SAP’s SAP.iO Foundry Acceleration Program has announced that it will work in collaboration with EON Innovation – the innovation division of E.ON, one of the largest energy companies in Europe and the Israel Electric Company, both SAP customers.
Healthcare startups are challenging longtime industry practices and assumptions, transforming everything from patient care to organizational efficiencies. Here’s how two entrepreneurs that recently participated in the latest healthcare-focused accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry New York viewed their respective missions to help patients and providers in a vastly changed healthcare landscape.
Real-time intelligence improves time management
Applying computer science and systems thinking to improve people’s lives has been a central tenet of Kishau Rogers’ career as an engineer and computer scientist. The COVID-19 pandemic has only amped up the mission behind her newest venture called Time Study. Over 35 hospitals throughout the United States rely on the startup’s “time intelligence” cloud-based platform that uses machine learning to track how physicians, researchers, and other healthcare employees are spending their time.
”Instead of just counting hours worked, we wanted to shift the concept of timesheets to a human-centered approach, elevating opportunities to improve people’s lives at work,” said Rogers. “Many of the time management issues we were already looking at, such as data silos and complexity, have only been amplified by the pandemic.”
Time Study has helped hospitals better understand fast-changing workforce movements, whether employees were hunting for scarce PPE, jumping into different care-giving roles onsite, or providing new patient services like telehealth. Some hospitals have improved data collection and reporting times by 80 percent, and increased regulatory compliance by over 120 percent.
The start-up company SRP from Tel Aviv, which started in the Nielsen incubator in Caesarea, reports faster-than-expected growth in the first half of the year, against the background of its innovative technology and the corona crisis. The company was also selected by SAP to participate in the SAP.iO acceleration program
Today’s neighborhood grocery ecosystem is primarily composed of three key players: large Consumer Products companies, local grocery stores, and consumers. Each entity faces a plethora of challenges: CPGs face harsh competition from retailers and struggle to influence customers, grocery stores lack proper management and operational tools and can’t make data-driven decisions, and consumers are turned off by crowded retail grocery shopping, and a delivery alternative comes with expensive fees.
The (one-stop) solution to a more economical retail format? SRP.
SRP developed a digital and data-driven Nearby Retail Platform (NRP) that connects CPGs, grocery stores, and consumers. SRP allows CPGs to boost revenues and influence customers, helps grocery stores flourish with advanced management & operational tools, and provides consumers with a seamless and intuitive way to shop
Product sampling is one of the best ways to generate new opt-ins for a brand’s consumer database, but getting data from external vendor systems to a brand’s CRM system can often be challenging. We recently participated in SAP.iO Foundry Consumer Products Cohort to establish a solution that process easier than ever. By integrating into SAP’s Customer Data Cloud, Sampler clients can add data collected in their programs seamlessly into their CRM system, in a flexible, standardized, fast and secure method. In this video, our founder and CEO, Marie Chevrier walks you through how Sampler helps CPG brands all over the world distribute product samples in a more targeted way and how this new exciting partnership will help build solutions for Sampler and SAP clients alike.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity Announces The 20 Finalists For The US$1 Million Global Maker Challenge 2020 including Queen of Raw.
They will present their solutions during a series of virtual pitches that will commence on August 31, 2020, in the lead up to the Global Maker Challenge Award Ceremony on September 6, 2020.
The finalists were selected from over 3,400 solutions that were submitted for Cohort 2 of the Global Maker Challenge, which was launched at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s (UNIDO) 8th Ministerial Conference of the Least Developed Countries in November 2019 in Abu Dhabi. Solutions from over 148 countries were received, of which 18% came in from least developed countries.
This year’s global challenges centered around four themes: Sustainable and Healthy Food for All, Climate Change, Innovation for Inclusive Trade, and Innovation for Peace and Justice.
The 20 finalists, comprising of five innovators per theme, were assessed and shortlisted in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s SOLVE initiative (MIT SOLVE), and a jury of 47 globally renowned subject matter and innovation experts from UN agencies, global organizations, digital innovation companies, NGOs, and academia.
Pecan is an AI-based predictive analytics platform that generates actionable, accurate predictions on company data in the shortest time possible, and is built around solution templates like customer churn and lifetime value. So far, Pecan has delivered over 11,024,601,821 predictions to their customers.
Aiola developed a super powerful virtual analyst that helps CPG managers in the sales, marketing, trade, and planning departments make better data-driven decisions. While an analyst’s mother tongue is “data science” and a sales manager speaks “business language,” Aiola‘s virtual analyst bridges the communication gap between teams.
Meet Erez Raanan & Guy Ernest, the Co-Founders of Aiola. Aiola developed a super powerful virtual analyst that helps CPG managers in the sales, marketing, trade, and planning departments make better data-driven decisions. Aiola participated in the SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv’s Consumer Products Spring 2020 cohort, and is integrating into SAP’s Sales Cloud.
As more and more brands have shifted to the E-commerce world as their primary sales channel, they seem to have forgotten one crucial player along the way: the seller. Especially today, as people are less frequently walking into stores and avoiding physical engagements altogether, the role of the online seller is critical; people buy from people, not ads. These sellers operate as brand ambassadors who represent the brand online, much like a salesperson would in a physical store.
The solution that seamlessly helps brands provide expertise and guidance to consumers through digital ambassadors? TVPage.
TVPage provides every brand the ability to turn on ambassador digital storefronts on their websites, empowering subject matter experts, in-store sales associates, influencers, and savvy customers to promote and sell their products online. With TVPage, brands transform their sales team into ambassadors who sell on their digital storefronts on the brand’s site, with an intuitive platform that measures results and commissions ambassadors on their actual sales. Today’s consumers depend more and more on recommendations to help dictate their purchasing decisions, and TVPage allows brands to seamlessly engage with their consumers through digital ambassadors.
Although most companies spend between 10–13% of their budget on marketing efforts, most marketers struggle to find the impact that the content they create and share has on sales. Today, only 15% of the content that companies produce affects successful journeys (TrenDemon). The solution that helps companies boost their ROI and conversion rates and empowers marketers? TrenDemon
Crosschq, pioneers of a new software category for the recruiting industry called Human Intelligence Hiring™, announced today a new round of financing that includes investment from Tiger Global Management and Rocketship.vc. This latest round comes immediately following a strategic financing from Slack and SAP.iO in June which also included re-investment from GGV Capital and Bessemer Ventures.
“We are proud to be partnering with these two great firms as we enter the next phase of our growth,” said Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO of Crosschq. “If we have learned anything from the last several months, it is that the future of work is ripe for disruption. Our use of human intelligence is becoming a foundational element of modern company building.”
Crosschq brings speed, efficiency, accuracy, transparency and accountability to the obsolete, manual process of vetting new job candidates. The new investment comes as Crosschq crosses the 100 customer milestone with customers including Dish, NBA, Upwork, Snowflake, NerdWallet and Glassdoor using the platform to enhance recruiting and make better hires.
“SAP strongly believes that the future of work is inclusive and diverse, and that starts with removing biases in the candidate experience,” said Ram Jambunathan, SAP senior vice president at and managing director of SAP.iO. “Crosschq will bring increased objectivity and consistency to the candidate reference checking process, thereby improving outcomes for both candidates and SAP customers.”
Security startups among the most-funded in New York City’s tech scene
Risk-management and security startups are in the spotlight among venture capitalists in the wake of increased remote work and a rise in high-profile cyberattacks.
And while current lockdowns and economic conditions may interfere with traditional deal making, a recent report tracking New York City-area startups reveals a surge of new funding.
These New York startups, which include BigID Inc., Payfone Inc. and BlueVoyant, offer software for cybersecurity, data governance and other risk-management functions.
Business interest in such technologies has intensified in recent years as companies seek ways to better manage risk-and-compliance issues associated with an explosion of user data, said Ram Jambunathan, a managing director of SAP.iO, the early-stage venture-capital arm of business software maker SAP SE.
When Rahul Nambiar, co-founder and CEO of Botsync, transformed his passion for robotics into autonomous mobile robots with three other co-founders, little did they imagine their efforts will become key in the new reality of business today.
“As a company, we want to resolve the mismatch between consumer demand and limited labor supply in the logistics and manufacturing sectors,” said Rahul. “It is estimated that by 2028, there will be 2.4M jobs unfulfilled in these industries. So, we knew there will be a definite demand for the autonomous mobile robots we are building. What we hadn’t expected was how quickly this demand would evolve.”
In today’s new normal where businesses resuming operations are facing new restrictions due to COVID-19 infection risks, the logistics and manufacturing sectors are finding it challenging to operate. They face mandatory sanitation measures, safe distancing rules, and a manpower crunch due to restrictions in travel. This has seriously affected productivity levels.
Sampler has raised a $4 million round in funding. The round was led by existing investors StandUp Ventures and BDC Capital with participation from EDC, Factory LLC as well as new investors from Calgary-based female-led financial platform, The51. The closing was managed by Chase Irwin, partner at Dentons Canada LLP, and brings Sampler’s total amount raised in equity financing to $10.3M since its inception in 2013.
The product sampling platform, which helps CPG brands distribute product samples to digitally targeted consumers direct-to-home, saw a spike in demand as in-store sampling, trade shows, and events were cancelled worldwide as a result of COVID-19. The company experienced a 300% increase in sales in Q2 2020 compared to the same period last year and user engagement doubled during the months of March and April as consumers looked to discover new products from home.
“We’ve been working on Sampler for seven years and built a unique platform that connects brands and consumers through in-home product experiences. Though we could not have predicted the sudden shift in the market, we were ready. When the pandemic hit and in-store demos, events, and trade shows were brought to a sudden halt, brands had to quickly rethink how they were going to deliver such a crucial element of their marketing strategy as product sampling in a socially distant world. Our company’s growth accelerated quickly and we’re thrilled that this investment will allow us to continue carrying our vision forward while driving new product offerings that will change the way retailers, trade shows, and events conduct product sampling forever.” said Marie Chevrier, Founder and CEO of Sampler
