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Beyond Smart Cities: How Drones And Robotics Revolutionize Building Inspections

Underneath the gleaming surface of modern megacities is an archaic patchwork of antiquated building inspection processes long overdue for a 21st Century makeover. Meet H3 Dynamics, a cloud-based inspection services platform that’s using drones and ground robots as the eyes and ears of engineers currently grounded by the pandemic, and long hampered by last century norms.

h a level of safety, efficiency, and accuracy not possible before.”  

Perfecting the human plus machine equation

Headquartered in Singapore, H3 Dynamics’ customers include companies and government agencies worldwide across a long list of sectors such as smart cities, real estate, maritime, oil and gas, utilities, renewable energy, and mining. Customers might be private equity firms that own facilities, insurance companies, site operators, safety inspection and certification organizations, or regulators involved in legislating safety mandates. H3 Dynamics also has clients that resell its digitized visual monitoring services to their own customers. What customers have in common are hard to reach sites, from the tallest skyscrapers to remote industrial outposts that defy the most intrepid human being’s effort to scale. But this isn’t a story about machines replacing people.

Drones and ground robots, as well as people, can capture information from buildings with video and other camera images, bringing this data into the H3 Dynamics platform. The system uses technologies including AI and 3D modeling to create an interactive map that displays defects on the scanned structure surfaces, classifying potential risks, whether aesthetic anomalies or unsafe areas that require repair. Civil engineers or other recognized industry experts review and validate the automated findings. Customers can generate a written report that details safety risks. In addition, the company has created shelter systems where drones and other robots can get batteries recharged, and upload data to the H3 Dynamics cloud.

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SAP Startup Spotlight: Supervizor

Alban Clot, co-founder and Managing Director (Sales & Operations) of Supervizor, is a graduate of ESCP Europe. Alban began his career in the consulting industry. He held several positions until he became a partner within an independent consulting firm. He then co-founded Supervizor with Cyrille de Gastines and held the position of Director of Operations. Alban is now leading all business development, marketing and operations teams and is in charge of the international expansion of Supervizor. In this interview, he talks about what his company offers and what’s next for Supervizor.

E-3 Magazine: Why did you start Supervizor to begin with?

Alban Clot: Supervizor is a financial audit and internal control software for CFOs of mid-market and large companies. They usually need to get rid of accounting errors and comply with anti-fraud regulations but rely today on inefficient manual internal controls and outdated external audits that waste time and money. Supervizor is the first automatic financial anomaly detection software dedicated to corporate finance that leverages AI to analyze 100 percent of transactions and instantly highlight anomalies and frauds, remotely and on an ongoing basis. Supervizor was created in order to resolve a pain every company encounters. The technology is the result of more than 10 years of research. The goal is to respond to a problem that companies encounter during their audit process. Indeed, the need to bring auditors to the premises and the long and costly processes are difficult for many of them. Supervizor has created a remote and automated audit solution to facilitate the audit process. After several years of use, 100 percent of the accounts analyzed revealed significant anomalies.

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Exploring Circular Technology That Enables Sustainability, Inclusion, Net-Zero Waste, and Circular Cities with Dr. Garry Cooper of Rheaply

Dr. Garry Copper, neuroscientist turned sustainability technologist and circularity advocate had a pivotal moment – that our field is one-noted and we need to build a reuse bridge to capture value left in materials to transition to a sustainable world, a fly-wheel of wealth for communities who have been left out in the linear economy. Led by curiosity and studying how people remember and forget, he stumbled on CE, and his life was changed forever. He is the CEO of a Chicago-based technology start-up Rheaply that helps manage material flows and the life cycle of assets in the circular economy through reuse, realizing the 4.5 trillion dollar opportunity. 

I met Garry a few months back at a Green Biz event and had chills after hearing him evangelize how the “circular economy can only be realized when it’s real for everyone, and everyone can participate. Materials flow everywhere.” I was blown away as he described his purpose “to make his story not remarkable,” empowering more people and particularly women of color to participate and not just be a passive stakeholder in making our communities sustainable. Rheaply is a part of Circular-City Chicago in tri-sector partnerships including local non-profit community champions. We pull on the threads of digital divide and food sovereignty, and hydroponic farming in Chicago too.

The future is bright. In Episode 45, he explores his journey as someone who wants to make an impact, and a black man in an almost exclusively white environment for most of his career. His dream for Rheaply is to operationalizing a net-zero waste strategy and help businesses be efficient in a COVID world by reducing holding and carrying costs, capturing material value and leveraging spend avoidance. However, we diverge and in a provocative discussion to explore the business case “let’s keep our marketplace on Earth” (not to be missed)!

As we unpack the business model emergency for circularity, the big question emerged…has COVID accelerated or decelerated climate and sustainability transition? We talk about recent weather disruptions and fires in California, and the burning question is “can you do business when folks can’t go outside?” The Earth is the business case. It’s not climate change, it’s a climate emergency. We also talk about doing the right thing particularly when it comes to social responsibility in forced child labor and the black lives matter movement. Do either of these pressing social issues really “need” a business case or is this a space to step up and be good stewards in business?

One of Rheaply’s key partners is SAP and Rheaply is currently in the SAP.iO Foundry. Big shout out to John Licata at SAP.iO. Garry explores his journey as a start up founder with lessons earned for other technologists. Also shout out to John Holm, a friend of Supply Chain Revolution from Pyxera Global, and a Circular Cities-Chicago advocate. Also, shout out to Harold Chapman for all the work you do to feed and teach the students in Chicago that there is sustainable way to live, eat, and learn. 

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Computer vision in supply chain – a chat with Cogniac

Cogniac is a company that uses convolutional neural networks to quickly and painlessly automate visual inspection tasks in all kinds of scenarios.

I invited Cogniac CEO Chuck Myers, and Cogniac CTO and co-founder Bill Kish to come on the podcast to tell me more, and we had a fascinating conversation where I learned how their solution is being used in scenarios as diverse as railroads, automotive companies, and timber yards.

To learn how supply chain leaders improve end-to-end supply chain visibility, download the research study of 1,000 COO’s and Chief Supply Chain Officers – “Surviving and Thriving How Supply Chain Leaders minimize risk and maximize opportunities


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Foundry New York startup Rheaply Featured on The Digital Supply Chain podcast

We live on a planet of finite resources so it makes a lot of sense to make the maximum possible use of all the resources we have. This is the fundamental tenet underlying the Circular Economy (which we have talked about previously on this podcast), and it is also the principle that Rheaply is building a platform to address.

Rheaply is a startup working with the SAP.io foundry in New York and they have developed a platform to allow organisations maximise use of their assets, saving money in the process, and avoiding unnecessarily sending items to landfill.

Rheaply’s Chief of Staff, and Head of Sustainability to joined the podcast to come on the podcast and explain how Rheaply works.

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FindMine for SAP Commerce Cloud Now Available on SAP® App Center

FindMine, a New York-city fashion tech start-up, announced that its FindMine app for the SAP® Commerce Cloud solution is now available on SAP® App Center, the digital marketplace for SAP partner offerings. FindMine for SAP Commerce Cloud allows brands and retailers in fashion, beauty, and home goods to help customers answer the age-old question, “How should I use this?” for every product.

Providing guidance to e-commerce shoppers in choosing outfits has historically meant lots of manual work. FindMine learns to mimic a company’s stylists through Artificial Intelligence to truly scale outfit guidance. This lifts online revenue and shopper engagement. For consumers, it recreates the experience of getting styled by a personal stylist. FindMine for SAP Commerce Cloud achieves significant revenue gains by showing shoppers three different ways to wear each item, resulting in higher CLTV, AOV, UPT, conversion, and margin.

Achieving this experience without automation is physically impossible for most retailers. With FindMine, every outfit, furniture/decor set, or makeup look can feature in-stock products, maximizes revenue lift, and looks like it’s been hand-picked by the company’s merchants or stylists. Most importantly, it reinforces what the brand stands for and differentiates it from competitors. FindMine for SAP Commerce Cloud has reduced time around this activity by more than 90% for merchandisers.

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SAP Startup Spotlight: RoadGoat

Kurosh Hashemi is the founder and CEO of RoadGoat. Prior to starting RoadGoat, Kurosh founded and led the Ultraviolet LED Lighting business at Philips Lighting, which was acquired by Apollo Management. Kurosh also has extensive expertise across the Internet of Things and location data. He earned his MBA at UC Berkeley, where he was a Haas Merit Scholar. In this interview, he will talk about why he founded RoadGoat, what his solution has to offer, and what’s next for the company.

E-3 Magazine: What exactly does RoadGoat offer?

Kurosh HashemiRoadGoat is a pocket travel guide. We provide user-generated data for over 4 million travel destinations – neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Travelers can use RoadGoat to figure out how safe a place is, whether an area is low-risk for COVID-19, if it is tagged for business travelers or foodies, and much more. We even provide a travel map for users that they can automatically update with all their social media accounts, business trip data, fitness trackers, Google Maps, and more. We initially started as a consumer app but we’ve now teamed up with Concur to deliver the same great experience for business travelers.

How does your solution work?

Hashemi: At the heart of our technology is a database of over 4 million travel destinations. Our users contribute meaningful insights about each of these destinations and we supplement this guidance with some more data-driven insights such as information about COVID-19, safety, when to go, budgetary ratings, and more. All that customers need to join RoadGoat is a WIFI-enabled device, as it is a completely free platform.

Why did you start RoadGoat to begin with?

Hashemi: We started RoadGoat because we felt that there was a lack of information about travel destinations. While sites like TripAdvisor, Google, and Yelp give great context about local businesses, no one is providing context about neighborhoods or towns – that’s where we come in. We help you understand if a destination is good for business travelers, nightlife, foodies, and more. Is it safe? What’s the COVID-19 situation? Is it LGBTQ+-friendly? Our users rate, rank, and tag destinations to help guide each other.

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Podcast: Digitizing your inventory with 3D printing – a chat with Ivaldi CEO Espen Sivertsen

I’m a big fan of 3D Printing, and have been ever since seeing the Replicator on Star Trek! So, when I heard that one of the Ivaldi, one of the startup companies in the SAP.io New York Foundry was in the 3D Printing space, I was very keen to chat with them.

Espen Sivertsen, the CEO of Ivaldi, graciously agreed to come on the show and we had a fantastic chat about how Ivaldi is helping organisations digitise their inventory (and we got to hear from his 3 year old daughter!).

If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast – feel free to leave me a voice message over on my SpeakPipe page or just send it to me as a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn. Audio messages will get played (unless you specifically ask me not to).

To learn how supply chain leaders improve end-to-end supply chain visibility, download the research study of 1,000 COO’s and Chief Supply Chain Officers – “Surviving and Thriving How Supply Chain Leaders minimize risk and maximize opportunities”.

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Where are they now? Revisiting the Hot 25 Startups for 2020

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully convey what a strange and difficult year this has been for the travel industry. While the stress of COVID-19 has permeated every sector and role, it seems particularly challenging for startups and their founders – many that ended 2019 with great momentum as part of an industry that was in the midst of record growth.

The good news is there are many travel startups that are finding ways to not just survive but in fact thrive through this extraordinary year, whether by reconfiguring budgets, pivoting their products, developing partnerships, identifying new opportunities or a combination of all four.

On Monday next week we will release our selection of the Hot 25 Startups for 2021. In preparation for that, we have checked in with the companies that made the cut one year ago – our Hot 25 for 2020. We asked them to answer two questions: 

  • Despite the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, what have been a few highlights of 2020 for your company (any partnerships, funding, change in strategy, pivots, etc.)
  • What are your priorities for 2021?

We heard from almost all 25.

Bacarai

  • Highlights: In the spring, we completed the SAP Concur Accelerator, which paved the way for Bacarai to be exposed to the broader business travel market. 
  • Priorities: With demand for student travel at a near standstill, we’ve turned our focus to building out more features in our platform. We don’t expect much to change in the first half of 2021 and are really looking towards the spring of 2022 for group travel to bounce back (pending a vaccine).

Hotailors

  • Highlights: We have taken advantage of the downturn in business travel and used this lull to develop our market offer, our technology, strategic framework and human capital. Just before the world went into lockdown, we were invited to join a three-month SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco acceleration program, which we completed successfully. We built an integration between our tool – which services business travel for extended workforce – with SAP Concur and SAP Fieldglass. We’ve also created new solutions to align with the new reality, such as strengthening the “duty of care” aspect of our technology. We have also been developing an AI module, which will allow a user to find a hotel that fits their preferences a lot quicker and more precisely. Our innovation has had interest from Oracle, and we will be further developing the idea using their Cloud solution. We also raised $3 million, which has given us financial security during the pandemic and has allowed us to focus on developing our innovation and technology.
  • Priorities: Our solution is part of the digital transformation in business travel – and ironically, it’s easier to introduce it when business travel isn’t taking place. We have strengthened our sales team and prepared a three-pillar sales strategy, which we are already implementing. First, our analysis shows that small- and medium-sized companies will start traveling again quicker than corporations, therefore, we have channelled our sales efforts in this direction. We are also reaching out to companies and sectors whose employees need physical meetings and hence travel right now – for example production plants and shipowners. Second, we have created an offer for TMCs that is an annual revenue share (when these customers start travelling again), which will allow TMCs to focus their energies on their core business, while their business clients in turn will gain access to the newest travel technology that will increase their safety and reduce their travel spend. The third pillar that we have been developing is channel sales, in cooperation with our strategic partners, such as SAP, EY and Oracle. We already see traction on all abovementioned fronts, which shows we have been making the right decisions. To be able to scale our business faster and take full advantage of the current situation – and with commitment from one of our strategic partners – we are looking at running an A round in 2021.

Jet-Set Offset

  • Highlights: The global pandemic highlighted the climate effects of travel, as we witnessed firsthand the drastic reductions in emissions and short-term environmental benefits when air travel halted. This has increased consumer awareness about carbon emissions from flying, and as we return to flying, Jet-Set Offset is making it easy for travelers to be climate positive. At the start of 2020, we participated in the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco B2B travel technology accelerator, with six other early-stage enterprise startups. This led to Jet-Set Offset becoming an SAP Concur partner, and building the first enterprise carbon offset option for SAP Concur customers. Jet-Set Offset is now powering the technology and marketing behind The Good Traveler — a sustainable travel brand started by San Diego Airport Authority and now used by over 20 of the most climate-aligned airports in the country. We’re looking forward to forming even more industry partnerships as we work toward a decarbonized future for aviation. We’ve also developed a partnership with Bluesource, the leading developer of offset projects throughout North America.
  • Priorities: In 2021, our top priority is the official launch of our green flight booking technology. We’ve spent the last several months building a decision support tool for point of booking that provides eco-conscious travelers with the opportunity to book a flight based on carbon emissions — not just price and schedule. Because carbon emissions can vary by up to 20% per flight route, this technology will provide consumers with even more data to inform their travel decisions and support our growing community of sustainable travelers and businesses. The technology also offers even more opportunity for new and exciting partnerships within the aviation industry. We’re also looking forward to growing our roster of climate-focused nonprofit partners to provide even more choices to our Jet-Set Offset users, welcoming new enterprise customers as employees begin to travel again, and fundraising to accelerate our growth and develop new technologies.

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SAP Startup Spotlight: Recotap

Recotap is an account-based marketing and advertising platform. It offers B2B marketers a better way to run personalized and multi-channel ABM campaigns. Using Recotap, marketers can make data-driven decisions to improve marketing and advertising performance and deliver better marketing ROI. In this interview, we will take a look at how Recotap works, how it is connected to SAP, and what’s next for the company.

How does Recotap work?

We offer a fully integrated and automated ABM platform that customers can use to manage their end-to-end ABM workflows. Recotap’s Identify module can help teams to quickly build the account list, which is usually a very time-consuming process. All Recotap-identified accounts come pre-loaded with purchase intent to design effective campaigns. Using our core advertising solution, marketers can precisely target their audience on social media
and major ad networks and engage them with personalized ads. They can also increase ad performance and website engagement using our smart pages module that dynamically alters web content based on the visitor profile. Lastly, Recotap can track and measure the audience interactions across ads, emails, and website activity to build an engagement score that acts as an indicator of account readiness for sales activation.

What are the customer-side requirements? Do they need special technology to use your service?

Recotap is a plug-and-play platform; if the customer has an account list, Recotap can import the data from their CRM systems. We offer out-of-the-box integration with major CRM systems, including Hubspot and Salesforce. If customers need help in building their account list, they can use the Identify module for it. They can also upload their creatives and content into Recotap and use them in advertisements.

Why did you start Recotap to begin with?

As a company, we are passionate about enabling marketing teams with relevant tools, data, and AI capabilities that can bring a significant difference to their daily job. We had a first-hand experience from our previous startups on how handicapped marketers’ roles can become in the absence of proper tools and processes, and that they often have to resort to guesswork. We want to eliminate guesswork and light up the path to success.

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Impact Manager from Soley Now Available for Purchase on SAP® App Center

Soley announced that its Impact Manager application is now available for online purchase on SAP® App Center, the digital marketplace for SAP partner offerings. Soley’sImpact Manager integrates with SAP S/4HANA® and delivers insights into a customer’s product portfolio and the value chain issues it affects.

Discover and Manage Critical Business Impacts on Your Product Portfolio

Soley supports decision makers in the industry who work under time pressure and enormous complexity. By organizing the whole product portfolio in one comprehensive KPI dashboard, Soley unveils analytical insights and shows where decisiveness is required. The tool, thereby, allows its users to prioritize work on business-critical topics along the value chain that add real value to their customers.

“We provide data driven insights that cut right through complexity and transform them into actionable tasks. That’s how you unlock potential in the millions with a click of a button” says Maximilian Kissel, co-founder, Soley GmbH.

At SAP App Center, businesses can discover approximately 1,600 innovative partner solutions that integrate with and extend SAP solutions. There, customers can find the SAP-validated partner apps they need to grow their business. And for each purchase made on SAP App Center, SAP will plant a tree. Find, try, and buy SAP partner solutions digitally at www.sapappcenter.com.

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How an Ecommerce-Insights Company Uses AI to Understand Customer Sentiment

Boaz Grinvald is the CEO at Revuze, a firm that helps businesses win their markets by mining unique insights from unstructured market opinions, both public and internal. Revuze performs sentiment analysis by personalizing the automated process to maximize accuracy and its success rate. 

Also known as opinion mining or emotion AI, sentiment analysis helps a business understand the social sentiment of their brand, product or service by mining text that identifies and pulls subjective information from the source material. An automated process, algorithms classify statements as positive, negative and neutral through machine learning and text analytics. 

Revuze emphasizes personalization as the key to learning consumer sentiment regarding certain product features. With their AI algorithms, the big-data consumer-analytics firm can extract unique topics ranging in specificity from the general, including price, to the specific, such as softness. 

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