CRM & Customer Experience Archives • Page 5 of 12 • SAP.iO

SAP.iO In Awards, San Francisco, CRM & Customer Experience, Sustainability

Bidgely Wins 2022-2023 Future Ready Organization Award by India’s Economic Times

Bidgely has been named a winner of The Economic Times’ 2022-2023 Future Ready Organization Award. The Economic Times Future-Ready Organizations listing honors companies that have successfully implemented organizational processes that are more flexible, integrated, resilient and ultimately more human in order to thrive in today’s market. Future-Ready companies are identified as those that are mission-driven; operate on speed and simplicity; and have a proven ability to learn, innovate and foster valuable ideas.

“We are honored to be recognized by The Economic Times for our dedication to quality and innovation – not only for the solutions we offer to customers but also for our internal processes and programs,” said Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely. “By thoughtfully creating a culture that supports employee empowerment and business strategies that are risk-proof, we are future ready.”

Bidgely was specifically recognized for its people-first culture, with an 85 percent employee retention over the last year, as well as a series of updated policies to financially and emotionally support the company’s extended workforce during the Covid-19 crisis. In the first half of 2022, Bidgely introduced its next-generation disaggregation technology, further enabling utilities and energy providers to itemize energy consumption usage down to the appliance level for a 360-degree view of their customers and grid load. Key components of Bidgely’s UtilityAI™ Platform feature solar and electric vehicle (EV) identification, personalized home energy reports, high bill projections and targeted recommendations for energy efficiency.

Meet Wisy, the Cloud Wars Startup and Innovator of 2022

The Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo featured cloud-native startups; judges selected a short-list of five top competitors, and a Cloud Wars Startup of the Year. The overall winner was Wisy.

Wisy is featured on Episode 22 of the Cloud Wars Horizon Minute — a video which features news and commentary hosted by Acceleration Economy analyst Tom Smith. Each episode provides insights into one or more Innovation Accelerators on the Cloud Wars Horizon. This is a special episode focused on the Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo and the winner, Wisy, which was profiled previously along with the other participants in the event.

Watch Episode Here…

SAP.iO In San Francisco, Tel Aviv, CRM & Customer Experience

Wisy Retail Intelligence App Headlines Cloud Wars Expo Innovation Stage

Cloud Wars Expo Day Three concluded with a flurry of quick-hit presentations from industry startups on the expo floor’s aptly-named Innovation Stage. An array of services, apps, and tools were presented to a panel of four Acceleration Economy experts, including Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans. From on-demand spare parts to products designed to streamline and diversify hiring processes, the focus of each presentation aimed to solve one of today’s universal business challenges.

Each presenter was held under a hard cap of just three minutes to present their unique business solutions, with five — Cloudthread, Crosschq, Insite, Najaxa, and Specright — earning their way onto the judges’ designated “short list” and qualifying for $20,000 of additional marketing aid each from the Acceleration Economy platform.

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.

Footprint: How Shoe Sizing Tech is Helping Cut Returns, Costs and CO2

Tom’s special Guests this week are Carolin Kleinert, Co-Founder & CBO Brand, People & Culture, and Onur Ergin, CTO of Footprint. Carolin and Onur discuss the needor better and more accurate shoe sizing- which will limit ecommerce retur fns. Tune in!

During the discussion Tom finds out more about how a digital sizing approach will help customers find the right fit for their favorite brands. Buying shoes online is never going to be easy, but by using Footprint to take a scan of their feet, the customer can order accurate sizes, and in turn avoid contributing to the mountain of returned goods that end up in a landfill each year.

Tune in here!

SAP.iO In CRM & Customer Experience, Sustainability

Lizee & Heuritech Named Leading Early-Stage Companies Reimagining Luxury Retail by CB Insights

SAP.iO startups Lizee & Heuritech were named as two of the top 70 early-stage startups that are spurring innovation beyond traditional e-commerce platforms by CB Insights.

Startups developing virtual enablement platforms, new materials, and metaverse tech are looking to make the $387B luxury retail industry more sustainable and engaging for younger generations.

Deepgram Named One Of Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces For Second Year in a Row

Deepgram, a leading automatic speech recognition software company, today announced that it was named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces list for the second consecutive year. The annual Best Workplaces list is a result of a comprehensive analysis of U.S.-based companies that have built an exceptional company culture. This year companies were evaluated on their ability to create a collaborative and supportive work environment for in-person and remote employees as a result of the pandemic.

Deepgram is honored among 475 companies that were selected based on the quality of employee responses to an independent survey conducted by Quantum Workplace. Each company submission was evaluated based on a number of categories, including company culture, management effectiveness, perks, and fostering employee growth.

“We’re proud to receive this recognition from Inc. Magazine for the second year in a row,” said Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram. “As of March 2022, Deepgram’s team has grown 60% YoY, and this acknowledgment is a testament to our commitment to maintain and even improve our culture as we grow. Our mission at Deepgram is to power the next generation of voice experiences, and we know prioritizing our people is critical to achieving that vision.”

SAP.iO Foundry New York Kicks Off Omnichannel CX Engagement Program

May 5, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) launched a Omnichannel Customer Experience (CX) Engagement focused program at SAP.iO Foundry New York. The six startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers, and investment funds to join the program.

The startups in the program are helping enhance and personalize the customer journey and experience. Customer Experience (CX) is SAP’s largest addressable market with a strong demand for more CX partner solutions that SAP customers can leverage.

Over the next 16 weeks, the startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry New York Spring 2022 program:

Big thinx is an Artificial Intelligence company focused on fashion retail, wellness and the metaverse, with products in mobile body scanning, digital twins, virtual try-ons, and supply chain augmentation.
Mad Street Den is a computer vision and artificial intelligence company building the A.I. architecture of the future.
Obsess is a metaverse shopping platform, that enables retailers to serve immersive 3D virtual stores on their websites, and on metaverse platforms.
SoPost helps brands run the most powerful product sampling campaigns online, with a focus on relevance, data and analytics.
Yellow.ai is a next-gen Total Experience Automation Platform enabling enterprises through its Dynamic AI agents to deliver human-like interactions that boost customer satisfaction and increase employee engagement at scale.
Zoovu is a product discovery platform for enterprise businesses that supercharges your digital ecommerce strategy across all channels.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 400+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

SAP.iO In Foundries, Berlin, Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience

Half a Million Shoppers Have Now Shopped At a Zippin-Powered Store

With 50 Stores Launched Worldwide, Zippin Hits Key Milestones in Adoption of Checkout-free Technology

Zippin, the leading provider of checkout-free technology, announced that it has reached a key milestone having served over half a million shoppers in one of its 50 Zippin-powered stores. Zippin calculates that it has saved consumers over 83,000 hours to-date, conservatively estimating that frictionless retail reduces the average shopping trip by 10 minutes.

As our desire for more and more frictionless experiences continues to grow, Zippin plans to scale rollout of its technology with key partners around the globe, improving the overall retail experience, and establishing its position as the top checkout-free platform provider.

“Retailers are under immense pressure to deliver fast, frictionless experiences for consumers, and this is especially true in high-traffic venues where time is limited,” said Krishna Motukuri, CEO and co-founder of Zippin. “We recognize that speed can’t come at the expense of accuracy. With each new store launch, Zippin’s AI improves its ability to provide the best experience for both retailers and shoppers, who are fast coming to expect this level of convenience. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to scale, quickly.”

Meta inks partnership for 3D ads in step toward the metaverse

Meta Platforms Inc will make it easier for brands to run three-dimensional ads on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms through a new partnership with an ecommerce technology firm.

The integration with VNTANA will allow brands to upload the 3D models of their products to Facebook and Instagram and easily convert them into ads, VNTANA said on Thursday in a press release.

The move is a stepping stone into advertising in the metaverse, said VNTANA chief executive Ashley Crowder, referring to the futuristic idea of a collection of virtual worlds that can be accessed through devices such as headsets.

Before VNTANA’s integration with Meta, advertisers would need to reformat 3D files to be compatible with Meta’s ad systems. Now, brands can use VNTANA to easily upload and convert the files into ads without technical expertise in working with 3D images, Crowder said.

Three SAP.iO Startups Named to CB Insights’ Retail Tech 100

The Retail Tech 100 is CB Insights’ annual ranking of the 100 most promising B2B retail tech companies in the world. This year’s winning companies include vendors working on hyper-personalized shopping experiences, blockchain-powered commerce, autonomous delivery, virtual shopping, and more.

The following SAP.iO startups were ranked this year:

Supply Chain Visibility: Shippeo
E-Commerce Logistics & Fulfilment: parcelLab
E-Commerce Merchandising & Discovery: Constructor.io

They were chosen based on several factors, including data submitted by the companies, company business models and momentum in the market, and Mosaic scores, CB Insights’ proprietary algorithm that measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies.

A New Israeli Startup Converts WhatsApp Messages into an Information Vault of the Company

The serial entrepreneur Amir Haramaty reveals his new startup, which aims to organize the information of the organization. Haramaty describes how he will perform this in a different manner, why he opened an office far away from Tel-Aviv and why he prefers to employ combat soldiers without a technological background.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you are concluding one more meeting, whether through Zoom, in or out the office – and you want to summarize the meeting.

After all, a large amount of important information is discussed during these meetings. When will you be able to do this? When you return to the office, in the evening, or perhaps even the next day? And what amount of that critical information will be included in the email summary, which will then be concealed in the mountain of emails? And what happens when you, or the person who receives your summaries, leaves the organization? Where does all this information end up?

It is estimated that only 10% of the critical information is stored in the organization, and even less is documented and shared with the rest of the organization.

The Israeli startup aiOla, which we are revealing today for the first time, wants to address exactly this agonizing problem, and to do so without complex interfaces or the application of new software.

aiOla is not just another tool which forces all your employees to learn the new interfaces and menus, not to mention the headaches that could cause you to postpone the on-the-job training, but a solution which connects to the main communication sources currently being used in the organization, whether it be WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams or more or less any other communication app. Amir Haramaty, the serial entrepreneur behind the startup, assured me that “If you know how to work with WhatsApp, you will know how to work with aiOla”.

The concept of aiOla is both simple and complex. Have you just finished a meeting or a session? You simply send an audio message to an aiOla bot that is connected to one of your communication services, and describe in your own words everything that occurred and everything you experienced.

Walmart Canada Is The First Major Canadian Retailer to Offer Carbon-Neutral Last Mile Delivery

Walmart Canada is the first major retailer in Canada to offer carbon-neutral last mile delivery for e-commerce purchases sold and shipped by Walmart, including online grocery.

This Walmart-funded program will offset an estimated 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking over 5,000 cars off the road, in its first year. This program is incremental to Walmart’s global ambition to achieve Zero Emissions by 2040 without the use of offsets for scope 1 and 2 emissions. Funding carbon offsets for last-mile delivery of e-commerce purchases, including online grocery, allows Walmart Canada to make an immediate impact while working with our third-party carriers to reduce emissions along with us.

Carbon offsets allow companies and consumers to fund projects that reduce the effects of climate change, compensating for the emissions created from actions like transportation. Walmart has engaged EcoCart, a sustainability technology company, to calculate and validate the emissions created from online orders and to purchase carbon offset credits from high-quality projects in the exact dollar amount required to reduce or avoid those emissions.

“Funding carbon offsets for last-mile delivery in our eCommerce operations is an opportunity for Walmart to make an impact today as we work towards becoming a regenerative company and eliminating emissions across our business,” explains Laurent Duray, SVP, eCommerce, Walmart Canada. “Minimizing the environmental impact of the last mile has been top of mind as customer behaviour has shifted towards increased reliance on our fast, easy and convenient delivery options for grocery and online orders.”

The projects Walmart’s offsets will support are aligned with the company’s journey to becoming a regenerative company and will support a portfolio of Canadian-based initiatives that work to either actively remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent future carbon from being emitted. The project portfolio is projected to include initiatives that protect forests, enable composting and waste diversion, aid with refrigerant management, and turn biomass into fuel. These Walmart-supported projects will also ensure they benefit the communities as part of their scope with key economic and environmental elements such as providing jobs, education opportunities, or protecting endangered species and biodiversity.

EcoCart is proud to collaborate with Walmart Canada as they become the first major retailer in Canada to offer a carbon-neutral last-mile delivery,” said Peter Twomey, COO, EcoCart. “It’s so exciting to see industry leaders like Walmart work toward a more sustainable future that benefits everyone. By funding offsets on behalf of their customers for last-mile delivery, Walmart is making a positive impact on our collective efforts to regenerate the environment.”

Along with calculating and validating Walmart’s last-mile emissions and sourcing and vetting high-quality carbon offset projects, EcoCart will also be providing quarterly impact and emissions reporting. This reporting will allow Walmart to track estimated emissions and establish benchmarks for its third-party carrier partners.

Startup of the Month: VNTANA 3D Commerce Solution & Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has been entangled in the recent whirlwind of metaverse chatter on the internet. Though, as a practical tool, the power of AR to substantially move sales for retailers is evident. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen rapid advancement in AR capabilities and brands are seeing the benefit of applying this technology in their sales and marketing strategies. Signaling the widespread adoption of 3D and AR technology for brands and retailers, VNTANA experienced a 500% expansion in customers and partners in 2021. Fashion League talked with VNTANA to get a better understanding of what the future of 3D and augmented reality looks like in fashion.

London-based startup Mention Me helps businesses to turn customers into engines for business growth

Pushing your brand to new customers and getting it known and recognised is one of the hardest parts of starting or growing a business. Increasingly common e-commerce businesses that have no physical presence can’t rely on footfall, on people just popping in on their way past – something that even physical shops experience less and less as our society becomes busier and we tell ourselves more frequently that we don’t have time – and it’s vital for them to be able to get word of their existence to online shoppers. But being active on social media and buying banner ads here and there isn’t enough.

London-based customer advocacy startup Mention Me has created a platform through which businesses can increase customer acquisition, drive growth, and increase revenue. The startup currently works with over 450 brands, using unique and sophisticated data analysis to fuel sustainable growth through referral marketing and customer retention.