Cloud Telephony Systems pioneer Ozonetel launched a new Omnichannel service widget – KOOKOO Interactive Assistant. The widget enables web visitors to place one-click, VOIP calls from the website. In a first-of-its-kind offering, it runs a parallel chat session concurrently with the voice call.
“Customers and agents use the parallel chat to exchange details that are frustrating to spell out over the phone. This includes names, email ids, links and booking ids,” Murthy Chintalapati, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ozonetel, explained. “It promises a smoother customer experience, and helps close transactions two times faster.”
“Businesses also cut costs on toll-free bills. We estimate that contact centers can cut costs by 50%, within two years of adoption.” Murthy adds.
Chaitanya Chokkareddy
Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Innovation Officer, Ozonetel, says: “Our Interactive Assistant closes the debate on live chat versus voice support. It combines both platforms to create a truly responsive, mobile-first experience. We’ve bundled features to benefit both sales and customer support.”
“The KOOKOO Interactive Assistant is in keeping with our desire to continuously innovate,” Chokkareddy continued. “Early this year, we rolled out bots and artificial intelligence capabilities to further improve B2C customer engagement. We will soon extend the AI capabilities to improve self-service options on the widget too.”
KOOKOO Interactive Assistant is supported by the KOOKOO Platform and KOOKOO CloudAgent. The Cloud contact center software at the backend ensures advanced calling features, automatic call distribution, skill hunting and visual IVR. Integration with all leading CRMs and Ticketing solutions including Zendesk, Zoho, Salesforce, Freshdesk, and Hubspot -ensures automatic capture and retrieval of caller details.
“Executives-as-a-Service” firm welcomes CMO specializing in high-velocity demand generation for SaaS and growth companies
Chief Outsiders, one of the nation’s fastest-growing management consulting firms, has announced the addition of digital marketing and go-to-market strategy specialist Jeff Loeb to its team of fractional CMOs.
Drawing from more than 20 years of SaaS, software, technology, and cloud expertise wielded within organizations ranging from start-ups to the Global 2000, Loeb partners with emerging company and mid-market business executives to accelerate revenue, increase pipeline, build awareness and optimize marketing ROI. Loeb couples go-to-market strategy and digital marketing expertise to accelerate new customer acquistion and increase customer lifetime value.
Prior to joining Chief Outsiders, Loeb served in executive marketing roles including Chief Marketing Officer at Vidyard, a SaaS video platform, Chief Marketing Officer and executive vice president at IT Management software firm Ipswitch, and vice president of global marketing at application performance management software company dynatrace.
While serving at these enterprises, Mr. Loeb drove awareness, leadership recognition, and revenue acceleration, growing dynatrace from $35M to $300M in revenue , and increasing revenue by 50% annually at Vidyard. Additional success stories include growing cloud pioneer Navisite from $10M to $100M in revenue, and driving eight company website redesigns, resulting in 50-80 percent increases in conversions and traffic.
“SaaS, cloud and technology businesses, in order to stand out and succeed, require compelling and persuasive digital and content marketing strategies to uniquely position their brand, attract new traffic, drive conversions, and rapidly land and expand,” said Slade Kobran, Managing Partner of Chief Outsiders’ Northeast team. “Jeff is an invaluable ally for B2B SaaS startups and mid-market companies alike who need assistance in creating high-velocity, low-friction customer acquisition and growth.”
Loeb earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the founder of the MIT CIO Symposium, the largest CIO event in the Northeastern United States.
Microzu.com, a Colorado based e-Commerce company, is pleased to announce the launch of their latest innovation to help online entrepreneurs find an alternative marketplace to grow their business. Designed to be user-friendly for beginners and savvy online e-Retailers, Microzu.com marketplace is free.
“Starting an e-retail business should no longer be an obstacle for anyone,” says Mr. Reggie Abbott, Microzu Lead Strategist.
According to Mr. Abbott, Microzu offers a virtual warehouse accessible to e-retailers once they are accepted as a vendor. Entrepreneurs can pick products of their choice from Microzu virtual warehouse and there is no registration fee.
According to Ms. Jenell C., a recent college graduate and owner of JCs Health and Beauty, Microzu marketplace is the ideal place for small e-Retailers like her, as it is not an Amazonian forest where you will get lost among millions of vendors.
For Mr. Bud W., a Chicago based e-Retailer expert, there is no easier way than Microzu to start your online business.
According to Bobby H., owner of B & H Pet Supplies, the sense of being part of community of vendors where members care about each other, is the greatest networking platform you can have.
Designed to be user-friendly, users can upload their merchandise on-the-go or from their desktop.
Abbott says that the beautiful part of Microzu.com marketplace is the vast amount of inventories, the large number of web stores vendors can channel out their products across multiple selling platforms.
Vendors can change product lines whenever they discover a new market niche at no additional cost.
Furthermore, according to Reggie, vendors get the technical assistance and business mentoring in term of designing their logo, starting their store, and promoting their store on major social networks. Monthly community webinars and easy to read white papers are published to support vendors.
“We’re very excited with the successful release of Microzu marketplace application. We purposely designed this App to be extremely user friendly with the cell phone and mobile device users in mind,” states Dr. Yaya Bamba, Managing Director at Y2Fox, Inc. parent company of Microzu.
Microzu.com is a subsidiary of Y2Fox Data Solutions, which is a trusted Cloud Service and Cyber Security Provider for the U.S Federal, State, and Local Government.
Company welcomes Professor Marios Savvides as Chief AI Scientist and expands AI research partnership with Carnegie Mellon University
Bossa Nova, the leading provider of real-time, on-shelf product data for the global retail industry, today announced the acquisition of the artificial intelligence company, HawXeye.
Founded by Prof. Marios Savvides and Andy Lin, HawXeye is a spinoff of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The company has introduced significant advancements in face detection and object recognition technology. Prof. Marios Savvides has joined Bossa Nova as Chief AI Scientist bringing over 18 years of experience in deep learning, facial biometrics, and object recognition. Savvides will be responsible for advancing AI capabilities within the retail environment, resulting in precise product recognition at large scale, highly accurate identification of out-of-stock and misplaced products.
Additionally, Bossa Nova also announced a new partnership with the CyLab Biometrics Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Founded and led by Savvides, the lab will advance research in AI, analytics, and robot perception in retail and autonomous navigation. With the addition of HawXeye and CMU’s technical expertise, leadership, and research, Bossa Nova gains exclusive licenses to more than 52 core IP properties in deep learning, correlation filters, 3D modeling, and additional product recognition technologies.
“With the leadership of Prof. Savvides, the HawXeye team has an impressive track record of successfully transferring AI research out of a lab environment and into reliable and scalable products,” said Bruce McWilliams, CEO of Bossa Nova. “We have only scratched the surface of what’s possible in retail and together, we will accelerate the development of advanced, AI-powered, data-focused solutions. We’re thrilled to welcome the HawXeye team and Prof. Savvides to Bossa Nova and to further expand our relationship with CMU.”
Prof. Marios Savvides
“Bossa Nova is changing the retail ecosystem. They deliver unparalleled real-time product data to the largest retailers in the world through fully autonomous service robots,” said Prof. Marios Savvides, Chief AI Scientist of Bossa Nova and director of CyLab Biometrics Center at CMU. “When combined with their robotics technology, our AI can unlock unprecedented levels of accuracy, reliability, and scale in retail scene understanding. With Bossa Nova, we’re confident we can create a new era of retail data and analytics.”
Field Squared, Inc.™, the industry’s first Field Service Management Process Automation Platform, today announced its continued market momentum over H1 2018, having signed a number of new customers or expanded contracts with existing customers. The company also announced the hiring of two key new executive appointments as well as enhanced its field service management platform.
Christopher James Camut
“The type of growth we’re seeing across both new and existing customers is very exciting,” saidChristopher James Camut, Director, President and CEO at Field Squared. “Field service organizations are realizing the benefits of digital transformation, and this momentum acknowledges how unique our field service management platform is in the marketplace. We can’t wait to share exciting things over the rest of 2018.”
In H1 2018, among other sales accomplishments, Field Squared grew its customer base, most notably signing new or expanding existing multi-year contracts with five large enterprise customers. Customers have chosen Field Squared because of the configurability of the platform, the ability to integrate with any back-office systems and the superior customer support.
Key New Executive Appointments
Field Squared hired two newly formed executive appointments to the company’s leadership team, bringing on Tiffany Aasted as director of marketing and Dan McDaid as director of sales.
Tiffany Aasted brings extensive technology marketing expertise across cloud and SaaS companies to lead the company’s marketing department.
Dan McDaid joins the company with a wealth of sales experience and an extensive background in SaaS and hybrid technology solutions. In his role, he will also lead the company’s partner programs.
Platform Technology & Innovation
Over H1 2018, the company released a number of innovative features to its field service management platform, including:
Scheduling and route optimization enhancements
Work order management feature-set expansion
Enriched field service analytics, reporting and business intelligence
Advanced work order Smart Form automation features
Kasten, a cloud-native data management company, today announced its K10 platform is now available to all users of the Google Cloud Platform Marketplace (GCP Marketplace). The K10 platform provides customers with the ability to operationalize at scale data protection, disaster recovery, cloud migration, and copy management of stateful Kubernetes applications. For the first time ever, K10 is now available to deploy with one click to Google Kubernetes Engine with a usage-based pricing model. Commercial Kubernetes applications can be deployed on-premise or even on other public clouds through the GCP Marketplace.
K10 uses a novel application-centric approach to data management that enables enterprises to meet business continuity and compliance requirements around stateful container based applications running at scale on public and private Kubernetes deployments. Kasten’s solution allows infrastructure teams to bring much needed operational discipline and peace of mind when handling use cases like Backup and Recovery, Test/Dev Environments, Cloud Migration and Disaster Recovery without sacrificing the flexibility and agility that developers have gotten accustomed to on a dynamic platform like Kubernetes.
“Enterprises are adopting Kubernetes at unprecedented pace and are increasingly using it as their primary infrastructure for both stateless and stateful applications. This has created tremendous demand for the Kasten K10 platform which simplifies the operational complexity around data management in this environment,” said Niraj Tolia, co-founder and CEO of Kasten. “We are excited to partner with Google Cloud to further simplify the process through which customers can deploy K10 both in the cloud and on-premises.”
GCP Marketplace is based on a multi-cloud and hybrid-first philosophy, focused on giving Google Cloud partners and enterprise customers flexibility without lock-in. It also helps customers innovate by easily adopting new technologies from ISV partners, such as commercial Kubernetes applications, and allows companies to oversee the full lifecycle of a solution, from discovery through management.
“To remain competitive and deliver on user demands, organizations adopting cloud need ready access to trusted, tested and portable applications that can run across their entire infrastructure. At Google Cloud we strive to make it as easy as possible for customers of all sizes to deploy, purchase and manage leading solutions in the cloud,” said Jennifer Lin, Director of Product Management Google Cloud. “The availability of commercial Kubernetes applications from providers like Kasten is a critical part of extending enterprise investments and can simplify adoption of container-based infrastructure no matter what environment they operate in, either on-premises or in the public cloud.”
– Cloud Revenue Growth Accelerates, Up 30% (IFRS) and Up 40% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies), Outpacing Competition
– New Cloud Bookings Up 29% at Constant Currencies on Top of a Strong Prior Year Quarter
– Strong Digital Core Innovation Cycle – 600 S/4HANA Customers Added in Q2, S/4HANA Customer Count Now Close to 9,000
– Double-Digit Operating Profit Growth Continues, Up 13% (IFRS) and Up 12% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies)
SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2018.
Bill McDermott
“The 4th generation of enterprise applications has taken another major step forward with C/4HANA. Together with S/4HANA, SAP customers are finally able to focus their entire business on delivering a personalized experience to their customers. The intelligent enterprise is the elixir to bridge silos inside fractured businesses and beyond so CEOs get a single view of the customer. SAP is presenting a clear strategy, customers are already validating it in Q2 and we are increasing guidance as a signal that a new wave of growth has been unleashed.” – Bill McDermott, CEO
“This quarter is exemplary for the road we have chosen: rapidly transforming the company to the cloud while substantially growing profits and margins. I am very confident that this momentum will continue to expand. That’s why we raised our 2018 outlook and 2020 ambition.” – Luka Mucic, CFO
Business Highlights
Financial Highlights
Second Quarter 2018
New cloud bookings1 grew 24% (29% at constant currencies) in the second quarter and reached €421 million. Cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew 30% year over year to €1.21 billion (IFRS), up 40% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).2 Software revenue was down 9% year over year to €996 million (IFRS), down 5% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software license order entry3 grew 12% at constant currencies year over year in the second quarter. Cloud and software revenue grew 4% year over year to €4.94 billion (IFRS), up 10% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue grew 4% year over year to €6.00 billion (IFRS), up 10% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).
SAP’s rapidly expanding cloud business together with solid growth in support revenue continued to drive the share of more predictable revenue. The total of cloud subscriptions & support revenue and software support revenue as a percentage of total revenue grew 2 percentage points year-over-year to 66% in the second quarter.
Second quarter operating profit was up 13% year over year to €1.04 billion (IFRS), up 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). As announced in January 2018, the Company expects a positive revenue and profit impact from the adoption of IFRS 15 in 2018. In the second quarter, this positive impact on SAP’s operating profit was around €54 million. Earnings per share increased 8% to €0.60 (IFRS) and increased 5% to €0.98 (non-IFRS).
Operating cash flow for the first six months was €2.99 billion, down 15% year over year. The decrease in operating cash flow was mainly due to timing of stock based compensation payments, currency headwinds as well as higher tax and insurance payments. Free cash flow decreased 25% year over year to €2.17 billion. Free cash flow was also lower due to the previously announced additional CapEx for 2018. At the end of the second quarter, net liquidity was -€2.97 billion.
With SAP’s next generation ERP S/4HANA, customers can massively simplify their IT landscape, turn real-time data into actions and reinvent their business models for the digital economy across every industry.
S/4HANA adoption grew to more than 8,900 customers, up 41% year over year. In the second quarter, approximately 600 additional customers signed up of which approximately 40% were net new.
S/4HANA continues to be selected by world-class global companies, including McDonalds (China) in the quarter. A growing number of companies are now adopting S/4HANA in the Cloud. TechnipFMC, China Sports Lemon, and Spirit Airlines chose S/4HANA Cloud.
SAP C/4HANA (Customer Experience)
SAP’s C/4HANA solutions serve a wide range of industries across both B2C and B2B and enable businesses to manage their entire front office: marketing, sales, commerce, service, customer data cloud – seamlessly and in real-time.
In the second quarter, SAP’s C/4HANA customer experience solutions achieved high double-digit year-over-year growth in new cloud bookings and total revenue in the SAP Customer Experience segment was up 65% to €242 million at constant currencies.
Whirlpool, Deutsche Telekom, and Novartis were among those that chose SAP’s C/4HANA solutions this quarter.
Human Capital Management
With SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass, SAP delivers total workforce management across both permanent and contingent labor. The SAP SuccessFactors suite is localized for 92 countries and 42 languages.
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, which is the flagship of SAP’s HCM offering, ended the quarter with more than 2,600 customers and scored numerous competitive wins including BMW, Telecom Argentina, Shiseido, and MG Motors India.
SAP Leonardo
With SAP Leonardo SAP delivers powerful innovation by bringing together deep process and industry expertise, advanced design thinking methodology and cutting edge software capabilities such as IoT, Big Data, Machine Learning, Analytics, and Blockchain. All of this is integrated on the SAP Cloud Platform with new technologies easily added as they emerge.
Toyota and Porsche are among many others that adopted SAP Leonardo solutions in the second quarter.
Business Networks
With the SAP Business Networks SAP provides collaborative commerce capabilities (Ariba), flexible workforce management (Fieldglass) and effortless travel and expense processing (Concur). SAP Business Network is the largest commerce platform in the world with approximately $2.4 trillion4 in global commerce annually transacted in more than 180 countries.
In the second quarter, total revenue in the SAP Business Network segment was up 21% to €688 million at constant currencies year over year. Bosch-Siemens Hausgeräte, and Avianca chose SAP’s Business Network Solutions in the second quarter.
Regional Revenue Performance in the Second Quarter 2018
SAP had a very strong performance in the EMEA region with cloud and software revenue increasing 10% (IFRS) and 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was strong and grew by 40% (IFRS) and 46% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Germany and the UK being highlights. In addition, SAP had strong double-digit software revenue growth in the UK, and the Middle East and Germany had another strong software revenue quarter with solid single digit growth.
The Company had a solid performance in the Americas region with a significant currency headwind. Cloud and software revenue decreased by 3% (IFRS) and increased by 8% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue increased by 24% (IFRS) and 35% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Brazil being a highlight.
In the APJ region, SAP had a strong performance. Cloud and software revenue was up by 4% (IFRS) and grew by 11% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was exceptional and grew by 42% (IFRS) and 52% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with China and Japan being highlights. For software revenue, Australia, China and India had impressive quarters and grew by double digits.
Financial Results at a Glance
Second Quarter 20181)
IFRS
Non-IFRS2)
€ million, unless otherwise stated
Q2 2018
Q2 2017
∆ in %
Q2 2018
Q2 2017
∆ in %
∆ in %
const.
curr.
New Cloud Bookings3)
N/A
N/A
N/A
421
340
24
29
Cloud subscriptions and support revenue
1,213
932
30
1,227
932
32
40
Software licenses and support revenue
3,731
3,826
–2
3,731
3,826
–2
3
Cloud and software revenue
4,944
4,757
4
4,959
4,758
4
10
Total revenue
5,999
5,782
4
6,014
5,782
4
10
Share of predictable revenue (in %)
66
63
2pp
66
63
2pp
Operating profit
1,044
926
13
1,640
1,570
4
12
Profit after tax
720
666
8
1,173
1,120
5
Basic earnings per share (€)
0.60
0.56
8
0.98
0.94
5
Number of employees (FTE, June 30)
93,846
87,114
8
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Six months ended June 20181)
IFRS
Non-IFRS2)
€ million, unless otherwise stated
Q1–Q2
2018
Q1–Q2
2017
∆ in %
Q1–Q2
2018
Q1–Q2
2017
∆ in %
∆ in %
const. curr.
New Cloud Bookings3)
N/A
N/A
N/A
667
555
20
28
Cloud subscriptions and support revenue
2,283
1,837
24
2,299
1,837
25
36
Software licenses and support revenue
7,012
7,248
–3
7,012
7,248
–3
3
Cloud and software revenue
9,295
9,085
2
9,311
9,085
2
10
Total revenue
11,260
11,066
2
11,276
11,067
2
10
Share of predictable revenue (in %)
68
66
2pp
68
66
2pp
Operating profit
2,069
1,599
29
2,876
2,768
4
13
Profit after tax
1,428
1,197
19
2,041
2,006
2
Basic earnings per share (€)
1.20
0.99
21
1.71
1.67
3
Number of employees (FTE, December 31)
93,846
87,114
8
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
1) All figures are unaudited.
2) For a detailed description of SAP’s non-IFRS measures see Explanation of Non-IFRS Measures online. For a breakdown of the individual adjustments see table “Non-IFRS Adjustments by Functional Areas” in this Quarterly Statement.
3) As this is an order entry metric, there is no IFRS equivalent.
Due to rounding, numbers may not add up precisely.
Business Outlook 2018
Due to the strong momentum in SAP’s cloud business the Company is raising its outlook for the full year 2018:
Non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue is now expected to be in a range of €5.050 billion − €5.200 billion at constant currencies (2017: €3.77 billion), up 34.0% – 38.0% at constant currencies. The previous range was €4.95 billion − €5.15 billion at constant currencies.
Non-IFRS cloud and software revenue is now expected to be in a range of €21.025 – €21.250 billion at constant currencies (2017: €19.55 billion), up 7.5% – 8.5% at constant currencies. The previous range was €20.85 – €21.25 billion at constant currencies.
Non-IFRS total revenue is now expected to be in a range of €24.975 billion − €25.300 billion at constant currencies (2017: €23.46 billion), up 6.0% – 7.5% at constant currencies. The previous range was €24.80 billion − €25.30 billion at constant currencies.
Non-IFRS operating profit is now expected to be in a range of €7.400 billion − €7.500 billion at constant currencies (2017: €6.77 billion), up 9.0% – 11.0% at constant currencies. The previous range was €7.35 billion − €7.50 billion at constant currencies.
While SAP’s full-year 2018 business outlook is at constant currencies, actual currency reported figures are expected to be impacted by currency exchange rate fluctuations as the Company progresses through the year. See the table below for the Q3 and FY 2018 expected currency impacts.
Expected Currency Impact Based on June 2018 Level for the Rest of the Year
In percentage points
Q3
FY
Cloud subscriptions and support
1 to -1pp
-4 to -6pp
Cloud and software
1 to -1pp
-2 to -4pp
Operating profit
1 to -1pp
-2 to -4pp
IFRS 15 Impact
As of January 1, 2018, SAP changed several of its accounting policies to adopt IFRS 15 ‘Revenue from Contracts with Customers’. Under the IFRS 15 adoption method chosen by SAP prior years are not restated to conform to the new policies. Consequently, the year-over-year growth of revenue and profit in 2018 will be impacted by the new policies.
As already announced in SAP’s Q4 2017 Quarterly Statement, the Company expects the full year 2018 impact of the policy change5 on revenue, operating expenses and profit to be as follows:
Revenues are expected to experience a benefit of substantially less than €0.1 billion with most of the difference resulting from exercises of customer software purchase options granted in prior years which result in software revenue.
Operating expenses are expected to benefit, in cost of sales and marketing, in the amount of approximately €0.2 billion from higher capitalization of sales commissions. Other policy changes will weigh on operating expenses with an additional cost of revenue of substantially less than €0.1 billion.
The above-mentioned effects will result in a net positive impact on operating profit of approximately €0.2 billion.
The new revenue recognition policies are described in our Half Year Report. Details regarding the IFRS 15 impact in the second quarter and first six months can be found in the section ‘Impact of Changes in Accounting Policies’ in this Quarterly Statement.
Ambition 2020
Looking beyond 2018, SAP is updating its 2020 ambition. This update reflects the strong momentum in SAP’s cloud business, the acquisition of Callidus Software as well as a more challenging currency environment compared to 2017.
SAP now expects 2020 non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue in a range of €8.2 − €8.7 billion (previously: €8.0 – €8.5 billion).
SAP continues to expect:
€28 − €29 billion non-IFRS total revenue
€8.5 − €9.0 billion non-IFRS operating profit
The share of more predictable revenue (defined as the total of cloud subscriptions & support revenue and software support revenue) in a range of 70% − 75%.
The updated ambition is based on estimated average 2018 currencies, assuming the current foreign exchange environment prevails until year-end. The previous ambition was based on average 2017 currencies. The change in currency assumptions negatively impacts the cloud subscriptions and support revenue ambition by approximately -€0.35 billion, the total revenue ambition by approximately -€1.0 billion and the operating profit ambition by approximately -€0.4 billion. These negative impacts are now included in the updated 2020 ambition.
Digital Marketing SaaS Provider Transforms Lead Acquisition, Management and Routing Process to Boost ROAS and Increase Lead Monetization
Accelerize and its digital marketing software division CAKE announced the availability of a marketing intelligence solution that seamlessly integrates lead generation technology with multi-channel measurement for complete visibility into campaign performance and lead quality for key optimization opportunities. With Journey by CAKE – an enterprise, cloud-based platform that collects and analyzes data in real-time – mortgage companies gain wider visibility into lead acquisition and multi-channel digital marketing activities, enabling them to monetize leads for higher returns on advertising spend (ROAS).
Journey by CAKE provides marketers with the ability to capture the complete customer journey, from the first interaction with a brand’s message all the way to the funding of a loan. Journey delivers advantages to mortgage providers including:
Powerful Lead Distribution and Monetization – Automate lead generation and monetization efforts with powerful tools for collecting, analyzing and distributing leads in real-time.
Lead Qualification – Qualify leads in real-time based on unique criteria to optimize ROAS.
Closing the Loop – Gain clarity into the customer journey all the way from initial interaction to loan origination and fulfillment, providing insights to further optimize lead generation processes.
Powerful Insights – Advanced analytics dashboards provide powerful customer journey insights and performance of multi-channel marketing efforts to help optimize lead to loan origination (funding) efficiency.
Digital Marketing Integrations– Easily extract performance data from media platforms including Google, Facebook and Bing to better understand channel performance and ROAS.
“Mortgage companies have encountered significant pain points during the customer journey and lead distribution process including a lack of marketing performance insights and closed-loop measurement,” said Santi Pierini, CAKE President and Chief Operating Officer. “We are entering a new era and it’s crucial for mortgage providers to embrace marketing solutions to gain an end-to-end view of the customer journey and help them move forward in the evolving landscape. Mortgage industry leaders leveraging CAKE’s marketing intelligence platform have already achieved a 255% month over month ROAS improvement. It is clear that mortgage companies able to prioritize the channels, sources and campaigns that result in the strongest ROAS have a clear competitive advantage.”
An effective online marketing strategy requires a lot of time and expertise. In fact, according to a 2017 Mortgage Marketing Report, the majority of survey respondents cited their biggest challenges are that they do not consider themselves to be marketing experts and are unsure about where to focus their marketing efforts nor how to prioritize channels such as paid search, direct, display, email and social.
Parascript, which provides document automation solutions that process more than 100 billion documents per year, today announced the availability of FormXtra.AI. This high performance capture system significantly reduces the complexity and costs associated with document classification and data extraction through a self-learning system that automatically configures rules and learns by itself in order to improve performance. Maintaining ongoing system performance in dynamic production environments becomes effortless because FormXtra.AI adapts to new changing streams of documents in the background while documents are processed.
“With FormXtra.AI, we approached our clients’ challenges from an entirely new angle,” said Greg Council, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at Parascript. “Our system automatically configures itself and adapts to the most dynamic document streams while it simultaneously measures and improves performance in the background. It learns what data is able to run ‘straight-through’ with no user intervention and preserves better than human-level precision. It’s the first of its kind. All those time-consuming—and sometimes costly—professional services for configuration and to ensure quality performance are no longer necessary.”
Read More: Decoding The Current State of SDR Automation Platform Powered by AI
The new smart-learning capability is based on Parascript’s 25 years of expertise with advanced artificial intelligence. While leading capture systems have some “learning” capabilities, they are based upon the combination of user-supplied instruction and template creation. This means that they require a user to sit with the application and tell it where the required data is through an explicit action. This typical process fails to reduce work with the initial configuration and creates a large, unmanageable system. Parascript solves this problem.
Beyond Disruptive Innovation
“Parascript’s approach is to analyze documents through FormXtra.AI self-learning,” Mr. Council explained. “You can provide FormXtra.AI a structured form or you can provide tagged samples, and it will analyze and automatically create a ‘document map’ with the push of a button.”
In production, FormXtra.AI monitors and collects background data from operations and uses it to measure and improve performance with no change to existing workflows. By working in the background, it completely eliminates manual efforts to configure or optimize the system. In addition, the data resulting from the self-learning process are stored in a file that can be transferred or shared from one system to another.
“I’ve been in the capture business for decades both as an end user and on the software side, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Parascript machine learning makes processing complex documents and forms not only easy, but painless,” said Bill Johnson, Vice President of Sales at Parascript. “FormXtra.AI processes high volumes of documents faster, using fewer people with less errors.”
Finance can now embed and refresh data in Excel, PowerPoint and Word with the push of a button
Further integrating the ecosystem of tools finance professionals rely on most, Host Analytics, the leading innovator of cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions, today extended its reporting capabilities for Microsoft Office. With Host Analytics Spotlight for Office, customers can seamlessly build management and financial reports directly within Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. With the push of a button, data can be dynamically refreshed within the applications; ensuring it is always accurate and up to date.
Sanjay Vyas
“Prepping data for presentations and reporting is an unavoidable and arduous task for finance teams. Often times the information needed is rendered in Microsoft Office, making it time consuming and difficult to manage,” said Sanjay Vyas, chief product officer, Host Analytics. “Spotlight for Office was designed to make this kind of process painless for our users, by enabling them to embed the data once, with minimal formatting, and then giving them the ability to quickly refresh with the correct, up-to-the-minute information.”
With Spotlight for Office, customers can harness the power of Microsoft Office for presenting information while ensuring “one version of the truth” from a centralized, secure data store. Presentations and documents can be built once with live links to the data and used as often as needed, saving valuable time and eliminating errors caused by manual cutting and pasting. Once a report is created in Excel, PowerPoint or Word it can be accessed anywhere and delivers data security, integrity, and confidence in the data by relying on the Host Analytics platform as its foundation. With the push of a button, data can be dynamically refreshed; ensuring it is always accurate and up to date.
In addition to delivering management and financial reporting from Word and PowerPoint, Host Analytics customers can now build and analyze Spotlight XL and Spotlight Web reports directly from the Host Planning Finance cube, reducing the time and effort required to build and analyze financial reports in Spotlight.
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