La startup Andjaro prend la première place du classement “Talent management”. Elle permet aux entreprises de gérer et d’optimiser en temps réel le staffing opérationnel interne des entreprises, en priorisant le recours à la main d’œuvre interne. A la clef, des économies considérables !
As the coronavirus crisis escalated in March, Emil Mikhailov, CEO of the AI startup XIX, sent an email to his employees, warning them to prepare for a recession when their top priority will be to “to survive the storm.”
“It’s not clear what is going to happen,” he wrote.
Then he made a vow: “We as a team will not lose anyone. We will sacrifice short-term to make sure everyone is OK.”
The downturn has upended the world of startups, many of which are scrambling for ways to cut expenses, including layoffs. But some startups are stressing the need to protect their employees’ jobs as they figured out ways to survive the downturn.
Some CEOs and founders, like Mikhailov, have even promised not to cut anyone.
Every day the news features stories about how businesses are adapting to the COVID-19 crisis. Whether it’s small companies developing new revenue streams to stay afloat, or larger ones reorienting operations to provide critical support, one thing is clear: Businesses are pivoting quickly.
But there can be missteps too. COVID-19 related promotions fill my social feed and inbox. Buy a comfy work-from-home bra! Puzzles (that are sold out) to help entertain the family!
Bonin Bough is a digital marketing guru, startup investor, and author of “Txt Me: Your Phone Has Changed Your Life. Let’s Talk about It.” His latest venture, OpenMessage, creates dynamic, branded text messages to drive customer loyalty. The company was selected by SAP.iO Foundry (a global startup accelerator) to participate in its new cohort of customer experience and retail companies.
The pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) is offering digital therapeutics (DTx) vendor SilverCloud Health’s line of tech-enabled mental healthcare solutions to the consumers it serves free-of-charge during the coronavirus pandemic, FierceHealthcare reports.
For context, PBMs generally act as middlemen between drug makers, retailers, and insurers, and are largely responsible for setting the price of pharmaceuticals. But in the past year, Express Scripts and other leading players have branched into the digital health realm to craft lists of effective DTx tools that their payer clients can sift through, which can help them choose the solutions they’d like to offer their members.
SilverCloud Health, the world’s leading digital mental health platform for healthcare systems and providers, health plans, and employers, today announced a $16 million Series B funding round led by MemorialCare Innovation Fund, which included LRVHealth, OSF Ventures and UnityPoint Health Ventures, elevating the company’s total funding to more than $30 million. Existing investors Act Venture Capital and B Capital Group participated in the round as well.
Four of the Series B investors, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, UnityPoint Health Ventures, OSF Ventures and LRVHealth are associated with leading U.S. healthcare systems that currently use SilverCloud, a testament to the quality and results of the platform.
“We are committed to providing truly impactful mental health support to all those with need,” said Ken Cahill, CEO of SilverCloud. “The need has never been greater than during this unprecedented global crisis. SilverCloud enables easier, earlier access to clinically validated mental health care that shows results equivalent to face-to-face care for the 1 in 5 people with a diagnosable mental health condition. With millions of people being asked to stay home and health systems needing to prioritize care, we recognize the heightened need for virtual support as the world copes with the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, SilverCloud is providing its clients, free of charge, expanded access to its platform to even more healthcare professionals, their families and patients to help make a difference for those in need in the current crisis.”
It’s now boast-worthy to participate in sharing-economy.
Solutions must be more than just green, which is why Stephanie Benedetto talks up financial and inventory-management benefits as she makes the case for Queen of Raw, a technology platform she cofounded in 2018 to connect people and brands with leftover fabrics—an estimated 15 percent of every production run. Queen of Raw caters to home sewers as well as big fashion companies, and Benedetto estimates that dead-stock textiles could become a $120 billion business. “It’s insane, the volume that is out there,” says Benedetto, who has listed fabrics up to a million yards long, or as short as a few yards, for a base of over 130,000 clients. “Never doubt you can change the world,” she says. “We will.”
Cloud-based enterprise software firm SAP has established a €3 million COVID-19 Emergency Fund to support the urgent needs of the World Health Organization (WHO), the CDC Foundation, and smaller nonprofits and social enterprises that work on the front lines serving local communities in crisis. “SAP stands with the WHO and supports its leadership in coordinating the global effort to mobilize the fight against COVID-19,” said Alexandra van der Ploeg, head of SAP CSR. “Specifically, SAP is donating €1 million to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the WHO hosted by Swiss Philanthropy Foundation and the United Nations Foundation for virus prevention and detection. SAP is also making resources and expertise available to help our nonprofit and social enterprise partners effectively shift to remote operations. We want to help ensure they can maintain their much-needed services to their communities and not lay off staff.” Meanwhile, SAP is collaborating with an ecosystem of business-to-business startup partners through its SAP.iO program – startups which center on managing a distributed workforce. The list includes secondment and staff re-allocation tool Andjaro; Bravely, a platform connects employees to on-demand professional coaching; Clearmetal, which enables accurate delivery forecasts and exception management in multi-modal container-based transport; Cultivate which facilitates growth in-management capability and organizational health through passive data acquisition and analysis of employee feedback; Disco which enables employees to recognize and commend each other, building employee engagement; mobile microlearning platform Gnowbe; Goodr, a startup tackling hunger by connecting sources of surplus food with those in need, such as food banks; the MeQuilibrium well-being and performance platform; Plum, a psychometric-based talent acquisition and management platform; WeGift, a leading platform for real-time on-demand digital incentives, payouts, and rewards due to eGift cards; and Wethos, which curates virtual teams of contingent creative and marketing experts.
SAP.iO Foundry Paris annonce le lancement ce jour de son nouveau programme d’accélération HR Tech et du « Future of Work ». L’accélérateur a retenu 8 startups innovantes dans le domaine pour accompagner leur développement technologique et commercial. A l’issue du programme, les technologies des jeunes pousses viendront compléter la solution RH numéro 1 du marché SAP SuccessFactors utilisée par 125 millions d’utilisateurs à travers le monde. Une opportunité unique pour les startups mais également pour SAP qui entend renforcer son offre aux entreprises de technologies intégrées qui améliorent le quotidien et la qualité de vie au travail de leurs employés.
Paris, 24 mars 2020 – SAP.iO Foundry Paris annonce le lancement ce jour de son nouveau programme d’accélération HR Tech et du « Future of Work ». L’accélérateur a retenu 8 startups innovantes dans le domaine pour accompagner leur développement technologique et commercial. A l’issue du programme, les technologies des jeunes pousses viendront compléter la solution RH numéro 1 du marché SAP SuccessFactors utilisée par 125 millions d’utilisateurs à travers le monde. Une opportunité unique pour les startups mais également pour SAP qui entend renforcer son offre aux entreprises de technologies intégrées qui améliorent le quotidien et la qualité de vie au travail de leurs employés
Min Chen, CEO of Silicon Valley data analytics startup Wisy, was born in China but grew up in Panama, where she lived through the turmoil of the 1989 US invasion. She and her co-founders are “wartime survivors” who endured the violence and the disruption of that period.
“That experience, somehow, has prepared us for this crisis,” she told Business Insider. “We come from places where there was nothing, even in times of prosperity.”
Like other startups, Wisy’s biggest challenge right now is cash flow, but Chen and her cofounders hope keep their team together. While other startups have begun shedding jobs, they’re taking a different approach. “Instead of laying people off, we decided to all take pay cuts,” she said.
That adaptation feels critical: “Companies that die are those that couldn’t adapt,” she said.
In Wisy’s case, new opportunities have come up because of the crisis. An international organization that wants to use Wisy’s technology for tracing infections and anticipating outbreaks has invited it to apply for grants.
“Even if we don’t have the grant, we would help,” she said.
Scientific data is proving to be the bedrock of workforce resiliency in a world reeling from COVID-19. Commonly misperceived as an inborn trait, resilience is actually a tangible skill that Massachusetts-based meQuilibrium is building in employees at Fortune 1000 companies worldwide.
“Every leader is talking about adaptive capacity, resilience, and agility,” said Jan Bruce, co-founder and CEO of meQuilibrium. “We are democratizing executive coaching, helping people manage the stress and burnout associated with constant transformation and rapid change.”
Managing stress with resilience
As the pandemic spreads with head-spinning speed, meQuilibrium’s interactive cloud-based platform appears ideally matched to what’s become a rightfully panicked workforce. Tracking steadily rising stress levels of employees on the meQuilibrium platform, the company sped up product updates to deliver refreshed daily tips and tool kits for managing anxiety, uncertainty, and isolation.
The startup’s worldwide customers cut across industries like pharmaceuticals, finance, telecommunications, packaged goods, and automotive. Many organizations have reported measurable benefits to date. One company reduced high anxiety by 36 percent, high stress by 27 percent, and depression by 24 percent in its large employee population.
Taking an idea and turning it into a full-fledged company is no easy feat, to say the least. Nobody can do it on their own, so access to support (or lack thereof) can make or break a business. That’s why Cartier has set out to assist female entrepreneurs in their quest to make positive impacts on the world via the Cartier Women’s Initiative, which will be awarding over $1 million in funding this year. Cartier just announced the 21 finalists for 2020, and they all have brilliant ideas to share.
Among the 21 finalists are three exceptional women from North America. First up is Stephanie Benedetto of New York City, who “buys and sells unused textiles, via the Queen of Raw marketplace, keeping them out of landfills and making the world a less wasteful place,” per a statement. The fashion industry could certainly use more help in becoming more sustainable, and Benedetto could easily become a driving force.
SAP.iO Fund, the startup investment arm of SAP SE (NYSE: SAP), has taken a stake in in Deepgram, provider of a high-accuracy automatic speech recognition solution that can be easily trained to understand new language models, accents and speech patterns.
With a new approach to speech recognition, Deepgram’s flexible API architecture enables real-time transcription for customer support, sales engagement and video/phone interviews and makes them searchable. Wing Ventures led the Series A round, which included existing investors Nvidia, Y Combinator and Compound.
This cohort will work to develop technologies to enable businesses to extend the value of their investments in SAP S/4HANA and SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions.
“Singapore has developed a vibrant startup ecosystem and is the gateway to the ASEAN region,” said Rachel Barger, SAP South East Asia president and managing director. “SAP continually partners with other solution providers, including startups in Singapore, to help organizations unlock value with the latest Industry 4.0 technologies.”
SAP.iO Foundry Singapore accelerates innovation and drives new business models for SAP. The zero-equity-ask program provides startups with curated support from within and outside of SAP, exposure to SAP technologies, and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers. The program will conclude at an SAP.iO Demo Day in the beginning of June.
SINGAPORE — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today kicked off a new SAP.iO Foundry Singapore program, with five international startups that will help SAP customers become Industry 4.0 businesses and go beyond digital manufacturing to seamlessly connect all aspects of an entire company.
This cohort will work to develop technologies to enable businesses to extend the value of their investments in SAP S/4HANA and SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions.
“Singapore has developed a vibrant startup ecosystem and is the gateway to the ASEAN region,” said Rachel Barger, SAP South East Asia president and managing director. “SAP continually partners with other solution providers, including startups in Singapore, to help organizations unlock value with the latest Industry 4.0 technologies.”
SAP.iO Foundry Singapore accelerates innovation and drives new business models for SAP. The zero-equity-ask program provides startups with curated support from within and outside of SAP, exposure to SAP technologies, and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers. The program will conclude at an SAP.iO Demo Day in the beginning of June.
“The SAP.iO Foundry Singapore spring acceleration program will see the development of new Industry 4.0 solutions for companies in the region, and contribute to bolstering the ecosystem for startups in Singapore,” said Kiren Kumar, chief digital industry officer of Digital Industry Singapore, a government office that supports the growth of Singapore’s technology sector. “We look forward to strengthening our longstanding partnership with SAP, as we innovate and create new solutions out of Singapore.”
The following startups are part of the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore Spring 2020 program:
Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews and @sap_iO.
Goal is to Get Needed Medical Supplies Where They Need to Be Faster During Coronavirus-Related Supply Chain Challenges
ClearMetal, a leader in Continuous Delivery Experience (CDX) for Supply Chain and Logistics solutions, announced today that it is offering the power of its CDX platform free of charge for the duration of the pandemic crisis to companies tasked with shipping needed healthcare and medical supplies to combat COVID-19. ClearMetal is committed to onboarding companies as quickly as possible so immediate decisions can be made and solutions implemented based on real-time data. To ensure critical healthcare and medical materials are prioritized, companies must qualify for the free offering based on shipment volume.*
“It’s important that all of us, companies and individuals, come together to contribute what we can to help mitigate the challenges this pandemic presents,” said Adam Compain, ClearMetal CEO. “The reason the shipping industry is so affected when ‘black swan’ events such as the coronavirus occurs is that most supply chains are static and not built to dynamically respond nor react quickly to situations like these. Companies tasked with getting critical healthcare materials where they need to go require a better solution and it’s our duty to let them use it for free during this crisis.”
ClearMetal’s data shows that there has been a 20-30 percent increase in delays, 10-15 percent increase in dwell times and 50 to 100 percent increase in rolls since January. The impact of logistics challenges that affect the speed of shipments for essential items in the fight vs COVID-19 brings an enormous financial impact to companies in billions of dollars of lost sales, written-off inventory and more.
