CRM & Customer Experience Archives • Page 7 of 12 • SAP.iO

SAP.iO In Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience, Paris

MishiPay Gains 20 More Airports And Takes On ‘Just Walk Out’ From Amazon

Travel retailer Paradies Lagardère will have more than 20 stores in airports around the U.S. and Canada deploying MishiPay’s mobile self-checkout technology in time for Christmas and the expected surge in holiday traffic.

The UK-based technology company’s in-house developed Scan, Pay & Go system has been selected by Paradies—part of the second-biggest airport retailer in the world Lagardère Travel Retail—after a successful test at two locations, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport in Florida and Charlotte Douglas Airport, in North Carolina.

The airport rollout includes some key hubs with high footfall such as Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Phoenix Sky Harbor, plus Vancouver and Toronto airports in Canada. A total of 26 Paradies stores will offer MishiPay from an estate of more than 950, including restaurants, in about 100 airports. Gregg Paradies, president and CEO at Paradies Lagardère, described the current expansion as “phase two” suggesting that further openings were possible.

The decision to expand was based on several factors including customer satisfaction levels in the test stores. They averaged 4.85 out of 5, with over 90% of shoppers making a purchase when they opened the app.

Circular Economy Becomes Reality For Retailers Thanks To This French Startup

Need a new outfit for a party, a wedding, or an awards ceremony? Want something special to perk up a grey day? Don’t buy it – rent it. By doing so, you’ll be part of a circular economy revolution to use more and own less.

Imagine having a wardrobe full of clothes you only wear once or twice – but instead of discarding them in landfill, you just return them to the brand you got them from and rent a whole new set for the season ahead.

Imagine renting just about everything else you only use once in a while – equipment for camping, sports or home workouts, tableware for a Christmas bash, musical instruments and clothes your kids will soon abandon or outgrow anyway, medical devices, tools, luggage for your next world tour – you name it, if it’s not perishable, rent it.

A Circular Vision

That’s the vision of Lizee, a French startup providing eCommerce and logistics software as a service. They believe that the manufacturing of goods will be cut in half during the next 25 years.

“Together with our supply chain partners, we offer a turnkey solution for brands and retailers that want to quickly transition into the circular economy by renting and reselling their products,” said Tanguy Frécon, the company’s co-founder and chairman. “Brands are realizing that it makes business sense to produce fewer goods but make them more robust so they last longer. Producing for reuse derives a different type of margin. The products become the resources.”

Lizee’s offering comes just in time as retailers are facing groundbreaking regulations in France that forbid the destruction of clothing, cosmetics, electrical items, and other goods that haven’t been sold. The ban is part of a wide-ranging anti-waste law passed by the French parliament last year.

Tanguy Frécon is convinced sustainability and profitability go hand in hand. The rent and resell business model is a new channel for brands to interact with their existing customers and reach new target audiences.

“With these new circular business models brands and retailers can deliver their sustainable transformation, clear inventory without discounting, target new consumers, and boost margins,” said Frécon.

A Skyrocketing Business Model

The market is massive. Back in 2019, Tanguy was inspired by McKinsey’s State of Fashion Report which named end of ownership as one of the key consumer shifts retailers should prepare for. The report stated that “the lifespan of fashion products is being stretched as pre-owned, refurbished, repaired, and rental business models continue to evolve and consumers have demonstrated an appetite to shift away from traditional ownership to newer ways in which to access product.”

Munich-based SaaS company commercetools acquires Frontastic: Here’s why

Commercetools, a Munich-based cloud-native headless commerce platform, announced that it has acquired Frontastic, developer of Composable Frontend Platform that unites business and development teams to build e-commerce sites on headless fast.

The acquisition comes two months after securing funds in a Series C round as the company focuses on broadening the reach of its commerce technology to support global enterprises and reinvent e-commerce.

“We’ve been partnering with the Frontastic team since the very beginning and see a huge market opportunity for their Composable Frontend Platform around the world,” says Dirk Hoerig, CEO and co-founder of commercetools.

“With this powerful combination, we’re bringing the MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, and Headless) movement to the mid-market as well as to digital business teams so that more companies can benefit from modern commerce experiences,” he added.

Frontastic: What you need to know

Founded in 2017, Frontastic provides modern front-end technologies for commerce sites.

The company’s “Composable Frontend Platform” enables merchants and brands to build websites easily and fast on top of headless by removing complexity for developers. It is used by international brands such as Universal Music, Flaconi, and APG & Co.

“We’re excited to become part of the impressive commercetools growth story,” says Thomas Gottheil, CEO and co-founder of Frontastic.

He adds, “We created Frontastic to help enterprises build the best shopping experiences – regardless of which commerce platform they use. By joining forces with commercetools, we can support even more brands on a global scale.”

The Business of Marketing Featuring Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and CEO at VNTANA

During this episode, you will hear from Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and CEO at VNTANA, a SaaS platform that makes 3D asset production and distribution fast and scalable for apparel, footwear and furniture. Learn how they worked with SAP to transform their business, the major obstacles they faced as a startup in the 3D space, and how they are leveraging technology to drive their growth.

Listen Here…

SAP.iO In CRM & Customer Experience, Berlin, Podcast, Munich

Why Renting Is The New Buying – Industry Insights by SAP

In this episode, Tanguy Frécon, Co-Founder & Chairman at Lizee shares how Lizee helps brands and retailers reach both their growth and sustainability goals by expanding their rental business and extending the use of their products.

Consumers want to engage with brands that are sustainable — but there can be no sustainability without profitability. Lizee, one of the startups in the SAP.io Sustainable Futures program, enables brands to produce fewer, more durable, more sustainable goods and reach even more customers without sacrificing revenue. Tanguy Frécon, Co-Founder & Chairman at Lizee, speaks with host Tom Raftery about the real and potential benefits to retailers as they shift from a linear to circular retail economy.

Catch the episode here…

SAP.iO In Tel Aviv, Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

Israeli startup EasySend raises $55.5m to help enterprises build, maintain digital customer journeys with its no-code platform

EasySend, a no-code digital customer journey platform announced a $50.5 million Series B funding round led by Oak HC/FT. Existing investors Vertex IL, Intel Capital, and Hanaco Venture also participated in the round. The company also secured $5 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank.

The announcement follows a year of accelerated growth; the company expanded its US revenues by ten-fold as it supported digital transformation for insurance, banks, and credit unions such as Cincinnati Insurance, NJM Insurance Group, PSCU, Sompo, and Petplan. The funding will accelerate EasySend’s growth in the US and other geographic regions as well as support expansion into new verticals and product use cases.

Tal Daskal, Chief Executive Officer, EasySend: “COVID-19 led to a massive shift in the way people interact with businesses online. EasySend helps enterprises accelerate their five-year digital transformation plans in just three months, making it simple for them to offer exceptional online customer experiences. We are grateful for the support we’ve received from Oak HC/FT and our other investors and are excited to continue helping more businesses make the digital leap forward.”

A third Of CMOs Don’t Trust Their Marketing Data According To Adverity Research

Over one-third of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) don’t trust their marketing data according to the latest research from leading marketing data analytics platform Adverity. What’s more, there is a growing divide between data analysts and marketers when it comes to trusting their data.

A third (34%) of marketers don’t trust the data they are given to inform campaigns. A number that rises to 41% among their data analyst colleagues—posing a new challenge for the C-suite charged with driving marketing results. Yet, the very same divide deepens at the leadership level—with 51% of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) & Chief Data Officers (CDOs) lacking trust in the data compared to 34% of CMOs.

The new “Marketing Analytics State of Play 2022: Challenges and Priorities” research commissioned by Adverity surveyed 964 marketers and data analysts across the U.S., U.K., and Germany, identifying the key strategic challenges faced by marketers and data analysts as well as their priorities for 2022.

For businesses, such a trust divide that becomes greater the more senior you go should cause significant alarm. Teams are failing to communicate mistrust, which results in key strategic decisions regarding spending, budget allocation, and campaign optimization being made without accuracy or confidence, potentially resulting in huge amounts of the marketing budget being misused or ultimately wasted.

Jebbit Declared Data Platform Now Available on SAP® Store

Jebbit today announced that its Jebbit Declared Data Platform is now available on SAP^® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Jebbit’s platform integrates with SAP^® Emarsys^® Customer Engagement and SAP Customer Data Platform and delivers engaging and interactive experiences that collect first-party, declared data or zero-party data (ZPD) customer data that yields personalization through safe and transparent privacy practices.

This partnership platform addresses the urgent demand of brands needing to know their consumers and transform their digital experiences. With its availability on SAP Store, businesses that use SAP solutions can now use the Jebbit Declared Data Platform to create beautiful product match quizzes and many other forms of interactive engagement that improve lead capture, conversion, and help personalize every step of the customer journey, increasing sales and lifetime value. These quizzes can be deployed anywhere digitally, and offline via QR codes.

“Marketers using SAP solutions can now leverage the Jebbit Declared Data Platform to personalize all stages of the customer journey from engagement, education, and conversion and consistently beat benchmarks for onsite conversion rates and overall engagement rates,” said Tom Coburn, co-founder and CEO of Jebbit. “Now, more than ever, consumers are pushing for greater transparency and control over their data and demanding value is delivered in return.”

Machine Learning Builds Customer Advocacy Beyond Black Friday Spike

Savvy CPG leaders this holiday season are firing up customer advocacy with an online referral marketing platform that rewards high-value shoppers and their trusted circles for growth long after Black Friday sales peak. Sure, there will always be one-off bargain hunters who disappear when the markdowns are over. But the experts behind Mention Me, a referral marketing platform, help brands understand who their best customer advocates are so they can treat them right.

“Encouraging your high-value customers to spread the word about your brand extends sales beyond the seasonal spike,” said Andy Cockburn, co-founder and CEO of Mention Me. “These are the customers who purchase the most over time, and they’re inviting friends and family who trust them. Thank you rewards incentivize everyone to buy again, increasing repeat customers, and growing the entire customer base.”

Shopping is easier with a little help from your friends

Instead of viewing referrals as a simple marketing tactic, Cockburn said that Mention Me’s customer-led strategy “cracks the referral code” to increase consumer advocacy and long-term growth.

“At the heart of the referral is a complex social interaction between friends. In a split second, the customer is asking will my friends value this product, and view me positively or negatively for sharing it?,” he said. “Our Referral Engineering approach applies data science to put the right message in front of the right customer at the right time. This helps companies turn existing relationships with customers into growth by extending their lifetime value. Rather than looking purely at how many purchases a customer has made, extended lifetime value, or ELTV, also looks at how many new customers they’ve introduced.”

SundaySky Announces 400% Increase in Customer Growth

SundaySky, the leading platform for video creation, distribution and optimization, announced incredible momentum following the company’s latest product release in the second quarter of 2021. Retail, healthcare, banking, telecom, financial services and other industries gained new self-service capabilities to easily create and scale videos without the extra costs or time demands of traditional video production.

Salesforce’s 7^th annual State of Marketing report states that “Video is the star channel of 2021,” and will be the top digital marketing tactic with 94% of the 8,200+ marketers surveyed using video or planning to use video in the future. In addition to video creation, brands face many new challenges ahead, including the daunting maintenance of keeping content up-to-date. Organizations of all sizes also want to personalize content more and more for individuals as data becomes accessible from their customer data platforms, customer relationship management systems and other databases.

Highlights from this most recent quarter include:

42% more new platform customers signed than in any other quarter in the company’s history, a 400% increase compared to the previous year
New customers testimonials from Anthem, REDCON1, Verizon, Merkle and Select Blinds
New product enhancements for self-service include: new creative themes and flexible scene templates; audio mixing and synthetic voice libraries for custom narrations; expanded music, font and media libraries; and the ability to create greater content relevance at scale with scene skipping and audience messaging
New partnership with SAP unlocked video for Commerce Cloud customers

Constructor brings project management for software developers back to basics

Constructor is a new, user-friendly task tracking and collaboration tool designed specifically for software development teams.

The solution offers features for developers such as assignable comment threads, dashboard card highlighting, hideable backlogs, and project checklists, which they can use to collaborate on software projects remotely, the company told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview.

Additionally, the company also reported to VentureBeat that it has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding.

Constructor cofounder and CEO Seth Purcell explained, “The way software teams work has changed massively over the past decade, as teams have become more distributed, chosen lighter processes, and adopted new practices and new tools like GitHub, Slack, and Figma. Tracking tools haven’t kept up because what’s required isn’t new features; it’s a complete rethink.”

Constructor was built from the ground up to fit the way modern teams are building software, Purcell said. Constructor designed its offering to support asynchronous discussions and provides features like checklists to increase transparency over the status of active projects.

Algramo Recognized by Fortune Impact 20 Award

This Chilean startup, whose name is Spanish for “by the gram,” was established in 2013 by then–engineering student José Manuel Moller. Moller launched Algramo with the goal of addressing the “poverty tax” on lower-income families, who tend to pay more per ounce for nonperishable staples sold in the smaller sizes that they can afford. Algramo established vending machines in neighborhood shops in the poorer outskirts of Santiago: The dispensers offer bulk purchasing, with reusable containers that enable consumers to buy exactly the amount they want. This helps drive down the cost of packaging, which can be as much as 40% of a product’s cost.

Algramo’s business model also helps address the issue of single-use plastic waste. Consumer giant Unilever noticed, and it partnered with Algramo to develop a mobile refill system for liquid laundry detergent. Consumers can place their orders via an app and get products delivered to their doorstep. Algramo uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) tagged containers and internet of things (IoT) technology to deliver the products. The reusable container has a unique ID which allows the consumer to attach it to their account and build a digital wallet to process discounts and credits for future purchases. Algramo now has partnerships in place with Nestlé’s Purina, Colgate-Palmolive, and Walmart, to help them drive the refill revolution for products including pet food and household-cleaning staples. The company today boasts over 2,000 locations in Chile and has expanded its services to Jakarta and New York City. In July, it secured $8.5 million in funding, led by Mexico’s Dalus Capital, to help expand its footprint and enter the beverage industry.

How Startups Are Monetizing the Booming Food Waste Business

Tech platforms Misfits Market, Too Good to Go and Goodr connect food companies with opportunities to divert their waste and improve their bottom lines at the same time.

Why it matters:

Nearly one-fourth of the food produced in the U.S. ends up going to waste, which also results in wasted resources spent by businesses to produce and transport food items.
Reducing food waste represents a tremendous opportunity for helping people in need and protecting the environment, while boosting food companies’ own profitability and sustainability.
Technology platforms such as Misfits Market, Too Good to Go and Goodr are successfully scaling up their operations as they tackle this challenge from different angles, seeking to provide benefits to both food businesses and consumers.

A handful of technology startups are seeking to tackle the challenge of reducing food waste at the grower, retailer, restaurant and consumer levels by matching surpluses with willing buyers.

Misfits Market, Too Good to Go and Goodr are leaning into the booming food waste management business, which generates an estimated $34.22 billion in global sales, and is on track to expand at a 5.4% compound annual growth rate over the next few years, according to Grand View Research.

Explorium Now Available on SAP® Store, External Data Platform

Explorium announced that its External Data Platform is now available on SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. The platform automatically discovers thousands of relevant data signals and uses them to improve analytics and machine learning, helping data scientists, business analysts and sales and marketing teams optimize data-driven campaigns.

Explorium’s External Data Platform integrates with the SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Customer Data Cloud solutions to help improve sales and marketing efforts for customers. The platform enables businesses to gain instant access to relevant external datasets such as business ratings/reviews, footfall traffic, point of interest data and geospatial data (zip code population, nearby competitors, nearby vacancies). Customers can quickly enrich their predictive models and deploy them in just a few keystrokes, with the assurance that all data is compliant with current regulations.

“With the Explorium platform, customers can increase revenue, streamline operations, reduce risk and automate external data integration into their modeling pipeline,” said Omer Har, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Explorium. “We’re constantly growing our universe of quality, relevant external data, and expanding our platform to serve as a single access point for all enterprise-level business intelligence and machine learning needs.”

Explorium works with global brands in the consumer goods, media and advertising, fintech, eCommerce and retail industries. Companies like GlassesUSA, BlueVine, OnDeck and Behalf use Explorium to enhance AI models for use cases including lead scoring, identifying default risk and fraud, and upleveling analytics such as demand forecasting and customer lifetime value.

Business of Marketing: Fang Cheng, CEO at Linc

During this episode, you will hear from Fang Cheng, CEO at Linc, the only end-to-end CX Automation solution purpose-built for brands and retailers. Linc was not only just a part of the SAP Foundries program in 2019 but has gone on to partner with SAP. Learn the genesis of the idea and what they see as the biggest drivers of growth for the company.