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Solutions Journalism Network Transforms Newsrooms by Educating the Next Generation of Journalists

November 5, 2019 NetSuite

Headlines focusing on crime, inequality, war and pollution proliferate in news outlets today. Positive responses to those problems that are happening all over the world often get lost in the shuffle.

However, there’s a movement underway to change how news is presented. Solutions Journalism Network, an independent nonprofit organization, is leading that charge.

Founded in 2013 by world-renowned journalists from the New York Times, Solutions Journalism Network advocates for evidence-based reporting linking problems to solutions in newsrooms and journalism schools all over the U.S. The organization provides training to editors, journalists and university professors in an effort to change the way news is delivered to the public.

“We’re affecting the mass of new journalists who are turning out through colleges and universities,” said Maurisse Johnson, Chief Financial Officer of Solutions Journalism Network. “They graduate and go to newsrooms, magazines and media outlets, and produce solutions journalism, thus changing the old ways of newsrooms.”

One very visible example of solutions journalism at work is coverage around voter fraud. An article focused on solutions journalism would mention that voter fraud exists while also showcasing ways global communities work to combat the practice.

Solutions Journalism Network is funded primarily by grants from foundations and donations from corporations and individuals. In the last two years they’ve experienced massive growth: a 40% increase in grant funding in just 24 months.

“Our mission has remained the same throughout, but our administrative burden exploded,” Johnson said. “We received an increase in the number of grants, the average grant size doubled, and we had to increase headcount accordingly.”

Prior to the surge in grants, Solutions Journalism Network used a combination of desktop accounting software and an outside accounting firm to manage their books. But as the organization grew at breakneck speed, so too did the complexity of its finances.

“We were at an inflection point where our organization had matured beyond external management of our books,” Johnson said. “As grants grew in both size and volume, we had a bigger responsibility to provide reporting and answer questions for funders on an ad hoc basis.”

At that time, Johnson undertook a business process review that lasted about six months. He made sure he thoroughly understood the business model, the people and the grant functions, so he could build a new process around all three.

Specific requirements for nonprofit accounting functions aided Johnson in narrowing down platforms for review. His choice of NetSuite was based on a combination of pre-built reports customized for nonprofits, the ease of closing out sub-ledgers, straightforward allocation tracking, and a pre-established trust in NetSuite based on years of experience.

“I have a history with Oracle that’s built on trust,” Johnson said. “I know that Oracle is going to put their efforts towards the development of NetSuite and offer me a robust support team. If something goes awry, Oracle will invest resources in it.”

Solutions Journalism Network went through a four-month implementation that included on-site builds – a huge benefit for Johnson and his team. NetSuite went live in January of 2019, including a direct connection to Solutions Journalism Network’s expense management platform.

Roughly one-third of their 40+ employees use it in some capacity, with plans to increase that percentage in the coming years.

“Dashboard reporting for nonprofits is already configured in NetSuite,” Johnson said. “We didn’t have to spend time building it. We don’t have to close out individual ledgers every month. And the allocation tracking in NetSuite is quite sophisticated. Grants dictate salary coverage and the allocations change every year. Being able to articulate this in a financial system (rather than manually) is huge.”

With the launch of NetSuite, Solutions Journalism Network has experienced time savings, increased confidence, and simplification across the organization. Today, Johnson can close the books in less than an hour. Auditors, board members and other financial professionals immediately have a level of trust when they learn that Solutions Journalism Network is using NetSuite. And given the ease-of-use, Johnson is able to leverage the data in NetSuite for interactive, organization-wide conversations.

“With NetSuite, we can share data across our organization with an ease we’ve never experienced before,” Johnson said. “Previously, we had static copies of accounting data that we’d send to stakeholders. Now, we can have a web meeting with a program manager and go through their P&L, asking meaningful questions we didn’t have access to before.”

The flexibility of financial reporting provides a big bonus as well. Before NetSuite, Johnson would have to manually run one report query across 50 different grants, which makes a big difference when you have limited or no IT staff. Now he can just apply a grant-specific filter in NetSuite to create each report. And, individual users can access reporting on their phones via an app – making it more easily digestible and accessible for all.

For the future, Johnson plans to work towards integrating Solutions Journalism Network’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform and payroll providers. His goals are to connect initial grant conversations in the sales cycle all the way to incoming grant funds, and tie payroll directly to financial data as well.

“We want to be able to answer questions like, how many foundations are we engaged with for over six months, what percentage produce dollars after six months, and what’s the churn rate,” Johnson said. “NetSuite is so robust in terms of creating KPIs, and we expect these to be viable metrics once we make the connection in the next year.”

Learn how other nonprofits like Solutions Journalism Network streamlined business processes using NetSuite.

Posted on Mon, November 4, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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Next Practices For The Intelligent Utility Enterprise

September 4, 2019 BI News and Info

Data analytics isn’t new to the utility industry. But now the quantity and variety of different data sources have grown so dramatically that managing it all has become a daunting challenge. Asset, transmission, GIS, customer meter, financial, operational, call center, and many other types of data are streaming into utility networks. New techniques for using that data, like automation, orchestration, and machine learning, are providing valuable insights that can impact customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

The digital disruption that is transforming other industries and society at large is also transforming utilities. At the center of this transformation is data. Data is behind improved operational efficiencies, better customer experiences, more efficient utilization of energy, predictive maintenance, faster recovery from outages, and other use cases. The winners in the utility industry are putting data, analytics tools, and dynamic use cases to work to differentiate themselves. They’re using leading technologies like IoT and AI to compete successfully in a rapidly changing market environment.

The utilities that are succeeding in this manner are on the path to becoming intelligent enterprises. This can mean using data and analytics to reduce customer bills and equipment costs with more accurate long-term capacity planning. Or it can mean using blockchain to provide a distributed ledger with untampered certificates on green energy. Other uses of data analytics can empower every business department, partner, supplier, and customer with automated digital solutions, services, products, and actionable intelligence. Intelligent enterprises focus on improving the use of resources, fine-tuning processes, developing new business models, and anticipating future needs.

Strategic priorities for utilities include:

Equipping personnel with real-time customer insights
Operating more efficiently to lower costs
Aligning energy production and consumption with market demand
Using digital solutions to predict prevent and recover from outages

From our global experience working with the leading, most innovative utilities, here are three SAP “next practices”— capabilities and outcomes to help your company utilize data and analytics on a grand scale.

1. Integrate your diverse data sources

Data is the currency of digital transformation. Yet within most utility companies, data is scattered among multiple applications, files, data warehouses, data lakes, and public and private clouds.

Next practice #1: Integrate your data by combining data sets — including big data, process data, product data, analytical data, etc. — as needed, into a single data universe for much greater visibility.

2. Analyze your diverse data

Your data comes to you structured, semi-structured, and unstructured. It may be spatial, chart, numeric, geographic, time series, relational, JavaScript object Notation (JSON), etc. Understanding all of these different types of data can be an extremely complex undertaking.

Next practice #2: Integrate your data sources, using orchestration and governance solutions. Go from raw feed to intelligence with real-time analysis of vast data sets. How? With solutions to understand, integrate, cleanse, manage, associate, and archive data to optimize business processes and analytical insights.

3. Simplify your data landscape

Today, utilities often lack a 360-degree view of their data and data landscape. With different databases, apps, and clouds to support, no centralized solutions are being used to manage it all. Intelligent utility enterprises use process automation and a centralized, easy-to-use platform and interface to simplify access to data so line-of-business managers can participate with data specialists in the development of creative products and solutions. Stakeholders assigned to an architecture team within your company can collaborate through a user-friendly Web application in the planning, design, and governance of the architecture.

Next practice #3: Create and maintain a complete landscape architecture that is easy to share and understand. Open up this landscape to an array of company employees and managers to jointly manage your data environment as an agile, strategic tool.

A growing number of data analytics use cases for utility companies

Data analytics is being recognized as a vital tool for utilities that need to innovate faster than the competition, create new markets and design new products quickly, and attract and retain customers. The need for speed has grown — along with the diverse types and quantity of data. Becoming a truly intelligent enterprise requires a reliable, easy-to-use platform to capture, ingest, process, orchestrate, compute, and consume data at tremendous scale.

SAP customers in the utility industry that are intelligent enterprises are using data analytics fed by an increasing array of data sets for use cases that include:

Short-term load forecasting for higher load utilization and less idle reserve capacity
Asset data quality to make better use of data currently residing in silos and seamlessly process large data sets across highly distributed landscapes
Long-term load capacity planning to extend the life of transformers by years and reduce time for forecasting and grid optimization
Transformer survival analysis to identify needs for infrastructure investments earlier and improve compliance by generating auditable analyses
Renewable energy distribution using blockchain to trade green energy and balance renewable supply and demand

These are just some of the many quickly evolving, creative ways that larger and diverse data sets are being put to work to guide utility companies today. Some use cases are relevant to every type of organization within the industry. Others are more suited to different types of businesses, geographies, markets, and other unique characteristics.

For more on how utilities around the world are transforming into intelligent enterprises, read the new SAP white paper “The Intelligent Enterprise for the Utilities Industry.”

And please listen to the replay of our “Pathways to the Intelligent Enterprise” Webinar, featuring Phil Carter, chief analyst at IDC, and SAP’s Dan Kearnan and Ginger Gatling.

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Digitalist Magazine

TIBCO NOW London: What’s New and What’s Next in Innovation

August 21, 2019 TIBCO Spotfire

With two successful events delivered and one to go, the 2019 TIBCO NOW Global Tour is well on its way to selling out its final stop. Top minds in the industry came together in Singapore and Chicago to discuss all things innovation, but innovation doesn’t quit; join us in London on September 25–26 to continue the conversation on innovation everywhere.

TIBCO NOW is all about what’s new and what’s next. We know our customers and partners want to be in the know with regard to the latest updates in digital innovation, and TIBCO NOW London will culminate in the most innovative conversations yet. The conclusion of the tour at TIBCO NOW London will include the latest trends in the industry, the latest in TIBCO technology, and the latest in how our customers and partners are driving innovation within their organizations.

So what is the latest? Three consistent themes are emerging in technology: the latest innovations with the cloud, open-source development, and with machine learning and artificial intelligence as a foundation for innovative business designs (AI/ML).

What’s new with the cloud

As businesses continue to migrate to the cloud, technology continues to evolve in order to accommodate the move. We will be discussing all things cloud at TIBCO NOW, so if you’re in the market to further your digital transformation via cloud technologies, plan your days accordingly.

Attend one of our many breakout sessions on the topic to learn about what’s new with TIBCO Cloud Mashery or how to leverage TIBCO solutions to build containerized applications in the cloud. You can bet Matt Quinn, TIBCO Chief Operating Officer, will be discussing the future of the cloud as a keynote speaker in our general session, but for a more one-on-one opportunity to learn, join one of the Cloud Tech Tours held in the Innovation Hub on Wednesday.

What’s new with open-source development

Open-source is the hottest phrase on the tip of all developers’ tongues, and for good reason. Open-source solutions are being utilized industry-wide to build out enterprise architectures, but how do you know it’s right for you? TIBCO technology is compatible with many open-source platforms—Nelson Petracek, Chief Technology Officer at TIBCO, is sure to detail the benefits of open source, including Project Flogo, and if you want to give it a go yourself, attend the hands-on lab, ‘Real-Time Image Classification with Project Flogo and TensorFlow’ on Thursday afternoon.

What’s new with AI/ML

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are no longer intangible, futuristic concepts—they are very real applications for digital businesses today. As data analytics becomes more powerful, the ability to rely on AI/ML for real-time decisionmaking has changed the pace of innovation.

Gain insights from experts on the subject at TIBCO NOW—Microsoft will be leading a breakout session on its mission to make AI/ML technology available to every digital business, and a hands-on lab on the topic of Turning Data into Automated Actions using TIBCO Cloud Events takes place on Thursday afternoon. There will be plenty more opportunity to see machine learning in action in the Innovation Hub’s Demo Theatre, and make sure to stop by the book-signing table while you’re in the Hub, where subject matter experts Shawn Rogers, Bob Eve, and Andrew Berridge will be giving away complimentary signed copies of their latest publications.

Whatever the needs of your digital business, TIBCO NOW has it. Check out the full agenda to see who else will be sharing stories of success related to AI/ML, open-source development, and the cloud, including keynotes from TIBCO customers Three UK, Schlumberger, Consentino, and more. We will be hosting networking events, including an opening reception in the Innovation Hub and a Happy Hour in the nearby Kings Suite. We can’t wait to share what’s new and what’s next in digital innovation—see you there!

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The TIBCO Blog

Next Practices For The Public Sector Intelligent Enterprise

July 24, 2019 BI News and Info

Evidence of digital transformation within governments is everywhere. Internet of Things technology is helping federal, regional, and local governments better manage and evaluate infrastructure, assets, traffic, and the environment. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are being put to work by agencies to deliver a more personalized, interactive citizen experience. Blockchain is being deployed to reduce fraudulent activity and increase transparency. Augmented reality is improving emergency management training, transportation planning, healthcare, and tourism.

Yet Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda Survey found that only 16% of government CIOs in 98 countries said they planned to increase investments in business intelligence and analytics, and only 6% will increase spending in data management. And a recent report by IDC predicts that by 2020, only 20% of national governments will revamp their metadata strategy to streamline how data is stored, indexed, and searched – even as the volume of unstructured data starts to slow compute times and the speed of data searches.

The disconnect between opportunity and action is glaring, especially since one of the big barriers to a full embrace of organization-wide data analytics has been solved. Until recently, the ability to bring together data from across and outside of an agency for real-time analytics on a grand scale was easier said than done. Now it’s available to everyone.

From our global experience working with the leading, most innovative public sector organizations, here are three SAP “next practices”– capabilities and outcomes to help you utilize data and analytics on a grand scale.

Integrate diverse data sources. Data is scattered. It’s in multiple applications, files, data warehouses, data lakes, and public and private clouds. Each silo walls off the data with proprietary rules and complexity. You need visibility into that data. Without it, you have a disjointed picture of the organization. With it, you can deploy an intelligent payment system, applying machine learning to tax and other payments to decrease revenue leakage. You can harness a broad collection of data sources to combat drug abuse, reduce infant mortality, improve trash collection, and optimize emergency response teams. Anticipate and mitigate breakdowns to water, roadway, streetlight, or other infrastructure with predictive maintenance – and much more.

Next practice #1: Integrate your data by combining data sets as needed – including Big Data, process data, product data, analytical data, etc. – into a single data universe for much greater visibility.

Make data more useful. Your data comes to you structured, semi-structured, and unstructured. It may be spatial, chart, numeric, geographic, time-series, relational, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and so on. Integrating all these different types of data is extremely complex. But without it, your organization risks growing inefficiency and squandering available resources.

Simplify your data landscape. Centralized. Easy-to-use. Automated. That’s what you want from your data analytics platform. And those features have been a challenge because of all the different databases, apps, and clouds in your IT and business environment. But now a centralized data management solution is available that manages all facets of a data universe. Represented visually, the architecture is easy to share and understand. Stakeholders assigned to an architecture team within your organization can collaborate through a user-friendly Web application in the planning, design, and governance of the architecture.

Next practice #3: Create and maintain a complete landscape architecture that is easy to share and understand. Open up this landscape to an array of employees and managers to jointly manage your data environment as an agile, strategic tool.

A growing number of data analytics use cases for public sector organizations

Data analytics is being recognized as a vital tool for public sector organizations. The need for speed has grown – along with diverse types and quantity of data. Becoming a truly intelligent enterprise organization requires a reliable, easy-to-use platform to capture, ingest, process, orchestrate, compute, and consume data at tremendous scale.

SAP customers in the public sector that are intelligent enterprises are using data analytics fed by an increasing array of data sets for use cases that include:

Smart city traffic monitoring
Predictive maintenance
Intelligent payment systems
Trade violation detection
Business fraud analysis
Real-time financial analytics

These are just some of the many quickly evolving, creative ways that larger and diverse data sets are being put to work by public sector intelligent enterprises today. Some use cases are relevant to every type of organization within the public sector. Others are more suited to different types of governments, geographies, markets, and other unique characteristics.

For more on how public sector organizations around the world are transforming into intelligent enterprises, read the new SAP white paper “The Data-Driven Public Sector Organization – Data Management for the Intelligent Enterprise.”

And please listen to the replay of our “Pathways to the Intelligent Enterprise” Webinar, featuring Phil Carter, chief analyst at IDC, and SAP’s Dan Kearnan and Ginger Gatling.

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Digitalist Magazine

Digital Selling Hacks And Hustles For Closing Your Next Deal

July 14, 2019 SAP

LinkedIn offers multiple avenues to cut through your prospects’ inbox clutter and build your reputation as a trusted member of their community. Here are three ways you can leverage LinkedIn to close more deals.

InMail

Decision makers get between 200 to 300 emails a day, but they only get one to five LinkedIn InMails a day. This means if you’re that that one InMail, you’re more likely to get noticed! The great thing about an InMail:

It’s going to hit their inbox rather than spam because it’s not a bad email address.

You know they’re more likely to see it because there’s a lot less noise in InMails.

When you send someone an email, it’s probably going to get buried by the other 200 emails they get. But when you send an InMail, they’ll see your profile and your mutual connections, which you likely have when prospecting in the same ecosystem. With email, all they see is your email address. They don’t know who you are; if you have a fancy subject line that catches their attention, then great, you might get a reply, but chances are you’ll still be buried by the 200 other emails.

I tell my trainees: would you rather be the one in 200 or the one in five? And, if you want to be the one in five, you need to make it personal. It could be about a mutual hobby, college, connection, or experience. There’s a lot you can find out about people through their LinkedIn or Twitter profiles.

Remember to curate your words, too. When people hear the word “meet” they think: “Oh gosh, I have to sit through another demo.” But if you say something like “connect” or “network,” it is much less stressful to accept the InMail and respond.

Another tip: be truthful. If you’re prospecting a company that you don’t like or you haven’t shopped at before, don’t tell them you’re a big fan.

Referral selling

Another way to use LinkedIn that should produce even better results: using a referral. Data shows that 84% of B2B deals start with a referral. So, find someone who can introduce you to your prospect, either through LinkedIn TeamLink or first-degree connections. Get them to help you build that relationship before you ever talk to the prospect.

Keep your request for a referral brief, explain why you want to get in touch with the prospect, and give the referrer the opportunity to say no. Remember, the person you’re asking for the referral may just forward your request to the prospect in question, so write your message with the prospect’s interests in mind, too.

Community

The third approach is to engage in the community and be part of the discussion with the people who are in your ecosystem.

Social branding is not about being famous, but it’s about being selectively famous. It’s about understanding the decision makers and influencers who need to know you and always being visible and delivering value to them. That’s what branding is about. It’s about understanding what makes you great and using that to help other people be successful.

One of the places where the community can be engaged is in LinkedIn Groups. You can join a group with maybe 10,000 to 20,000 like-minded people all focused on a specific topic. You can start to engage in conversations and build your reputation and connections with people who need to know you.

Focus your conversations on how you deliver value. For example, I recently read on BBC about the rise in Facebook users despite privacy scandals; if I think people in one of my groups might benefit from that information, I might share it with that group and add my point of view. Just sharing content doesn’t have a lot of value, but if I add my point of view and explain why I think they should check out this article, I’m delivering value to a network of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, or 40,000 people. The more regularly I do that, the more I become part of that community – and I think that’s how the magic happens! You have a vast network of people who know who you are because you’re constantly delivering value to them.

To build a reputation as a trusted adviser and subject matter expert – that’s not just built on your LinkedIn profile – that’s built on the conversations you’re part of and how much value you bring to those conversations.

Top salespeople have mastered how to use social networks to grow revenue potential, exceed quota, prospect efficiently, and maintain a robust pipeline by playing by each social network’s etiquette rules. Learn more by listening to “Mining For Golden Nuggets: LinkedIn for Digital Selling” on Changing the Game with Digital Selling hosted by Bonnie D. Graham.

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Digitalist Magazine

Where in the world is the Power BI World Tour next?

May 10, 2019 Self-Service BI

The Power Platform User Groups (Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow) are excited to announce that they have added another stop to the Power Platform World Tour – They are headed to beautiful Vienna, Austria!

We have several other stops planned in 2019 such as:

Where would you like to see us go next? Submit your request here and we’ll do our best to get it added to the list of World Tour Stops.

What can you expect at Power Platform World Tour?

The theme of this year’s Power Platform World Tour is pursuing greatness through innovation. We’ll be focusing on how the Power Platform applications can push the envelope on your business needs. Industry experts will be showing you the power and agility of Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow through robust learning sessions, demos and Q&A opportunities.

Power BI – make sense of your data, produce beautiful reports, and uncover hidden insights for your business.
• PowerApps – listen in as peers talk through how they have created apps that extend and mobilize their business using the no code PowerApps option.
• Flow – find out how to automate processes, making your business more efficient.

All brought to you by your local Power Platform User Groups, this event series gives you the unique opportunity to come hear from and learn from your peers, Microsoft and industry experts. Step away from your desk to explore the latest business challenges, discover best practices for solutions across various industries, and see the innovative world of technology in action.

This event wouldn’t be a success without the vast network of individuals and peer-to-peer knowledge being shared. Grow your experience and expand your network of connections by registering for an upcoming Power Platform World Tour Event! Working together, we can ensure that we produce tangible tools for growth!

Interested in speaking or have an idea that you would like to see featured in one of the World Tour stops? Call for proposals is currently open to the community for several cities:

Copenhagen – September 11 -12 – Call for Proposals

São Paulo – October 3- 4 – Call for Proposals

Mexico City- October 23 -24 – Call for Proposals

Vienna – October 29 -30 – Call for Proposals

Madrid – November 13 -14 – Call for Proposals

Additional cities coming soon! Keep updated on the latest locations by joining the mailing list here.

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Understanding the Total Cost of Ownership of Your Next CRM System

May 7, 2019 CRM News and Info

So, you have decided to purchase a new CRM system. On the surface, it sounds easy enough: Just find the system you want, make sure you have enough funds to purchase it and then implement it. Unfortunately, what some organizational decision makers fail to realize is that there is much more cost involved than might appear at first glance. To make an informed decision about a major business application purchase such as this, you need to understand the total cost of ownership (TCO).

When you make the decision to buy a car, there is a lot more to consider than just the sticker price. Major business applications are the same way. With a car, you will need to pay for the title, registration, taxes, insurance, maintenance, cleaning, fuel and probably more. That is why people who were previously non-drivers but who are gifted cars or win them on game shows often have trouble after taking ownership. They might not have the long-term budget necessary to keep and take care of their cars.

With CRM, the total cost of ownership can vary depending on the product you choose, the features and components you purchase along with that product, your implementation strategy, the cost of support, maintenance and infrastructure (for on-premises), subscription fees (for cloud), security and the number and access privileges of user accounts.

To help you determine the total cost of ownership of your next CRM system, CRM Software Blog has an easy Quick Quote Tool that features Microsoft Dynamics 365. You get a free cost estimate of licenses, maintenance and estimated implementation.

The tool is free to use and requires no commitment or contract. Visit www.crmsoftwareblog.com/quick-quote to get started.

Then check out our directory of Microsoft Dynamics 365 partners to find a partner who can help you evaluate your options and make the right choice.

By CRM Software Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Azure Analysis Services now supported and what’s coming next with Paginated Reports in Power BI

April 4, 2019 Self-Service BI

Power BI is a platform that lets you meet the diverse needs of your enterprise user base, from self-service analytics to centralized report distribution. A critical part of this flexibility is the enterprise semantic model, which provides a secure, governed, and descriptive representation of your business metrics, available as a single source of truth across your enterprise. This semantic model can be reused in reports built by your IT team, in those created by business analysts, and even in external BI tools like Excel or even third-party tools as recently announced with support for the XMLA endpoint.

Paginated Reports using the enterprise semantic model

Over the next month, we will also allow Paginated reports to be built on this same enterprise semantic model, reducing the complexity of reporting deployments that mix interactive and paginated reporting. Starting this week, you can build Paginated reports on semantic models from Azure Analysis Services. Later in April, you will also be able to build Paginated reports for semantic models deployed as Power BI datasets. As always, when you consume the semantic model the role-based security (RLS) defined in the model is honored for each user regardless of tool, and this is the same for Paginated reports.

How to get started with Azure Analysis Services and Paginated Reports

To connect to an Azure Analysis Services data source, use the existing option to connect to SQL Server Analysis Services in Report Builder and build your connection string accordingly. From there, you can simply build out your report as you’d do with any of the supported data source and upload it through the Power BI portal.

“New Feature Friday” for Paginated Reports

Today’s announcement is the first of several you’ll see for new features in Power BI. In fact, we’ll be announcing one every Friday for the next several weeks in what we’re calling “New Feature Friday”. These will include several highly anticipated features, including support for Power BI datasets, Sharing via Apps and E-Mail Subscriptions.

FAQ:

When is General Availability for the feature planned?

General availability for Paginated Repis coming in a few months time. We have been spending the last few months working hard to add features and make sure the capabilities are GA-ready, so you should feel comfortable moving to production at any time before that if you’d like.

Will the feature be coming to smaller SKU sizes of Premium?

Yes, we are planning to support A3 and EM3 SKU sizes around the GA timeframe for customers as well as the currently supported Premium SKU’s.

Will the feature be available for Pro users vs. being a Premium only feature?

We know this is a popular request among our customers and users and we are continuing to evaluate options. Please vote on this idea to get updates as we evaluate future capabilities — Paginated Reports in Pro and Premium

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These Tips Will Help You Make Your Next Trade Show A Success

March 18, 2019 CRM News and Info

Marketers are always looking for the next online strategy to enhance their marketing efforts, but there’s more to moving the needle than just digital tactics. Direct and in-person marketing can have incredible business benefits.

According to the Event Marketing 2018: Benchmarks and Trends report, the overwhelming majority (80%) of marketers believe live events are critical to their company’s success (1). There’s a prevailing misconception that every marketing initiative can be executed online, but building personal relationships with customers can prove a major differentiator — and trade shows are great opportunities to connect with your target audience.

If you’re new to this world, you might not be aware of the trade show marketing best practices you should be following to maximize your impact before, during, and after each event. These tips will help you attract people to your booth, make a great first impression, and successfully follow up with leads after the event is over.

Capture Your Audience’s Attention at Every Step of the Way

Each and every interaction with each and every attendee is important — whether they’re a potential lead, existing client, or possible new partner — which is why you need to make a good impression that will capture and hold your audience’s attention before, during, and after an event.

Trade shows are a great way to connect with your audience, but you need to focus on promoting each event through a variety of tactics to ensure a good turnout. Developing and implementing multi-channel campaigns for each event might seem overwhelming — especially if you’re attending more than one trade show in a given timeframe — but the right marketing automation platform (such as Act-On) can make the process of building landing pages, automating email programs, and promoting your event on social media efficient and effortless.

Once you’ve got a captive in-person audience, you need to grab and hold their attention. Invest in clean, crisp, eye-catching booth materials, stock up on useful and memorable swag (more on that here), and make sure your team is enthusiastic and ready to answer questions and interact with your visitors.

Send Your Best Personnel to Each Trade Show

Your trade show success will ultimately depend on your employees’ efforts. Today, merely sending a couple sales reps isn’t going to cut it. Consumers are savvier than ever and will resist blatant attempts at being sold — regardless of how great your products or services are.

So, along with your sales personnel, send one or more team members who are skilled at making people feel at ease and receptive to your messaging. Customer success personnel are usually great candidates because they’re inherently skilled at nurturing prospects and love working with people.

Sending the right people to staff your trade show booth will help you stand out from other exhibitors and help you create lasting connections with awesome prospects.

THANKS FOR READING!
Check out our additional related content:

Demand Gen 101

Don’t Forget to Follow Up After the Event

Once the show is over, your representatives must be proactive about following up with new contacts to let them know you appreciate their valuable time and their willingness to interact with your brand. This will open the door for you to nurture those relationships and educate new leads about your offerings.

To ensure strong follow up, lead data is paramount. Capturing this data in-person can happen in several ways — including lead retrieval systems, badge scanners, and lists provided by the promoter or association.

Regardless of how you collect data, it needs to be relevant and accurate. Using an email verification service like NeverBounce on your signup forms will guarantee you’re getting legitimate data at the point of entry. Further, uploading a full list of all the visitor data you acquired at the show will help ensure your event-triggered email marketing efforts reach their intended inboxes, allowing your customer success representatives to continue the conversation in the digital realm.

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Act-On Blog

AI Weekly: The AI research agenda for the next 20 years is being made now

February 10, 2019 Big Data

It’s mind-blowing how much world-shaping work that gets done in hotel ballrooms. Machine learning experts regularly gather at conferences around the world to discuss noteworthy work and how to move the industry forward. Few are fortunate enough to attend in person, but you can sometimes find video online.

The most recent example: The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) met in Hawaii last week, and among topics discussed was the roadmap for AI research in the United States for the next 20 years.

The process to create a plan for the next two decades started in November with private workshops attended by academics and people from industry. A draft of the report is due out later this month, and the final will come in April following a period of public comment.

A town hall gathering at AAAI gave the world its first glimpse of what the report will include. VentureBeat doesn’t typically write stories about a report whose draft hasn’t even been released yet, but we made an exception here because of the major implications it could have for the future.

The priorities set in the report could shape government policy and funding, national security, and people’s personal lives through health care, personalized education, and evidence-based social policy.

It could even be a step toward the kind of national AI strategy former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis reportedly urged President Trump to create.

Commissioned by the Computing Community Consortium and working with the National Science Foundation, organizers of the effort include Cornell University professor Bart Selman and Stanford University professor and former Google Cloud chief scientist Fei-Fei Li.

Major themes discussed in the town hall that may be part of the final report include:

Integration of key AI systems
Better understanding of human intelligence and emotion
Training robots to learn by example
How people interact with AI systems

Recommendations are still being gathered and refined but include:

An open national AI platform
Broaden AI education in high schools and colleges
Create contextually intelligent AI that act as a lifelong assistant

“If you want to do common sense knowledge, if you want to do true natural language semantics, you need a good knowledge base; a good, large knowledge graph in a sense, but the knowledge graph, for example, that Google is developing is in house and not accessible to academic research. So we need a very large, shared resource that will be developed across the country, then shared via some institute or center that would manage that,” Selman said about the idea of a national AI platform.

What surprised me watching the town hall was the number of times fundamental knowledge about people came up, things like understanding human intelligence. Also surprising was the number of times words like “trust” was used.

If you’re interested in taking a closer look at initial findings and workshop results, you can watch the town hall video or read through this CCC blog.

Stick with VentureBeat to hear the final recommendations and the challenges and opportunities researchers see for AI in the years ahead.

For AI coverage, send news tips to Khari Johnson and Kyle Wiggers — and be sure to bookmark our AI Channel.

Thanks for reading,

Khari Johnson
AI Staff Writer

P.S. Please enjoy this video exploring the history of artificial intelligence.

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