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In Press Coverage, Sustainability

COI Energy Featured on NYSE Floor Talk

SAP.iO startup COI Energy was recently invited to participate on NYSE Floor talk.

COI Energy stands for “Circle of Influence.” Founder & CEO SaLisa Berrien named her company after the people and organizations like @SAP_iO that help to propel her company forward.  SaLisa said that she learned how to make a dollar out of $0.15 from my grandparents. This has helped COI Energy thrive during and beyond the pandemic. They are helping businesses eradicate energy waste in their facilities and repurpose the waste to balance the electric grid, protect the environment and uplift marginalized communities with clean energy resources. Enterprise businesses can find us them on the SAP AppStore and join the movement by quadrupling their impact with COI Energy.

Learn about the SAP partnership and more on today’s #NYSEFloorTalk #BlackBusinessMonth

See interview here…

In Awards, Supply Chain Management, Business Technology Platform

Astraea and NaVis Identified as Leaders in Location and Geospatial Intelligence by IDC

Astraea and NaVis were identified as innovative solutions for location and geospatial intelligence in a recent IDC Market Glance report. Creating intelligence is only possible when an enterprise combines data (internal or external) with analytics and has the underlying tools and structures to store, organize, and maintain the data. Therefore, examining the location and geospatial intelligence market requires considering data, analytics and visualization, and location-enabled tools.

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In Paris, Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

Oslo-based foodtech company TotalCtrl receives investment from Newday

TotalCtrl, an Oslo-based food waste prevention software company, announced recently that it has received a significant investment from Norwegian investment company Newday.. Besides Newday, existing investors, including Loyal. VC, also invested. The company says it will use the funds to accelerate its growth nationally and internationally.

TotalCtrl is a foodtech company that leverages its Inventory Management System to help the food industry optimise the planning, purchasing, and use of food inventory by providing data-driven insights and decision support to make fact-based and sustainable choices.

The company works with Halden municipality, Nordic Choice, and Bergstadens hotel – which can show good results in food waste reduction and improved profitability.

Further, TotalCtrl is a certified B corp company, which means it maintains the highest standards in social and environmental impact globally.

“Today is a big day for us at TotalCtrl. The fact that Newday, through a comprehensive process, has chosen to invest significant amounts and not least to contribute important experience, expertise, and passion – means that we can now take the company to a new level. Moreover, Newday’s investment means that TotalCtrl now has the muscle to grow”, says Charlotte Aschim, CEO of TotalCtrl.

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In HR & People Engagement, Awards

Crosschq Named a Finalist in the 2022 SaaS Awards

 Crosschq, pioneers of the Talent Intelligence Cloud™, which is powering a revolution in data-driven hiring and people analytics, today shared it has been declared a finalist in the international business software program, The SaaS Awards. A partner of the popular Cloud Awards, the SaaS Awards strives to represent software from around the world across a number of categories. Crosschq has been recognized in the Best SaaS Product for Recruitment category.

A data-driven recruiting platform, Crosschq helps take the guesswork out of hiring, delivering valuable candidate insights and advanced analytics. The company’s suite of products supports streamlined processes, enhanced outcomes and improved quality of hire while integrating easily and securely into existing workflows.

James Williams, Head of Operations for the SaaS Awards, shared, “This year, the SaaS Awards received a very strong shortlist. All chosen finalists demonstrated a remarkable commitment to innovation. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many innovative solutions on the shortlist, but Crosschq proved to the judging panel it was a clear choice to make it to the next stage, with every possibility of being selected as the ultimate category winner.”

Crosschq CEO Mike Fitzsimmons commented, “Given the challenges associated with hiring and the number of companies looking to solve these problems, it’s a tremendous honor to stand out as a SaaS Award finalist and speaks directly to what differentiates Crosschq. We’re not just another solution provider; we’re changing how companies think about recruiting and making a measurable impact for our customers.”

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In CRM & Customer Experience

How Zoovu secured Spotlight Status and became the fastest riser in the SAP Store in 2022

It’s hard to look at the last 6 months here at Zoovu and not be incredibly proud of what we’ve built and continue to build, we announced a $169 million Series C round with FTV Capital  to continue establishing ourselves as the go-to solution for Discovery experiences and we’ve continued to strengthen our partnership with SAP.  As of August, Zoovu is featured in the SAP Store as the Spotlight solution for their over 425,000 customers.

As I mentioned in our post about participating in SAP’s SAP.iO program this past spring, I’m a firm believer in the idea “We are Better Together.” When an SAP customer integrates Zoovu, we both benefit from showcasing how solutions work together to provide everything a business needs to thrive and meet their customer needs and expectations. In essence, SAP and Zoovu complement each other and supercharge customer experiences as a unified solution.  For this reason and more (read on to find out), SAP continues to highlight Zoovu as a game changer for their customers to supercharge content discovery with a variety of experiences powered by AI and semantic knowledge.

When I look at the value of Zoovu in the market and specifically for SAP’s customers, it’s a trite but true pandemic lesson: the digitization of sales impacted businesses of all types, those who sell to consumers and those who sell to businesses. For B2B organizations, they were scrambling to adjust to a digital first world and facing the reality of “how do we communicate and sell complex offerings online?” for the first time.

This shift of streamlining operations to drive business cost savings while still making impact requires a solution like Zoovu. By tackling time and money drains on businesses, such as providing continuous enrichment of product content and enabling self-service content discovery experiences, Zoovu is an incredibly powerful platform for any business selling on digital channels. Regardless of selling model, we automate any sales conversation and content discovery at scale.

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In HR & People Engagement, Awards

Paradox Named Human Resource Executive Top Product of the Year For Third Time in Four Years

Paradox, the conversational recruiting software company helping companies like Unilever, McDonald’s, and General Motors get hiring work done faster by automating repetitive tasks, was today named HR Executive Top Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive.

This is the company’s third HRE Top Product honor since its first entry in 2019 — and this year was presented for Traitify by Paradox’s Animated Assessment, a revolutionary personality assessment built around custom, relatable images that have been intentionally and scientifically crafted to produce more accurate assessment results.

In 2019, Paradox won HRE’s top award for its Hire product — which is fundamentally changing high-volume hiring through fast, mobile-first experiences that automate up to 90% of the process for field hiring managers. And in 2021, the company won for Experience Assistant — which transforms how people engage with career sites, instantly turning them into dynamic, hyper-personalized experiences that evolve with every interaction.

“We’ve always believed that if you get the people thing right, you can build teams that change the world — and in many organizations, assessments play a key role in that mission,” said Paradox CEO Aaron Matos. “I’m proud to work with a team that cares so deeply about building the next generation of recruiting technology. This is just another step in the journey to help our clients transform how they build great teams.”

In an article announcing this year’s winners, judges from Human Resource Executive noted: “Candidate and employee assessments don’t have to be a burden. Paradox has done the nearly impossible by creating an innovative assessment program that is more engaging, perceptive and frankly looks like a dating app. The software provides reports to both hiring managers and candidates based on research culled from more than 5,000 study participants, including a match score for each candidate using Paradox’s underlying Ideal Candidate Profile.”

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In HR & People Engagement

Plum Named a Top HR Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive®

Revolutionary talent assessment platform Plum today announced the selection of Plum Leadership Potential as a Top HR Product of 2022 by Human Resource Executive® magazine and the HR Technology Conference & Exposition®.

Every year, the editors of Human Resource Executive and program chair of the HR Technology Conference review Top HR Products of the Year submissions with the goal of highlighting new solutions that improve and enhance the work of HR leaders in today’s ever-evolving business landscape. Submissions were judged on product innovation, value added to the HR function, intuitiveness for the user and the ability to deliver on what they promise. Winners represent six critical HR competencies, with Plum selected in the Talent Management category.

“For more than three decades, Human Resource Executive has recognized the groundbreaking technologies that offer real value to HR leaders. This year, our judges reviewed many innovative solutions, with the difficult task of selecting only a handful of winners,” said Elizabeth Clarke, executive editor of Human Resource Executive. “Plum stood out for its Leadership Potential offering, which brings a new approach to talent management and makes it easy for employers to identify their next generation of leaders.”

Plum Leadership Potential enables organizations to identify high-potential talent using proven science combined with scalable technology. Leveraging the results of Plum’s single assessment, organizations gain the ability to measure leadership potential in every employee instantly. This ensures all members of the workforce get considered equitably for their aptitude. Using objective criteria, Plum Leadership Potential helps organizations strip away bias and build more diverse leadership pipelines. By surfacing employees with leadership potential – regardless of race, gender or background – employers can engage, develop and retain future leaders who will be critical to their organization’s success moving forward.

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In Uncategorized

Alexa Gorman, the Startup Whisperer at SAP

Alexa Gorman, Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries & Intrapreneurship at SAP, appeared on the n-tv podcast “So techt Deutschland.” Gorman discussed her 23 years at SAP, the company’s culture, and how she selects startups for investment. She said that cooperation between SAP and startups is not a one-way street, in fact they benefit from each other. “There must be added value for both sides. Then this cooperation is really successful,” she said. Gorman also discussed where she is looking for new partners and how founders differ in the different countries.

Original Article Here…

In Funding Announcement, HR & People Engagement

Talent Development Platform GrowthSpace Announces $25 Million in Series B Funding

GrowthSpace, the world’s first outcome-focused talent development platform, today announced $25 million in Series B funding led by Zeev Ventures. Existing investors M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund) and Vertex Ventures participated in this round, which brings the total amount raised to $44 million.

“We’re thrilled with the Series B investment led by Oren Zeev, that enables us to continue partnering with hundreds of forward-thinking companies looking to strengthen investments in the future of their employees, who will be able to drive business KPIs and impact performance through our outcome focused talent development platform,” stated Omer Glass, CEO and Cofounder of GrowthSpace. “The demand for our solutions is strong as we achieved a 5x ARR growth in the last 12 months. Additionally, we have built a network of 1,500 experts in over 50 countries, and look forward to expanding our reach and impact even further.”

The funds will be used to scale global operations to help meet the rapidly accelerating demand of the G2 category leader. The GrowthSpace talent development platform connects employees to relevant experts at scale, solving a major challenge in a $360* billion+ market.  As a market leader in supporting employee professional growth, Growthspace platform understands the challenge of an individual or a group and leverages sophisticated algorithms to match them with a proven, relevant expert for a development sprint. This can then be implemented dynamically and at scale, across an entire organization.

The platform can be implemented modularly to address specific requirements or set up as a comprehensive solution, enabling companies to plan and execute various talent development programs. Customers can utilize individual and group coaching, mentoring (internal & external), training, workshops, and lectures. GrowthSpace enables HR and organizational development executives to dynamically allocate resources and funds between different types of programs based on corporate goals and people requirements. This enables a centralized wallet powering a decentralized system that can be driven by each individual and team.

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In Uncategorized

Providing Access to Opportunity for Innovators to Start Up with SAP

Starting a new business is never easy. For underrepresented entrepreneurs such as women and people of color, however, the challenges can be especially daunting.

In 2018, SAP’s network of no-equity-ask external startup accelerators SAP.iO Foundries was embarking on a journey: exponentially scale its global ecosystem of innovative startup partners to help SAP customers extend their SAP software landscape. At that time, the team was shocked to learn that despite the fact diversity yields better innovation, the majority of venture funding primarily goes to invest in startups founded or led by a very narrow demographic. For example, only 2.3% of global venture capital (VC) funding went to startups with only female founders, and Black women in the U.S. had raised just .0006% of all tech venture funding since 2006.

As a steward of purpose-driven innovation, SAP recognized its duty to be intentional about how it invested in and scaled its ecosystem of software startup partners. It recognized that driving inclusive entrepreneurship in the enterprise software and VC industries could accelerate innovation, reduce bias, and drive better outcomes.

In 2019, SAP launched SAP.iO No Boundaries, the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented and underestimated entrepreneurs in the business software industry. SAP pledged to scale SAP.iO Foundries with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship and set an ambitious target of supporting at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023.

The SAP.iO team crafted a clear and effective strategy to achieve this commitment:

  • People: Scaled a diverse team and mentor community of leaders with connections to different communities around the world. The SAP.iO Foundries team is currently 63.3% female and represents more than 15 nationalities, compared to SAP’s overall 34.3% women in the workforce.
  • Processes: Committed to investing the time to empower more entrepreneurs to start up with SAP, review every application for the program, set transparent criteria for selecting startups to participate in programs, and regularly measuring progress.
  • Participation: Attended, sponsored, and hosted events such as Culture Shifting Weekend, StartOut Equity Summit, HBCU National Braintrust, and more to expose underrepresented founders and their investors to the opportunity of partnering with SAP.
  • Partnerships: Created partnerships with organizations including the United Nations Foundation, World Economic Forum, Les Déterminés, Latino Startup Alliance, Gentry, Chatham House, StartOut, and more.

Great Impact

Implementing this strategy has been so successful that by July 2022, SAP.iO achieved its goal of supporting 200 startups founded or led by a female or underrepresented entrepreneur six months ahead of schedule. The 200 startups make up 44% of the SAP.iO portfolio of 450 startups and tie or surpass their counterparts in benchmarks used to measure success. They represent:

  • 51% of the exits in the portfolio (18 of 35)
  • 50% of the unicorns in the portfolio (two of four)
  • 42% in cumulative VC raised by startups within the SAP.iO portfolio (US$2.7 billion of $6.6 billion)
  • A greater likelihood to progress in their partnership with SAP

One of the most successful startups in the SAP.iO portfolio is female-founded Censia Inc. It recently joined the SAP Endorsed Apps, a designation achieved by less than one percent of SAP Store partner solutions. Censia augments HR management software provided by SAP with AI-powered resume review, passive sourcing, and candidate evaluation software. Censia has successfully closed 14 go-to-market opportunities with SAP and major brands such as Tapestry Inc., TJ Maxx, and PepsiCo Inc.

Censia CEO Joanna Riley reflects: “Entrepreneurship is about continuous learning and to be able to be part of SAP.iO, I feel like I’m cheating. I’m learning from lessons that have been learned through years of experience that SAP has acquired and taking those and applying them to my business so that we have a head start. I would recommend any company, especially [those] focused on enterprise, to look at SAP.iO as a real solution to build a produce that is great for enterprise.”

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In Supply Chain Management

7 SAP.iO Startups Identified by CB Insights as Leaders Innovating Connected Packaging and Labeling Across the Supply Chain

From authentication tech to cold chain packaging, CB Insights looked at the companies offering connected packaging and labeling tech to improve transparency, sustainability, and freshness across the supply chain. Seven startups from the SAP.iO Foundries portfolio were identified as leaders in the space. Scantrust was recognized in the Authentication Tech category, CodeCheck and EVRTHNG were recognized in the Connected Packaging & Smart Labels category, EON was recognized in the Fashion Traceability category, Algramo and Limeloop were recognized in the Reusable Packaging Platforms category, and Connecting Food was recognized in the Food Traceability category.

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In Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Manufacturing companies plan their material purchases for production with this AI

Read why SAP Customers like Merck work with GenLots

Dear reader,

If you are looking for …

  1. Latest AI innovation for more sustainable supply chain management
  2. A way to rapidly decrease costs in upstream logistics
  3. An increased digitalization of your operations
  4. A better understanding of your supply chain triangle (costs, cash, and service)
  5. A product already integrated with your SAP system

…for your manufacturing company, then read on:

Why AI in upstream logistics and why now?

SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce ($46 trillion) and 99 of the 100 largest companies in the world are SAP customers (SAP Corporate Factsheet, July 2022). SAP’s utmost priority is to connect these enterprises in a global sustainable business network.

As we partner with innovative startups like GenLots, we still put our customers first and we leverage the vast number of businesses worldwide that run on SAP to act smarter, more efficiently and more sustainably.

At the recent Viva Technology 2022 in Paris — Europe’s biggest tech event where business meets innovation, my team at SAP.iO (SAP’s startup program) was thrilled to host our partner startup GenLots and discuss on stage how they’ve helped SAP’s customer Merck, a large pharmaceutical company, adapt their upstream logistics (i.e. all operations related to the sourcing of goods destined to be assembled in production) to the challenges of today.

What is GenLots?

GenLots is an AI application helping leading manufacturing companies to achieve their sustainability and efficiency goals through the digitalization of supply and upstream logistics.

In practice, usage of GenLots looks like this:

Let’s say a manufacturing company uses Active Ingredient X in its production and knows the production requirements for this material for the 12 months to come, i.e. the dates on which it will be used and in which quantity. GenLots will automatically compute the Total Cost of sourcing of this material for the next 12 months, including the cost of the material itself (which can be influenced by quantity discounts), the cost of bringing a batch to the manufacturing site each time an order is placed (quality control or transport fees for example), and the cost of holding it until it is used in production (inventory cost).

According to these costs, GenLots’ AI will then optimize the timing and quantity of each order. It may group certain orders to reach a better price, reschedule some deliveries, etc. The savings associated to these changes can reach up to 10% of the Total Cost.

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In Supply Chain Management, Shanghai

Geek+ announces $100 million series E1 financing round with strategic investment from Intel, valued over $2 billion

Geek+, the global leader in autonomous mobile robot technologies, announced it has closed a new, $100 million series E1 funding series, with the company valued at over $2 billion. Investors in the round include Intel Capital, Vertex Growth, and Qingyue Capital Investment. The company will use this funding to accelerate its global market expansion and invest in its AMR technology research and development for key product innovation.

In early 2021, Geek+ closed a previously undisclosed series D financing round led by CPE. In 2021, Geek+ registered annual revenue of $150 million and over $300 million in orders. In the first half of 2022, Geek+’s order volume doubled compared to the same period in 2021, and the company expects to maintain its 100% year-on-year growth trajectory for the remainder of 2022.

“Thanks to the successful implementation of our global business strategy, the transformative value of our products, and the surge of the smart logistics market, Geek+ is well-positioned to further capture the outsized growth opportunities,” said Yong Zheng, founder and CEO of Geek+. “Geek+ has passed the stage of simply pursuing scale and is now moving towards the stage of commercial success with profitability and positive cash flow.”

“We are confident in our commercial success and future growth trajectory. The labor-intensive logistics sector has a strong demand for robotic automation, and the market is still largely underserved. With the first-mover advantage, Geek+ has already developed a solid competitive advantage in global markets, bringing in a constant driving force for business development. This, coupled with our three technology pillars of robotics, systems, and algorithms, has not only allowed Geek+ to develop a full product line, but also improve R&D efficiency while reducing R&D costs.”

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In New York, Business Technology Platform

Kargo Acquires Ziggeo to Expand Footprint Into Online Video

Kargo is acquiring video software-as-a-service company Ziggeo to create a bespoke online video offering.

Kargo, best known as an ad-tech firm that offers software to connect publishers and advertisers, is more specialized than a typical supply-side or demand-side platform, with a focus on unique ad units and advanced features, a space known in the industry as “rich media.” This is where Ziggeo comes in.

The video platform’s customizability makes it ideal for Kargo’s vision of creating bespoke online video ad units, said Ziggeo founder Oliver Friedmann. The SAAS platform is not in the advertising business. In fact, its use cases include proctoring online tests and tracking systems for job applicants.

Kargo will maintain Ziggeo’s software-as-a-service business while focusing new technological advancements of the underlying Ziggeo software toward ad tech, said Kargo CEO Harry Kargman.

The Ziggeo acquisition is the latest in a string of deals and new business lines for Kargo. In August, 2020, Kargo acquired Rhombus, which focuses on targeting social embeds within articles. In March, 2021, the company unveiled Fabrik, a content management system for publishers. Later that year, Kargo acquired StitcherAds, which specializes in ecommerce-focused ads on social platforms and in March 2022, the company bought attention-focused mobile ad-tech business Parsec.

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In Supply Chain Management

Armed with $19.5M, LiveEO plots a big data course between satellite geospatial information and industry

When it comes to geospatial and mapping data and how they are leveraged by organizations, satellites continue to play a critical role when it comes to sourcing raw information. Getting that raw data into a state that can be usable by enterprises, however, is a different story. Today, a Berlin-based startup called LiveEO, which has built a satellite analytics platform to do just that, has raised €19 million ($19.5 million) on the back of strong demand for its tech from companies working in transportation and energy infrastructure.

The rise of companies like LiveEO comes on the back of a period of rapid commercialization in infrastructure intended to be used in space, typified by companies like SpaceX but also others building, for example, a new wave of satellites themselves. As with the larger opportunity in enterprise IT, big data players like LiveEO are essentially the second wave of that development: applications built leveraging that infrastructure.

“Someone has to build applications for end users to really make it simple to use and integrate that data into processes,” explained Daniel Seidel, who co-founded and co-leads LiveEO with Sven Przywarra. “That is what we are doing at scale.”

MMC Ventures is leading the investment, which is not tied to a specific round, and in addition to €17 million of venture capital, the round also includes backing from two public bodies, the European Commission and Investitionsbank Berlin. Previous backers Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures (DvH Ventures), Helen Ventures, Matterwave and motu ventures, and new backers Segenia Capital and Hannover Digital Investments (HDInv), are also participating. LiveEO had previously raised a €5.25 million Series A in 2021, and it said that in that time, it’s tripled revenues with customers in five continents and more than doubled its headcount to about 100, with more than half of those engineers and data scientists.

As a German company, LiveEO is one of a small but growing group of startups in Europe capitalizing on increasing interest in space among investors in recent years, despite the wider pressures on tech finance. Relatively speaking, though, the sums are still modest compared with other areas of tech: LiveEO says that this €19 million round is one of the largest in earth observation tech in Europe. LiveEO is focused on enterprise, specifically industrial applications for its analytics — although given the geopolitical landscape, and how that is bringing a new host of interested parties playing the part of financiers to foster its growth, it will be interesting to see how that develops.

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