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SAP.iO In Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience

Virtual shopping startup Hero launches short-form video feature

Hero, a virtual shopping platform, has introduced a “Stories” feature, the company announced on Thursday. The tool allows brands to create short-form, shoppable videos highlighting their products that can be shared within their online store.

According to the company survey of about 1,500 consumers, the company found that shoppers wanted short, relevant videos, more product experts than influencers and the ability to visualize products in an authentic way. Hero’s survey showed that 64% found the inability to see products up close as they would in person was their least favorite aspect of online shopping.

“Static product images and boring text descriptions simply aren’t cutting it,” the company wrote in its announcement. “Today’s shoppers want to see real video content about their favorite products, from experts who know them best.”

A Quick Dive into Retail Tech Startups In Europe

Statistics say that since 2015, nearly $130 bn has been invested across the continent in nearly 23,600 equity deals to tech startups in the European continent alone. It is interesting to note that despite the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact of the same on the global supply chains, 2020 still managed to produce major tech breakthroughs along with some profound startup launches and growth stories.

From shelf monitoring to increasing brand engagement, retail tech startups in Europe have developed amazing solutions for the global market. European Retail Tech Startups have driven $26 trillion revolution and the retail tech landscape in the continent seems to be at its peak.

EY Announces Dimitri Sirota Of BigID As An Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2021 New York Award Finalist

Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) today announced that Dimitri Sirota, CEO and Co-Founder of BigID was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2021 New York Award finalist. Now in its 35th year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year program honors unstoppable business leaders whose ambition, ingenuity and courage in the face of adversity help catapult us from the now to next and beyond.

Award winners will be announced during a special virtual celebration on August 3rd and will become lifetime members of an esteemed community of Entrepreneur Of The Year alumni from around the world.

Roambee’s Real-Time Demand Signal Is Transforming Interstate Batteries’ Fulfilment Logistics

Roambee‘s real-time demand-signal solution for Interstate Batteries has earned the Top Supply Chain Project Award 2021 from Supply & Demand Chain Executive (SDCE) . The ~$1.5B Interstate Batteries, the largest independent battery distributor in North America, boasts a network of 250+ distributors and more than 250K+ dealer locations. Interstate Batteries is deploying Roambee in upgrading its fulfillment logistics to a demand-based dynamic model. The company’s transformation journey is designed to move it away from a milk-run consignment model.

A demand-driven dynamic logistics model requires live insight into batteries sold and stocked at every dealer location through either a centralized ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)/POS (Point of Sale) system or physically tracking the inventory. Standardizing POS machines or ERP systems across such a vast network of multi-brand retail dealers — many of which are small automotive service shops — was deemed impractical.

Explorium advises enterprises on improving and speeding up analytical machine learning

The key to successful artificial intelligence-based advanced analytical training is augmenting internal data with external, according to data science platform startup Explorium Inc.

The process is not easy, though. Problems include getting a hold of and managing that mass of external material.

“The key to any analytical problem is having the right data,” said Zach Booth, director of global partnerships and channels at Explorium.

Models are only as strong as the data they train on, but getting that needed, external data is challenging. “It’s manual, it’s tedious and it’s extremely time consuming,” he said.

Explorium claims it has a solution that includes a curated, data-source catalog coupled with a platform to integrate everything within an organization’s existing, internal material.

Booth spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Things in AI, Security & Life Sciences. They discussed how external data source platforms — taking advantage of the massive amounts of data being generated in the world — could improve and speed up analytical machine learning for individual organizations.

BigID Is A Finalist Of The Ventana Research 14th Digital Innovations Awards

BigID, a leader in data discovery and intelligence for privacy, protection and perspective, today announced it is a finalist in the Data category for this year’s annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards.

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards recognize vendors that have introduced noteworthy innovations in technology that advance business and IT. The Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency, productivity and the performance of an organization.

European Space Agency Support Jumpstarts LiveEO’s Product Development and Enables Market Leadership

Around 17 months after the initial proposal to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Business Applications Programme, Earth observation company LiveEO successfully concluded its Demonstration Project, proving the business viability of its solution utilising space technology. ESA’s support to LiveEO throughout the project implementation played a significant role in bringing its product to maturity, lifting its business to the next level and establishing its position as the world leader in satellite augmented infrastructure monitoring.

Demonstration Projects within ESA’s Business Applications Programme have to show clear potential to become sustainable in the post-project phase. To be eligible for funding, proposed projects must include user involvement and contribution, and benefit from the integrated use of one or more space assets.

LiveEO’s project SIM (Space-Enabled Full-Stack Solution for Infrastructure Monitoring) met these requirements: Utilising satellite data, an infrastructure monitoring platform has been established – in close dialogue with network operators in the verticals electricity, pipeline and railway in the United States and Europe. The solution developed in the course of the project effectively represents LiveEO’s core products on the market today.

Since the implementation’s kick-off, LiveEO’s monitoring solution has brought value to companies both inside and outside the project’s scope. The solution that encompasses vegetation analysis to detect any danger posed by trees to overhead electricity lines and railways, as well as the identification of ground movement and third party influences close to pipelines, has been rolled out to customers around the world.

Cogniac Presents on CogX Festival’s Lab to Live Stage, Named Finalist in 2021 Best AI Product Awards

Cogniac Corporation (“Cogniac”), a San Jose, California-based provider of enterprise-class Artificial Intelligence (AI) image and video analysis, yesterday presented on the enterprise value of the Cogniac AI visual platform on the CogX Lab to Live stage, and earned one of three finalist positions in the Best AI Product 2021 Awards in the Transport and Logistics category.

The annual, global leadership summit and festival of AI and transformational technology focused on addressing the question, “How do we get the next 10 years right?” Featured on the Lab to Live stage, Chuck Myers, CEO of Cogniac, Dr. Amy Wang, vice president of Systems, and Joel Honeyman, vice president of global Innovation at Doosan Bobcat, provided a deep-dive into the enterprise application of Cogniac’s visual AI platform demonstrated through Doosan Bobcat’s use in their industrial kitting process.

“We are thrilled to have been invited to participate in the 2021 CogX Festival and pleased to be named a finalist for Best AI Product in Transport and Logistics,” said Chuck Myers, CEO of Cogniac. “This is an exciting time for Cogniac’s development as the ground truth system of record for visual data, and transportation and logistics are just the beginning.”

CogX Best AI Product finalists and winners are selected by a team of expert judges including some of tech and global innovation’s prominent change leaders, recognizing a company’s effort to develop sustainable transportation and logistics interventions leveraging AI. Cogniac’s finalist designation recognizes their innovative work in visual data.

SetSail Announces Revenue Acceleration Programs To Align Sales Behaviors With Specific Growth Objectives

Silicon Valley Startup Improves On Its Industry-leading Revenue Execution Platform With A Host Of New Ai And Workflow Enhancements

SetSail, the Revenue Execution platform for sales, has launched a library of machine learning powered Revenue Acceleration Programs that extend its intelligent signals engine. Combined, these two products form a complete solution for driving predictable revenue growth for B2B businesses and digitally transform their sales processes.

“Despite the maturity of the CRM space, running efficient sales programs has always been the Achilles heel of revenue organizations,” said Haggai Levi, the CEO of SetSail. “By introducing a new layer of program management on top of SetSail’s intelligent signals, we are making it easy for sales managers to guide their teams towards in-quarter goals. Just like ABM ushered us into the age of programmatic marketing, Revenue Acceleration Programs ensure teams can rally around specific growth objectives — with clear accountability and higher impact on key behaviors.”

BP completes nationwide rollout with Too Good To Go

The Too Good To Go app lets consumers buy surplus food and drink from retailers, restaurants, pubs, and producers to stop it from going to waste. Consumers simply download the free Too Good To Go app and search for nearby businesses with unsold produce. They then purchase a ‘Magic Bag’ and collect it at an allotted time.

The surplus food app has now been successfully rolled out to all 292 company-owned and operated bp M&S Food Stores across the UK, having launched an initial pilot in Scotland and Essex in August 2020.

Since August 2020, the partnership has saved more than 138,000 Magic Bags of food from going to waste. The BP Magic Bags contain a mix of short-dated fresh groceries, food-to-go items, deli items, and ambient produce from M&S Food, Wild Bean Cafe, and other in-store ranges.

‘Shopify for physical stores’ raises £1.3m

Retail disrupter Mercaux has secured £1.3 million in new debt financing from Flashpoint Venture Debt.

The London firm helps transform retail stores from simple point of sale, into multi-purpose centres that deliver a personalised in-store customer experience and omnichannel sales, as well as serve as customer acquisition and remote selling channels.

It achieves this by deploying built-for-purpose modular in-store digital platform that connects stores to eCommerce and other systems, such as OMS, PIM and CRM.

The company’s in-store solutions are operated by store associates, or self-served by customers, and also reveal a rich pool of in-store customer behaviour data that can be leveraged in other channels.

Mercaux’s clients include Stadium Goods, Dufry, Holland & Barrett and TENDAM (formerly the Cortifiel Group), operating in more than 1,000 stores across the world.

Founder and CEO Olga Kotsur said: “What Shopify is for eCommerce, Mercaux is for physical stores.

Fintech MatchMove gets US$100m shot in the arm

FINTECH company MatchMove said it is receiving a US$100 million strategic investment from US-headquartered IT services group Nityo Infotech Corp at a US$600 million post-money valuation, which will make Nityo the startup’s largest shareholder.

Breeze Technologies Wins 2021 Future Hamburg Award

Today the 2021 Future Hamburg Award was presented as part of a digital awards ceremony at the International Innovation Day by Plug and Play Hamburg.

The winners of this year’s award are the high-impact startups Breeze Technologies, traceless materials, and Infinite Mobility. Based in Norway and Germany, these three startups convinced the Future Hamburg Award’s expert jury with their smart solutions for sustainable cities of the future.

Up-and-coming businesses from 15 countries had applied for the award. Bonus prizes by homePORT, a partner of the award, were also bestowed on the teams of Blue Atlas Robotics from Denmark and KONVOI from Germany.

The three winning teams will be invited to join a tailor-made programme by the Hamburg Startup Unit and will be able to take their business model or products to the next level as part of the Reallabor Hamburg mobility project. Moreover, they will be supported in building a high-quality industry network and establishing contacts with investors. The first-place startup, Breeze Technologies from Germany, will also be able to take part in an international four-week accelerator programme hosted by Plug and Play in Silicon Valley.

In addition, the homePORT innovation campus of the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) is contributing attractive bonus prizes: Blue Atlas Robotics from Denmark and KONVOI from Germany will have the opportunity to develop their products and solutions in the fields of logistics and maritime technologies at the HPA test field in Hamburg.

Strengthening Inclusivity through AI

Kishau Rogers is the Founder & CEO of Time Study, Inc., a venture-backed startup offering solutions for using machine learning, advanced natural language processing, and data science to automatically tell a story of how enterprise employees spend their time. She has a deep background in computer science, over 25 years of experience building enterprise technology solutions and more than 15 years of entrepreneurial leadership. This episode features discussions of current diversity issues and how Artificial Intelligence can empower underrepresented communities through inclusive algorithms in the future.

Listen Here…

SAP.iO In Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience

Popwallet’s Elias Guerra: ‘The pandemic was a catalyst for changing consumer behaviour’

As the payment journey continues to evolve, innovative methods are taking on a heightened role of importance, especially as global economies emerge from the pandemic.

Elias Guerra, Founder and CEO of Popwallet, spoke to Payment Expert about how the pandemic has shifted consumer habits and elevated the importance of mobile wallets.

Payment Expert: Firstly, can you tell us more about the Popwallet offering?

Elias Guerra: Popwallet is a Mobile Wallet Marketing Automation and Customer Experience Management Platform. Really, that’s just a fancy way of saying we provide software tools for brands to reach and engage their customers through mobile wallets like Apple Wallet and Google Pay.

Popwallet enables brands to leverage mobile wallets to deliver contactless customer experiences such as dynamic coupons and offers, loyalty, gift, and member ID cards, tickets, and other branded content. The mobile wallet enhances traditional marketing and communications tactics by replacing paper and plastic with a dynamic mobile engagement channel.

PE: How has the climate for mobile wallets changed over the past year?

EG: The pandemic really was a catalyst for shifting consumer behaviour. Think pre-pandemic: the value proposition for these mobile wallets was more about convenience. It was a little bit easier to use your credit card if it was on your mobile device as people’s mobile devices are with them at all times, so you’re less likely to forget something at home.

When the pandemic hit, the value proposition shifted to be driven more by consumer safety than convenience. The idea of touching a payment terminal or handling a plastic credit card or paper cash–any physical object–all of a sudden was undesirable; people no longer wanted to touch things as a means to try and stay safe from COVID-19. This definitely accelerated the use of mobile wallets and contactless transactions over the past year.

PE: What role do loyalty points and cards sit within the payment journey and how integral are they to providing an engaging user experience?

EG: Brands want to acquire new customers and retain loyal customers. A common way to do this is by rewarding customer behavior around purchases. The ability to reward through exclusive offers and loyalty is essential for acquiring and retaining these ideal customers, so being able to accomplish this through one common place, like a mobile wallet, is the ultimate combination of content and commerce.

It is a very powerful tool for brands, and provides utility and value for consumers. With the mobile wallet as the centerpiece of the loyalty program, brands are able to seamlessly tie loyalty and rewards to purchase behavior in a way that’s very convenient for their customer.