Page 5395 – SalesTech Star

Chad Sanderson, a ValueSelling Associate, Named as a Top 5 Emerging Training Leader for 2018

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February 25, 2019

Chad Sanderson, a ValueSelling Associate, Named as a Top 5 Emerging Training Leader for 2018

Training Magazine Announces Winners of the Emerging Training Leaders Awards

ValueSelling Associates, Inc., a global sales training company, is pleased to announce that Chad Sanderson has been chosen as one of the industry’s Top 5 Emerging Training Leaders by Training magazine. Training announced the winners, recognizing 25 training professionals who inspired and engaged their organizations with exceptional leadership skills, business acumen, and innovation. Of these 25, Sanderson was selected as a Top 5 leader.

The Training magazine award winners have been in the industry for two to 10 years and have demonstrated stellar leadership skills, business savvy, and training instincts. These professionals will be profiled in the January/February 2019 issue of Training magazine and will be honored at an awards ceremony on 26 February 2019, during the Training 2019 Conference & Expo in Orlando, FL.

The winners were chosen by the Training Editorial Advisory Board members and the editor-in-chief based on the following factors:

Training Editorial Advisory Board members and the editor-in-chief judged nearly 50 nominations and chose the 25 winners based on the following factors:

Have been in the training industry for two to 10 years
Took on at least one new responsibility in the last year
Successfully led a large-scale training/learning and development initiative within the last year that required management/leadership of a group of people and resulted in the achievement of a corporate strategic goal
Demonstrate specific leadership qualities
Have the potential to lead the Training or Learning & Development function at an organization in the next one to 10 years

Chad Sanderson, Managing Partner of Value Prime Solutions, a leading provider of the ValueSelling Framework® says, “I’m honored to be recognized by Training magazine, but more importantly, by the peers who nominated me. Working with others to guide, coach and help them grow is proving to be one of the most rewarding aspects of my career and a journey like no other.”

Sanderson credits the ValueSelling Framework methodology for his ability to consistently exceed quota. Within four months of initially applying the formula, he closed his first $1 million deal. Since then, he has trained his sales and marketing teams in ValueSelling, resulting in their ability to deliver record-setting results quarter over quarter. Sanderson has also been instrumental in helping to develop ValueSelling Associates’ Vortex Prospecting program.

Lorri Freifeld, editor-in-chief of Training magazine, adds, “The 2018 Emerging Training Leaders are leading lights at their organizations. They shine brightly as they coach and empower direct reports, foster career development, collaborate, embrace change, innovate, and think out of the box to create and implement training that helps their organizations achieve strategic goals.”

Softomotive and CaptureFast Partner to Extend the Scope of RPA by Unlocking Valuable Data Trapped in Hard to Access Physical and Digital Documents

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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February 25, 2019

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Softomotive and CaptureFast Partner to Extend the Scope of RPA by Unlocking Valuable Data Trapped in Hard to Access Physical and Digital Documents

Softomotive, a leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendor, has announced a strategic partnership with CaptureFast, a state-of-the-art Data Capture solution. CaptureFast allows users to unlock valuable information from physical or digital documents via AI using machine print character recognition. This partnership will provide Softomotive’s clients an all-in-one, ready-to-deploy solution for customers’ automation needs that require an additional method for data capturing from editable or noneditable physical or scanned documents.

John Anastasopoulos, Head of Product for Softomotive said “We are excited to extend the capabilities of ProcessRobot, our leading enterprise RPA platform, to include CaptureFast for extracting valuable data from physical and digital document data capturing. This is an important development for our customers because it opens up the range of processes that are potentially suitable candidates to be automated. By doing so, it means they can accelerate process development to achieve better ROI.”

Gurkan Karagoz, founder and CEO of CaptureFast explains, “We believe Softomotive is a great partner for us because we share a similar point of views about how the market is evolving and the needs of clients. In particular, both CaptureFast and Softomotive products are very easy to use, which is a great benefit because there is no learning curve and no need for complicated –and costly- approaches.” He added, “Data capture is normally the starting point and customers also need to take action or process the data once it is captured. Capture, by itself, solves only part of the problem. In order to achieve broader automation, CaptureFast values partnerships with RPA vendors such as Softomotive because it provides customers with an easy to implement and flexible data capture solution in their RPA deployment.”

From the Forrester Wave: Robotic Process Automation, Q2 2018 Report:

“Text mining applied to unstructured content lifts RPA’s value. Text analytics enhances the strategic value of RPA. Typical documents in scope include insurance, medical claim forms, invoices, purchase orders, and emails. Unstructured text fields are scattered throughout such documents. Before these text fields can become actionable in RPA, a process must extract structures — simple ones like names, times, and locations, and complex ones like sentiment, effort, and intent. Leading vendors stepped up their game with partnerships or native extensions.”

CaptureFast fills this gap in the market offering quick, easy set-up for a very flexible and integrated cloud solution at affordable prices.

Gurkan Karagoz, said, “We believe Softomotive’s RPA and RDA solutions combined with CaptureFast’s capture capabilities creates an all-in-one, ready-to-deploy solution for customers’ automation needs that require AI enabled data capture, especially for unstructured data”.

CaptureFast is used in multiple verticals such as insurance (application, sales, claim forms between field and HQ), Banking & Finance (account opening, checks, KYC, loan and mortgage documents, bank statements), Non-profits (member forms and files), Construction (insurance documents, work orders), healthcare, legal, logistics and many others.

CaptureFast serves both local and global companies such as Allianz Insurance, INGBank and Ceva Logistics.

SalesTech Primer: What is Sales Performance Management?

Sudipto Ghosh

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February 25, 2019

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SalesTech Primer: What is Sales Performance Management?

Sales Performance Management is the practice of applying corporate performance management tactics to sales teams and determining how to best encourage the kinds of behavior that drive sales.

Everyone would agree that sales is a tough job. With the right attitude, skills and technology, the tough part can be managed. Sales research show that 90% of customers would choose a product or brand based on how well the human touch points interact, reply and respond to their queries.

If customers like the human touch in their buying journeys, wouldn’t it be interesting to analyze the same human touch build up between Marketing, Sales and Customer Service groups and other departments within an organization?

So, what makes it hard for Sales teams to establish the same bond with their peers?

Why do Sales professionals fail to inspire other team members and achieve targets?

A part of the answer to these questions lies with the lack of organization benchmarks in defining, “Sales Performance Management (SPM)?”

What is Sales Performance Management?

What are the major components of Sales Performance Management?

Business leaders often assign the blame of failing to meet sales numbers to numerous reasons, while not accounting for how humans work. In 2019, with AI and Automation in Sales taking a large chunk of human effort out of the selling equation, businesses are expected to grow their Sales teams, retain the Sales success factors from past quarters and meet new goals. However, that may not happen. Why?

One of the hardest things in Sales is to keep the high-performer happy, motivated and driven to chase down Sales goals at a rapid rate of success. That led us to analyze top-tier Sales Enablement and Coaching platforms, in addition to established Sales Performance Management software providers.

Here are the top business-savvy frameworks related to “What is Sales Performance Management?” that we gathered from the industry.

Gartner defines SPM as, “A suite of operational and analytical functions that automate and unite back-office operational sales processes.” In its blog, the research reveals the three ‘core’ capabilities and three ‘near-core’ capabilities of SPM suite.

The core and near-core capabilities of SPM suite are:

Sales Incentive Compensation Management (ICM)
Objectives Management
Quota Management and Planning
Territory Management and Planning
Advanced Analytics
Gamification

Corporate Definitions and Standard Practices

Xactly promotes its Sales Performance Management Software as an AI-driven platform that “leverages predictive analytics to power your entire sales resource planning and performance management process—from quota and territory planning to incentive compensation management.”

A leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Sales Performance Management, SAP identifies these tools as “simplifying compensation management and optimizing outcomes by empowering administrators to create, refine, and distribute effective incentive plans.”

CallidusCloud, now part of SAP Sales Cloud, also focuses on the core areas of Sales Performance Management, including Commissions, Territory and Quota management and predictive analytics. It identifies Sales Performance metrics based on accelerated sales practices, reporting and data analytics, system integration between CRM, ERP and HR, and gamification.

IBM’s Sales Performance Management suite also provides valuable insight into the space while outlining the need to have Sales Performance tools that cover speed, agility, incentives and cultural fitment.

IBM says that by implementing Sales Performance Management measures, (the) “Companies can be better positioned for success.”

These revolve around strategic planning, sound communication, pre-emptive analysis and evaluation and a clear articulation of goals, roles, and responsibilities.

Another leader in the segment, Anaplan broadly classifies Sales Performance efforts into three use cases —

Sales Planning – Quota planning, account segmentation, and sales capacity
Sales Incentives
Sales Insights – Pipeline management, sales forecasting, pricing, and discounting

When these three come together, Sales leaders can leverage technology and human skills to connect their operations with data and analytics to discover new scenarios in the business and make decisions quicker.

According to bpm’online, Sales Performance Management tools “help sales managers to accurately monitor, understand, and make changes to sales processes deemed to affect the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales reps, based on sales key performance indicators (KPIs).”

Further, the company also identifies the similarities and differences between SPM and Sales Enablement efforts.

According to TrustRadius, Sales Performance Management is “the practice of applying corporate performance management tactics to sales teams, and determining how to best encourage the kinds of behavior that drive sales.”

In this fast-evolving world of Mobile CRM, how could Sales Performance Management applications lag behind? For Mobile Sales Analytics, Oracle Engagement Cloud offers Mobile Compensation Tracking and Intelligent Sales Planning on your fingertips.

In this segment, Oracle defines Sales Performance Management as a set of practices enacted to “improve sales effectiveness and achieve target revenue goals with process automation and advanced planning tools.”

What to do with SPM Tools: Manage Salesperson, Sales Team, and Overall Sales Force Performance

Optymyze says Sales Performance Management is part of a strategic transformation of sales operations driven by industry best practices and expertise in Sales Data Management and Planning. A part of the Sales Ops revolution, Optymyze defines Sales Performance Management as, the process of leveraging “deep expertise enabled by industry-leading technology to drive and efficiently manage salesperson, sales team, and overall sales force performance.”

Therefore, the mission of Sales Performance Management is to:

Build focused sales teams
Increase revenue and improve agility
Eliminate payout disputes
Increase productivity by providing accurate insights on sales numbers and lag
Discover and prepare for ‘What if’ scenarios in sales
Quickly train and build sales force applications around data management, reporting, analytics and automation.

To succeed in the dynamic Sales Technology landscape, there are numerous insights and actions you could take to improve sales performance. However, without a verifiable strategy guided by strong sales culture and leadership, Sales Performance Management can’t deliver on its promises. It needs a fine mix of tools, automation expertise and future vision to lead and maintain sales performance.

So, what do you think about your Sales Performance standards and how often do you revisit your strategy?

Share your insights by participating in our SalesTech interviews, blogs and RADAR. Please drop us a line at news@martechseries.com

Major Chinese Global Digital Services Join Yext Knowledge Network in Spring ’19 Product Release

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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February 25, 2019

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Major Chinese Global Digital Services Join Yext Knowledge Network in Spring ’19 Product Release

Yext Spring Release also includes new Google Q&A Functionality and General Availability of AI-Ready Yext Pages

Yext, Inc., the leader in Digital Knowledge Management (DKM), announced integrations with some of the largest global digital services used by Chinese travelers around the world, as part of Yext’s Spring ’19 Product Release. The integrations with Baidu Map (Overseas), Fliggy, CK Map, and PIRT put businesses outside China in control of their brand information in the services that hundreds of millions of Chinese travelers all across the globe use to find places to eat, shop, stay, and more.

“The Chinese digital landscape is made up of an entirely different set of services from those in the West. When Chinese travelers who use services like Baidu and Fliggy at home travel overseas, they use these same services to find businesses in the cities they are visiting,” said Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext. “If a business’s information isn’t in these services, it is invisible to these potential customers. We’re integrating with some of the largest Chinese services so businesses using Yext can provide perfect answers to Chinese travelers.”

Travelers from Mainland China are still subject to the “Great Firewall” when they travel overseas, and so they do not use sites like Google to find places to eat, stay, or shop, overseas. Instead, they use services like Baidu Map (Overseas), Fliggy, CK Map, and PIRT while traveling. A survey by Coresight Research indicates that 72% of Chinese tourists use online resources to plan their trips and 98% rely on their mobile phones while abroad to keep in touch and do research on the go.

“Chinese tourists spent a world-leading $261 billion in 2016, and the economic impact of tourism from China is expected to grow in the coming years. Many businesses aren’t structuring their information and making it available to the digital services this critical customer base is using, and so they are unable to reach these customers,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext. “Yext’s integrations with leading Chinese services make it possible for businesses in the West to provide verified answers to consumers using these services, increasing visibility and providing a better customer experience.”

The Spring ’19 Release includes the following features:

New Integrations with Chinese Apps: The Yext Knowledge Network now includes leading services that Chinese travelers use when they travel around the world. Businesses outside China using Yext can now publish their information to Baidu Map (Overseas), Fliggy, CK Map, and PIRT, so their critical business information will be correct and up to date in these services. Current Yext customers will see these new data partners in their accounts on March 26.
Google Q&A: Businesses can now monitor and answer questions that consumers ask about them on Google in Google’s Q&A search results, directly in the Yext dashboard. Using Yext, they can also sync pre-answered FAQs to pre-empt common customer questions in order to provide a better customer experience and win more business.
AI-Ready Pages: Yext’s self-serve Pages option is now available for general access. With the Spring ’19 Release, Yext has enhanced AI-Ready Pages with new customization options. AI-Ready Pages let businesses create a smart landing page on their website for any entity stored in Yext with just a few clicks to drive consumer discovery and action.

TruFactor, a New Business Unit of InMobi, Launches a Secure Data Platform for Telcos Powered by Microsoft Azure

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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February 25, 2019

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TruFactor, a New Business Unit of InMobi, Launches a Secure Data Platform for Telcos Powered by Microsoft Azure

Announced at Mobile World Congress, Trufactor Delivers Increased User Privacy, Improves the Customer Experience and Helps Drive Growth for Telcos

The InMobi Group, which powers intelligent, mobile-first experiences for enterprises and consumers, unveiled TruFactor, an independent business unit for telcos. TruFactor’s mission is to enable telcos to transform their digital assets into strategic knowledge and provide competitive advantage in a world of connected devices.

Derived from InMobi’s acquisition of Pinsight Media, a formerly wholly-owned subsidiary of Sprint, TruFactor’s data platform enables telcos to ingest, curate and analyze data to increase user privacy, improve customer experience and drive growth. It transforms raw, network-level mobile data into actionable intelligence to improve customer experience and retention.

TruFactor is partnering with Microsoft to bring its secure data platform to market through Microsoft Azure, which delivers enterprise-grade security, best-in-class machine learning APIs and global scale. TruFactor will use Azure Data Lake Storage as its foundation for delivering secure, massively scalable data lake functionality that is tightly integrated with all Azure Analytics services.“

Telcos are increasingly under pressure to deliver responsible and secure data management in a world driven by intense competition, rapid technological changes and accountable privacy practices,” said Piyush Shah, Co-Founder, InMobi Group and President, Marketing Cloud and TruFactor. “Built with consumers and businesses in mind, TruFactor exists at the intersection of truth and fact – emerging as the one true factor that enterprises can trust for growth.”

As InMobi’s partner and TruFactor’s first customer, Sprint is already experiencing the platform’s benefits. Built on the foundation of trust and data, TruFactor upholds the highest standard of governance, policy and regulation to ensure the privacy and security of consumer information through a robust anonymization process.

The TruFactor platform has been developed through active collaboration with consumer advocacy groups and takes into consideration guidelines issued by privacy regulators. Designed to provide the user with complete transparency, choice and control over how their data is used, the platform comes with a secure and consumer focused, privacy-first policy framework and a scalable data management layer.

“We’re pleased to be working with InMobi and TruFactor to bring to market an open and extensible platform for telcos,” said Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner (OCP), Microsoft Corp. “Our aim at Microsoft is to empower enterprises to derive more value from their data and deliver world-class customer experiences. This announcement builds on our existing work with InMobi and brings together three of our core business aspects around cloud, AI and user privacy.”

Personalization Is a Priority for Travel Advertising Campaigns

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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February 23, 2019

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Personalization Is a Priority for Travel Advertising Campaigns

More than 600 travel marketers surveyed in 46 countries

Sojern, a leading provider of digital marketing solutions for the travel industry, published a new report called “State of the Industry: The 2019 Report on Travel Advertising.” With more than 600 respondents and 46 countries around the world represented, this is the largest ever global survey focused exclusively on travel marketers. The findings cover a wide cross-section of topics including budget allocation, investments in social media and personalization, technology adoption, media channel effectiveness, and more.

“With more than 8,500 customers around the world, we obsess over travel marketing minutiae every day. We know marketers working in every area of the travel industry face unique challenges—from stressing over budget decisions, to delivering personalized customer experiences, to keeping up with mobile and how quickly the digital marketing industry is changing. We asked ourselves, what might happen if we could all share perspectives and learn best practices from one another?” said Jackie Lamping, vice president of marketing, Sojern.

Survey respondents include travel marketers working to maximize annual budgets of less than $50,000 all the way up to those managing multi-million dollar budgets, representing brands across the spectrum of airlines, hotels, destination marketing organizations (DMOs), cruise companies, online travel agencies (OTAs), metasearch, attractions, homesharing, and more. The report is a must-read for travel marketers who want to better understand industry best practices and establish a benchmark for their approach against others in the industry.

Personalization is a Priority
46 percent of travel marketers said that delivering personalized ads and offers in real-time was a top challenge. Personalization has become a priority for marketers because customers expect it. Brands are expected to provide a modern customer experience which begins by providing the right offer at the right time in a way that works for them. Harnessing the power of data gives travel marketers the ability to advertise with quality over quantity—more precisely targeting travelers based on their preferences, trip motivation, and where they are on their path to purchase, instead of general demographic data.

Increasing the Return On Advertising Spend
45 percent reported that achieving return on investment (ROI) targets for advertising investments, targeting travelers during a specific point along their path to purchase, and keeping up with the fast-paced advertising landscape were also top challenges. With better visibility into a traveler’s behavior, marketers can deliver the right message at the right time regardless of channel or device—ultimately optimizing their advertising efforts, delivering better customer experiences, and increasing ROI.

Increase Social Media Usage to Reach and Engage Travelers
55 percent of respondents said they plan to spend more this year on social media advertising to reach and influence their audiences. As Facebook and Instagram continue to launch advertising products to help travel marketers and address their specific needs, you can expect travel marketers to continue spending on the platform.

Embrace Visual Storytelling with Video
54 percent of those surveyed plan to use YouTube advertising, 50 percent plan to use Instagram Stories, and 49 percent of travel marketers report that they plan to use Facebook Stories to reach travelers. Through the power of video, travel marketers are able to showcase their properties and experiences in a more engaging manner—creating excitement among prospective and booked travelers, whether it be on social or YouTube.

Use Data to Better Understand Customers
Today’s most successful travel brands are going beyond what data they already know and asking about what data is left unseen. 61 percent leverage data for the ability to target travelers based on intent and/or where they are in the path to purchase. 60 percent said data gave them better visibility into traveler behavior across websites and apps, and 59 percent activate data to understand where they’re winning or losing customers across the path to purchase.

With the complete knowledge into a traveler’s complete path to purchase and trip motivations, brands gain a deeper understanding of who their customers are, and where they are winning and losing across the buyer’s journey to more intelligently plan future campaigns and their overall digital strategy.

Ogury Announces Major Updates to Its Consent Manager

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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February 22, 2019

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Ogury Announces Major Updates to Its Consent Manager

Consent Manager’s Fair Choice Marks the Beginning of a New Era Where Mobile Users Are in Full Control of Their Data and Can Choose to Use It as a Currency to Access Quality Content

Ogury, the leading technology company specialized in Mobile Journey Marketing (MJM), announced the launch of Ogury Consent Manager to strengthen its Mobile Journey Marketing Cloud. Ogury Consent Manager will include a game changing capability, “Fair Choice” that provides users with an alternative to pay with their data to access quality content

With the anniversary of the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on the horizon, managing user consent has never been a more pressing issue for organizations that handle data. For app publishers this means collecting explicit user consent for every single partner they work with. With the average app having over 15 partners integrated, operationally it is difficult to implement without causing serious disruption to their users’ experience. Furthermore, the majority of consent notices today force users to consent rather than giving them a clear and explicit choice to opt in or out. This leads to a lack of consumer trust, long term business loss, and the risk of a hefty regulatory fine.

Ogury Consent Manager, a registered IAB Consent Management Provider (CMP) and fully GDPR compliant, streamlines this process for publishers by combining all consent notices from every demand and supply partner, technology solution, as well as every tracking and analytics provider into one convenient place. Therefore, users are shown just one consent notice, providing them with a clear and informed choice to share or withdraw their data. Establishing a relationship of trust, minimizing disruption to user experience and assuring regulatory compliance.

“Ogury Consent Manager has been the quickest and easiest way for us to meet GDPR guidelines for our European based users,” said Mo Rahim, Founder of London Transport Planner. “ The solution offers unique customization and reporting options via the online dashboard. We haven’t found a free solution that comes close to Ogury Consent Manager in features and simplicity. We thank the support team for their valuable assistance in answering all of our questions and facilitating integration.”

Benefits of Ogury Consent Manager for Publishers:

Compliance guaranteed, whilst maintaining revenue. Ogury was built with GDPR at its core and has been collecting user consent since its very beginning in 2014. This insight feeds AI to optimize user acceptance rate, enabling publishers to continue maximizing their revenue potential.
Built for mobile and completely free for iOS, Android and mobile web. Available within Ogury’s dynamic SDK, publishers can access Ogury Consent Manager alongside Ogury Intelligent Monetization and Active Insights with one simple SDK integration.
Customized consent notice to match a publisher’s brand. Publishers can add their logo and change colors within an easy-to-use self-service dashboard, part of Ogury MJM Cloud.
Monitor consent metrics over time. Publishers can keep an eye on what’s working via the monitoring dashboard which tracks users consent metrics over time and provides a detailed view of impressions and user activity.

“Ogury was built with user consent at its heart, long before GDPR was created,” said Jean Canzoneri, co-founder and co-CEO of Ogury. “We believe it’s important to build a trusting relationship with users and by developing Ogury Consent Manager we have been able to give our publishers the ability to establish that relationship of trust as well. Our product helps publishers manage complex regulations while establishing user trust and maintaining user experience and overall revenue.”

“Ogury’s goal is to help businesses move into the era of data transparency and user choice. We want to help publishers create a dialogue of transparent value exchange with users. This is why we will be releasing a new capability in Consent Manager named “Fair Choice”. Fair Choice goes one step further than simply giving users the choice to share or withhold their data by introducing a third-option to pay a fair price in exchange for a marketing-free experience, without data sharing.”

With this new capability, giving users the choice to decide how to pay to access quality content, Ogury continues to reinvent the way digital marketing is conducted to restore and reinforce user trust, an indispensable ingredient in the long term prosperity of the digital ecosystem.

Pluralsight Promotes Brandon Peay to Chief Strategy and Operations Officer

Sales & Marketing

STS News Desk

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February 22, 2019

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Pluralsight Promotes Brandon Peay to Chief Strategy and Operations Officer

Pluralsight, Inc., the enterprise technology skills platform, announced the promotion of Brandon Peay to Chief Strategy and Operations Officer effectively immediately. Reporting directly to Pluralsight co-founder and CEO Aaron Skonnard, Peay was promoted from his current position as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations.

“Brandon joined Pluralsight in 2014 and began making an immediate impact in our growth and aligning our corporate strategy to fulfill our mission to democratize technology skills,” said Skonnard. “Through his many roles at Pluralsight, he has demonstrated an incredible passion and commitment to our business and has played a pivotal role in achieving our many milestones over the last five years. I’m thrilled to announce Brandon as our new Chief Strategy and Operations Officer and I’m confident his contributions will be invaluable as we continue our growth in 2019 and beyond.”

In his new role, Peay will have two key responsibilities to execute on the company’s vision and fulfilling Pluralsight’s mission to democratize technology skills. He will create alignment across the company to effectively execute the company’s corporate strategy and ensuring operational excellence to drive greater speed and growth of the business in support of that strategy. Peay will partner with leaders across the company to deliver a best-in-class experience for customers.

Prior to becoming the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations, Peay served as the Chief of Staff to the CEO, and as Director of Corporate Development. Prior to joining Pluralsight, Peay held several roles at Bain & Company, where he helped identify and solve strategic problems for corporations across a variety of industries. Peay holds a BS in Economics from Brigham Young University and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business.

Information Builders Named a Leader in Ventana Research’s 2019 Value Index for Mobile Analytics and Business Intelligence

Data Visualization

STS News Desk

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February 22, 2019

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Information Builders Named a Leader in Ventana Research’s 2019 Value Index for Mobile Analytics and Business Intelligence

Industry-Leading Scores for Manageability, Capability, and Reliability Earn Designation in Three Categories

Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI), analytics, and data management solutions, announced that the company received the overall top score for Manageability, as well as strong scores in Capability and Reliability, resulting in its designation as a Value Index Leader in Ventana Research’s 2019 Mobile Analytics and Business Intelligence Value Index.

As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile and dependent on mobile devices even in the office, Ventana Research’s 2019 Value Index for Mobile Analytics and Business Intelligence aims to help organizations evaluate which BI and analytics tools will best support their needs on those devices now and in the future. For the Value Index, Ventana Research takes a quantified, research-based approach to evaluating 15 vendors’ solutions across a variety of evaluation categories, of which Information Builders was named a Value Index Leader for three.

Information Builders earned the highest overall score of 86 percent in the Manageability category, resulting in its designation as a Value Index Leader for the category. Manageability evaluation criteria are critical to the success of a project as they are intended to ensure that the product will meet both “business and IT needs for installation, deployment, and administration.” This includes IT administration and business support; security provisioning, audit and compliance capabilities; and requirements for licensing, subscriptions, or maintenance.

Information Builders was also named a Value Index Leader for industry-leading scores in the Capability and Reliability categories. The report noted Information Builders’ breadth of mobile capabilities available via WebFOCUS, allowing end users to interact with analytical content whether online or offline. This companion application to the company’s WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform supports organizations’ hybrid approach to BI and analytics with rich user experiences and collaboration on the go.

David Menninger, senior vice president and research director, Ventana Research, said:
“The Ventana Research Value Index assesses the value offered by mobile analytics and business intelligence vendors and solutions based on their ability to address business needs versus simply providing features and functions – a strong distinction from other industry analyst rankings. After careful evaluation of hundreds of criteria, this year’s index revealed that Information Builders is among the highest scoring vendors in the market for mobile BI and analytics solutions and delivers the strongest functionality for the management of those solutions.”

Frank J. Vella, chief executive officer, Information Builders, said:
“It’s no surprise that mobile BI and analytics is becoming an increasingly important element for data programs. Workforces need access to data for decision-making whenever and wherever they work. Information Builders will continue delivering solutions that not only match these business requirements, but also anticipate and support future market needs for delivering trusted data for analytics at scale.”

WaitWhat -The Premium Content Company And Award-Winning Podcast Creator — Raises $4.3 Million Series A

Content Sharing

STS News Desk

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February 22, 2019

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WaitWhat -The Premium Content Company And Award-Winning Podcast Creator — Raises $4.3 Million Series A

Cue Ball Capital, Burda Principal Investments lead gender diverse investor group that includes Victress Capital, Able Partners, Human Ventures, Reid Hoffman, Jacki Zehner, and Joi Ito

WaitWhat, the “media invention company” known for its creation of premium, genre-defining digital content announced that it has raised $4.3 million in Series A funding. Founded by former TED executives June Cohen and Deron Triff, the duo who led the ushering of TED Talks into a globally recognized media brand, WaitWhat in its short history has already developed one of the most successful online media properties with the 2018 Webby Award-winning podcast Masters of Scale, hosted by iconic entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman. In addition to its Series A funding, today the company launches Should This Exist? — a podcast, created in partnership with Quartz, which offers a fascinating journey into what technology is doing to humanity.

Ms. Cohen and Mr. Triff, whose combined leadership built TED Talks from a concept to 1 billion views/listens each year, quietly launched WaitWhat in January 2017 as a media company committed to the creation of highly-differentiated, premium content that is gender-balanced and diverse in its subject profiles, and boundary-breaking in its formats. Where most media companies focus on quick hits within a specific genre, format or demographic, WaitWhat is betting on a strategy aimed at creating diverse content experiences that scale across mediums; designing media properties whose value builds over time; and eliciting certain “contagious emotions” that accelerate sharing.

“People don’t just transact with content; they want to feel connected to it through a sense of wonder, awe, curiosity, and mastery. These are contagious emotions, and research shows they stimulate sharing,” said WaitWhat Co-founder and CEO June Cohen. “Where many media companies aim for volume — putting out lots of content with a short shelf life — we’re building a completely distinctive portfolio of premium properties that are continually increasing in value, inspiring deep audience engagement, and creating opportunities for format expansion.”

In May 2017, WaitWhat launched Masters of Scale as its prototype for an entirely original media experience, born as a podcast, and evolving into other formats that expand how audiences access each episode’s timeless content. With guests like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Netflix’s Reed Hastings, Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Thrive’s Arianna Huffington, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, Goop’s Gwyneth Paltrow and Nike’s Phil Knight; 15+ million downloads in more than 200 countries; 2,500 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts; and a listen-through rate of nearly 90%, Masters of Scale has become one of the most prestigious and differentiated media properties in the world of business.

In January 2019, WaitWhat forged a partnership with Harvard Business Publishing to create an offering of “Podcases,” which adapt Masters of Scale content into an audio-first version of Harvard’s world-renowned business cases. The first 3 Masters of Scale Podcases are now being licensed to universities around the world.

“In creating the TED Radio Hour and other media innovations during my time at TED, I fell in love with the idea of completely rethinking format. The initial body of content is the ‘first format,” and it acts as a precursor to what ultimately becomes an entire eco-system of media products, experiences and more innovative business models surrounding it,” says Deron Triff, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer of WaitWhat. “With this raise, we’re able to expand the team who will continually invent both new properties and format extensions.”

“There is an undeniable shift and demand in media today for premium differentiated content. What I love about WaitWhat is not only their unmatched ability to consistently produce the most relevant content, but to equally innovate around the business model and partnerships that accrue the best value for that content. This is the future of media – high quality content, but with a different and better business model. We are honored to be part of this great team and investor set,” said Tony Tjan, Managing Partner of Cue Ball.

In addition to its Series A funding, the company announced and launched today Should This Exist?, a podcast created in partnership with Quartz, and hosted by Caterina Fake, the Silicon Valley investor and Internet pioneer who’s known as an eloquent dot-connector on technology and the human condition. In each episode, an entrepreneur or scientist with a radical new technology joins Caterina on a journey to peer around corners, and glimpse their technology’s wildest potential to change human lives for the better — and the hidden forces that might send their vision sideways.

In identifying potential investors for WaitWhat, Ms. Cohen and Mr. Triff sought out a diverse, group of backers who think boldly about reinventing media, understand the advantages of building gender-balanced and ethnically diverse teams, and believe in the long-term value of creating premium media properties.

Cue Ball and Burda Principal Investments led WaitWhat’s Series A round. Other investors include Reid Hoffman, Jacki Zehner, Joi Ito, Julia Popowitz, Roy Martin, Ann Lovell, Will Allen, Maria Thomas, Joshua Schacter, Liminal Ventures, and Scott Green. The company has also reserved up to $1.5 million dollars of additional funding capacity specifically for women and minority led investment funds such as Victress Capital, Human Ventures, Able Partners who will join in this Series A Round.

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