SAP is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but half a century is a long time for any company, especially for a software company. How do you stay up to date? As SVP and Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries & Intrapreneurship at SAP, Alexa Gorman is responsible for addressing these questions.
In the hy Podcast, Alexa talks to Christoph Keese about these challenges and how SAP.iO helps innovators inside and outside SAP scale while creating value for customers, startups, employees and SAP.
Supply chain is a web that spans so wide that many large corporations can’t easily track the entire life cycle for each of its products — let alone capture enough data to ensure that everything is being done to standards and protocol. Carlos Moncayo knows the system all too well as the former founder and CEO of ASIAM Inspector, a company that supports brands and retailers with sourcing operations in Asia, he did everything from inspections to auditing to sourcing. This gave Moncayo deep insight on the many layers of the supply chain and it wasn’t pretty. He noticed a lot of issues surrounding visibility. After 10 years with the company, he was surprised they hadn’t gotten any better.
“We thought with supply chain management and production chain management, the only way to solve [the issues] was to approach it from moving offline relations to online relations and helping companies make sense of the data coming out of that,” he tells Forbes. But at the time, no one was trying to tackle that, so the former founders of ASIAM decided to try it themselves. They launched Inspectorio in 2016 to help companies and brands move their supply chain online and have better visibility and data surrounding quality and sustainability. Since Inspectorio launched its first product in 2017, the company has expanded its product offerings and more than 7,000 customers including Target and Kohl’s have signed on.
The Minneapolis-based startup raises a $50 million Series B round led by Insight Partners with participation from Techstar Ventures, Matchstick Ventures and strategic backers including Flexport, among others, as originally reported in Midas Touch newsletter. Ryan Hinkle, a managing director at Insight, says the firm has been building a relationship with Inspectorio since the beginning of the startup’s life. While the investment could have been sparked by the company’s progress — Hinkle points to the startup’s 93% revenue growth in 2021 — for him it was a bit more personal. His family used to own a clothing store and he remembers helping unwrap shirts and using a measuring tape to ensure the sleeves were the same length and that the size labels matched when he was a kid. Both of which would fall under the quality control assurances Inspectorio looks to provide further down the supply chain.
Robert Heinecke is an entrepreneur, futurist thinker and smart city expert.
He is the CEO of Breeze Technologies, a German industry leader in air quality sensors, data and analytics, which he founded in 2015.
Robert regularly speaks and publishes on the topic of smart and sustainable cities, air quality and climate action. Congratulations!
Diamonds and girls have been best friends for centuries, but that friendship has long come at a high cost for the communities involved in the excavation and processing of these highly coveted gems. Thanks to shifts in consumer behavior, however, sustainability considerations are now on par with price and design for consumers when purchasing diamonds, according to new research published by De Beers Group.
And it is high time. The mine-to-market journey contains a myriad of social and environmental impacts at every step of the way. From soil erosion, deforestation, and the destruction of ecosystems to the appalling working conditions, low wages, and child labor rampant in the industry, there is certainly a dark side to the way people have acquired their sparkling stones. The upside is that the industry creates high levels of employment and makes up a significant part of the GDPs of the countries that produce them.
Tackling these issues requires crystal clear insight into the value chain. Tools and services from Everledger, for example, enable independent retailers to easily reference the origin, human rights, and environmental performance of their diamond listings from the world’s leading producers. The global digital transparency company based in the UK uses blockchain to track goods from raw materials to the end consumer and beyond – making it ideal for retailers implementing circular business models.
“Internet of things” tracking startup Tag-n-Trac Inc. today launched out of stealth with $10 million in new funding.
Dell Technologies led the Series A round, with Merck Global Innovation Fund and Aerosafe Global also participating. Including the new funding, Tag-n-Trac has raised $11.8 million to date, according to data from Crunchbase.
Founded in 2020, Tag-n-Trac was founded with the goal of modernizing the entire logistics lifecycle. The company offers a full-stack IoT solution that integrates multiple modes of hardware, software and data technology to build smarter solutions that solve complex problems. The founding team consists of senior executives with engineering leadership experience in WiFi, Bluetooth, sensors and positioning technologies.
Tag-n-Trac says its platform offers complete, real-time visibility into the entire global supply chain ecosystem. The company’s technology combines low-cost “printable” hardware sensors and a sensor-agnostic software-asa-serivce platform to help shippers, logistics providers and manufacturers track goods’ location, status and condition from manufacturing to shipping to delivery.
The Tag-n-Trac platform, powered by wireless Bluetooth and cellular smart label technologies, grants a complete end-to-end view to help efficiently address production obstacles such as temperature excursions, tamper detection and potential diversions. Usable in various verticals, Tag-n-Trac works with supply chain partners, including multi-modal third-party logistics, enterprise resource planning, business intelligence software providers, and packaging and labeling manufacturers.
Radancy, the global talent technology leader, is pleased to announce its plans to acquire Firstbird, a global leader in SaaS based employee referral programs. Based in Vienna, Austria, Firstbird offers a comprehensive software solution to digitize and streamline the employee referral process. The acquisition of Firstbird is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including certain regulatory approvals.
This strategic acquisition combines Firstbird’s innovative referral technology with Radancy’s unified talent acquisition platform. Together, they will provide global clients with enhanced touchpoints along the entire candidate journey, connecting people to careers and companies with qualified candidates to solve their most critical talent acquisition challenges.
“From the first meeting I knew Firstbird checked every box for us. The people, the technology and the opportunity to expand Radancy’s reach within the DACH market made this a perfect match,” said Michelle Abbey, President and CEO of Radancy. “I’m excited to integrate their technology into our global unified platform and continue to transform talent acquisition for our customers.”
Jebbit, provider of the world’s leading zero-party data platform, has received a $70 million strategic growth investment from Vista Equity Partners, the leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses. The growth capital will help the company scale across all departments to further accelerate its mission to help brands deliver personalized digital experiences that collect data that is willingly and intentionally shared by a consumer (“zero-party data”).
Jebbit’s no-code platform enables companies to build beautiful interactive product and personality quizzes, lookbooks, trivia, lead generation forms and more that gather zero-party and first-party data. Jebbit experiences help brands drive higher engagement, lead capture and conversion while maintaining data privacy and security. In a world where cookies and ID’s will no longer be a reality, Jebbit’s solutions empower companies of all sizes to gain deep customer insights that fuel engagement and increase sales. Jebbit’s easy-to-launch, no code quizzes offer seamless integration and scalability, making them ideal for small- and medium-sized business as well as large global enterprises, across a wide range of industries, including consumer packaged goods, retail and commerce, travel and hospitality, and financial services.
Visual work communication tool CloudApp has raised $9.3 million in Series A funding led by Grayhawk Capital and Nordic Eye. The round also includes previous investors Kickstart Fund, Cervin Ventures, New Ground Ventures, Bloomberg Beta and new entrants Peninsula Ventures & Forward VC. It also features CloudApp customers Peter Kazanjy, the CRO of Atrium, and Derek Andersen, the CEO of Startup Grind and Bevy.
Founded in 2015, CloudApp aims to help teams share information faster through instantly shareable videos, gifs and screenshots. The tool is an all-in-one screen recording software that captures and embeds HD video, marked-up images and more into workflows. Every file users create is securely stored in the cloud, and accessible via CloudApp’s native Mac and Windows Apps, or shareable on the web through secure password-protected links.
The goal of the company is to help teams avoid having to schedule extra calls or emails and instead communicate their message through simple shareable videos. CloudApp sees itself as a visual voicemail that can be read at any time without disrupting workflows. The tool supports dozens of integrations, including Slack, Atlassian, Trello, Zendesk and Asana. Since its launch, CloudApp has garnered more than four million total users. Notable CloudApp clients include Adobe, Uber, Zendesk and Salesforce.
BigID, the leading data intelligence platform that enables organizations to know their enterprise data and take action for privacy, security, and governance, today announced Splunk Ventures is investing in BigID’s next phase of growth and innovative technology development.
Splunk Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Splunk Inc., the data platform leader for security and observability, and is dedicated to investing in organizations that expand and enhance the value of business data to drive outcomes. BigID is an innovator in data intelligence, with an ML-powered enterprise platform that reimagines data management for data discovery, privacy, security, and governance. BigID helps customers proactively manage and protect their data, reduce risk, and get more value from their data.
Data drives the world, and as digital transformation and cloud initiatives continue to accelerate, BigID’s modern approach to data management is purpose built to address the challenges of today’s data landscape. With BigID, customers can make better decisions with their data, achieve compliance, scale with evolving data privacy and protection landscape, and ultimately reimagine how they manage their data.
“Now more than ever, organizations need clearcut ways to harness their data to drive innovation while also remaining compliant and secure,” said Varoon Bhagat, vice president of Corporate Development for Splunk. “Our investment in BigID is the latest example of our commitment to transform data into business value and remove the barrier between data and action.”
Dresden, Germany-based Wandelbots has raised a healthy sum in the years since it appeared on our Disrupt Berlin stage, way back in 2017. The following year, the no-code robotic software firm raised $6.8 million, followed by another $30 million in June 2020, as excitement around automation continued to build as COVID slowed manufacturing to a crawl.
Today the firm returns with a healthy $84 million Series C, putting its funding well north of $100 million to date. This latest round was led by Insight Partners and featured a slate of existing investors, including 83North, Microsoft, Next47, Paua, Atlantic Labs and EQT.
Wandelbots’ mission is a deceptively simple one, and something a number of firms are pushing to solve in the space. Can a robotic software layer lower the barrier of entry for deploying robotics in a factory setting? Specifically, how can a firm deploy a robotic army without the need for a lot of outside help, significant sums of money and/or robotic coding know-how? The company’s solution involves a “Trace Pen,” which an instructor uses to mimic a motion and train the robot in the process. The motion can then be fine-tuned on the software without coding.
Wagawin helped McDonald’s switch from their traditional paper printed coupons to a digital version powered by their platform that integrates with SAP. Their recent campaign achieved more than 2 million ad impressions and provided McDonald’s with valuable insights on customer engagement and preferences.
Wagawin works with SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Customer Data Cloud, and SAP Customer Data Platform and is available on the SAP Store.
Express was looking for a new way to deepen their engagement with their loyalty members. They partnered up with Jebbit to understand customer preferences by providing members with monthly quizzes and challenges that featured incentives like bonus points or monetary credits. While Express initially planned to deepen engagement, rather than conversion, they successfully brought in seven figures of revenue between direct and incremental sales resulting from this program.
Jebbit works with SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement and SAP Customer Data Platform and is available on the SAP Store.
With the help of parcelLab, Lidl was able to increase customer loyalty by delivering automated, personalised shipping messages to their customers. This new experience resulted in 85% of customers returning to Lidl’s webpage and a 12% increase in average basket size.
parcelLab works with SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Upscale Commerce and is available on the SAP Store.
Werder Bremen of the Bundesliga is one of the oldest German professional sports clubs with over 40,000 active members and nearly 2,000,000 loyal fans. They worked with Pico to deepen these relationships by creating an automated service to provide fans with unique options for redistributing tickets issued for games that were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pico works with SAP Customer Data Cloud and is available on the SAP Store.
Unilever found it challenging to manage all the information of the thousands of products and understand what happens in retail stores once products are delivered. By leveraging Teamcore, they now analyse and prioritise huge data sets to accurately understand the reality of what is happening in each store. In addition, the solution automatically generates proactive reminders for tasks like rotating merchandise that leads to improved KPIs and better communication between the retail stores and corporate office.
Teamcore works with SAP Sales Cloud and is available on the SAP Store.
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Verusen, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of tools to manage materials for global supply chains, raised $25m in Series B funding.
The round was led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from current investors Glasswing Ventures, Flyover Capital, Zetta Venture Partners, Forte Ventures, BMW i Ventures, and Kubera VC.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its global footprint, and further build out its AI-driven technology platform expanding its reach in both the Indirect MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) and Direct Materials space.
Crosschq, pioneers of the Talent Intelligence Cloud powering a revolution in data-driven hiring and people analytics, announced the launch of Crosschq Recruit, the world’s first recruiting platform built specifically to help companies source qualified talent directly from the professional networks of job applicants.
Crosschq’s Recruit allows talent leaders to effortlessly build talent pools of highly qualified candidates who are open to new career opportunities. This pool is built from individuals who served as a Crosschq 360 reference. When acting as Crosschq 360 reference, that person is invited to “opt-in” and be considered for new job opportunities across the entire Crosschq@ customer base. Profiles of candidates who “Opt-in” are enriched and matched through the Crosschq Talent Intelligence Cloud™ and are directly delivered to the inboxes of recruiters.
Mention Me, the customer advocacy platform, has secured a $25m Series B round, led by Octopus Ventures. Lead investor from the prior round Eight Roads Ventures also participated.
The London-based scale-up helps businesses turn referrals into a strategic channel for acquiring high-quality customers, while gathering valuable first-party data that amplifies wider marketing activity.
Mention Me will use the funds to support its vision to make every brand think advocacy-first by expanding into the US, investing in its partner network (which includes Klaviyo, TrustPilot, Ometria and SAP) and developing its product offering. This includes further development of Mention Me’s approach to applying AI and machine-learning to referral data, so brands can more effectively identify their biggest fans and optimise the wider customer experience to drive customer advocacy.
The platform’s unique Referral Engineering® technology has already delivered more than 4.5 million referrals totalling more than USD $1.5 billion in revenue for clients globally. Sports brand Puma, international franchise Pret a Manger, InsurTech unicorn Bought By Many, Europe’s leading online florist Bloom & Wild and international fashion retailer ASOS are among its 450-strong client base.
The funding will also be used to grow the team following a series of senior hires. This includes Roy Robinson from Boxever as CPO to lead product development, Ash Rama, previously at Trustpilot, as VP People and Rebecca Hooley joining from private equity firm Livingbridge as CFO.
This week at the SAP Digital NRF Experience Chantal Emmanuel, CTO and Co-founder of Limeloop, and Kange Kaneene, Vice President SAP.iO Foundries North America sat down with Megan Meany to discuss how Limeloop is innovating to save waste from packages associated with online shopping via reusable packaging paired with a shipping platform that provides reverse logistics, security and more.
