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Monthly Archives: July 2020

Jonathan Slocumb’s ‘Cuss Free Comedy’ Joins Top Family Stand-Up Comedy Channel LaughUSA On SiriusXM

July 31, 2020   Humor
 Jonathan Slocumb’s ‘Cuss Free Comedy’ Joins Top Family Stand Up Comedy Channel LaughUSA On SiriusXM

The newest chapter of African American stand-up comedy has begun! Jonathan Slocumb’s Cuss Free Comedy, a new brand that provides a platform for African American clean comedians. It was announced today the launch of their new stand-up comedy show to be featured on SiriusXM top comedy family channel LaughUSA.

Jonathan Slocumb gets his shot to bring along a slew of diverse clean comedians such as;  AJ Jamal, Rodney Perry, Small Fire, Ceto Rodriquez, Marc Patrick, Anthony Griffith and a host of others.  Jonathan Slocumb’s Cuss Free Comedy will add diversity to the meaning of LaughUSA theme, Comedy For Everyone. Cuss Free Comedy is being featured on the mainstream platform of SiriusXM that reaches 37 million listeners monthly.

Speaking about the comedy show, Jonathan Slocumb, founder/co-owner of Cuss Free Comedy commented, “At the end of the day, everybody should laugh! And everybody should have the choice to enjoy the kind of comedy that they prefer. That’s what we’re here for. If you are uncomfortable or offended by the usage of profanity but want to laugh? CUSS FREE COMEDY is your Destination!”

Jonathan Slocumb’s Cuss Free Comedy dispels the notion that all black comedy is one dimensional. Also, mentioning that the absence of profanity leads to corny and not funny.

“There is nothing cheesy or campy about Cuss Free comedians,” stated co-owner Alvin Williams.  “I’ve watched Jonathan Slocumb and other clean comedians work for decades in front of audiences of all ages from 18 to 85, joking about; family, work, relationships, marriage, kids and even politics to millions of people.  Cuss Free comedians still bring the extreme funny, they simply don’t use profanity. Funny is and will always be funny” ended Williams.

If you want to listen to Jonathan Slocumb’s Cuss Free Comedy and don’t have SiriusXM. Don’t worry, visit www.CussFreeComedy.com and receive a Free Three-Month Trial.

You will be able to listen to, Jonathan Slocumb’s Cuss Free Comedy starting daily this Monday, August 3rd thru Friday August 6th at 5PM EST.

For more information about Jonathan Slocumb’s Cuss Free Comedy visit www.cussfreecomedy.com or send an email to cussfreecomedy@gmail.com

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Damon Wayans Jr. To Star In New Action Comedy In Works At Peacock Channel

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D365 Customer Insights for Asset Mgmt: More Opportunities

July 31, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights for Asset Management: Better Data Insights Lead to More (and Better) Opportunities

For asset management firms, succeeding with only basic understanding of clients, advisors and consultants is a thing of the past. To be a successful asset manager, you need to know more than just basic demographics to initiate knowledgeable, proactive decision making when it comes to opportunities. But, how exactly do you do that? Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, you can take and combine copious amounts of available data and put it to work so you don’t miss out on opportunities or clients.

Gather, Analyze and Gain Important Data Insights with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

If you aren’t familiar with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, we recommend reading our blog post from January 2020 that introduces Customer Insights and six reasons companies should leverage the most important features of this powerful tool.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights helps to you to gather and import all of your data—from any source—into one location, analyzes that data with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and delivers insights far beyond what is capable by humans (even experienced humans with tribal knowledge). Companies can then take these valuable insights and apply them to sales, marketing, activities and service initiates to personalize engagement.

But, how exactly do asset management firms leverage Customer Insights?

Asset Management Firms Identify Big Tickets with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Thanks to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, gone are the days of limited information about big tickets and wholesalers relying solely on colleagues with extensive tribal knowledge.

To ensure all opportunities and vulnerabilities are being addressed, intermediaries need to target certain wholesalers. Big tickets are an important focus of asset management firms, and Customer Insights provides the tools needed to determine:

  1. The big ticket’s source—even down to the advisor.
  2. If the big ticket is a SELL or a BUY
  3. If that specific trade has been influenced by the wholesaler

Determining these factors is done in various ways including relationship evaluations, examining recent activities with advisors in a given office, and more. Once asset managers have this information, they can choose the next best action. In the case of a BUY, you would show gratitude for their business and go on to investigate potential complimentary strategies with other clients. For a SELL, however, you would indicate a change in strategy or risk of losing wallet share.

This is where Dynamics 365 Customer Insights really shines by merging all of your firm’s data across every source—even your current CRM system—by linking the data sources, and by applying public info to enhance your data. Customer Insights does the work so you can drill down into data, gain the insights you need and make an informed decision on your next course of action. Advisors and offices can view the span of rich data, including transactions over time, wallet share and product types. This powerful tool can even pull in new data–such as life or public events—based on financial accounts or holdings that could affect a given account or holding.

You can even keep your current CRM system and information reporting/display tools with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. Talk about a win!

Don’t Miss Opportunities with Customer Insights

Thanks to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, you don’t need to guess about what to do with your data; you can easily identify who you need to speak with to prevent missed opportunities or lost clients. And, losing someone with tribal knowledge is no longer a necessary fear.

Contact AKA today to learn more about their Customer Insights for Asset Management firms. Ready to see this powerful tool in action? Get started with a Proof of Concept engagement


ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
AKA specializes in making it easier to do business, simplifying processes and reducing risks. With agility, expertise, and original industry solutions, we embrace projects other technology firms avoid—regardless of their complexity. As a true strategic partner, we help organizations slay the dragons that are keeping them from innovating their way to greatness. Call us at 212-502-3900!


Article by: Tom Berger | 212-502-3900

With 20+ years of field experience, Tom Berger is Vice President of Financial Services for AKA Enterprise Solutions.

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Teradata Supports Volkswagen Industrial Cloud as Partner

July 31, 2020   BI News and Info
teradata supports volkswagen industrial cloud Teradata Supports Volkswagen Industrial Cloud as Partner

SAN DIEGO and MUNICH, GERMANY – July 23, 2020 – Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the cloud data and analytics company, today announced that it will be a partner of the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud.

The Industrial Cloud – which is being developed by Volkswagen together with Amazon Web Services (AWS) – is an open IoT platform combining the data of all machines, plants and systems from all facilities of the Volkswagen Group. Teradata will support Volkswagen by providing cloud-based data analytics to optimize production processes and drive productivity increases in the plants.

“We are delighted to partner with Volkswagen as part of this open industry platform, joining other leading companies in shaping the future of digital production,” says Sascha Puljic, Vice President, Central Europe at Teradata. “Our cloud-based data and analytics solution provides comprehensive data intelligence and supports Volkswagen in fully leveraging the value of data in production to increase efficiency and quality.”

The aim of the Industrial Cloud is to integrate companies from the entire value chain of the automotive industry, creating a vast partner network that shares data and services so that all partners benefit – including suppliers, technology providers, system integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), logistics providers and manufacturers.

In the future, all sensor data and other information will be integrated in the cloud-based platform and analyzed with intelligent algorithms. Relevant data will be made available to partners in the Industrial Cloud, creating enormous potential for optimizing production and logistics processes.

To this endeavor Teradata brings its extensive experience in industrial IoT data analysis, as well as its analytics platform – Teradata Vantage – which is available on AWS. Data analysis from the cloud is used throughout production at Volkswagen to, for example: optimize yield, implement data-based quality assurance and enable predictive maintenance.

Optimizing Production and Driving Productivity

One initial use case that showcases Teradata’s role in supporting Volkswagen’s efforts to improve production processes, is analyzing data from welding procedures in manufacturing:

  • First, spot welding data and additional metadata is integrated and analyzed in Teradata Vantage. 
  • Using analytical models that include machine learning, Teradata classifies and refines the data based on various quality characteristics. 
  • Based on the results, the downstream inspection processes can be optimized, and required rework can be specifically assigned. 
  • The outcome is confident, documented quality of the manufactured parts as well as increased efficiency of the production and quality assurance processes.

Another example of Teradata’s future contribution comes from a set of preliminary projects being explored at the Volkswagen Group: Teradata was able to identify additional efficiency potential in production processes, using AI (artificial intelligence). The team analyzed sequence optimization for specific production plants, while also developing quality predictions for manufacturing processes and products.

Such use cases, driven by Teradata expertise in the manufacturing space, demonstrate the power of integrating data to elevate production processes and increase productivity.

About Volkswagen Group

The Group comprises twelve brands from seven European countries: Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and MAN. In addition, the Volkswagen Group offers a wide range of financial services, including dealer and customer financing, leasing, banking and insurance activities, and fleet management.

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Researchers examine the ethical implications of AI in surgical settings

July 31, 2020   Big Data
 Researchers examine the ethical implications of AI in surgical settings

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A new whitepaper coauthored by researchers at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence examines the ethics of AI in surgery, making the case that surgery and AI carry similar expectations but diverge with respect to ethical understanding. Surgeons are faced with moral and ethical dilemmas as a matter of course, the paper points out, whereas ethical frameworks in AI have arguably only begun to take shape.

In surgery, AI applications are largely confined to machines performing tasks controlled entirely by surgeons. AI might also be used as a clinical decision support system, and in these circumstances, the burden of responsibility falls on the human designers of the machine or AI system, the coauthors argue.

Privacy is a foremost ethical concern. AI learns to make predictions from large data sets — specifically patient data, in the case of surgical systems — and it’s often described as being at odds with privacy-preserving practices. The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, a division of the U.K.’s National Health Service based in London, provided Alphabet’s DeepMind with data on 1.6 million patients without their consent. Separately, Google, whose health data-sharing partnership with Ascension became the subject of scrutiny last November, abandoned plans to publish scans of chest X-rays over concerns that they contained personally identifiable information.

Laws at the state, local, and federal levels aim to make privacy a mandatory part of compliance management. Hundreds of bills that address privacy, cybersecurity, and data breaches are pending or have already been passed in 50 U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia. Arguably the most comprehensive of them all — the California Consumer Privacy Act — was signed into law roughly two years ago. That’s not to mention the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requires companies to seek authorization before disclosing individual health information. And international frameworks like the EU’s General Privacy Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aim to give consumers greater control over personal data collection and use.

But the whitepaper coauthors argue measures adopted to date are limited by jurisdictional interpretations and offer incomplete models of ethics. For instance, HIPAA focuses on health care data from patient records but doesn’t cover sources of data generated outside of covered entities, like life insurance companies or fitness band apps. Moreover, while the duty of patient autonomy alludes to a right to explanations of decisions made by AI, frameworks like GDPR only mandate a “right to be informed” and appear to lack language stating well-defined safeguards against AI decision making.

Beyond this, the coauthors sound the alarm about the potential effects of bias on AI surgical systems. Training data bias, which concerns the quality and representativeness of data used to an AI system, could dramatically impact a preoperative risk stratification prior to surgery. Under-representation of demographics might also cause inaccurate assessments, driving flawed decisions such as whether a patient is treated first or offered extensive ICU resources. And contextual bias, which occurs when an algorithm is employed outside the context of its training, could result in a system ignoring non-trivial caveats like whether a surgeon is right- or left-handed.

Methods to mitigate this bias exist, including ensuring variance in the data set, sensitivity to overfitting on training data, and having humans-in-the-loop to examine new data as it’s deployed. They coauthors advocate the use of these and transparency broadly to prevent patient autonomy from being undermined. “Already, an increasing reliance on automated decision-making tools has reduced the opportunity of meaningful dialogue between the healthcare provider and patient,” they wrote. “If machine learning is in its infancy, then the subfield tasked with making its inner workings explainable is so embryonic that even its terminology has yet to recognizably form. However, several fundamental properties of explainability have started to emerge …  [that argue] machine learning should be
simultaneous, decomposable, and algorithmically transparent.”

Despite AI’s shortcomings, particularly in the context of surgery, the coauthors argue the harms AI can prevent outweigh the adoption cons. For example, in thyroidectomy, there’s risk of permanent hypoparathyroidism and recurrent nerve injury. It might take thousands of procedures with a new method to observe statistically significant changes, which an individual surgeon might never observe — at least not in a short time frame. However, a repository of AI-based analytics aggregating these thousands of cases from hundreds of sites would be able to discern and communicate those significant patterns.

“The continued technological advancement in AI will sow rapid increases in the breadths and depths of their duties. Extrapolating from the progress curve, we can predict that machines will become more autonomous,” the coauthors wrote. “The rise in autonomy necessitates an increased focus on the ethical horizon that we need to scrutinize … Like ethical decision-making in current practice, machine learning will not be effective if it is merely designed carefully by committee – it requires exposure to the real world.”

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TIBCO NOW Connected Experience: Your Content, Your Way

July 31, 2020   TIBCO Spotfire
TIBCO NOW2020 696x365 TIBCO NOW Connected Experience: Your Content, Your Way

Reading Time: 3 minutes

If you’ve attended any virtual conferences this year, you’ve probably wished for something more engaging, more relevant, and more compelling. One promise we can make is that the digital experience at TIBCO NOW will surpass what you think you know about online events.

The TIBCO Connected Experience will feature our channel-based approach, offering around-the-clock content that can be viewed live in your timezone or watched on-demand. Whether you are an early bird or night owl, in Sydney, Paris, or New York, TIBCO NOW will be on, streaming, and ready for you to flip through the channels and select or binge based on your interests and areas of expertise. 

The TIBCO Connected Experience will feature a channel-based approach, offering around-the-clock content that can be viewed live in your timezone or watched on-demand. Click To Tweet

With five channels from which to choose, your content options are vast. Here is a look at the different channels we are offering as a part of our global agenda: 

Sustainable Innovation: Join the TIBCO executive team and visionary leaders focused on sustaining the pace and impact of innovation. Data is the fuel that powers both commercially-focused and societal challenges. Learn how to build and sustain digital leadership and recognize those that have raised the bar of sustainable innovation to the highest levels. Available for all passes.

Vision & Value: Watch and participate in a series of breakout sessions focused on innovation at its core. TIBCO technology leaders present their latest releases and initiatives, and TIBCO customers from across the world share their applications of TIBCO technologies to propel their data-centric innovation success. Available for all passes.

Innovation Hub: Enjoy sessions on the latest innovations from TIBCO and our premier partners, including lively demo sessions with experts. Connect and engage with peers and have some fun. Available for all passes.

TIBCO NOW+: Go deeper and gain more insight. Explore technology topics with greater depth and immersion with TIBCO experts and industry analysts. Join “Ask Me Anything” forums with TIBCO executive leaders — a unique opportunity to go behind the scenes as never before. Only available to those with Digital Plus or NOW Educate passes.

NOW Educate: Brush up on TIBCO technologies with product knowledge training to foster new skills, learn new products, and prepare for your certification exam. Join two-part deep dive lab sessions to get instructor-led content around select TIBCO products. Only available to those with NOW Educate passes.

TIBCO NOW is a global event, so wherever in the world you are, you’ll enjoy an all-inclusive event experience filled with keynote speakers, TIBCO product announcements, customer success stories, interactive demos, sponsor- and partner-specific content, and insights from TIBCO industry leaders—all with a click of a mouse. 

Your agenda and experience are curated by you. Choose the sessions that interest you the most and look for linkages to recommended sessions based on your selections and interests. Consume the content live or on-demand when your schedule best allows. 

We have three packages from which to choose: NOW Digital Plus, NOW Educate, or NOW Digital Free. The package you choose will determine which channels, content, and features you will have access to throughout the event. 

If you are looking for more immersive content, the NOW Digital Plus package gives you all of the NOW Digital Free content plus:

  • In-depth product breakouts
  • Sessions with tips & tricks for many of our most popular tools and solutions
  • Insights from TIBCO experts and thought-leaders from across our organization as well as top technology analyst firms
  • The ability to engage with speakers and other attendees through channel chat, question submissions, and session surveys

If you are looking to strengthen your skills and capabilities with TIBCO products, the NOW Educate package gives you all of the tools to build that expertise, including:

  • All NOW Digital Plus content and features
  • Product knowledge training to prepare you for certification exams
  • Deep dive sessions for experienced users of TIBCO Spotfire® and TIBCO BusinessWorks™
  • A voucher to become certified in a TIBCO product of your choice (a $ 300 value) + 20% off all additional certifications
  • A year-long subscription to TIBCO Academy to sharpen your skills (a $ 995 value)

Check out our newly-released global agenda to see when this content is playing in your specific time zone and stay tuned in the coming months for more information about how to create your custom event agenda. 

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Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: Yes! But How Much Will It Cost?

July 31, 2020   CRM News and Info
crmnav Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: Yes! But How Much Will It Cost?

Perhaps you’ve been planning to upgrade your current on-premise CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution to a Cloud-based system that will offer more of what you need to drive your business forward. If so, it’s a safe bet that Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM is at the top of your shortlist.

You’ve read a lot of information here on the CRM Software Blog and elsewhere about Microsoft’s Dynamics 365/CRM Cloud solution and the features that put it at the top of its class. You understand that Dynamics 365/CRM fully integrates with your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to enhance your business processes and provide you with invaluable BI (Business Intelligence) for successful decision-making.

And Dynamics 365/CRM gives your employees powerful tools that will be familiar and intuitive.

Now you want to know the bottom line: How much will it cost?

The good news is that getting a price quote for Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM is easy, instant, and can be done right here on the CRM Software Blog.

Yes, in just a few minutes, you can get an instant price quote for a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM solution with the CRM Software Blog’s Quick Quote Wizard.

Here is how the Quick Quote Wizard works:

Look on the right-hand side of each page of the CRM Software Blog for the orange bar labeled: Request Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM.

Click on the orange bar to bring up the Quick Quote form.

Select the number and types of licenses you need for your team. Microsoft allows you to mix different license and user types, so you only pay for what you need.

Indicated the level of implementation support you require. Information is supplied on the form.

Enter your contact address, click submit, and you will receive an instant, automated Dynamics 365 Quick Quote outlining license and estimated services costs for an entire CRM project.

There is no obligation; the information and price quotes are a free service that we offer to our readers.

The Quick Quote Wizard is easy and free. Why not try it now?

Find a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM partner in your area.

By CRM Software Blog Writer,www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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A NICE STORY

July 31, 2020   Humor
blank A NICE STORY

Two white guys swore to split an lottery winnings.

They made the pact 20 years ago.

One of them won $ 22 million.

They’re both millionaires now.

When Tom Cook and Joe Feeney agreed to split their future lottery winnings years ago, the friends didn’t think their handshake would mark a multimillion-dollar agreement.

But last month, Cook checked the numbers for his June 10 Powerball ticket and discovered he had won $ 22 million. He didn’t hesitate.

“A handshake is a handshake, man,” Cook said of the arrangement in an interview with the Wisconsin Lottery. The Lottery confirmed Thursday that Cook and Feeney are splitting the prize.

Their pact is so old that Feeney couldn’t remember exactly when it started. He guessed it dated back about 20 years. In a release, the Lottery traced the deal to 1992, when the lottery game was first offered in Wisconsin.

Thomas Cook and Joseph Feeney agreed years ago to split future lottery winnings. Cook followed through on that promise when he won a $ 22 million prize in June.
“We said whenever the big winner comes, we’re going to split it, so we buy every week … not really thinking it would happen,” Feeney said.

The win came against steep odds: Currently, the chance of hitting the Powerball’s grand prize is 1 in 292,201,338.

The pair laughed when Feeney recalled learning the news: “Are you jerking my bobber?” the avid fisherman said to Cook.

Cook and Feeney are taking a cash payout of $ 16.7 million, and each will get about $ 5.7 million after taxes, the Wisconsin Lottery says.

The two didn’t report any particularly extravagant plans for spending the money to the Wisconsin Lottery. Cook quit his job and is planning to spend more time with family and travel stress-free. He’s still playing the Powerball, he said.

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Adding New Users to Allow Access to Power Apps Portals Admin Center

July 31, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

A common issue for new Power Apps Portals deployments is that you may need to have multiple internal employees that need admin level access to the Power Apps Portals admin center. These users would need this level of access to perform common Portal Actions, including: Restart the portal Update Dynamics 365 URL Install Project Service Automation Extension Install Field Service extension for partner…

Source

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Alphabet revenue dropped in Q2 2020, the first decline since going public

July 31, 2020   Big Data
 Alphabet revenue dropped in Q2 2020, the first decline since going public

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(Reuters) — Google parent Alphabet’s quarterly sales fell for the first time in its 16 years as a public company, but the decline was less than expected as many advertisers stuck with the most popular online search engine during the pandemic.

Shares of Alphabet fell 1.2% to $ 1,518.85 after it released the second-quarter results. The stock had rebounded early Thursday to this year’s pre-pandemic high of about $ 1,525.

With its mostly free tools for web browsing, video watching and teleconferencing, Google unit has become a larger part of many consumers’ lives during the pandemic as lockdown orders force people to rely on the internet for work and entertainment.

But advertisers on Google have suffered mass layoffs and other cutbacks during the pandemic, and marketing budgets are often the first to get slashed especially by big clients like travel search engines, airlines and hotels.

Google’s ads business has long trended with the broader economy, and the U.S. economy contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

Google appeared to weather the slowdown better than before, as the pandemic has made the internet more attractive to advertisers than TV, radio and other avenues.

“This quarter, we saw the early signs of stabilization, as users returned to commercial activity online,” Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told analysts on Thursday. “Of course, the economic climate remains fragile.”

Alphabet’s overall second-quarter revenue was $ 38.3 billion, down 2% from the year-ago period. Analyst’s tracked by Refinitiv, on average, had estimated a 4% decline to $ 37.367 billion.

The sales decline was the first since the company went public in 2004 and the worst performance since its 2.9% growth during the Great Recession in 2009.

About 66% of Alphabet’s revenue came from Google search and YouTube ads, 12% from ads sold on partner properties online, 8% from its cloud business and 14% from its mobile app store and about a dozen other smaller businesses.

It has adjusted by slowing expense growth. Alphabet’s total costs and expenses rose about 7% from a year ago to $ 31.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with a 12% jump a quarter ago.

Alphabet’s quarterly profit was $ 6.96 billion, or $ 10.13 per share, compared with the analysts’ average estimate of $ 5.645 billion, or $ 8.29 per share.

New data privacy laws, including one that went into effect this month in Google’s home state of California, are also depressing ad prices.

Antitrust regulators in countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia are weighing whether Google has stifled competition on its way to dominating search, mobile software and other businesses, with some bodies even considering forcing it divest parts of its ad operations.

About 2,000 employees last month petitioned Google’s emerging cloud business to scuttle deals with some police agencies, citing racial discrimination concerns. And whether a massive hiring spree will win other cloud clients is uncertain.

Investors may be shifting toward less ad-reliant rivals. Entering Thursday, Amazon and Microsoft, which have smaller ad businesses than Google but bigger cloud units, were trading at 145 times and 35 times their respective earnings over the last 12 months. Alphabet shares were at 30 times earnings over the last year.

(Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif. and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Richard Chang)

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How AI Can Increase Customer Retention

July 30, 2020   CRM News and Info

This story was originally published on March 21, 2020. As a result of popularity, it is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series.

Customer attrition and churn are not new problems. Anyone who has spent time in the sales world has heard statistics around the cost of acquiring a new customer. It can be five to 25 times
more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

More importantly,
improving your customer retention by just 5 percent can increase profits by 25-95 percent, depending on your industry and company size. Needless to say, companies cannot afford to neglect their customer churn.

Today, many companies are intrigued by the idea of turning to artificial intelligence for help in the sales process. However, most do not know where or how to get started. The best way to tap into the power of AI and machine learning is by building an intelligent experience.

The intelligent experience is all about leveraging AI and ML to derive predictive insights that can be embedded into the workflow of a CRM. Companies seeking a competitive advantage must find ways to make their business operations more intelligent.

Reasons for Churn

How can the intelligent experience help improve customer retention? It starts with a shift in focus. Typically, businesses are addressing the problem by homing in on churn. They invest time in figuring out how to prevent churn. However, the focus needs to shift from customer churn alone to an overall look at customer success.

Focusing on churn exclusively is a very reactive tactic. Oftentimes, companies are late to the party with churn. They will identify customers likely to churn when it’s too late. This is because there is a major difference between a leading indicator and a lagging indicator.

For example, many businesses want to look at order cadence as a sign of churn. However, it tends to be a lagging indicator of a problem that manifested earlier. In order to make an impact, businesses must look at the leading indicators.

Often the best indicators for churn are further back in the customer lifecycle, during acquisition and onboarding. Sometimes high customer attrition is not due to poor customer service but to poor customer acquisition efforts.

Think back to what was happening in your business when a new customer started. Were you launching a new product? Were there changes in your manufacturing process? How long did it take the customer to start utilizing your service once the deal was executed?

It is crucial to assess the landscape of the acquisition time period. This often is where perceptions of the relationship start to form. Customers are going to be comparing their initial experience to the expectations you set during the sales process. As the age-old adage tells us, first impressions are hard to shake.

Examine Cost

Have you ever determined the true cost of customer churn for your business? Before you take any steps to improve customer retention, you must quantify the cost of churn. There are three major variables to consider.

First is obviously the loss of recurring revenue. Whatever that customer is paying is money lost.

Second, with any existing customer, there is an opportunity to upsell and expand revenue. So you have to take into consideration the loss of that potential revenue.

Finally, factor in all your customer acquisition costs.

By combining these factors, you can get a better understanding of the true cost of customer churn.

Once you have determined the true cost of customer churn, you can begin assessing the quality of churn. Not all customer attrition is regrettable. You should be able to determine what an acceptable level of churn is and set an established benchmark using basic analytics.

For example, it might be OK for a customer to leave if the cost-to-serve is high and the margins are low. That assumes you are acquiring net-new customers at an appropriate velocity and volume to compensate for lost business. AI is certainly exciting, but you cannot jump into it without first laying the foundation with basic analytics.

Get Smart About Customer Success

After you shift your focus from purely churn to overall customer success, determine the true cost of customer churn, and establish foundational analytics, you then can begin using analytics and AI to drive customer success and reduce attrition.

As I mentioned earlier, the real value is in creating an intelligent experience. When implementing AI into a business, gathering insights is great, but that is not enough. You must be able to leverage the insights that can be uncovered from data to identify next steps.

Your AI project cannot be simply about getting a score of how likely a customer is to churn. You need to set your team up for action by weaving insights into the business process. This allows the focus to move from churn to customer success.

Here is how it actually works. To predict the probability of a customer to churn, you need a logistic regression model that is trained on historical data. It is looking for examples of customers who have churned and ones who have not. It will learn from these situations and develop a probability score for each customer. Then various actions can be taken to influence that probability in hopes of changing the outcome.

Natural language processing models can be used to discern a customer’s sentiment. These models can be fed large amounts of unstructured data — such as call recordings and Web chats — to find themes. Then customers can be classified by how they feel: good, bad or indifferent. These classifications then are put into a logistic regression-based churn model.

You are starting to chain together multiple models to help isolate customers who are likely to churn. The key is to figure out how to intervene before something actually happens. This is the power of predictive analytics. It allows you to be more proactive in improving customer retention rather than reactive to customer churn.

Here is an example of how to pair insight with action: George, an inside sales rep, is working the retention desk, which is a specialized team tasked with reaching out to customers who have a high likelihood of churning. He enters the office in the morning and logs into his CRM. He sees a call list generated by an AI model that surfaces and ranks customers likely to churn. It tells George why the customer is likely to churn and provides a relevant sales play to take action.

There is even more value in what AI and ML can do after George makes the call and takes the recommended action. Once he inputs his call notes and updates the CRM, the customer can be re-scored in real time. This system allows you to continue ensuring you are taking the next best steps to retain the customer.

Conclusion

AI is the future of business operations. When contemplating an investment in AI, be sure you have a setup that will allow you to embed insights into the daily workflow of your organization. Through the power of AI, you can start blurring the lines between sales, service and marketing.

Remember, the best time to have a selling conversation is right after you’ve solved a problem. AI can be used to improve customer retention in a variety of industries. Consider how implementing AI can help change your sales operations and ultimately drive customer success.
end enn How AI Can Increase Customer Retention


Nicholas%20Christ How AI Can Increase Customer Retention
Nicholas Christ is account director at
Atrium. He works with customers to leverage their data to unlock its analytic and predictive potential. For more than 20 years as a sales and service leader, he has transformed organizational processes and CRM capabilities. He is also a Salesforce Certified Administrator. Nick graduated from Loyola University Maryland where he earned his B.A. in business administration and management. He lives in Maryland with his wife and two teenage boys.

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