity management strategies in order to boost security and compliance, plus reduce risk, cost and complexity. These four companies are now reaping the rewards for taking a truly industry-leading approach to identity and access governance.”

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“They each have a clear vision to innovate, streamline and optimise their identity management strategies in order to boost security and compliance, plus reduce risk, cost and complexity. These four companies are now reaping the rewards for taking a truly industry-leading approach to identity and access governance.”

Strategic partner EY picked up the award for EMEA Systems Integrator Partner of the Year, in recognition of key logo wins and for its support of enterprise customers. Top Performing Partner for EMEA West was Kocho, formerly known as Thirdspace. IPG Group picked up the same honour for EMEA East, while Scan received the Fastest Transaction Award, having successfully closed a deal with a major brand in just 18 days.

“Saviynt’s strategic partners are central to our ongoing success in the EMEA market; last year alone they helped us more than double our partner-related revenues, so we say thank you and congratulations to our award winners,” said Brooks Wallace, Senior VP Sales, EMEA, Saviynt. “Even more importantly, these partners are playing a pivotal role in educating and supporting enterprises as they seek to streamline their identity and access management processes, while at the same time ensure that their operations remain secure and compliant.”

“We are delighted to be named as one of Saviynt’s most successful partners in EMEA,” said Alastair Rees, Director of Alliances, Kocho. “The pace of organisational change together with enterprises’ increasing reliance on third parties significantly adds to the challenge of managing identities. Saviynt solves these challenges, so we are thrilled to be partnering with its team and continue to see considerable benefit from working together.”

Saviynt’s London Summit recognises its growing presence and continued commitment to the EMEA market. Identity experts from partner and customer organisations gathered at the event to discuss industry best practices and new capabilities included in the Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud platform, a leading cloud-native converged identity platform for workforce, enterprise applications, privileged and third-party identities.

The London Summit followed the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit, which took place on 6/7 March 2023, where experts from Saviynt and representatives from customer organisations shared their identity insights and best practices.

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Domo Named a Winner in the 2022-2023 Cloud Awards for Cloud BI and Analytics

Domo announced today that Domo Apps has been named the winner of the Best Cloud Business Intelligence or Analytics Solution in the international cloud computing awards program, The Cloud Awards

“Domo Apps deliver an impressive and comprehensive solution to businesses that require multi-source data-driven solutions,” said Christopher Southall, lead judge at The Cloud Awards. “The range of connectors and use of low-to-no code solutions in providing smart insights and analytics really impressed the judging team at The Cloud Awards. Domo Apps are a serious contender in this highly competitive field.”

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Domo Apps bring the benefits of data-driven decisions and actions to those who are underserved by traditional business intelligence (BI) and analytics. They go beyond charts and graphs to embed data, analytics and workflows into existing apps and processes where work is already happening. People at every level of an organization – from CEOs to frontline workers – benefit from a personalized, standalone Domo App that impacts their work and ability to succeed – all accessible through their mobile device.

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“Domo Apps turn analytics into insight-creating, action-driving applications, harnessing the power of data in its most useable and actionable form,” said Domo’s chief technology officer Daren Thayne. “They are a quantum leap in utility from traditional BI dashboards which never go beyond merely providing insights. Domo Apps offer highly-curated data experiences that enable anyone to automate business processes and take informed actions that multiply business impact.”

Domo transforms business by putting data to work for everyone. Domo’s low-code data app platform goes beyond traditional business intelligence and analytics to enable anyone to create data apps to power any action in their business, right where work gets done. With Domo’s fully integrated cloud-native platform, critical business processes can now be optimized in days instead of months or more.

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Pipedrive Named the “Easiest to Use” CRM by The Motley Fool

Selected among the top 3 CRMs for small businesses, Pipedrive outranked the largest players in the CRM space.

Pipedrive, the easy and effective sales CRM for small businesses, has been named the “Easiest to Use” CRM software by The Ascent, a Motley Fool company that provides small businesses with unbiased, data-driven analysis, advice, and reviews on finance and technology.

Pipedrive is economically priced, ridiculously easy to use, and is made by sales experts, for sales experts. If you want to invigorate your lead generation and sales flow from top to bottom, then Pipedrive can be a smart investment.

The Ascent refers to Pipedrive as a tool suitable for small teams who want to generate and organize leads or improve their sales process. “Pipedrive is economically priced, ridiculously easy to use, and is made by sales experts, for sales experts. If you want to invigorate your lead generation and sales flow from top to bottom, then Pipedrive can be a smart investment. Just about any small business owner who generates leads, closes deals, or sells services could make wise utilization of Pipedrive,” the review states.

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“We are humbled and excited about this acknowledgment. I fully agree with Steve Jobs’ statement that the ‘Easiest to Use’ award is in many ways the most significant,” said Shaun Shirazian, Chief Product Officer at Pipedrive. “Software can only be truly useful if it is easy to use and intuitive, ensuring that users are able to seamlessly navigate its features and maximize its benefits. That is why Pipedrive is committed to providing a simple and efficient sales CRM that empowers small businesses to grow and succeed.”

In 2023, Pipedrive is planning several updates to its sales CRM, centered around ease of use. Most are focused on tailoring and customization capabilities to match the buyers’ journey.

The product roadmap includes updates that allow:

  • Easier management of busy pipelines with flexible customizations, sorting and deal grouping.
  • Pipeline-specific fields, field permissions and quicker navigation to improve team focus.
  • Automatic field formulas and data validation that save time.
  • Enhanced products (services) inventory management.

The review was authored by a small business expert Tom Rayner, who has 15 years of first-hand experience using and recommending CRM tools and applications.

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Qualtrics and Five9 Partner to Improve the Contact Center Experience for Agents and Customers

New integrations bring industry-leading conversation intelligence, making agents more effective and allowing organizations to increase customer loyalty by closing the loop faster

QUALTRICS X4 – Qualtrics and Five9 announced a partnership to integrate Five9’s industry-leading cloud contact center solutions with Qualtrics Frontline Care™. The new seamless integration between Five9 Event Subscription Services and the Qualtrics’ XM Platform™ enables customer service teams to more deeply understand how their customers feel about a service experience, uncover agent coaching opportunities and quality assurance issues, and respond more efficiently when a customer relationship is at risk. The combined capabilities will help contact center managers improve the agent experience and deliver more personalized customer experiences that increase brand loyalty.

Amidst inflation and spending cuts, contact center leaders are asked to improve service and increase sales while simultaneously being challenged to lower costs and overcome sky-high agent turnover rates. More than one-third (38%) of contact center agents don’t feel they’re set up for success and only 54% of agents believe their leadership invests in their team, according to Qualtrics research. Contact center teams need a solution that not only provides the right technology but also the subject matter expertise to help them optimize their approach to CX and deliver ongoing business value.

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Collect higher quality Contact Center feedback with Five9 and Qualtrics Customer Care

Building upon the existing integration with Five9 and Qualtrics XM Discover, Qualtrics CustomerXM customers using the Five9 platform can now automatically deploy dynamic post-interaction surveys tailored to customer channel preferences to drive higher response rates. Service agents are alerted immediately following a negative interaction and can follow up directly through voice, chat, or email using Qualtrics Ticketing, reducing response times, and increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction.

“Contact centers are among the most critical pieces in delivering a high-quality customer experience but they face many challenges due to lack of funding and high agent turnover rates,” said Fabrice Martin, Chief Product Officer of Qualtrics XM for Customer Frontlines. “These integrations bring two industry leaders together and will help contact center teams improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs, increase customer loyalty, and minimize risk and compliance issues.”

“Personalizing customer experience is crucial with today’s consumers when it comes to brand loyalty. By combining Qualtrics’ cutting-edge natural language understanding and dynamic survey capabilities with our cloud contact center management capabilities leveraging Five9 Event Subscription Services, contact centers can leverage the data from the surveys to improve the customer experience,” said Scott Black, RVP Business Development at Five9. “Together we will help contact center teams gather higher-quality feedback and quickly and easily uncover process improvement opportunities, allowing businesses to deliver better customer service experiences.”

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AI-powered Scheduling And Automated Labor Compliance With Replicon Workforce Management Solution

Enforce schedule adherence, labor compliance, working time directives, time off, and pay regulations for a global diverse workforce

Replicon launched an AI-powered Workforce Management solution that helps organizations achieve 100% labor and wage compliance.

As organizations become more global and diverse, managing their workforce is fraught with challenges. Paying employees accurately and on time is a challenge. It’s difficult to continuously monitor the various global and labor laws that organizations are required to comply with.

With Replicon, organizations can support multiple use cases and harness employee time data for billing, payroll, and finance. Our unified workforce management solution has the ability to manage time and attendance, complex schedules, time off, gross pay, and labor compliance with a single solution. Replicon has designed these capabilities especially for organizations undergoing digital transformation to unify their time tracking, get real-time visibility into their time data, and gain a competitive advantage.

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“Replicon invested big to develop the industry’s only workforce management solution with evolving built-in labor compliance for 375 jurisdictions across 85 countries. Our in-house legal team continuously monitors global regulations around working time directives, schedules, time off and pay. Organizations can leverage the solution to stay ahead of the global labor and wage compliance risks while they run their global business,” said Lakshmi Raj, Co-CEO at Replicon.

Replicon’s Workforce Management solution offers advanced job scheduling to identify the right employee, for the right shift, at the right time. SmartSchedule, an AI-powered employee recommendation engine, automatically identifies the best resource for every job to manage complex job requirements across roles, skills, and shifts. The unified solution brings harmony across teams with conflict-free schedules for jobs and demands, while enabling managers to view and modify schedules in real time to fill gaps dynamically.

The solution replaces the traditional time tracking approaches with AI-powered timesheets that automates employee time capture in a compliant way for payroll purposes. It helps organizations pay their employees and bill their clients both accurately and on time and prevent any time or wage theft.

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A Compliance-first Workforce Management Solution for Time & Attendance, Time off, Schedule, Labor Compliance and Gross Pay

Key highlights of the powerful Workforce Management solution:

  • Automates time capture and pre-populates employee timesheets by leveraging ZeroTime™, a revolutionary AI/ML technology.
  • Enables automatic collection of accurate time and work data from more than 100 digital work apps.
  • Collects error-free, compliant data at the time entry level.
  • Enforces schedule adherence that complies with global and local time off policies and working time directives.
  • Identifies the best resource for every job with SmartSchedule, helping organizations easily manage complex job requirements across roles, skills, and shifts.
  • Enables managers and employees to manage their or their teams’ time off status in real time.
  • Helps comply with working time directives, schedules, time off, and pay regulations in 375 jurisdictions across 85 countries.
  • Enables crew workers to turn any device into a cloud-connected kiosk for accurate time capture with the help of CloudClock.
  • Provides real-time updates on deployed and upcoming compliance rule changes through a comprehensive compliance dashboard.
  • Integrates easily with multiple payroll vendors like ADP, Ceridian, Paycer, SAP, and paylocity.

Raj Narayanswamy, Co-CEO at Replicon, said, “Our solution helps the professional services industry unlock ground-breaking efficiencies in managing a global workforce while being fully labor and wage compliant. Before switching to Replicon, we often heard our customers talk about the challenges faced in handling multiple time tracking and payroll systems that could expose them to compliance risks. Leveraging the Replicon Workforce Management solution can free up organizations’ time and facilitate focus on more strategic activities with their customers — a win-win for all.”

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Gradient Technologies Hires High Powered Executives to Drive Commercialization Efforts

Gradient  logo

New executives bring extensive experience in cybersecurity to drive adoption of Gradient Cybersecurity Mesh (GCM) in commercial and government applications

Gradient Technologies, a deep technology startup pioneering true zero trust in the identity and access management space, today announced three key executive hires as the company ramps up its commercial efforts. Gradient has emerged as a disruptive technology firm focused on eliminating credential-based cyberattacks by leveraging its groundbreaking platform.

With a deep moat of technology, Gradient has secured more than twenty patents and over a hundred trade secrets and patents pending. Gradient’s products have been rigorously tested and deployed by F500 companies  and leading government agencies. The company is now pressing full force with its commercialization efforts and has already amassed over $10 million in funding from well known deep investment firms and experienced technology luminaries.

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More about Gradient’s Key Executive Hires:

  • Dr. Edward (Ed) Frank joins as Executive Chair and brings decades of technology leadership to the company. In addition to his role on Gradient’s Board, Dr. Frank serves on the Boards of Directors of Analog Devices, Marvell, Rocket Lab, and SiTime, as well as being a board member or advisor at several start-ups in the AI, semiconductor, and social networking markets. Dr. Frank previously served as Vice President of Macintosh Hardware Systems Engineering at Apple, as Corporate Vice President of Research and Development at Broadcom, and a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. Dr. Frank earned a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a Hertz Foundation Fellow, and is a member of its Board of Trustee. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves on the Board of Metallica’s All Within My Hands Foundation.

  • Chris White serves as Chief Operating Officer and will lead the company’s Product Development and Delivery efforts. He brings over fifteen years of experience in cybersecurity leading technical teams that protect F500 companies from cyberattacks. Prior to joining Gradient, Chris was Chief Security Officer at BlueVoyant where he was responsible for strategy, security, and solutions functions across the firm. Chris began his career at Booz Allen Hamilton where he served as Chief Engineer for Commercial Cyber Engineering Services. He is an experienced advisor in the realm of cryptography, metadata analysis, security analytics, and secure data management. Chris has two B.S. from MIT, in Mathematics and Business Administration, and an M.A in Applied and Computational Mathematics from The Johns Hopkins University.

  • Jason Thompson leads Gradient’s go to market efforts as Chief Marketing Officer. He is a 6X marketing and operations executive with an extensive background starting up and scaling world-class technology companies. Prior to Gradient, Jason served as CMO for BlueVoyant, COO at threat intelligence company IntSights (acquired, Rapid7), CMO of SecurityScorecard, as VP Marketing at NS1 and SSH Communications Security, respectively, and led digital marketing at SIEM pioneer Q1 Labs.

“I am very pleased to have these exceptional leaders join Gradient as we move quickly to transform the $18 billion identity and access management (IAM) market,” said Christian Wentz, Founder & CEO of Gradient. “Bringing a transformational cybersecurity product to market requires a team with the experience and credibility to drive widespread adoption. With Chris, Jason, and Dr. Frank, we have the core team in place to dominate the space.”

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ThreatBlockr Announces Partnership with Engaged Security Partners

This strategic partnership highlights the importance of breach prevention and creating a proactive security culture

ThreatBlockr, the autonomous cyber intelligence and active threat defense platform, and Engaged Security Partners, a firm specializing in human error prevention, have announced a partnership focusing on “left of boom” protection to bring enhanced breach prevention to customers.

Engaged Security Partners uses ThreatBlockr’s platform for threat intelligence management and integration into the network. Together, Engaged Security Partners’ customers will benefit from blocking malicious traffic and reducing human error, turning employees into threat hunters and creating a strong first and last line of defense.

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“The best way to eliminate human error is to eliminate bad traffic”

“We have been seeking a partner who prioritizes breach prevention, and since ThreatBlockr is the only solution that makes threat intelligence actionable with its patented technology and sits ‘left of boom,’ this is a natural partnership,” said Chad Earwood, CEO of Engaged Security Partners. “With over 95% of breaches caused by human error, which threat actors rely on to carry out attacks, it’s essential to stop threats before they hit the network. We are thrilled to partner with ThreatBlockr and leverage their innovative solution to create a proactive security environment.”

“The best way to eliminate human error is to eliminate bad traffic,” said Brian McMahon, CEO of ThreatBlockr. “We are excited to work with Engaged Security Partners to provide our proactive solution to their customers and continue to monitor, manage and block every threat.”

This partnership comes on the heels of a series of updates to the ThreatBlockr platform, including list consolidation, simplified policy configuration, easier protection of networks and ports, improvements to management systems and simplified access controls. These new enhancements, combined with Engaged Security Partners’ innovative Security Intel Filtering (SIFT) service, will provide customers with a unique opportunity to take control of their security and understand the risks their company is facing.

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