The Partnership Provides Businesses Access to a Fully Featured Payments Platform, 150+ Payment Methods, Optimised Payment Processing and Fraud Prevention
SafeCharge, a leader in advanced payment technologies, announced the launch of SafeCharge’s Plugin for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the fastest path to unified commerce. Commerce Cloud enables brands to provide personalized experiences for shoppers that span web, mobile, social and in-store. And now, as part of the world’s #1 CRM platform – Salesforce – brands can deliver unified experiences for customers that extend beyond commerce to include marketing, customer service and more.
SafeCharge’s integration empowers Commerce Cloud customers to accept payments safely and securely through SafeCharge’s Hosted Check-out and Merchant Direct solutions.
SafeCharge’s Hosted Check-out solution allows merchants to accept all relevant payment options via ready-to-use check-out pages which can be easily configured by merchants to fit their brand.
SafeCharge’s Merchant Direct solution connects directly to the SafeCharge Payments Engine and offers full flexibility for merchants to accept credit card payments on their websites.
This integration offers the following benefits:
Ready-to-use hosted check-out pages or direct integration with website pages
Advanced risk and fraud management tools
The availability of more than 150 payment methods and 100 currencies
One-click payments for returning visitors (for both cards and alternative payments)
Dynamic 3D Secure (only routing higher risk transactions for 3D authentication)
Responsive design to support mobile and tablet as well
Descoping of PCI compliance
“We are very excited to release our Plugin for businesses using Salesforce Commerce Cloud,” said David Avgi, CEO, SafeCharge. “This partnership gives businesses working with Salesforce Commerce Cloud access to some of the latest payment and risk technology endorsed by the world’s most demanding businesses. Merchants utilizing SafeCharge’s solutions benefit from maximum uptime, the highest conversion rates and advanced fraud protection.”
“Creating personalized, omnichannel experiences is now more important than ever for brands,” said Kori O’Brien, SVP, ISV Sales, Salesforce. “By leveraging the power of Commerce Cloud and the new integration from SafeCharge, businesses will benefit from access to some of the most advanced payments and fraud prevention platform enabling them to boost growth.
People don’t like it when their time is taken up by trivial tasks. That sentiment fuels every facet of a salespersons’ mindset concerning data entry and is a key reason why a CRM works against them. Sales teams stuck with a traditional CRM find themselves facing an uphill battle.
The average sales rep spends 4 hours per week updating data in a CRM. That’s 208 hours a year lost to entering information, most of which is irrelevant or misleading. Such mundane tasks often leave team members feeling uninspired, which impacts their productivity.
If stats need to be configured, the services of a data analyst should be acquired. Or, at the very least, an admin person to collect details. Expecting a rep to dedicate their time to data entry, rather than focus on acquiring new customers, is counterproductive.
Here is why those CRM metrics that you’re tracking don’t stack up and slow down the sales process.
Math for Dummies CRMs measure the number of contacts salespeople are speaking to on a monthly basis. Call measuring can be inaccurate, however. A sales rep might make 500 calls per month but only convert 20. As far as the CRM is concerned, though, the sales rep has done an outstanding job by making so many calls.
A variety of problems arise from measuring such a method, such as reps increasing their numbers to meet monthly targets. Conversions are the only real identifier of success. Anything else is just background fridge buzz in a salesperson’s life.
Meeting attended tells a similar story. Just because a rep has roughly 20 meetings scheduled for the month, it doesn’t mean each one signifies a good lead. How likely are the majority of those meeting going to end in a deal? Reps need to vet potential clients and make informed choices about the likelihood of a sale.
If meetings are taking place with a decision maker, the chances of a conversion are higher. If it’s a customer representative, it’s likely to be no more than another skewed number without a sale as the conclusion.
The Lines are Busy Tracking the amount of time salespeople spend on the phone might seem like a valuable indicator. But there are issues with placing trust in the method.
It’s possible to falsify the length of time spent on a call in CRMs. And even if conversation lengths aren’t being falsified, the time spent on the phone isn’t a barometer of a successful call. Perhaps the prospect only kept the rep on the phone because they don’t want to be rude.
Using such a metric to measure sales success is misleading. It might look like salespeople are doing their jobs, but in reality, they are being given the runaround by prospects who aren’t serious about buying a product or service.
If It Feels Good, Do It Having access to such a vast amount of metrics in CRM software sounds like a good option for managers. But if salespeople aren’t updating the information correctly so the lead can move along the pipeline, problems arise.
What you are left with is outdated, incomplete or false information, which leads to incorrect projections. Nobody wins, but there can be plenty of losers. A sales rep needs to concentrate on sales, not spend their time on data admin that doesn’t provide a clear picture.
A Different Type of Process The only data you can rely on your salespeople filling out is when a lead is won. If their bonus depends on it, you can bet they will enter the relevant info. Anything else is just a roadblock to the ultimate goal.
Put your salespeople in the driving seat with a tool that understands their needs, and tracks their performance with key metrics.
MindTickle, a company revolutionizing how businesses prepare and train their sales teams, raised $27 million in Series B funding to accelerate product innovation and global expansion. Canaan Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. MindTickle’s total amount raised is now $41.3 million.
MindTickle is the most comprehensive, data-driven sales readiness platform in the market. The company offers a modern, mobile and engaging experience for onboarding, micro-learning, skills development and coaching – a purpose built platform that companies stuck with legacy learning management systems (LMS) have been waiting for.
“In today’s dynamic and highly competitive environment, companies need to prepare their sales teams like never before. MindTickle’s comprehensive readiness platform enables companies to be at the forefront of sales excellence through its unique combination of gamification, automation, and a strong analytics framework for correlating learning and performance,” said Krishna Depura, co-founder and CEO of MindTickle. “This additional funding will allow us to accelerate the vision we share with our customers for data-driven sales enablement.”
Companies such as Symantec, Phillips, Micro Focus, DexCom, Ola, Cloudera, and Nutanix use the platform to go to market faster, boost win rates, increase average deal sizes, and engage their teams in a learning experience that is both enjoyable and impactful.
“Sales Readiness is the single most important metric that every public company CEO is paying attention to and the best predictor of future performance,” said Joydeep Bhattacharyya, partner at Canaan Partners, who has joined MindTickle’s board of directors. “MindTickle is the leader in this new massive area of applications for sales teams, with tremendous customer adoption.”
This funding underscores the momentum MindTickle has achieved in 2017, a year that’s closing with stellar additions to the executive team, exciting product innovation, solid partnerships, and accelerated revenue growth.
Adobe announced that the company has achieved equal pay between men and women in the US, an important milestone in Adobe’s ongoing efforts to create an innovative and productive work environment for all employees.
“It means a lot to our US employees, and we’re excited to extend that same commitment to our global employee base in the upcoming year.”
Women are now making $1.00 for every dollar earned by male employees in the US, up from 99 cents a year ago. As previously announced, non-white employees are earning as much as white employees.
Over the last year, Adobe undertook a review of its job structure and analyzed its compensation practices, and then made small adjustments based on this review. Adobe is committed to maintaining pay parity and will disclose its US pay parity results annually as part of the Adobe corporate responsibility report.
“We were already close to pay parity in the US through our strong people practices, and now we are proud to have achieved and documented this last step of full parity,” said Donna Morris, executive vice president of Customer & Employee Experience at Adobe. “It means a lot to our U.S. employees, and we’re excited to extend that same commitment to our global employee base in the upcoming year.”
Building on this U.S. milestone, Adobe will continue to work to achieve global pay parity. The company is poised to achieve pay parity in India, its next largest employee population, early next year. The company first outlined its US and India parity timelines in September 2017.
In November, Adobe has unveiled its Adobe Cloud Platform to break down siloes and deliver connected experiences across Adobe and non-Adobe marketing tools. Adobe has added several new extensions from leading technology providers including 33 Sticks, Clicktale, Decibel Insight, DialogTech, Dun & Bradstreet, Evidon, ForeSee, LinkedIn, PebblePost, QuestionPro, and TrustArc.
NewVoiceMedia Won a Frost & Sullivan Excellence Award in the Cloud Contact Centre Services Growth Excellence Leadership Category
NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of cloud contact center and inside sales technology that enables businesses to have more successful conversations, has won a Frost & Sullivan Excellence Award in the Cloud Contact Centre Services Growth Excellence Leadership category.
Founded in 2006, The Frost & Sullivan Excellence Awards is now in its 12th consecutive year and seeks to recognize companies and individuals that have pushed the boundaries of excellence – rising above the competition and demonstrating outstanding performance in the Australian market.
The award, which was presented at a ceremony in Sydney on 7 December, follows several recent victories for NewVoiceMedia including being named by Forbes as one of the world’s top private cloud companies and honored in the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100.
NewVoiceMedia’s cloud contact center and inside sales platform deliver more successful conversations to help organizations worldwide build a more personal relationship with every customer and prospect. The technology joins up all communications channels without expensive, disruptive hardware changes and plugs straight into an organization’s CRM platform for full access to hard-won data. NewVoiceMedia now serves more than 700 customers worldwide, including MobileIron, Lumesse, Vax, JustGiving and Canadian Cancer Society.
“This achievement underscores our commitment to offering the best possible technology on the market for driving more successful conversations for sales and service teams. Our cloud contact center and inside sales platform is attracting some of the world’s highest-growth businesses as we continue to drive innovation that transforms the way they connect with their customers and prospects,” said Dennis Fois, President and COO of NewVoiceMedia.
NewVoiceMedia’s cloud contact center and inside sales platform deliver more successful conversations. The leading vendor’s award-winning customer contact platform helps organizations worldwide build a more personal relationship with every customer or prospect. It joins up all communications channels without expensive, disruptive hardware changes and plugs straight into your CRM for full access to hard-won data. With a true cloud environment and proven 99.999% platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability, and reliability.
Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a powerful technique to deliver targeted and personalized engagements to customers in key accounts. ABM Leadership Alliance’s recent research report shows that B2B marketers who adopt ABM can expect a 171% uplift in annual contract value – so perhaps it’s no wonder that according to data by Constellation Research, 92% of companies plan to implement an ABM strategy in 2017.
However, according to the same stud, it appears that despite overwhelming evidence of the revenue growth opportunity presented by ABM, many companies aren’t entirely unconvinced of its successful execution or whether they will achieve a satisfactory return on investment. Why is this?
That old nemesis of scalability seems to be the primary cause of concern.
Meeting the Challenge of ABM at Scale With Artificial Intelligence
ABM campaigns are currently, for the most part, only feasible for targeting a few key accounts. This lack of scalability hinges on a company’s ability to direct significant time and resources towards researching and engaging customers. Whilst many marketers have adapted by building a content function within the team, all too often the collateral they produce is generic, and furthermore they have to ‘guess’ where customers are in the buying cycle – a direct contradiction to the goal of relevant, timely, hyper-personalized marketing in the ‘age of the customer’.
Artificial Intelligence is set to turn ABM on its head by
introducing hyper-personalization at scale.
Predictive analytics will feed the ABM process with never-before-seen real-time insight into customer needs and goals, pain points, market dynamics and competitor activity, sentiments and buying triggers. Millions of structured and unstructured data points will be crunched, analysed and filtered to deliver the in-depth account knowledge needed to drive campaigns and personalised engagement opportunities, that target not just a few select accounts but hundreds or perhaps thousands, without the need to increase the size of the marketing team or create large quantities of marketing collateral.
But more than just cutting through the white noise, reducing research time and furnishing marketers with rich customer data, machine learning algorithms will remove the guesswork when it comes to achieving relevance and timing. No longer will marketing teams have to produce generic mass broadcast communications, spamming customers, and prospects with untargeted, untimely and irrelevant messages. Instead, they will know the best time to act and the most appropriate attention-grabbing content for each individual customer – generating personalized 1:1 emails, customised website experiences and hyper-personalized brand interactions at scale with laser-targeted relevance and pinpoint timing accuracy.
What Will the Future Look Like?
As AI collides with ABM the possibilities are immense.
As time goes by and the volume of results data and precision improves, it will be possible to construct predictive models using machine learning to find patterns of event types, market challenges and future opportunities ripe for direct action, whilst at the same time correlating patterns of open rates and sharing activity across channels to recommend the most relevant content and delivery mechanism, and the likelihood the customer will want to receive it. Step forward again and AI-powered applications may even act as a proxy, delivering content on the marketer’s behalf for the ultimate in ‘always on’ ABM.
I think it’s fair to say I have only scratched the surface of how AI could feed ABM in the future – the innovation is still very much in its infancy. But even with development at its current stage, it’s quashing fears and reticence to invest by solving the immediate challenge – the combination of ABM and Artificial Intelligence gives marketers the ability to deliver highly personalized ABM strategies at scale.
Provider of Data-Driven Sales Enablement Software Continues to Scale, Adds Global Innovators to Client Roster
Qstream, makers of mobile software for igniting high-performance sales teams, announced it ranked #139 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies in North America. Qstream grew 808% percent during this period.
In 2017, Qstream’s SaaS platform continued its growth trajectory as market leaders such as Mastercard, HubSpot, Nuance Communications, and Olympus Medical Systems committed to new or significantly expanded relationships with the company. Qstream also released a number of new platform features, including the addition of video coaching to its award-winning Coaching Hub, and integration to Veeva CRM.
“Qstream’s trajectory reflects the overall growth of the sales enablement market, as well as our success in serving the distinctive needs of enterprise sales teams operating in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment. Our platform’s unique mix of performance insights, coaching optimization, and knowledge and skills reinforcement – supported by data – is delivering measurable impact for customers, while offering unparalleled visibility into the capabilities that matter most for sales success,” said Duncan Lennox, CEO and Co-founder of Qstream.
“The Deloitte 2017 North America Technology Fast 500 winners underscore the impact of technological innovation and world class customer service in driving growth, in a fiercely competitive environment. These companies are on the cutting edge and are transforming the way we do business. We extend our sincere congratulations to all the winners for achieving remarkable growth while delivering new services and experiences for their customers,” said Sandra Shirai, Vice Chairman, Deloitte Consulting LLP and U.S. technology, media and telecommunications leader.
“Emerging growth companies are powering innovation in the broader economy. The growth rates delivered by the companies on this year’s North America Technology Fast 500 ranking are a bright spot for the capital markets and a strong indicator that the emerging growth technology sector will continue to deliver a strong return on investment. Deloitte is dedicated to supporting the best and brightest companies of the future in the emerging growth company sector. We are proud to acknowledge the significant accomplishments of this year’s Fast 500 winners,” said Heather Gates, national managing director of Deloitte & Touche LLP’s emerging growth company practice.
Overall, 2017 Technology Fast 500 companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 135 percent to 59,093 percent from 2013 to 2016, with median growth of 380 percent. Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 provides a ranking of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies — both public and private — in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2013 to 2016.
The Index Provides a Holistic, Quantified Assessment Of Sales Rep And Team Readiness While Also Producing A Leading Indicator Of Their Expected Performance
MindTickle, the company with the most comprehensive enablement platform and trusted by global sales leaders to ensure always-ready sales teams, launched the Sales Capability Index (SCI), a capabilities score that, for the first time in the industry, provides a holistic, quantified assessment of sales rep and team readiness while also producing a leading indicator of their expected performance.
Corporations currently use MindTickle’s data-driven sales readiness solution to train, coach and align their sales teams and achieve reductions in ramp time, improvements in competitive win rates, increased average deal sizes and higher rates of training adoption.
Sales leaders will now be able to have a higher level of conviction as to how prepared their sales teams truly are, overall or across specific initiatives and proactively address capability gaps. The Index, and corresponding sales results, can be benchmarked across periods to the point of knowing how movements in the Index are likely to impact sales results and drive more predictable revenue.
“With the introduction of SCI, we are proud to have significantly advanced our objective of helping customers deliver highly measurable enablement for their sales teams and we will continue to advance the way sales leaders define and assess the readiness of their teams. We’ve collaborated with a select group of MindTickle customers to fine tune and field test this groundbreaking capability. We’re delighted with the results and excited to launch it to our broader customer base,” says Krishna Depura, co-founder and CEO, MindTickle.
MindTickle offers the industry’s most comprehensive readiness solution for closing the knowledge and skill gaps found in customer-facing teams. Sales teams across a wide range of industries use MindTickle’s award-winning platform to train, coach, and align their sales teams to make reps and their managers more effective. Combining on-demand online training, bite-sized mobile updates, gamification, coaching and role-play with a data-driven approach, MindTickle accelerates time-to-productivity, ensures consistent execution, and helps boost sales performance. Companies leveraging MindTickle for sales enablement to assess and certify the readiness of each rep see bigger deal sizes, higher win rates and reduced sales cycles.
Expanded Partnership Offers Customers Joint Cloud Capabilities and a Trusted Road Map
Microsoft Corp. and SAP SE have announced integrated offerings to provide enterprise customers with a clear roadmap to confidently drive more business innovation in the cloud. In a bold show of commitment, the two companies also announced they will be deploying each other’s cloud solutions internally. Through their unique partnership, the companies will co-engineer, go to market together with premier solutions and provide joint support services to ensure the best cloud experience for customers.
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud — SAP’s private managed cloud service — on Microsoft Azure will allow customers to run SAP S/4HANA in a secure, managed cloud. Additionally, Microsoft will deploy SAP S/4HANA® on Azure to help run its own internal finance processes, and SAP will move its key internal business-critical systems to Azure. Finally, SAP Ariba is currently utilizing Azure and is exploring further use within its procurement applications. Together, SAP and Microsoft will help companies make the most of running SAP applications in the cloud.
Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP and Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, double down on their commitment to partnership. (PRNewsfoto/Microsoft Corp.)
“As technology transforms every business and every industry, organizations are looking for the right platforms and trusted partners to help accelerate their digital transformation. Building on our longtime partnership, Microsoft and SAP are harnessing each other’s products to not only power our own organizations, but to empower our enterprise customers to run their most mission-critical applications and workloads with SAP S/4HANA on Azure,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
Enterprise companies are increasingly moving business-critical systems to the cloud for the benefits digital transformation provides: better customer relationships, more empowered employees, streamlined operations, new business models, and new products and services. According to research firm Gartner Inc., two-thirds of all business leaders believe that their companies must pick up the pace of digitalization to remain competitive.* As leaders in enterprise software, SAP and Microsoft are aligning closely to provide customers with the safe and trusted path to digital transformation.
SAP CEO Bill McDermott added, “We are taking our partnership to the next level with this new capability to run SAP S/4HANA in the Microsoft Azure environment. The world’s significant businesses trust Microsoft and SAP. Together, we will help companies win the customer-driven growth revolution.”
Microsoft and SAP join forces to give customers a trusted path to digital transformation in the cloud
SAP and Microsoft both will run SAP S/4HANA on Azure for their internal operations. Microsoft is transforming its internal systems — which include legacy SAP finance applications — and will implement the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution running on Azure. Microsoft also plans to connect SAP S/4HANA to Azure AI and analytics services for more efficient financial reporting and more powerful decision-making. SAP is migrating more than a dozen business-critical systems to Azure for the optimal efficiencies, flexibility and innovation the platform offers. This includes the SAP S/4HANA software supporting Concur, an SAP company.
Both companies will document the internal projects to provide customers with guidance and enterprise architecture for deployment of SAP applications on Azure.
With SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud on Azure, customers get the best of both worlds: application management and product expertise from SAP and a global, trusted and intelligent cloud from Microsoft Azure, including the range of Microsoft cloud services.
Enterprise customers of all types, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Columbia Sportswear Company, Coats and Costco Wholesale Corp., count on SAP and Azure today for their businesses.
Barry Simpson
Barry Simpson, senior vice president and chief information officer at The Coca-Cola Company, said, “The strategic partnership announced between Microsoft and SAP is an extremely important development for the Coca-Cola System. The value of aligned engineering, sales and delivery between these two strategic partners will allow our system to accelerate our digital agenda. This is a very positive and exciting development for us.”
“SAP and Microsoft are key partners with Costco, and this alliance will help drive our cloud strategy and digital business forward,” said Jim Rutherford, senior vice president of Information Systems at Costco Wholesale.
Mike Hirt
Mike Hirt, vice president and chief information officer at Columbia Sportswear Company, said, “Microsoft and SAP are strategic partners helping us grow our wholesale and direct-to-consumer businesses. Their close alignment is an integral part of advancing our technical architecture and cloud strategy to better serve our customers around the world. We produce innovative products that allow our customers to pursue and enjoy their outdoor passions. Our partnership with Microsoft and SAP is essential to us continuing to deliver on that commitment.”
Hizmy Hassen
“With SAP HANA on Azure, we have the data intelligence to operate more efficiently across all aspects of our business and accelerate the delivery of finished goods to our customers. The Microsoft and SAP alliance provides us with the assurance we need for our innovation in the cloud,” said Hizmy Hassen, chief digital and technology officer, Coats.
An enhanced version of Bigtincan Hub with New AI-driven Predictive Features And Other Enhancements To Support Critical Phases Of The Sales And Marketing Lifecycle Hit the Market in October
Gartner defines the high level capabilities of digital content management for sales as content repository management, content development, content delivery, content usage analytics, and sales process integration.
David Keane
“Digital content management plays an increasingly critical role in sales teams’ success. In today’s mobile environment, reps need the right content and insights at their fingertips at key moments throughout the sales cycle. We believe our inclusion by Gartner validates our platform strategy, AI direction, and our emphasis on helping organizations simplify and scale performance across their sales teams. We are thrilled to be recognized,” said David Keane, Bigtincan Co-founder and CEO.
According to Gartner, “digital sales content management (DCMS) applications encompass repositories, authoring tools, collaborative environments, and interfaces for publishing, versioning and presenting content, to help salespeople (both direct and indirect) efficiently and effectively develop and close business. These applications improve the delivery of internal- and external-facing content to salespeople, or improve engagement with prospects and clients, and increase win rates, deal velocity and deal sizes. They are most commonly used to support long-cycle B2B and B2C sales processes, but they also apply to transactional sales processes, such as detailing merchandisers on the retail selling floor.”
Bigtincan’s mobile, AI-powered sales enablement automation platform, Bigtincan Hub, is designed to empower sales, marketing and service teams to work smarter and faster. On October 4, 2017, Bigtincan introduced an enhanced version of Bigtincan Hub with new AI-driven predictive features and other enhancements to support critical phases of the sales and marketing lifecycle. Highlights include support for Apple iOS 11, adaptive onboarding and learning, deeper sales and marketing alignment, dynamic reporting/BI, and 3rd party developer support for custom add-ons.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Bigtincan helps sales and service teams increase win rates and customer satisfaction. The company’s mobile, AI-powered sales enablement automation platform features the industry’s premier user experience that empowers reps to more effectively engage with customers and prospects and encourages team-wide adoption. Leading brands including AT&T, ThermoFisher, Merck, ANZ Bank and others rely on Bigtincan to enhance sales productivity at every customer interaction. With global sales and marketing headquartered in Boston, Bigtincan also has offices across EMEA, Australia and Asia.
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