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Teradata and Deutsche Telekom Strike Strategic Partnership to Make German SMBs More Successful Through Data, Analytics

Pipeline & Analytics

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November 1, 2019

Teradata and Deutsche Telekom Strike Strategic Partnership to Make German SMBs More Successful Through Data, Analytics

Teradata becomes Deutsche Telekom’s central partner for providing data analytics to customers, Teradata Vantage is added into Deutsche Telekom’s portfolio of IT solutions for SMBs, Deutsche Telekom develops the “Digital Sales Assistant”

Teradata, the cloud analytics company delivering Pervasive Data Intelligence, and Deutsche Telekom, announced a strategic partnership at Digital X in Germany, where Oliver Ratzesberger, President and CEO at Teradata, and Hagen Rickmann, Director Business Customers at Telekom Deutschland, were presenting to an audience of 20,000. The partnership will support the digital transformation goals of small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in Germany, giving them access to the enormous potential of data analytics to provide the insights required for growth and innovation.

By combining the strengths of Teradata and Deutsche Telekom, customers benefit from dual technology expertise and an end-to-end offering: Teradata contributes leading software for data analytics and decades of experience in data science and business consulting; Deutsche Telekom provides a comprehensive cloud ecosystem, demand-driven infrastructure, highly secure data centers, IT security and IoT solutions over the proven Telekom network.

“This partnership gives SMBs access to data analyses that only large companies have been able to carry out to date,” said Hagen Rickmann, Director Business Customers at Telekom Deutschland. “By combining our strengths, we can provide affordable solutions created especially for our customers.”

Teradata Vantage: Turning Data into Answers

As the basis for this partnership, Deutsche Telekom is integrating the leading analytics platform, Teradata Vantage, into its IT solution portfolio. For SMBs in Germany, this provides unprecedented easy and efficient access to data analytics, bypassing the technological complexity that has previously been a barrier to entry. With Vantage, customers can analyze enormous amounts of data in the cloud from a wide variety of sources – including, but not limited to, sensors, machines, smartphones or social media – in real time. By leveraging tools such as machine learning for artificial intelligence, SMBs can discover answers to business-critical questions, increasing their ability to make data-driven decisions.

“Data is the backbone of any digital transformation, much like SMBs are the backbone of success and innovation in the German economy,” said Oliver Ratzesberger, President and CEO of Teradata. “Data and analytics – areas that are so crucial for all businesses today – are especially challenging for SMBs to properly leverage, given their lack of in-house expertise and smaller budgets. Together with Deutsche Telekom, we are proud to close this gap by offering a cloud-based, simple solution: we manage the infrastructure, and entrepreneurs focus on the analytics that lead to answers, innovation and growth.”

Digital Sales Assistant: Application in Development

Using Teradata Vantage, Deutsche Telekom is already developing its data analytics application for the company’s SMB customers: The “Digital Sales Assistant”, which will enable the sales force to immediately recognize the needs of its customers and respond to them more precisely. By combining existing data sources, such as CRM, ERP, public open source, social media, IoT and telecom data, the sales force gains previously undiscovered information about its customers and is empowered with intelligent recommendations, such as “next best offer,” price/margin optimization and demand forecasts.

The Digital Sales Assistant, an easy first access point for SMBs to begin using data and analytics, is expected to be available in spring 2020.

Industry Focus: Retail, Real Estate, Industrial Production

Teradata and Deutsche Telekom will initially address companies that do business in retail, real estate and industrial production. Each of these industries can particularly benefit from data and analytics in the following ways:

Retail: Data helps retailers optimize their stores, calculate prices correctly, manage logistics chains better and, most importantly, understand customers’ needs.
Real estate: Providers can use data analytics to make building-specific forecasts on value creation, occupancy and operating costs. These factors work to determine the value of a property on the basis of factors such as location and trends, or to determine the costs of buying, selling and converting buildings.
Industrial production: Data is the basis for the smart factory of the future and smart manufacturing. By analyzing sensor data in machines, anomalies can be detected and a possible failure can be predicted. This type of predictive maintenance offers enormous savings potential.

Navint Acquires Leading Quote-To-Cash Implementation Provider Statera

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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November 1, 2019

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Navint Acquires Leading Quote-To-Cash Implementation Provider Statera

Fusion of strategic business process and technology capabilities will enable end-to-end lead-to-revenue transformation

Navint Partners, a consulting and technology firm that helps recurring revenue companies drive growth and operational efficiency, announced it has acquired Statera, a premier Salesforce implementation firm. The deal is designed to bring together advisory and process innovation with deep Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) & Billing implementation capability to help clients modernize their lead-to-revenue operations and succeed in today’s customer-centered economy.

“The combined Navint and Statera team will connect extensive business advisory and ERP experience with deep technical and implementation capabilities, uniquely positioning the company to help clients modernize their lead-to-revenue operations across the front and back office”

As the shift to a recurring revenue model continues, many businesses struggle to create sales and billing processes that support the dynamic nature of the modern contract. Across every industry, the proliferation of new business models, such as subscriptions and other Business to Business (B2B) and Direct to Consumer (DTC) channels has redefined how people and businesses buy everything from software to vehicles. The front-end disruption has left organizations challenged to transform their back-end processes and technologies to keep up.

Modern lead-to-revenue solutions must bridge the gap between sales and finance to support multiple users, disparate revenue streams and complex billing calculations during the quoting process. They also must enable contract alterations like upgrades, add-ons and swaps – all while maintaining a seamless customer experience. Without a connected CPQ, Billing, CLM (Customer Lifecycle Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system combined with process and operational change, businesses risk revenue leakage, churn, reporting issues, manual process overload, SKU proliferation, billing disputes and more. While most B2B and recurring revenue businesses recognize the need to transform across their entire lead-to-revenue lifecycle, it can be incredibly difficult, time consuming and costly.

“Enterprises are struggling to operate against new revenue models and find themselves increasingly challenged to connect CPQ, Billing, CLM, ERP and revenue recognition. In order to enable true transformation, companies need to understand how to optimize their business processes and connect front and back office technologies,” said Jim Martindale, CEO of Navint. “Adding Statera’s deep technical expertise to Navint’s proven business and advisory services allows us to deliver a comprehensive and connected set of services to meet our enterprise clients’ most difficult lead-to-revenue challenges. We can now accelerate how we offer these services to current clients and expand our reach to help new clients successfully transform. We are incredibly excited to welcome the entire Statera team to the Navint family.”

Navint works across the entire lead-to-revenue technology ecosystem including all major ERP, CLM, CPQ & Billing technologies. A majority of Navint clients deploy the Salesforce platform, which represented a unique opportunity for Navint to build a premier Salesforce CPQ & Billing capability. Earlier this year, Navint received Salesforce Billing certification and expanded its internal team to meet growing market demand for recurring revenue technology experts.

“The combined Navint and Statera team will connect extensive business advisory and ERP experience with deep technical and implementation capabilities, uniquely positioning the company to help clients modernize their lead-to-revenue operations across the front and back office,” said Chong Moua, General Partner of Boathouse Capital.

Brad Weydert, President of Statera, said, “This is an exciting time for Statera. We’ve experienced a significant amount of growth over the last five years and are excited to be partnering with Navint and Boathouse for the next stage of our growth. Boathouse also brings expertise and resources that will help us continue to build our position in the market through strategic acquisitions and growth initiatives.”

Navint will retain all Statera employees and offices, resulting in an expanded footprint in London, New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver and Dallas.

Folloze Advances Intelligent Personalized Marketing With $11 Million in Series B Funding

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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November 1, 2019

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Folloze Advances Intelligent Personalized Marketing With $11 Million in Series B Funding

Funding and addition of industry leaders to executive and advisory boards will fuel vision to personalize every touchpoint in the customer journey

Folloze, the leader in applied hyper-personalization, announced a series B funding round of $11 Million and the addition of Peter Isaacson, CMO of Demandbase and Sydney Sloan, CMO of SalesLoft to its advisory board, as well as industry veteran Brian Gentile as Chairman of its executive board, to help shepherd its vision for an important new paradigm for B2B marketers – Full-Funnel Personalized Marketing.

“Folloze is disrupting the way B2B marketing has operated over the last decade”

“The B2B buying process has changed dramatically in recent years, from the traditional funnel-based perspective to a customer-led, real-time journey and high-value experience,” said Etai Beck, CEO and co-founder of Folloze. “That’s why Full-Funnel Personalized Marketing is so critical today; it represents the ability to power intelligence-based personalized journeys for B2B customers that create relationships based upon information sharing and trust building – not selling. And today, customers will accept nothing less.”

Folloze is leading this new marketing wave by uniting three critical aspects – none of which, on their own, can fully enable marketers to seize upon it:

Data and AI: The Folloze Personalized Marketing Platform dynamically combines visitor data, intent data and account data – from multiple sources within and outside a marketing organization’s purview – yielding a depth of personalization previously impossible.
Multi-channel: The Platform personalizes across virtually any and all channels used by B2B marketers and sellers, thereby providing a perceived 1-to-1 engagement with B2B customers, and improving conversions across their entire buying journey.
Scale: It achieves an unprecedented level of personalization scale from a relatively small amount of creative resources via automation, as well as leveraging the sales channel to extend marketing reach.

“Folloze is disrupting the way B2B marketing has operated over the last decade,” said Peter Isaacson, newly appointed advisory board member. “Traditionally, we’ve relied on marketing automation solutions to send batch emails to large swaths of the universe – which has become less and less effective. Folloze is taking a very different path by enabling B2B companies to deliver personalized communication with messaging and content that has been approved by marketing and delivered by sales; it is circumventing marketing automation systems in a way that is far more effective and relevant for the audience you are after. The company has created a strong footprint in the market and has a fresh vision to continue to grow and play a key role within the B2B ecosystem and ABM.”

The $11M series B round was led by BGV, with participation from Canvas ventures, Cervin Ventures, Grayhawk Capital and SVB. Yash Hemaraj, Partner at BGV, said, “BGV invests in transformational businesses we call Enterprise 4.0, SaaS companies that transform industries and combine Intelligent workflows, AI and unique customer datasets. Folloze clearly falls into that camp, having been able to solve critical problems and power key workflows for some of the most advanced companies in the world. They have a strong vision for improving B2B buying processes by delivering personalized customer journeys at scale, merged with an elegant and effective marketing and sales orchestration process. We have great confidence in the company’s leadership and are extremely impressed by the speed and depth of the company’s innovation.”

“One of the primary reasons ABM has become such a critical B2B strategy is its reliance on delivering highly relevant content to individuals within accounts at the right time,” according to Robert Peterson, Sr. Research Director, Account-Based Marketing Strategies at SiriusDecisions. “The ability of marketers to identify audiences of one within ABM accounts and map out distinct but interrelated roles in the buying process is essential to driving relevance. Effective personalization comes from an organizational commitment to being insight-driven, and to investing in the tools and processes that leverage these insights to optimize content and the buying experience itself.”

Concluded Beck, “This latest funding, and our esteemed new board members, are reflections of the success customers like Autodesk, Cisco, Marketo, Microsoft and Oracle are seeing by leveraging Folloze to deliver self-managed, value-driven journeys for their own customers, today and in the future.”

Pearl Thinks, LLC Announces Strategic Platform Partnership with Mailchimp

Email Tools

STS News Desk

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October 31, 2019

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Pearl Thinks, LLC, a leading data technology company and the developers of Pearl, the Customer Data Platform for e-commerce and retail businesses, announced their latest integration with top email marketing platform, Mailchimp.

With this new integration, Pearl and Mailchimp subscribers now have real-time synchronization of their email engagement data across platforms and the ability to apply Mailchimp tags within Pearl. The seamless flow of data across platforms enables users to optimize Pearl’s insights to build smarter audience segments and deliver timely and relevant Mailchimp email campaigns that drive greater engagement and conversion.

Integrated with Mailchimp, Pearl is a brand’s all-in-one marketing communications, customer engagement and marketing activation platform, eliminating the guesswork of why, when and how to execute targeted marketing campaigns.

Pearl continues to develop and deploy industry-first innovations and solutions like the Relationship Lifecycle, a methodology for visualizing a customer’s journey to brand loyalist; the Database Rx, a tool for brands to calculate the overall database health; and the Marketing Data Assessment, a holistic report on the accuracy, completeness and potential of your brand’s contact database.

Pearl’s product and services empower e-commerce brands with data-driven wisdom about their customers and prospects to deliver significant ROI.

Pearl Thinks, LLC is a data technology company helping e-commerce brands of all sizes accelerate revenue growth by converting data into long-term customer and database value through data unification, enrichment, analytics, and marketing activation strategies.

Vonage Adds Video Collaboration to Its Vonage Business Cloud (VBC) Solution

Abhishek Upadhyay

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October 31, 2019

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Vonage Adds Video Collaboration to Its Vonage Business Cloud (VBC) Solution

Vonage Meetings will enhance the firm’s unified communications offering

One of the leading business cloud communications leaders, Vonage is adding a new feature to its Vonage Business Cloud (VBC) solution. The newly launched Vonage Meetings will add to the video collaboration abilities of the platform and enhance the unified communications offering of the firm. Vonage Meetings uses APIs to enable collaboration among staff via SMS, voice, social, team messaging, and email channels. The addition of video to the interface is the latest development towards providing a clean user interface.

Sales Teams Would Be Able To Leverage the Capabilities to Provide Better Customer Experience

Since Vonage owns the entire stack, it is the only cloud communications company that is able to provide customers with a truly unified, end-to-end communication experience. All VBC users can access Vonage Meetings to activate conversations everywhere. It allows businesses to have conversations and engagements in the places where they’re the most productive. Additionally, it empowers employees to directly connect with each other and with customers, across all channels possible. Sales teams would be able to leverage the platform to engage customers in additional ways and provide them with outstanding customer experience.

Ron Maayan, VP of Product Management for Vonage clarified that the company will continue innovating towards its vision of helping businesses connect with the right people via multiple channels. “With Vonage Meetings, we are leveraging an integrated user experience with our rich set of communications APIs to create unique next-gen solutions for our customers, helping them to create great employee and customer experiences by leveraging voice, messaging, and now video,” Ron added.

Brands can leverage the power of Vonage Meetings in numerous ways. The feature can be used for internal employee collaboration or customer engagement, or in the recruitment process to conduct video interviews.

Some of the important features of the Vonage Meetings programmable video conference solution are:

Multiple channel collaboration across SMS, voice, social, team messaging, email, and video.
Built-in chat, screen sharing, and the ability to record meetings.
Meeting history including the information of attendees, chat, call log, and links shared.
1-click to arrange groups from Google Calendar.
Ability to allow guest users to join a video session from a web browser, without downloading any software.

PPRO’s US Cross-Border E-Commerce Report Provides a Guide for American Businesses to Succeed in a Global Marketplace

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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October 31, 2019

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PPRO’s US Cross-Border E-Commerce Report Provides a Guide for American Businesses to Succeed in a Global Marketplace

PPRO, an industry leader in local payment methods has released a new report showcasing the opportunity for US merchants to expand their sales around the world. The report features data on the changing nature of global e-commerce and insights into how localization is crucial for global expansion.

Data in the report highlights the importance of local payment methods as a catalyst for sales conversion all over the globe: Local payment methods account for 77% of total global e-commerce spend and by 2024 are expected to reach 82%, further proving that consumer preferences are inherently local.

The opportunity for growth is evident as in 2018, US merchants sold $57 billion worth of goods to foreign buyers in America’s top 14 e-commerce export destinations alone. PPRO data further shows that only 37% of US merchants sell cross-border which is comparatively low to other major markets around the world. With a localized approach US merchants can unlock this global cross-border e-commerce opportunity, a sector that grew by 4% last year to a value of $412 billion.

“American merchants have a golden opportunity to take their business to global consumers. It is a matter of localizing their approach to meet the cultural factors of various markets,” said Steve Villegas, Payment Partnerships Leader at PPRO. “While credit cards are king in America with 70% of US consumers owning one, they are only used by 18% of global customers. Local payments are the key to conversion with these global consumers.”

The report will be officially announced and distributed at this year’s Money 20/20 conference, where PPRO will be an exhibitor and featured speaker on a panel titled “X-Border Customer Journeys.” More PPRO executives will be available on-site for further details or questions around the report.

Read More: BlueSnap Acquires Armatic

NICE inContact CXone Delivers World’s Most Comprehensive Digital-First Omnichannel Offering in CCaaS Market

Sales Engagement

STS News Desk

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October 31, 2019

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NICE inContact CXone Delivers World’s Most Comprehensive Digital-First Omnichannel Offering in CCaaS Market

CXone Fall 2019 release empowers organizations to reach more customers with a vast range of digital channels and provide seamless, digital-first omnichannel service

NICE inContact announced the Fall 2019 release of NICE inContact CXone which delivers the world’s most comprehensive digital-first omnichannel offering in the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) market. Omnichannel service experiences are those that do not require customers and agents to start over when switching channels. With digital-first omnichannel, CXone now makes it possible for organizations of all sizes across the globe to reach more customers using voice and a vast range of digital channels such as SMS text, Twitter, or WhatsApp – all unified on the CXone cloud customer experience platform. CXone continues to lead the market with customer-driven innovations and only CXone unifies Omnichannel Routing, Analytics, Workforce Optimization, and Automation & Artificial Intelligence – providing a seamless customer and agent experience – as part of one enterprise-grade, cloud native platform.

NICE inContact CXone Delivers World’s Most Comprehensive Digital-first Omnichannel Offering in Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) Market.

Customers today expect to interact with companies via a variety of digital channels and contact center leaders will adopt and excel at digital-first customer engagement strategies. According to a 2019 Dimension Data / NTT study, organizations report that Generation Z and Millennials have an overwhelming preference for digital channels for customer service. The 2019 NICE inContact Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark found that customer use of and preference for digital channels is on the rise. In the US from 2017 to 2018, chat use tripled and text grew tenfold; preference for these channels grew 36 percent and 71 percent respectively. In addition, the benchmark found that 40 percent of companies plan to invest in four or more channels to improve the customer service experience in the coming year.

“Companies can now engage with customers in the channels they are accustomed to using, and do so seamlessly. Until now, many have spoken of omnichannel. Today, NICE inContact CXone makes digital-first omnichannel a reality in order to help organizations achieve superior business outcomes,” said Paul Jarman, NICE inContact CEO.

Jarman continued, “With this latest CXone release, NICE inContact again demonstrates our focused commitment to enabling the very best agent and customer experiences, no matter the channel. CXone sets the standard with the world’s most complete, unified and intelligent cloud customer experience platform.”

New CXone Digital-first Omnichannel Paradigm Empowers Organizations to Drive Customer Loyalty and Agent Productivity

The days of disjointed customer experiences and siloed digital and voice agents are over – with CXone contact centers can now run a true digital-first omnichannel operation. CXone ushers in a new paradigm that allows agents to handle messaging and real-time customer service interactions with control and context – naturally handling both real-time and digital messaging interactions in one intelligent inbox and with a 360-degree view of customer context.

CXone Delivers World’s Most Comprehensive Omnichannel Offering
CXone now offers the most supported first and second generation digital channels in the industry with dozens of pre-integrated messaging, social and traditional voice / chat channels – including Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, and more – native in CXone cloud customer experience platform.Now with CXone it is easy for brands to provide digital-first omnichannel service in the channels customers expect. Contact centers are empowered to provide personalized digital interactions that deliver native experiences such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools. Pre-integrated channels are simple to activate and make it easy to offer to customers and agents.

CXone Intelligent Inbox Consolidates Handling of All Channels to Empower Efficient Omnichannel Agents
The new CXone intelligent inbox is a single interface for agents to handle a wide range of digital channels and voice communications and allows agents to handle multiple customer interactions concurrently. Agents can see and control the flow of interactions in one place while providing efficient one-to-many service.

CXone Customer Card Provides a 360-degree View of Customer Context to Empower Effective Omnichannel Agents
The new CXone customer card shows digital interaction context – both past and live, as well as customer sentiment, suggested replies for next best action, agent notes and previous interactions with the customer regardless of channel. As agents switch between customers they quickly have a 360-degree view of each customer, their journey and conversation history, plus other insights to provide a fast, personalized and effective omnichannel service.

At 93 percent, the vast majority of customers expect seamless omnichannel experiences when interacting with businesses, but they are not getting them. Ninety-one percent say companies are not excelling at allowing them to seamlessly switch between channels. Now with CXone, contact centers can provide quicker and more convenient customer experiences on the digital channels customer use.

Broadest Set of Pre-Built Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) Integrations

NICE inContact empowers organizations to maximize the value of their CRM, UCaaS, and contact center technologies through its rare combination of contact center functionality and expertise, plus breadth of integrations. Pre-built CRM integrations include Salesforce, Oracle Service Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow, Zendesk, SugarCRM, NetSuite, SAP, and Bullhorn. NICE inContact UCaaS integrations improve rapid collaboration across the contact center and the rest of the organization, leading to faster answers for customers and a better experience for contact center agents and customers, and include RingCentral, Jive, Fuze, and Momentum Telecom.

NICE inContact was named a leader for its fifth consecutive year in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, North America report, and in 2019 achieved the highest and furthest overall position for ability to execute and completeness of vision. In The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Contact Centers, Q3 2018, NICE inContact CXone was named a Leader, positioning CXone among the most significant cloud contact center solutions in the market.

First Insight Survey Finds Significant Disconnect Between Senior Retail Executives and Consumers on Diversity and Inclusion

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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October 31, 2019

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Retail Executives Overestimating Consumer Interest in Diversity and Inclusion, Underestimating Impact of Offensive Products

In an era of rising sensitivities around diversity and inclusion themes, retail executives may be misjudging their impact on shopping decisions. According to a new report by First Insight, Inc., the world’s leading technology company transforming how leading retailers make product investment and pricing decisions, 92 percent of senior retail executives surveyed felt that consumers would continue to buy from their company even if they created and offered a controversial and offensive product, if they pulled it from the shelves quickly and issued a public apology. In comparison, only 27 percent of consumers responded that they wouldn’t mind and would continue shopping at that retailer. Further, 19 percent of consumers said they would stop shopping at that retailer or brand forever, versus the 5 percent predicted by senior retail leaders.

“According to the results of this survey, consumers may be more understanding and forgiving of retailers as they ramp to meet rising inclusivity and diversity expectations than previously anticipated by most senior retail leaders”

The study points to a significant perception gap between senior retail executives and consumers on the impact of diversity and inclusion themes on shopping behavior. When asked about the importance of diversity factors when choosing which retailers or brands to shop, only 61 percent of consumers felt extended sizing was important, versus 82 percent of senior retail leaders. Similarly, only 44 percent of consumers felt brand influencers representing diverse viewpoints were important, versus 77 percent of senior retail leaders.

“According to the results of this survey, consumers may be more understanding and forgiving of retailers as they ramp to meet rising inclusivity and diversity expectations than previously anticipated by most senior retail leaders,” said Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, and as retailers and brands continue to work to align with new expectations of today’s consumer, whether it’s through extended sizing, cultural inclusion, hiring a Chief Diversity Officer, or responding to and learning from mis-steps, retailers need to continue to be sensitive to the needs of the consumer. The data also shows that senior leaders need to stay invested in their day-to-day operations, and stay connected with the voice of customers on quality and pricing of items.”

Results of the surveys were announced today during WWD’s Apparel & Retail CEO Summit in New York City.

Other significant findings of the surveys include:

Misalignment on Value of Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer:

While both consumers and senior retail leaders were aligned on the importance of women and minorities in senior leadership positions (50 percent versus 54 percent, respectively), 75 percent of senior retail leaders said they do not plan to hire a Chief Diversity Officer compared to 54 percent of consumers who felt it would benefit them.

Cultural Inclusivity More Important to Consumers than Senior Retail Leaders Know:

While cultural inclusivity which includes modest styles, hijabs and head coverings was ranked the least important diversity factor impacting shopping behavior by both groups, it was more important to consumers (46 percent) than to senior retail leaders (38 percent).

Senior Retail Leaders Significantly Out of Step on Mobile Purchase Behavior

While senior retail leaders believe 33 percent of purchases are made in-store and 67 percent are made online, in close alignment with consumers (37 percent and 63 percent respectively), results show a significant disconnect on the number of purchases being made via mobile devices monthly. According to the report, 75 percent of senior retail leaders believe consumers are making purchases on mobile devices more than six times a month. However, only 42 percent of consumers say the same.

Consumers Believe Prices are Increasing, Particularly In-Store

Fifty percent of consumers surveyed believe prices of products online are increasing. However, only 38 percent of senior retail leaders answered the same. Further, 60 percent of consumers felt that in-store prices were increasing, compared to only 35 percent of senior retail leaders. Of note, while significantly more senior retail leaders believe in-store pricing is increasing this year versus 2018 (20 percent), they are still significantly disconnected with consumer beliefs (60 percent of consumers felt in-store pricing was increasing 2018).

Senior Retail Leaders Out of Touch on Pricing and Convenience in Purchase Decisions

Similar to our 2018 report, there remains a large disconnect between senior retail leaders and consumers on the impact of pricing on purchase decisions. While quality remained the most important factor for both senior retail leaders (48 percent) and consumers (51 percent), a greater percentage of consumer respondents (40 percent) ranked low price of a product as important, versus 23 percent of senior retail leaders. Of note, 23 percent of senior retail leaders ranked convenience as important, with only seven percent of consumers ranking it as important.

Notes on Survey Methodology and Analysis

First Insight’s findings are based on two separate surveys. The consumer survey was based on targeted samples of more than 1,000 respondents and was fielded in September of 2019. It was completed through proprietary sample sources amongst panels who participate in online surveys. The executive survey was based on a sample of 48 retail senior-level business executives (C-suite, EVP/SVP, Vice President and Director roles), and was conducted in September and October 2019.

Realogy Modernizes Agent and Broker Learning: Launches New Digitally Driven Learning Platform

Onboarding & Training

STS News Desk

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October 31, 2019

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Realogy Modernizes Agent and Broker Learning: Launches New Digitally Driven Learning Platform

The Learning Platform brings a dynamic and interactive experience to learning and training for Realogy brands, including Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate, CENTURY 21, Coldwell Banker and ERA

Realogy Holdings Corp., the largest full-service residential real estate services company in the United States, announced the launch of its new dynamic, interactive and digitally driven Learning Platform for affiliated agents across a number of its well-known brands. The Learning Platform will be white-labeled for each brand and comes at no additional cost for affiliated agents and franchisees. CENTURY 21 University is the first Realogy brand learning portal to be upgraded, while the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Coldwell Banker and ERA brands will roll out their new learning platforms by year end.

“Having a digitally-driven and impactful learning offering is a game-changer for agents and brokers, especially as it relates to agent recruiting, retention and productivity,” said Simon Chen, Realogy’s executive vice president of Product and Innovation. “With ideas and input from affiliated agents and franchisees, we have created a platform that leverages best-in-class technology, data and learning principles with a flexible functionality that delivers a differentiated brand experience and personalized, relevant content for the individual agent.”

The Learning Platform is a modern learning experience designed to mimic the role technology plays in how people learn today, utilizing aspects of social networking, gamification and personalization. Some key features include:

Customizable Curriculum: Agents and brokers can enter their business goals to create an actionable, tailored business plan along with individualized training programs, coaching sessions and lesson plans to help them achieve their goals. The Curriculum can be even further customized based on an agent’s experience level, including years working in the industry and management experience. At any point, users have the flexibility to choose specific lessons through an easy search functionality of lesson topics.
Personalized Calendar: The Learning Platform’s calendar is designed to schedule brand and personal trainings, regional events and office events, allowing agents to see all the lessons available to them in one place.
Learn from Colleagues: Leveraging aspects of social networking, agents and brokers can connect within the platform to learn directly from others within their brand. This includes the ability to exchange scripts and presentations, collaborate on problem-solving and hear tips and tricks directly from other agents. They are also able to compete through a leaderboard within the platform that assigns scores based on activities completed and usage of the platform.

“Realogy’s tech team worked alongside our brand learning teams and affiliated agents to understand how we could create a more modern and meaningful learning experience,” explained Dave Gordon, Realogy’s chief technology officer. “We found that delivering a consistently personalized experience is what agents and brokers are looking for to support their growth. The Learning Platform will utilize our deep data sets to be smarter and more strategic in the recommendations it makes to agents and brokers, ensuring the learning and training will have a meaningful impact on their business.”

Talkdesk Receives New Security and Business Continuity Certifications, Leads Contact Center Industry

Pipeline Management

STS News Desk

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October 31, 2019

1

Talkdesk Receives New Security and Business Continuity Certifications, Leads Contact Center Industry

Talkdesk sets the bar as first to achieve security certification for Business Continuity Management

Talkdesk, Inc., the cloud contact center for innovative enterprises, announced new certifications for information security and business continuity. The international standard for Information Security Management, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, specifies the requirements for an information security management system within the context of the organization. The international standard for Business Continuity Management, ISO 22301:2012, specifies requirements to establish, implement, maintain and continually improve a documented management system to protect against disruptive incidents. Talkdesk is the first, and only, Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) provider to receive the ISO 22301:2012 security certification.

.@Talkdesk receives new security and business continuity certifications, leads contact center industry and sets the bar as first #CCaaS to achieve security certification for Business Continuity Management

According to the International Organization for Standardization, these security certifications give world-class specifications for products, services and systems, to ensure quality, safety and efficiency. They help organizations manage the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted to companies by third parties, and they are instrumental in facilitating international trade.

“In an era where data security breaches are a common occurrence, Talkdesk is taking every available measure to ensure our customers’ data is protected,” said Tiago Paiva, chief executive officer, Talkdesk. “Talkdesk takes security seriously. We do whatever it takes to protect customer information and to ensure Talkdesk Enterprise Cloud Contact Center is always available and secure.”

With more than 30 security certifications, including SOC2, SOC3 and PCI-DSS level 1, HIPAA and GDPR compliance, Talkdesk Enterprise Cloud Contact Center is backed by the industry’s most comprehensive set of security certifications and standards to ensure all security measures are in place to safeguard customer information. As the first CCaaS provider to offer ISO 22301:2012 certification, Talkdesk establishes a new benchmark for the industry and stands alone as the leader in CCaaS security and availability.

“Information security is Cognosante’s number-one goal,” said Michael Zurat, director of engagement solutions, Cognosante. “Talkdesk helps us address our liability and security concerns by allowing us to own and control our call recordings. No other solution offers this.”

Teradata and Deutsche Telekom Strike Strategic Partnership to Make German SMBs More Successful Through Data, Analytics

Teradata Vantage: Turning Data into Answers

Digital Sales Assistant: Application in Development

Industry Focus: Retail, Real Estate, Industrial Production

Navint Acquires Leading Quote-To-Cash Implementation Provider Statera

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Misalignment on Value of Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer:

Cultural Inclusivity More Important to Consumers than Senior Retail Leaders Know:

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Senior Retail Leaders Out of Touch on Pricing and Convenience in Purchase Decisions

Notes on Survey Methodology and Analysis

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Teradata and Deutsche Telekom Strike Strategic Partnership to Make German SMBs More Successful Through Data, Analytics

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Folloze Advances Intelligent Personalized Marketing With $11 Million in Series B Funding

Pearl Thinks, LLC Announces Strategic Platform Partnership with Mailchimp

PPRO’s US Cross-Border E-Commerce Report Provides a Guide for American Businesses to Succeed in a Global Marketplace

NICE inContact CXone Delivers World’s Most Comprehensive Digital-First Omnichannel Offering in CCaaS Market

First Insight Survey Finds Significant Disconnect Between Senior Retail Executives and Consumers on Diversity and Inclusion

Realogy Modernizes Agent and Broker Learning: Launches New Digitally Driven Learning Platform

Talkdesk Receives New Security and Business Continuity Certifications, Leads Contact Center Industry

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