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In CRM & Customer Experience

Web-Store Plugin Reduces CO2 Footprint of Online Shoe Shopping

Currently more than 50 % of all shoes purchased online are returned, most of them due to an improper fit. Fashion Industry company Footprint Technologies and SAP are going to change that. Their cloud-based Artificial Intelligence solution helps online shoe buyers to find their perfect fit, on the first try. The footprint app is installed into online shoe retailers’ web-shops, using SAP Commerce Cloud as a proven connector. Online retailers increase their profitability by minimizing size- and fit-related returns, customers are happy and the planet benefits from saving CO2 emissions and packaging waste.

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In Article, CRM & Customer Experience, Supply Chain Management

Help Holiday Shoppers Shop with Retail Solutions on SAP Store

This holiday season, consumers are more budget conscious than ever as they react to inflation – and smart retailers are harnessing all the tools available to keep sales up while spending goes down. A seamless shopping experience across channels, simplified product discovery that anticipates buyer needs, price optimization – these are all essential to building customer loyalty and repeat purchasing. And savvy retailers have recognized that the ability to respond to overnight shifts in consumer behavior can be achieved only with the agility enabled by the cloud.

Cloud Solutions for the Agility You Need to React and Respond

With these innovative solutions, SAP and our partners can help you maximize opportunities now during the busiest shopping season and gain momentum for the year ahead. On SAP Store, you’ll find a wide range of solutions that you can try, buy, and deploy quickly. SAP rigorously validates partner solutions for quality, interoperability, and a similar look and feel for usability and fast adoption. Check out these cloud solutions for retail today.
Coveo Search and Recommendation for SAP Commerce – Online buyers can easily and quickly find what they’re looking for, as well as personalized recommendations for what they might be looking for, with this AI-powered industry cloud solution. When shoppers can discover more options in an online product catalog with automated suggestions based on their intent, they tend to buy more.
EcoCart Carbon Neutral Orders – With this solution, your customers can opt to offset the environmental impact of their orders at checkout with a single click and add 1-2% to their total – which can boost conversion and customer loyalty while strengthening your brand. In addition, EcoCart Plus can help you build and execute a comprehensive sustainability strategy.
Retail Suite – Everyday Price by Eversight – Drive sales growth and margins through dynamic AI-powered price optimization with this industry cloud solution that integrates with the SAP Customer Activity Repository application. Even as the cost of goods increases and shopper preferences change, you can set the right price at the right moment by experimenting and benchmarking against the competition – using your own business rules.
Recommerce Management System by Loop Logistics – Shoppers can rent, resale, or buy secondhand products thanks to this solution, which lets you make use of unsold products without discounting or destroying them. This solution, accelerated with the SAP.iO strategic business unit that invests in start-up innovation, helps retailers reduce environmental impact and generate new revenue streams.
Mention Me – This referral marketing platform uses unique data sets to build dynamic conversion programs, helping you increase customer loyalty and advocacy. It harnesses customers’ enthusiasm for your brand and gathers first-party data that allows you to see the true lifetime value of a customer’s propensity to refer. Development of Mention Me was accelerated by SAP.iO.
MyWave.AI Intelligent Personalization Platform – This solution combines AI, personal data, and proactive automation to deliver intelligent personalization at scale. Based on customer preferences in the context of past behavior and intent, MyWave.AI dynamically offers relevant products or advertising along with intelligent cross- and up-sell options.
Threekit 3D and Augmented Reality – This visualization platform allows brands to offer immersive experiences to their customers, who can view, spin, build, and customize products to their specifications. The enhanced product experience gives customers confidence in their selection, increasing conversion rates and reducing returns.
SAP Intelligent Returns Management – Optimize your margin on returns and enhance the customer experience by guiding them through a smooth product return that keeps them engaged and updated throughout the process. The solution also helps you identify key trends early and mitigate issues to drive correction actions and optimize assortments and price points.
SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing – This solution enables consistent pricing for promotions across all sales channels, calculating effective prices for a product or set of products by applying promotional rules. The result is a consistent buying experience across the Web, sales order, point of sale, and so on. An administration service deletes obsolete prices and promotional rules.
Zoovu Conversational Assistants for SAP Commerce & Sales Cloud – This solution for product discovery makes it easy to find, evaluate, and buy by bringing context to the search. It guides the buyer through the process with relevant questions and interactive buying advice. Conversational assistants enrich product content automatically with industry-specific taxonomies and work across all industries.
You can find the full list of cloud solutions from SAP and our partners for retail on SAP Store here, many available for a demo or free trial.
In CRM & Customer Experience, New York

Public sector drives strong demand for conversational AI, with 2.7M+ users served on the Yellow.ai platform

With governments across the world working to enable broad-scaled digital transformation, public sector organizations are increasingly gravitating towards the adoption of Conversational AI solutions to redefine the citizen experience. According to data released by Yellow.ai, a leading enterprise-grade Conversational AI platform, the company has served over 2.7M unique users for its government sector clients worldwide.

Recently mentioned in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Government Services, 2022, under the chatbot category, the company works with key government departments across countries. The Yellow.ai platform has recorded an exchange of over 79M messages focused on citizen delivery services, exchanged between its Dynamic AI agents and end-users during over 5M sessions.

Raghu Ravinutala, CEO & Co-founder, Yellow.ai said, “Public sector organizations need to address numerous queries daily, and doing so manually is a time-consuming task. At the same time, citizens have a growing expectation of being able to conveniently avail government services. That’s where Conversational AI can step in to improve efficiency and human productivity, streamlining the process of delivering citizen services digitally while keeping humans in the loop. We have seen a huge surge in traction from government agencies across countries and our deployments are helping address some very unique use cases by bringing power to citizens’ fingertips on channels that they actively use. With continued emphasis on digitization, we expect Conversational AI to soon become an integral pillar in delivering stellar services to citizens.”

While text-based messaging channels are the preferred medium for citizen delivery services, the company is also seeing voice-based Conversational AI solutions gain momentum. The major use-cases, as observed, are for automating customer support, filing documentation related to government entities, booking services, raising complaints, making payments, and locating branches and offices, where the most traction is being witnessed on channels such as WhatsApp.

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In San Francisco, CRM & Customer Experience

How Startup FindMine Leverages AI to Lift E-Commerce Content, Revenue

Anyone who’s ever run a website can relate to the challenge of populating that site with an adequate supply of quality content that will keep an audience coming back and support the business’ revenue goals.

That challenge is especially applicable to businesses such as apparel, home decor, and beauty products, where manufacturers and retailers alike must present an adequate amount of content in ways that will engage those visiting their sites.

For example, an article of clothing may catch a site visitor’s eye, but it’s possible to get them more interested if they can see that clothing with various combinations to find one that appeals to them. The process of building those combinations is quite challenging.

A startup named FindMine is looking to solve the problems in this scenario: the ability to create combinations in a scalable way and, in so doing, improve the “shoppability” of a website to make it more robust — from a customer experience point of view and a business point of view. And to do so in ways that accurately reflect the brand’s value proposition.

FindMine built an artificial intelligence (AI) engine that builds these combinations and presents them to visitors. The company started, in part, because CEO Michelle Bacharach was personally frustrated by the need to create combinations herself for a variety of products. And, through experience as a product manager, she understood the importance of removing friction from the buying process.

“Every company in retail sells one product at a time. Think about how you use stuff: You don’t wear a shirt with no pants and no shoes,” Bacharach says. “In my life as a consumer, I always wondered, why is this so annoyingly hard?”

FindMine launched its product in 2016. The New York-based company, part of the SAP.iO startup accelerator program, has secured venture capital funding of $10 million. FindMine has 30 employees and has built an impressive roster of global brands as customers.

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In New York, CRM & Customer Experience

Virtual Store Platform Obsess Introduces First-of-Its-Kind

New Industry Innovation Enables Any Brand to Create Its Own Customized Metaverse Experience. Charlotte Tilbury Is First Partner to Launch “Branded Avatars” as Part of Its Immersive Holiday Shopping World.

Obsess, a leading experiential e-commerce platform enabling brands to create immersive virtual stores, today launched “Branded Avatars,” a first-of-its-kind industry technology that enables brands to customize the look-and-feel and character style of shopper avatars to create branded metaverse experiences on their e-commerce sites. The new capability then lets shoppers personalize all aspects of their branded avatar, including skin tone, facial features, body shape, clothing and makeup.

Charlotte Tilbury is the first brand to partner with Obsess to offer the innovative new functionality, introducing it as part of its Charlotte’s Beauty Realm holiday wonderland to further personalize the virtual store experience and deepen its connection with customers.

While consumers could create avatars in mobile apps and gaming environments previously, Obsess’s new technology represents the first-time shoppers will be able to customize their own avatars in a browser-based virtual store environment—with no download, signup, login or fee required. The function also allows shoppers to apply complete makeup looks to their avatars for the first time ever, giving brands the opportunity to curate unique beauty looks for their customers.

In addition, the new function enables friends to shop and attend events together in real time with their friends’ avatars. Shoppers can use their personalized avatars to walk through and experience the virtual environment together, discovering, learning about and purchasing products, all while interacting and conversing in real time.

“Innovative brands have been looking to incorporate more personalization, gamification and social interactivity into their virtual store experiences to make shopping in these environments more engaging, social and fun—essentially more like shopping in real life,” said Neha Singh, Founder and CEO of Obsess. “We’re thrilled to launch this industry-first innovation and to push avatar technology forward for all consumers outside of gaming environments. Our platform now enables brands to create their own custom metaverse on their site—where both the environment and avatar style match the brand’s look-and-feel—to give consumers an unforgettable shopping experience.”

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In ERP & Finance

Specright Recognized as a Representative Vendor in New Gartner® Market Guide for Packaging and Product Specification Management

Specright, Inc., the pioneer of Specification Management software that helps customers take control of their supply chain data, today shared business momentum milestones from this year that cement its position as category leader, including new recognition from Gartner. The 2022 Gartner Market Guide for Packaging and Product Specification Management names Specright as a Representative Vendor for Packaging and Product Specification Management (PPSM).

“With two million products on our platform globally, Specright is helping companies make the products and packaging that we use every day in an efficient, sustainable way – from Tide Pods, to Carmex chapstick, and even the packaging for COVID-19 vaccines,” said Matthew Wright, CEO and founder at Specright. “It’s rewarding for the entire Specright team to reap the recognition of our industry-leading position in the market.”

Digitized Specification Management is vital for businesses in packaging, product development, supply chain, manufacturing, and more that need to easily create, share, and track product and packaging specifications while working closely with suppliers to bring their product to market while ensuring sustainability. Specifications are constantly changing, and managing this data with Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and email can result in product recalls, waste, and production delays when outdated specs are used. Specright not only digitizes this data with a patented, spec-first platform but introduces a new way for companies to make amazing, sustainable things by developing them from the ground-up.

Specright’s approach has led to year-over-year doubling of revenue and the number of active platform users since the company’s first funding round. Multiple companies in the Fortune 500 as well as challenger brands choose Specright as the foundation for digitizing their supply chains, including Colgate-Palmolive, Taylor Farms, and Johnson & Johnson, and the platform boasts 99 percent customer retention.

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In Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management, Foundries, Portfolio News

Clarifruit raises $12 million to reduce waste in the fruit and vegetable industry

Clarifruit, a company developing a software platform for automated quality control for fruit and vegetable supply chains, has announced that it has completed a $12 million Series A round led by Champel Capital and Firstime Ventures with participation from Kubota, a provider of agricultural machinery and technologies, and NevaTeam Partners venture capital fund. It brings the company’s total funding to $15 million following a grant of $2.5 million received through Horizon 2020.

The company hopes to reduce waste in the fresh produce supply chain, an industry estimated to be valued at $2 trillion, and secure a sufficient food supply for future generations. Its solution addresses challenges in quality control and decision-making and the lack of standardized and objective quality control processes when assessing fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that this problem leads to a waste of 45% of the agricultural production in the industry, representing approximately $900 billion of loss every year.

“Since we launched our product 20 months ago, we have been able to make a significant impact and onboard tens of leading global players into our circle of clients that are now using Clarifruit’s advanced technology to automate their quality control and provide real-time info to reduce waste and maximize revenue opportunities,” said Elad Mardix, Co-Founder and CEO of Clarifruit.
Its platform has two elements: the first is a mobile app allowing quality inspects to conduct quality control processes in minutes. The second is a cloud-based control system that allows operation managers to monitor the process specific to their company and its goals, results, and insights all in real-time. It uses computer vision technology with Big Data and analytics capabilities to help retailers, wholesalers, marketing companies, and growers make data-driven decisions to reduce waste.
In Uncategorized, Foundries, Interview, Supply Chain Management, Inspiring Innovators

Inspiring Innovators: Leanne Kemp Founder and CEO of Everledger, On Transparency

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In Munich, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

IoT and Industry 4.0: Zerynth raises a €5.3 million round led by United Ventures

Zerynth supports companies in digitizing production processes through Industrial IoT solutions which enable any machinery to Industry 4.0.

The investment round, one of the largest in Italy in the Industrial IoT field, is led by United Ventures with the participation of a pool of selected Italian and international investors and business angels, including Vertis SGR with Venture Factory through the VV3TT Fund, LIFTT and CDP Venture Capital with the “Comparto IndustryTech” of the Corporate Partners Fund.

The capital increase will enable Zerynth to make AI and IoT technologies increasingly accessible, confirm its leadership in Italy, and strengthen its international expansion.

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In CRM & Customer Experience

WeGift wraps up £26 million series B for gift card APIs at global brands

Incentive marketing startup WeGift has closed its series B round at £26 million, with backing from fintech VC CommerzVentures among others.

WeGift’s API-driven software platform is used by Nike, Airbnb, and Aldi together with some 100 other brands to easily disburse gift cards online, allowing end-customers to buy them as gifts or as loyalty rewards from a third-party business.

Last month, WeGift surpassed the 120-employee milestone and it’s now readying its “all-in-one” gift card platform for further overseas expansion, with software that immediately loads gift cards with the right foreign currency.

Incentive marketing startup WeGift has closed its series B round at £26 million, with backing from fintech VC CommerzVentures among others.

WeGift’s API-driven software platform is used by Nike, Airbnb, and Aldi together with some 100 other brands to easily disburse gift cards online, allowing end-customers to buy them as gifts or as loyalty rewards from a third-party business.

Last month, WeGift surpassed the 120-employee milestone and it’s now readying its “all-in-one” gift card platform for further overseas expansion, with software that immediately loads gift cards with the right foreign currency.

In the series B round, Element Ventures led with further commitments from AlbionVC, Clocktower Ventures, Volution Capital and SAP.

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In New York, ERP & Finance

Queen of Raw, Inc. Raises from Future Planet Capital for Software, Saving Companies $200 Billion in Waste

Queen of Raw, Inc., a New York-based climate fintech company specializing in recouping value from excess inventory, has raised funding from Future Planet Capital (“FPC”), the international venture capital and impact investor with ~$400M of committed capital and a portfolio including 23andMe, Vaccitech, and Tokamak.

$288B of excess inventory annually becomes waste in landfills, burned, or laid to rest in warehouses. Queen of Raw turns it into a revenue source through sustainable solutions. Its flagship SaaS software, Materia MX, was released out of stealth over a year ago in response to growing supply chain inefficiencies, rising prices, and excess inventory that were escalated amidst the pandemic. These market forces are depleting company profits.

Companies using Materia MX can digitally manage, resell, and recycle excess inventory from a centralized location, with end-to-end automation and reporting in the cloud. Business losses are recouped and capital is preserved to be deployed during periods of recession. No CapEx required.

For its customers, including some of the world’s biggest Fortune 500 companies, the amount of wasted materials represents up to 15% or more of their bottom line. “At that volume,” says Stephanie Benedetto, the female founder and CEO of Queen of Raw, “waste isn’t just environmentally irresponsible–it’s a financial risk and a CFO issue.” An example of the impact: In just weeks leveraging the software, one client realized savings on $14M worth of inventory and holding costs, generating revenue from recycling 10 metric tons of excess materials in Asia and diverting 95% from landfills and incineration.

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In CRM & Customer Experience

Velocity Ventures invests in CarbonClick that makes carbon offset simple for businesses

Singapore-based hospitality & travel-focused VC firm Velocity Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in New Zealand’s enviro-tech company CarbonClick.

The startup will use the funds to boost its expansion into Asia, with a regional office in Singapore scheduled to open in 2023.

Founded in 2017, CarbonClick aims to make carbon offset simple for businesses and their customers. It provides the full details of the offset by ensuring a receipt is emailed to each customer, showing where and how their contributions have been used with a “track and trace” feature.

The startup has made inroads into the aviation, travel, and airport sectors and works with over 1,000 brands. The firm works with companies such as Etihad, Amadeus, and London Stansted Airport.

In Southeast Asia, CarbonClick currently supports Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve, a project in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan which protects 65,000 hectares of peat swamp, avoiding more than 130 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

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In Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

Infront acquires Israeli sportstech startup Pico

Switzerland-based sports marketing company Infront has acquired Israeli startup Pico Get Personal, a sports technology company that helps rightsholders to gather, manage and own zero- and first-party audience data to customize marketing.
Pico pairs content with fun activations, capturing first-party data and individual preferences. Brands or rightsholders can then use those insights to create personalized marketing.
Pico, founded in 2014 by Asaf Nevo, Aviv Paz, and Roi Mozer, has raised $5 million to date and all 12 of its employees will be joining Infront.

“Beyond the joy of joining the biggest organization in our sector, one of the most important things for us was to ensure that every one of our employees would be able to come with us,” said Nevo. “We have been working with Infront for many years now, making this new chapter a very natural step in our growth. The sports industry has made a push in recent years into tech and data, with Pico playing a major part in that. By joining one of the biggest players in this market we will be able to provide our services at a much bigger scale.”
In Supply Chain Management

Milkman Last Mile Platform Now Available on SAP® Store

Milkman S.P.A. today announced that its Milkman Last Mile Platform is available on SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Integrating with SAP Transportation Management and SAP Commerce Cloud, the Milkman Last Mile Platform provides users with real-time updates on the status of delivery and rescheduling options. The user experience is enhanced with better delivery predictability.

“I am both proud and flattered of our platform being on SAP Store,” said Antonio Perini, Milkman S.P.A. CEO. “I am delighted and grateful for the opportunity to work with such a team of experts at SAP. We are at the very intersection of a sustainable consumer experience and the digital supply chain, taming the complexity of today’s fulfillment networks for omnichannel is the most exciting challenge ever.”

Milkman Last Mile Platform connects recipients’ and businesses’ needs, allowing logistics and retailer organizations to:

  • Enable greener deliveries, reducing mileage and CO2 emission thanks to cutting-edge route optimization algorithms, combined with efficient delivery processes for successful first delivery attempts.
  • Exceed recipients’ expectations, with an interactive last mile strategy that modulates the service level and addresses the most demanding requests with very precise appointments at a low cost.
  • Reduce WISMO (Where Is My Order) calls by enabling interactive communication flows with recipients, providing full visibility over the order delivery process. The recipient is always in control and can intervene to check, verify, and eventually apply changes.
  • Automate operations by implementing standardized processes for exception management, allowing manual adjustments.

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In Tel Aviv, CRM & Customer Experience

Vue Storefront wins best e-Commerce and retail startup at The Europas Tech Startup Awards 2022

Vue Storefront, a technology company that develops software for businesses to create fast, modern and high-performing online storefronts, was crowned a winner at The Europas Tech Startup Awards 2022, picking up the prize for hottest e-Commerce and Retail tech startup.

One of the most high-profile technology awards in Europe, The Europas recognize the continent’s most ambitious and successful startups. Already in its fourteenth year, previous winners include Spotify, wise, SoundCloud, Deliveroo and Starling.

Patrick Friday, CEO, Vue Storefront: “We’re honored to receive this award and take our place among such illustrious previous winners. It’s testament to the hard work of our talented team and shows that, as a company, we’re moving in the right direction. Thanks to our investors for believing in our vision, to our customers and partners for trusting in our product, and to our huge global community of developers, who have been with us since day one – driving us to continually improve our technology.”

Borys Musielak, Partner, SMOK Ventures: “As Vue Storefront’s first institutional investor, it’s thrilling to witness its growth and the successes of the founding team. That it has been named the best e-Commerce startup in Europe is no surprise at all. This is a company that will help define digital commerce in the coming years and its potential for growth is unlimited.”

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