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In New York, Supply Chain Management

How SpecRight Digitizes Product, Packaging Specs for Greater Efficiency

Most product specifications — for the products themselves, their packaging, and other details — are managed in spreadsheets or legacy systems.

This results in data consistency and integrity challenges, access issues, and major efficiency problems. Without easy access to product and packaging data, employees aren’t able to make the quick, accurate decisions that are needed to remain competitive in the Acceleration Economy.

Those are the big issues that Specright took on with the launch of its company in 2015. “From automotive, to aerospace and food packaging, I saw that industries were struggling with inefficiencies that stemmed from a lack of packaging and product data,” says Specright CEO Matthew Wright. “I also realized any data that did exist was typically worthless because it lacked a common nomenclature. Not only was it frustrating, it was bad for business.”

The SpecRight platform is designed to digitize and manage all specification data, from raw materials to ingredients and formulas to packaging and finished goods. By digitizing and linking specifications together, companies create visibility and traceability across their supply chains. Today, more than one million products are in the Specright system, according to the company.

“From automotive, to aerospace and food packaging, I saw that industries were struggling with inefficiencies that stemmed from a lack of packaging and product data. I also realized any data that did exist was typically worthless because it lacked a common nomenclature.”

Matthew Wright, Founder and CEO of Specright

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In Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Atlanta food waste management startup Goodr raises $8M

Atlanta food rescue startup Goodr Inc. has raised $8 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, likely the single largest investment round for the 5-year-old company.

As part of the raise, the company also received debt financing from Atlanta Emerging Markets, Inc., a community development entity created by economic development agency Invest Atlanta, for $300,000.

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In Business Technology Platform

NWO.ai Helps Companies Get in Front of Consumer Sentiment, Demand

The founders of NWO.ai observed that consumer packaged goods and other industries encountered major blindspots during the Covid-19 pandemic: Rapidly shifting consumer sentiment made it difficult, if not impossible, to plan for demand.

That effect is still being felt today, more than two years after Covid-19 began, as many companies struggle to fulfill customer demand as well as understand and meet shifting preferences.

That lack of visibility led to the formation of NWO.ai, which develops an artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) platform that gathers and crunches vast quantities of data from publicly available sources, enabling customers to query that data for visibility into current and future customer trends.

“This is the reason we started the company during Covid,” says Miroslav Dimitrov, chief operating officer of NWO.ai, based in New York. “We saw massive, super volatile changes from one day to the next and we saw that traditional demand planning and market analysis methods didn’t cut it. They involve massive studies for 6 months, but by the time you implement, you have a year lag. As we saw during the pandemic, this doesn’t make any sense.”

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In HR & People Engagement

Anthill Helps Firms Embrace and Retain Deskless Workers

Those of us who work in the tech field may have a tendency to think about the global workforce as being similar to us: always connected, equipped with the latest computer, cellphone, and Internet technology, and technologically savvy.

So it may come as an eye-opener, as it did for me, to learn more about the “deskless” workforce – and its scale. A deskless worker is one that doesn’t:

  • Work in an office
  • Have an employer email address
  • Have computer access through an employer
  • Necessarily have a smartphone

The number of workers globally who have the characteristics cited above is 2.7 billion, or 80 percent of the global workforce.

Startup company Anthill aims to help companies manage and retain deskless workers more effectively. Its value proposition: Since companies are already investing in deskless workers with training and other resources, they should proactively engage them and retain these workers as well as they treat their knowledge workers. The company also aims to bring new possibilities (such as growth opportunities) to the deskless workforce.

Anthill’s solution is built on a simple premise: using text messaging (which is available even to those without smartphones) as a means to engage these workers, build more of a relationship with them and, ultimately, retain them.

With $4.4 million in venture capital funding and 23 employees, Chicago-based Anthill is part of the SAP.io startup accelerator program.
In Singapore, Funding Announcement

Delivery Hero Ventures backs Staple’s seed round

Staple, a SaaS data management firm based in Singapore, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Delivery Hero Ventures.

The company, founded in 2018 by its CEO Ben Stein and Josh Kettlewell, helps businesses automate document processing using AI.

According to Stein, Staple’s software interprets and reorganizes data, helping companies deal with large volumes of unstructured information such as transactional documents and tax filings when communicating with other organizations.

The firm currently serves a diverse set of enterprises – financial institutions, online grocery retailers, and professional services firms.

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In Foundries, Global, ERP & Finance, Network & Spend Management

5 companies leveraging startup innovation to improve their customer experience

Providing a top-notch customer experience is critical for competing in today’s market. By better understanding their customers, companies can provide personalized experiences that exceed expectations.  

To date, over 150+ startup solutions in SAP’s partner ecosystem have built integrations to help SAP customers expand the capabilities of solutions in their SAP landscape including SAP Customer Data Platform, SAP Commerce Cloud and more. 

Here are 5 impressive stories highlighting companies that are working with startups to provide world-class customer experiences. 

 

Deli Home & Expivi: Improving customer experience while delivering bespoke products at scale

Deli Home, an international supplier for DIY products, needed a solution to help their customers configure their timber orders online that could be easily integrated with their retail website and ERP system powering their business. Expivi’s 3D Product Configuration solution was the perfect solution to enable customers to order custom-made wood panels directly from their website. 

Expivi works with 3 SAP solutions and is available on the SAP Store.  

Target & SundaySky: Providing interactive video-powered experiences to its new RedCard members 

Target worked with SundaySky to provide interactive and customized video-powered experiences to its new RedCard members at many touchpoints along the customer journey to drive relevancy and deepen their customer engagement. 

SundaySky works with SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Upscale Commerce and is available on the SAP Store.  

Signet Jewelers & Creatable: Bringing in-store associates into the online store   

Signet Jewelers is working with Creatable to empower their sales teams to sell online through personalized virtual storefronts to drive new revenue, traffic and extended consumer engagement – all integrated with their online stores powered by SAP Commerce Cloud. 

 Creatable works with Industry Cloud, SAP Commerce and is available on the SAP Store.  

Jenny Craig & Jebbit: Using data to provide a better experience for customers 

Jenny Craig is a nutrition and weight loss company that partnered up with Jebbit to create a solution to generate engagement with their customers and allow them to understand potential customers’ intents, motivations, and desires by delivering engaging experiences. 

 Jebbit works with SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement and SAP Customer Data Platform and is available on the SAP Store.  

Bose & ParcelLab: Delivering an outstanding end-to-end journey that delights customers 

Bose needed a flexible solution to meet customer demands and deliver a consistent customer experience across multiple touchpoints. They teamed up with parcelLab to design a series of fully customizable post-sales emails that provide customers with access to the latest updates on their order. By embedding the order tracking information solution directly in Bose’s website, they were able to significantly improve their search engine optimization and contribute to repeat sales.  

parcelLab works with SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Upscale Commerce and is available on the SAP Store.  

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In Foundries

SAP, HTGF Deepen Startup Investors Funding Alliance

High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), a venture capital investor for innovative technologies and business models, has recently added SAP as one of its key investors in its 4th fund for startups in the Industrial Tech, Digital Tech, Chemicals, and Life Sciences domains. With the shared goal of helping tech startups scale their businesses while championing sustainability, the joint investment intends to accelerate startup innovation and deliver next-gen solutions to help customers become intelligent sustainable enterprises.

HTGF has been a trusted partner of tech giant SAP– supporting startups through SAP.iO, the company’s strategic business unit focused on incubating startup innovation to help them scale and integrate their innovative solutions with SAP and, eventually, make them available on the SAP Store. In addition, the Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen-headquartered firm’s portfolio companies have participated in SAP’s accelerator programmes with five already available in SAP Store, demonstrating the two German enterprises’ mutually advantageous partnership.

Tech startups Datarade and 4tiitoo are two of the SAP.iO participants that have received funding support from HTGF. Provider of cloud-based data commerce platform Datarade joined the SAP.iO Foundry Berlin programme in 2018 and received seed investment from HTGF two years later. Similarly, 4tiitoo, a provider of AI-based solutions for intuitive eye control for smart workplaces also received HTGF financing in 2014 for the SAP.iO’s Industry 4.0 programme and later on secured Series B funding. 4tiitoo’s solution, piloted by both SAP and customers, is now available in SAP Store.

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In San Francisco, CRM & Customer Experience

Constructor Introduces Quizzes to Increase Personalization for Online Retailers

Constructor, the company building revenue-driving on-site search and discovery solutions, today introduced Constructor Quizzes, a new offering that provides e-commerce retailers with the capability to ask customers questions while they shop online.

Online brands and marketplaces lose $18B annually in cart abandonment. E-retailer websites are set up with a one-size-fits-all approach that guesses and suggests instead of asking shoppers questions like a sales associate would in-store. The Constructor Quizzes on-site questionnaire enables retailers to collect detailed information about customers like their lifestyle activities, shopping preferences, and health and wellness goals to guide search and discovery results across their e-commerce site. As a result, online retailers can drive more conversions and revenue, build stronger relationships, and reduce time to purchase.

“Customers are stuck in analysis paralysis, which hinders their decision-making process during checkout, and retailers have a big part to play in this,” explained Eli Finkelshteyn, CEO and founder of Constructor. “Constructor Quizzes directly applies customer feedback to create individualized experiences for shoppers, narrowing options to only show them the best suited items and driving greater revenue as a result.”

Retailers leveraging Constructor Quizzes can customize the questions they ask customers and the type of data they collect through the solution. Then, leveraging AI and machine learning through the rest of Constructor’s holistic search and discovery platform, answers to the questionnaire create a highly specific, personalized shopping experience that is unique to each customer. Retailers deliver the most personalized results leading to stronger on-site shopping experiences that drive site conversions.

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In Business Technology Platform

Deep Learning Basics: Learn How to “Unlock” Your Data

Industry leaders estimate that nearly 80 percent of organizational data is dark – siloed in individual storage locations and buried under outdated or redundant content. As a result, teams often miss critical information needed to drive innovation, improve services and stay ahead of the competition.

This scenario has caused organizations across industries to struggle to make use of their rapidly growing data sets. For example, a hospital creates an average of 50 petabytes of data a year. Of that data, nearly 97 percent of it goes unused. Yet, these organizations still invest significantly in storage and analytics that only get to a fraction of their data. For example, cloud storage spending alone is expected to reach 137.3B by 2025.

When considering deep learning and artificial intelligence, most think of future-looking capabilities like fully autonomous “hands-off” operations. While these capabilities show promise, they are often only implementable for organizations with a very mature machine learning department. However, there are semi-autonomous solutions available where deep learning is making an impact for companies of all stages – particularly in enabling individuals and organizations to unlock and operationalize challenging data sets.

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In Supply Chain Management

5 SAP.iO Startups Named Leaders in Retail Supply Chain Sustainability by CB Insights

Congratulations to SAP.iO startups Inspectorio, Roambee, SpecRight, Shippeo & Wise Systems who were among the companies recognized by CB Insights for helping retailers make their supply chains more sustainable with visibility platforms, autonomous ground delivery, and more.

This report looks at the companies helping retailers like Walmart and Amazon make their supply chains more sustainable with visibility platforms, autonomous ground delivery, and more.

Global supply chain leaders have historically prioritized efficiency and cost optimization, but with growing climate concerns and unprecedented supply chain disruption, sustainability has become central to supply chain strategies across industries.

Read Report Here…

In Fund, Foundries

SAP invests in latest startup fund raised by High-Tech Gründerfonds

Team rowing boat in bay

Committed to helping new growth businesses startup and scale, we are pleased to continue our productive cooperation with High-Tech Gründerfonds. SAP will be an investor in their 4th fund. With this new investment, SAP champions the strong development of vibrant start-up ecosystems to ultimately provide our customers with the best startup innovation to run at their best.

With their funds, investors and personal commitment, the High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) contributes significantly to the consistent development of the start-up ecosystem in Germany and across Europe. Until recently, the public–private partnership initiative had successfully launched a total of three funds, financing more than 650 companies, of which more than 150 have been successfully sold or floated on the stock exchange. In addition to seed investments, over 4 billion euros of private funds have flowed into HTGF portfolio companies through follow-up financing. HTGF is now introducing a 4th fund, supporting growth businesses in the areas of Industrial Tech, Digital Tech, Chemicals and Life Sciences with an increased focus on sustainability.

For the past ten years, our cooperation has unlocked access to both our networks and expertise on startups for reciprocal knowledge transfer and sourcing activities. The result has proven value for SAP, HGTF and connected startups. High-Tech Gründerfonds has invested in startups from SAP.iO programs, while HTGF portfolio companies have joined SAP.iO Foundry programs with five of them also being available on the SAP Store.

Exemplary, Datarade was part of the SAP.iO Foundry program in Berlin in 2018 and received seed investment from HTGF later in 2020. The startup has since partnered with SAP to empower customers to easily discover, evaluate, and access external data from commercial data providers. 4tiitoo received investment by HTGF in 2014 and was then introduced to SAP.iO in 2018. The startup participated in our Industry 4.0 program in the same year; their AI-based solution for easy eye control of computers was piloted by both SAP and with several SAP customers and is being offered on the SAP Store. In 2020, they secured Series B funding.

SAP.iO is offering startups the fastest way to scale with SAP – while enabling customers to access innovation complementing SAP solutions.

“We are therefore looking forward to our continued fruitful cooperation with HTGF and seeing our community of founders and startups grow”, Alexa Gorman, SVP, SAP.iO, said. “Our renewed support for the High-Tech Gründerfonds emphasizes our joint belief in a promising future for entrepreneurialism.”

Read the investment announcement by High-Tech Gründerfonds here and find more on our proven cooperation in this interview with Alexa Gorman, Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries and Intrapreneurship.

In Supply Chain Management, Shanghai, Funding Announcement

SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai’s “Intelligent Manufacturing” cohort startup SunwayLand completes Financing

On June 10th 2022, SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai “Intelligent Manufacturing” cohort startup SunwayLand completed a financing round of 200 million yuan, led by Hangzhou Golden Investment, followed by Cornerstone Fund, SDIC, etc. This financing will be mainly used for product R&D iteration and market expansion, and seize opportunities for digital transformation and localization alternatives.

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In San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

The CEO of Gapsquare, Dr Zara Nanu, receives MBE

Dr Zara Nanu, CEO and Co-Founder of Gapsquare, part of XpertHR, has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list for services to tackling global workplace inequalities and promoting fairness and inclusion.

 

Zara’s commitment to ensuring diversity and inclusion began in her native Moldova. It was here that she worked to bring an end to exploitative people trafficking rings which forced women into sweatshops. It’s with this same determination that Zara has sought to bring equality to the workplace by founding Gapsquare in 2016; harnessing data and AI technology to help organisations put a stop to biases and prejudicial practices preventing equality.

Gapsquare provides business leaders with actionable insights about their company’s existing pay gaps through their flagship software FairPay® Pro. The organisation has helped over 80 organisations across the UK create fairer workplaces, including working with Wieden + Kennedy, Condé Nast and Accenture.

Zara is taking Gapsquare’s mission to end pay inequality global, working with business leaders to get pay equity on the agenda and implementing the pay technology in the United States.

A leading voice in the campaign for positive change and action, Zara is Chair of the Women in Business Task Group and a member of the Global Future Council on Equity and Social Justice at the World Economic Forum. She has also been recently appointed to the Shinkwin Commission focusing on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Zara Nanu, CEO and Co-founder at Gapsquare, from XpertHR, comments: “From my work in Moldova to using technology to tackle inequality with Gapsquare, I have been focused on creating a better world of work, one that has fairness at its core and is not held back by patriarchal structures. It is an honour to have this work recognised and I am incredibly grateful for the nomination. It’s heartening to see this work, and the values it represents, placed firmly on the national agenda.

“But our work is by no means complete, the impact of the pandemic means that the time it will take to close the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years. That is why I am focused on change at a global level, bringing Gapsquare to the US, and continuing to work with our leaders in the UK to deliver meaningful change for a fairer and more inclusive future of work.

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