Outreach, the number one sales engagement platform, today announced Outreach Kaia (Knowledge AIAssistant), a revolutionary real-time, voice-enabled knowledge assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that makes every sale rep more effective and every customer conversation more productive. The new product was unveiled today at Outreach’s flagship event, the Unleash Virtual Summit 2020, before an audience of over 10,000 sales professionals.
Outreach Kaia brings together intelligent sales enablement, advanced automation that streamlines tasks, and out-of-the-box capabilities that help sales reps conduct productive meetings and execute the perfect follow up.
“I’ve been waiting five years for Outreach Kaia. This is the most powerful tool to be introduced in the sales industry in a long time, and we are very excited to be bringing the next generation of sales technology to life,” said Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach. “Now more than ever, sales teams need Outreach Kaia — especially when so many of them are working remotely. Outreach Kaia’s ability to surface real-time information exactly when a sales rep needs it during a live conversation is powerful.
“Imagine you’re on a sales call and someone asks you a question about your product or your competitor’s pricing and you don’t know the answer. Well, Outreach Kaia will automatically pull up the information you need – in real-time.
“This level of intelligent assistance will make sales teams productive immediately. Outreach already drives a nearly 5x return for our customers. Now, with Outreach Kaia we expect that ROI to soar.”
Outreach Kaia keeps sales deals moving. It reduces the need for follow-up that can slow down a deal cycle — helping sales reps stay organized and focused during meetings and makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. Key features include:
Web conferencing integration: Outreach Kaia is integrated into Zoom, a leading online conferencing solution, and includes support for video recording with screen share. Additional conferencing partners are planned in the future.
Real-time call recording and transcription: Sub-second call recording and speech-to-text transcription accurately capture the sales conversation as it happens. Transcriptions can be searched or reviewed after the call for training and coaching.
Flashcards: Questions raised by a prospect during the meeting are answered by Outreach Kaia with prompt, on-screen Content Cards.
Content Cards provide information on topics such as product specifications and competitor comparisons, so sales reps can provide smart and timely answers to customer questions.
People Cards provide the sales rep with real-time knowledge about stakeholders that may be involved in the sales cycle
Action Items: Critical sales tasks and action items are automatically captured in real-time as they occur during the conversation and are included in the meeting summary.
Meeting Summary: A meeting summary is automatically created and sent to the rep which includes a list of meeting attendees, action items, and notes. The meeting summary can then be personalized and quickly emailed to all stakeholders.
Bookmarks and Notes: Key moments during the meeting can be “bookmarked” by the rep in real-time so they’re easy to refer back to later and reps can create notes for easy reference.
Security & Privacy: Kaia has security and privacy measures built directly into the experience. Participants are alerted to recordings prior to and at the beginning of the meeting as Kaia visibly joins as a meeting participant. Recordings and transcripts are securely stored within Outreach, which has enterprise-grade security measures already in place.
Along with Outreach Kaia, Outreach unveiled several other platform enhancements at its virtual summit including:
Sequence Intent Reporting: This feature in Outreach’s Amplify AI suite uses machine learning to classify the intent of a prospect’s email into granular categories. Instead of a simple yes/no replies, Sequence Intent Reporting classifies responses into positive, objections, referrals, and unsubscribe requests. Now managers have more context into customers’ intent, giving them the insights they need to respond rapidly and increase productivity while closing the gaps between top and bottom performers.
Outreach Voice Connectors: Now sales professionals can call their customers within Outreach. With new integrations with IP telephony solutions like Dialpad and RingCentral, sales reps can launch their inbound or outbound call tasks within Outreach seamlessly, and have that call data collected in Outreach.
Buyer Intent Scores featuring Bombora: Given the current selling environment, understanding where potential buyers are in their buying process is critically important. Outreach is the only sales engagement platform offering buyer intent scores powered by intent data providers, which allows reps to prioritize engagement based on the accounts most likely to buy. Leading intent data provider Bombora joins the Outreach Galaxy of partners with its integration and an exclusive offer for all Outreach customers.
ASAPP, Inc., the artificial intelligence research-driven company advancing the future of productivity and efficiency in customer experience, announced that it recently completed $185 million in Series B funding bringing the company’s total funding to $260 million. Participation in the Series B round includes legendary Silicon Valley veterans John Doerr, John Chambers, Dave Strohm, and Joe Tucci, along with respected institutions Emergence Capital, March Capital Partners, Euclidean Capital, Telstra Ventures, HOF Capital and Vast Ventures.
“ASAPP builds AI-Native products to solve problems of massive scale and systemic inefficiency. We are thrilled and grateful for this latest investment, which allows ASAPP to continue scaling and meeting the extraordinary demands large enterprises are facing as a result of the global pandemic. Many organizations are experiencing historically high levels of customer interactions at a time when their capacity to support is at an all-time low. By augmenting agents who are on the frontlines, ASAPP enables them to be vastly more efficient and productive, realizing significant savings while delighting customers.” said Founder and CEO Gustavo Sapoznik. “Our current focus is in solving customer experience challenges faced by large enterprises, which for decades has been addressed by attempting to deflect customer calls, and has resulted in poor experiences, frustration, and massive amounts of money being spent on this problem. Our approach to cost savings is radically different and focuses on building state-of-the-art capabilities to make agents better and empower them by augmenting and automating their workflows,” said Sapoznik.
“ASAPP has created an all-in, AI-Native platform which delivers significant savings and superior customer experience,” said investor and ASAPP board member John Doerr. “Gustavo’s world-class team is creating audacious partnerships with large, forward-thinking enterprises. We’re excited to be part of the team by backing ASAPP’s vision.”
Customer care and sales agents use the ASAPP platform to know the right thing to say and the right action to take, in real-time, as the customer conversation transpires on phone calls and digital messages. ASAPP’s machine learning models are continuously learning and predicting from every customer interaction, effectively turning every agent into your best agent without the need for manual programming or extensive training. Many of the world’s largest companies in telecom, financial services, and travel have realized dramatic improvements to both efficiency and effectiveness in how their agents serve customers today.
The company has seen a massive increase in interest in its platform in recent weeks. The Coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic recession are creating significant disruption at contact centers across all industries. Historically, the execution of efficiency measures – more call deflections, hiding contact information from customers, frustrating chatbots that cannot handle complex transactions – has come at the expense of customer satisfaction. Customer Experience Officers are looking for fast improvements to their operations, to drive significant automation without sacrificing customer experience. ASAPP is uniquely designed to deliver this promise, not by traditional means, but by radically improving agent labor efficiency and effectiveness with artificial intelligence. ASAPP customers have achieved a 2.5x agent throughput increase while realizing a 45%-100% improvement in customer satisfaction scores as a result of using the platform.
With ASAPP, for the first time what is right for the company in the form of lowering costs and improving efficiency, is now also right for the customer: fast, accurate issue resolution and superior experience.
MarTech Series Reviews the Top 20 Acquisitions of 2018 That Disrupted the Technology Landscape
We begin the New Year with a round-up of the top 20 MarTech acquisitions in 2018. The article is part of the research that intends to shed light on the most-read MarTech topics focused on funding, acquisitions and product launches that were in demand in 2018. While one of the biggest acquisitions of 2018 was IBM acquiring Red-Hat, here are the rest that we found to be disruptive.
Cision, a leading PR Tech firm, acquired PRIME Research in January last year. The acquisition was important for Cision to bolster their media measurement, professional services, and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities.
We got in touch with Connected Work Analysts at Frost & Sullivan to obtain commentary on the acquisitions of 2018. They said, ”As a team, we seem to agree that there is no point in trying to establish which acquisition was the largest in $$ value. Instead, we believe acquisitions must be evaluated based on their impact on the industry. We also seem to have reached a consensus that Cisco’s acquisition of BroadSoft was the most impactful acquisition in the UC/UCaaS space in 2018.”
Callidus Software’s Lead to Money Suite combined with SAP’s cutting-edge consumer engagement platform is the perfect mix to emerge as industry’s leading CRM. No surprises then that SAP thought it was a great idea to acquire Callidus Cloud.
Acquisitions seem Townsquare’s forte as it continued acquiring in 2018. America’s third-largest AM-FM radio provider, the company has 320 radio stations in 66 markets. Townsquare originally started from radio and has since diversified its business into media.
MarTech leader Salesforce decided to acquire Mulesoft to give a newer dimension to its product portfolio. Mulesoft has a unique attribute of associating enterprise data with it. Hence, the software can handle integrations of all components of an enterprise environment in a single system. Mulesoft’s clients were able to leverage these capabilities on disparate devices and software.
STRATACACHE acquired X2O from Barco Media in March 2018. The acquisition is crucial for STRATACACHE, the company being a leading digital engagement brand. X2O gets two things done for STRATACACHE — gets cash-cows as clients and enhances their interactive digital engagement capabilities.
West Corporation’s acquisition of Nasdaq’s business ingests additional horsepower in the company’s already well-established technology-enabled services suite. Nasdaq’s business unit that has been acquired consists of Digital Media & Public Relations. This will significantly increase West’s outreach and consumer base.
Infosys, one of the biggest names in consulting, technology and services of the future acquired WONGDOODY in May last year. WONGDOODY is a creative agency that also works in the consumer insights space. With studios in Seattle and Los Angles, WONGDOODY brings to Infosys, creative talent and deep marketing and brand engagement expertise.
Impartner is perhaps the biggest brand when it comes to Partner Relationship Management. In June last year, it acquired Tremolo Software in an attempt to optimize brand engagement for its customers. Tremolo specializes in NewsOnDemand (automated newsletters) and SocialOnDemand (Social Content Syndication for vendor’s partner).
Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub opens a plethora of opportunities for almost 30 million developers. GitHub is the go-to platform for the developer community to train and educate themselves on the entire paradigm of coding. Microsoft’s benefit — the company has always had a developer first attitude.
One of the two big acquisitions of Adobe in 2018, Adobe’s acquisition of Magento integrates the latter’s Commerce Cloud into Adobe’s capabilities. With this, Adobe has been able to deliver a single, end-to-end digital experience platform.
Plantronics acquired Polycom in July last year in its efforts to boost its capabilities in the Unified Communications and Collaboration Marketing Technology landscape. With the acquisition, Plantronics managed to focus on several aspects pertaining to human-technology exchange.
Gannett, the futuristic media company acquired WordStream in July 2018 — Wordstream is a SaaS solution for optimizing digital marketing services campaigns. The acquisition enabled Gannett to go light years ahead in its pursuit to accelerate digital transformation for every sector that it caters to.
July 2018 also saw Forrester making a couple of acquisitions so that the company can better its Customer Experience (CX) capabilities. Forrester acquired the following two brands –
FeedbackNow — The company develops monitoring software to measure and enhance CX
GlimpzIt — Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Provider
Cost of Acquisition: Undisclosed
George Colony
“We work with business and technology leaders to develop customer-obsessed strategies and operations that drive growth,” said George Colony, CEO, Forrester.
Why Forrester and SiriusDecisions? Forrester provides the strategy needed to be successful in the age of the customer; SiriusDecisions provides the operational excellence. The combined unique value can be summarized in a simple statement:
Workday’s acquisition of Adaptive Insights in August 2018 successfully groomed the former’s itinerary of products. Adaptive Insights developed solutions that facilitate easier business planning. Workday, being a leader in Finance and Human Resource capabilities for the enterprise, leveraged Adaptive Insight to refine and sharpen its products.
Amobee’s acquisition of Videology’s assets helped the former equip itself with advanced TV and video advertising abilities. Amobee now has access to sophisticated data-driven linear-TV planning tools for its connected TV and digital video solutions.
We spoke to Kim Perell, CEO, AMOBEE, to inquire about the state of the company’s acquisition of Videology. She said, “While television remains the largest single channel for advertising spend, the TV industry is transforming through the nascent stages of TV and video convergence for both viewers and advertisers. We saw an enormous opportunity with the acquisition of Videology,which had established its pedigree as the market-leading technology for video and linear TV. With consumers now moving seamlessly from screen to screen, from channel to channel, the incorporation of the Videology technology within the Amobee platform means that we are now able to provide best-in-class advertising solutions that drive results for our clients across the entire spectrum of media channels, seamlessly joining TV and digital planning, execution and reporting within a single interface.
Further, the strategic addition of Videology to our suite means that Amobee can work with progressive broadcasters to meet the goals of marketers more efficiently, with sophisticated audience-based planning technology and yield optimization solutions.
The net result of the acquisition is that Amobee is now in a pre-eminent position to capture the global digital marketing opportunity brought about by the ongoing convergence of TV and digital.”
Deloitte announced that it will be acquiring Magnetic Media Inc’s Artificial Intelligence-powered business platform. This move clearly indicated Deloitte’s increased focus in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Audience Data Analytics. This strategic acquisition helped Deloitte accelerate smarter and faster development of its Digital Experience Services platform.
SiriusXM acquired Pandora in this third quarter of 2018, automatically transforming the company as the leader in the subscription radio domain. This is because SiriusXM, prior to the acquisition was only a vendor for in-car-radio. After the acquisition, the company could penetrate in other Radio Marketing Technology landscapes such as home radio, mobile radio, etc. Pandora was/is the largest US audio streaming platform.
Adobe’s second-biggest acquisition after Magento, Marketo’s buyout ensured that Adobe infused some of the best B2B marketing technology techniques in its offering. Thanks to the Magento-Marketo acquisition, Adobe is now light years ahead of its competition. Not to mention that Magento-Marketo capabilities join extremely superior technologies such as Adobe Experience Cloud and Sensei AI.
SAP’s technology engages with 77% of transactions worldwide. Combine that with Qualtrics’ experience data and you have the biggest platform to accelerate the XM category. This is a divine combination of Experience Data mixing with Operational Data to create an end-to-end global platform, at scale. We have yet to experience the force of this acquisition. But we will be on the lookout for the same.
Forrester is one of the most credible brands when it comes to businesses looking out for well-researched reports. SiriusDecisions has its niche in B2B research and the subsequent advice. Forrester acquiring SiriusDecisions helps the former expand in size and offer further innovative and customized solutions to its large clientele.
That was our review of the top 20 acquisitions in the Marketing Technology landscape for 2018. What do you think? Let us know at news@martechseries.com.
Adobe Leverages Their Powerful Analytics Engine to Conclude Record Sales of $7.9 Billion on Cyber Monday for the Year 2018
Adobe Analytics released a consolidated report to share facts pertaining to Cyber Monday and the holiday week that went by on Monday. Here is a snapshot of the report-
“Cyber Monday sales topped $7.9 billion according to Adobe Analytics data, making it the single largest shopping day in US history,” said John Copeland, Head of Marketing and Customer Insights at Adobe. “Sales coming from smartphones hit an all-time high of $2 billion and we saw a significant spike in the ‘Buy Online, Pickup In-Store’ trend.”
Adobe should be complimented on the way they have detailed the report. These extremely deep-dived statistics are only possible due to Adobe’s Sensei – Adobe’s technology powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Sensei extracts data from a trillion data points that flow into Adobe’s analytics engine and Magento’s Commerce Cloud — parts of the Adobe Experience Cloud. Adobe’s acquisition of Magento has added major capabilities for Adobe in their digital transformation endeavors.
Here are some statistics about Adobe’s Analytics Engine:
Analysis of American retail websites – One trillion visits capped so far
Accenture has launched SynOps, an innovative human-machine operating “engine” that optimizes the synergy of data, applied intelligence, digital technologies and talent to help organizations transform business operations, create exceptional user experiences and deliver results previously unimaginable.
“SynOps’ greatest value is in how it creates compound intelligence from emerging technologies powered by human expertise to deliver better insights, which lead to better-informed decisions, stronger outcomes — and results previously unimaginable.”
SynOps is an assembly of talent, capabilities and technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics, that gives organizations a fit-for-purpose and flexible roadmap for achieving higher levels of efficiencies across the enterprise. SynOps enables companies to make their organizations more flexible, agile and responsive, helping them generate additional value by driving growth and scaling operations quickly.
SynOps harnesses data and insights from more than 1,000 Accenture client engagements and hundreds of years of cumulative expertise across business functions, industries and domains. By synthesizing this with data from clients’ existing systems and drawing on external data to provide benchmarks, SynOps identifies high-impact opportunities for business process reinvention. The result, in addition to a higher return investment from existing IT systems, is greater insights — enabling better decisions and business outcomes.
Combining the optimal assembly of talent and human-machine work orchestration with advanced analytics, SynOps enables organizations to reinvent business processes and achieve intelligent operations across key functions such as finance & accounting, marketing and procurement. SynOps comprises four essential components:
Human + machine talent: SynOps draws on Accenture’s more than 100,000 Operations professionals — including data scientists and AI experts — to complement and augment the company’s machine workforce of more than 3,600 automation solutions, 65 analytics apps and 40 AI advisors.
Work orchestration: SynOps optimally orchestrates the allocation of work, assigning transactional tasks to software bots and leveraging AI and analytics to identify new opportunities for automation. Through data-based insights, SynOps also ensures that the right resource is tapped for the right task.
Insights and intelligence: SynOps integrates the analytics and AI capabilities of the Accenture Insights Platform and best-of-breed partner technologies with more than 100 preconfigured analytics and AI solutions to quickly deliver insights that enable exceptional business outcomes and sustainable competitive advantage.
Diverse data: SynOps enables the collection, monitoring, storage, analysis and reporting of structured and unstructured data from diverse sources and creates the environment for advanced data exploration and AI model development to enhance real-time decision-making.
Examples of recent SynOps investments by Accenture clients and results include:
A global IT company deployed SynOps for Finance to drive operational excellence. With high administrative costs and falling customer satisfaction, the company needed to better see and manage its financial performance while freeing up cash to take advantage of market opportunities and to grow. Process transformation, automation and analytics boosted productivity by more than 50 percent. With the productivity gains, automated processes and a new customer portal, more than $140 million in savings were delivered.
A high-tech company encountered fragmented sales pipeline data without a single source of truth. Through SynOps for Marketing, applied advanced analytics helped augment, treat and rank leads — helping the client process 740,000 leads (compared with the 25,000 leads previously processed in one year) and leading to an 11 times increase in revenue in the first four months.
A multi-national food and beverage company leveraged SynOps for Procurement when profitability was harder to achieve despite higher revenues. SynOps provided innovative talent with digital tools, information and process rigor and gave users end-to-end transaction transparency. The engine also gave leaders global spend visibility to make better decisions. From an improved user experience to greater efficiency and productivity, SynOps helped the company save millions of dollars in indirect procurement costs. SynOps’ intelligent model ultimately delivered US $30 million in savings, equivalent to an average of 15 percent savings per year.
“SynOps represents the re-imagining of the enterprise as operations leaders grapple with integrating their automation, analytics and AI strategies,” said Phil Fersht, CEO and chief analyst at HFS Research. “Moreover, Accenture focuses SynOps on augmenting the human experts, which is so critical as companies design the processes they need to drive an effective operations strategy and business outcomes.”
Nirav Sampat, group technology officer of Accenture Operations, said, “SynOps’ greatest value is in how it creates compound intelligence from emerging technologies powered by human expertise to deliver better insights, which lead to better-informed decisions, stronger outcomes — and results previously unimaginable.”
Debbie Polishook, group chief executive of Accenture Operations, said, “For our clients, the key to delivering exceptional business impact — for speed to realized value, flexibility and sustainable competitive advantage — is intelligent operations. SynOps will play an integral role in helping our clients in their journey to intelligent operations. SynOps ultimately showcases the art of the possible with how clients can now embrace innovation to drive new value — it is ‘the new’ applied now.”
