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Tag Archives: 2018

Huawei Plans USA Splash In Early 2018

October 25, 2019   Mobile and Cloud

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huawei usa Huawei Plans USA Splash In Early 2018With technology security rumblings in the United States surrounding China’s Huawei, the Chinese firm is forging ahead in establishing a …
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2018 ERP/CRM Software Blog Award Winners

February 23, 2019   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Hard work deserves recognition.

This year we have decided to give recognition to our top bloggers, top members, and founding members of the ERP Software Blog, CRM Software Blog and ERP Cloud Blog. All of these companies get our sincere congratulations for their hard work.

  • Top Blogger Award – Members whose posts received the most traffic and members with the highest number of clicks from their posts back to their website. Their articles get the most readers and inspire those readers to take action and learn more.
  • Top Member Award – Members that posted the highest number of blog articles this year and members that posted consistently every month. Our version of the “perfect attendance” award.
  • Founding Member – Members that joined our sites right at the very beginning and have stayed with us all these years.

ERP Software Blog – 2018 Top Blogger Awards

Visitors

  1. Columbus
  2. KTL Solutions
  3. iCepts Technology Group, Inc.
  4. Technology Management Concepts
  5. Clients First Business Solutions-South Central

Links

  1. iCepts Technology Group, Inc.
  2. KTL Solutions
  3. Clients First Business Solutions-South Central
  4. Technology Management Concepts
  5. Turnkey Technologies, Inc.

CRM Software Blog – 2018 Top Blogger Awards

Visitors

  1. Beringer Technology Group
  2. Crowe
  3. Dynamics Objects
  4. Ace Microtechnology, Inc.
  5. Strava Technology Group

Links

  1. Ace Microtechnology, Inc.
  2. Dynamics Objects
  3. Beringer Technology Group
  4. Crowe
  5. Turnkey Technologies, Inc.

ERP Cloud Blog – 2018 Top Blogger Awards

Visitors

  1. Indusa
  2. The TM Group
  3. Admiral Consulting Group
  4. The Resource Group
  5. Clients First Business Solutions

Links

  1. Indusa
  2. The TM Group
  3. Admiral Consulting Group
  4. Alta Vista Technology
  5. The Resource Group

ERP Software Blog – 2018 Top Member Awards

Members with the highest number of articles in 2018:

  1. HIGH Software
  2. Integrity Data
  3. InsightWorks
  4. Accountnet
  5. Trinsoft

Members that never missed a month:

  1. HIGH Software
  2. Integrity Data
  3. InsightWorks
  4. Accountnet
  5. Trinsoft
  6. iCepts
  7. Intelligent Technologies
  8. Sana Commerce

CRM Software Blog – 2018 Top Member Awards

Members with the highest number of articles in 2018:

  1. Beringer Technology Group
  2. Crowe
  3. AKA Enterprise Solutions
  4. JourneyTEAM
  5. JOVACO Solutions

Members that never missed a month:

  1. Crowe
  2. JOVACO Solutions

ERP Cloud Blog – 2018 Top Member Awards

Members with the highest number of articles in 2018:

  1. Alta Vista Technology
  2. CAL Business Solutions
  3. Nexvue Information Systems
  4. Intelligent Technologies, Inc.
  5. Advanced Solutions & Consulting

Members that never missed a month:

  1. Alta Vista Technology
  2. Intelligent Technologies, Inc.

ERP Software Blog – Founding Members (Joined June 2009)

CRM Software Blog – Founding Members (Joined November 2009)

ERP Cloud Blog – Founding Members (Joined April 2015)

All of our members on each blog site are appreciated. But these few deserve a little extra credit for their hard work. We look forward to honoring more members for 2019.

A special badge has been added to the profile page of each member on the blog site. Click the link of each winner to check it out, learn more about their company, and read their posts.

Interested in joining our group blogs? Contact us.

ERP Software Blog – Microsoft Dynamics ERP Partners (VAR and ISV)

CRM Software Blog  – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partners (VAR and ISV)

ERP Cloud Blog – Acumatica, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, SAP Business ByDesign, Accolent ERP, Microsoft Dynamics ERP (VAR and ISV)

By ERP/CRM Software Blog Owners

www.erpsoftwareblog.com

www.erpsoftwareblog.com/cloud

www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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Teradata Reports Strong Fourth Quarter 2018 Financial Results

February 9, 2019   BI News and Info

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PitchBook: European VC investment rose 4.2% in 2018, but number of deals dropped 25.9%

January 19, 2019   Big Data

Europe recorded a bumper year for venture capital (VC) investment in 2018, even though the overall number of deals fell by more than a quarter.

The findings were published as part of data and research company PitchBook’s annual European Venture Report, which revealed that a total of €20.5 billion ($ 23.3 billion) was invested across 3,384 deals in 2018 — this represents an increase of 4.2 percent in terms of the overall money invested. But the total number of deals dropped by 25.9 percent.

Translated: Deal sizes got bigger in 2018. Reading between the lines here, this also indicates that investors were more interested in putting in more money to companies at a later stage, rather than smaller cash injections into younger startups.

Above: European VC investments

Image Credit: PitchBook

It’s worth noting here that the year-on-year comparative figures aren’t in relation to the original 2017 report, because the investment data and research firm subsequently amended the numbers with fresh data that emerged later. Additionally, we should highlight that the PitchBook report apples to all industries, not just technology, and incorporates pharmaceutical and biotech, energy, commercial services, media, and more.

PitchBook, in conjunction with London PR firm London & Partners, released separate figures for the European technology industry a few weeks ago, though it was chiefly focused on the U.K. capital. It did reveal, however, that total VC investment into European companies experienced a slight drop in 2018 — down to €11.85 billion ($ 13.46 billion) from the record €11.88 billion ($ 13.5 billion) in 2017. From this, we can extrapolate that roughly half of all European VC investments in 2018 involved technology companies.

That report also found that while investments into London-based technology companies fell by 29 percent in 2018, they still managed to attract nearly double the amount raised by their nearest counterparts in other European cities — London tech firms secured $ 2.3 billion last year, while Berlin and Paris companies raised $ 1.2 billion and $ 1 billion respectively.

Exits

Direct VC investments only conveys part of the story. The PitchBook report found that there was €47.5 billion ($ 54 billion) of exit value in 2018 — up 164.8 percent on the previous year — while the number of exits dropped 30.5 percent to 373. So this was similar to what we saw with VC funding: more money involving fewer companies.

However, it’s worth highlighting that if you take Spotify and Adyen’s respective IPOs out of the picture, exit value actually declined 4.2 percent year-on-year, which helps to illustrate the effect that just two outliers can have on the stats. London-based Farfetch was another multi-billion-dollar exit in 2018, which was valued at around $ 6 billion at its IPO.

Elsewhere, PitchBook’s 2018 report shows that VC funds raised €8.4 billion ($ 9.54 billion) last year across 62 funds, representing a modest 0.2 percent increase and 23.5 percent decrease, respectively.

“Despite declines in volume across dealmaking, exit activity and fundraising, Europe’s VC ecosystem did sustain healthy investment levels throughout 2018 as a result of increased investor focus on targeting fewer, more mature startups,” noted PitchBook analyst Cameron Stanfill. “An important milestone to note was the exit market’s ability to support three multi-billion-dollar liquidity events in 2018, as it inspires investor confidence in their ability to sponsor companies through the later stages of growth. An area that will be watched closely in 2019 is capital availability for early stage startups, with investors raising fewer, larger funds.”

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Top 5 Collections Posts for 2018: NPL, DCAs and IFRS 9

January 14, 2019   FICO

How are regulations changing approaches to collections and recovery? Those discussions drove the most-viewed posts on the FICO Blog last year in the Collections & Recovery category.
Here are the top five posts from 2018.

NPL Europe Top 5 Collections Posts for 2018: NPL, DCAs and IFRS 9

Bruce Curry wrote about the impact that regulators’ focus on non-performing loans (NPL) is having in multiple areas, including debt collection agencies. Here’s an excerpt:

One of the big changes we see as a result of the NPL activity is in the debt purchaser market, where some of the larger firms — such as B2 Holdings and Hoist — have grown rapidly, as banks look to shed unprofitable portfolios. Debt purchasers and debt collection agencies are consolidating, innovating and in some places become the preferred location for financially vulnerable customers. This is driven to a large degree by regulatory pressures on banks to reduce their NPL, and also by a new force: IFRS 9.

IFRS 9 accounting rules have effectively drawn a new border line for concern. Under previous regulation IAS 39, this border was at 90 days past due, when loans are classed as NPL. Under IFRS 9, this border has moved way up in the funnel, to 31 dpd, when customers (and all their accounts with the bank) move from Stage 1 to Stage 2 in terms of risk. At this point, the bank must increase impairment for the customer’s accounts from 12-month expected credit losses to lifetime expected credit losses. That’s a cliff-edge banks are naturally keen to avoid.

NPL IFRS9 Top 5 Collections Posts for 2018: NPL, DCAs and IFRS 9

Read the full post

In his last post of the year, Bruce Curry looked forward to 2019, discussing multiple trends including the rise of analytics in collections and recovery:

AI is here for a few and coming for many, but there will be many failures and many areas of wasted investment before appropriate AI is an off–the-shelf purchase. In the C&R space, a huge proportion of the industry still needs to develop a reasonable standard of analytic insight. My advice: Don’t get distracted by the word AI, unless you’re already pretty far along the analytics spectrum. You’ll see faster results from focusing on a good set of collection models and strategy optimization. (And for those that are close enough to it you’ll recognize that mathematical optimization in an adaptive control environment, and so actually is AI and machine learning!).

Not every organization will realize this off the bat, but those interested in achieving a true competitive collections competence will look to analytic models, decision engines and automated, omnichannel communications. Early adopters of highly sophisticated omnichannel systems will gain an advantage from their ability to serve pre-delinquent and disorganized payers at an extremely low cost, whilst achieving a better customer experience. (For many, many customers, collections is their experience of a lender.)

These omnichannel solutions are the target investment of many organizations that recognize the competitive disadvantage if they’re not in place. However, these platforms that provide the biggest change in customer treatment and performance for huge cohorts of customers only start to truly ”buzz” when they are deployed on a foundation of analytic optimization.

Read the full post

Collections optimization lifecycle Top 5 Collections Posts for 2018: NPL, DCAs and IFRS 9

While many collectors are still getting on board with analytics, some of the most sophisticated are using mathematical optimization to decide who to treat, when and how. Ulrich Wiesner explored how optimization works in various areas of collection treatment.

Even if you have a decent strategy for segmenting customers and assigning actions, this will be complicated by workload issues.

Accounts enter in waves, so you won’t have the same inflow every day, and you need to spread work over the month. Credit cards are less of a problem — there are between 15 and 22 cycles spread over the month. But many loans or mortgage products only have payments once or twice a month, so all accounts become delinquent at once. You can’t call them all on the 15th.

Furthermore, you have to deal with the higher volume after vacations and holidays, where you will face higher delinquency rates. If you’re a mobile provider, you may sign a bunch of new contracts when a new iPhone is released, which can cause a wave of delinquencies with the next invoice. You also need to schedule around vacation time for collectors.

This is where collection treatment optimization really delivers benefits, because it works these capacity crunch constraints out for you. In a traditional environment, you can do ad hoc capacity management by manually overwriting your strategy, saying this week we won’t dial this campaign because we don’t have enough people to cover it. But this can negate the impact of a good strategy. With optimization, at the press of a button you can adapt your strategy to fit new constraints and capacity.

Read the full post

Direct Debit Persistent Debt Top 5 Collections Posts for 2018: NPL, DCAs and IFRS 9

In the UK, the FCA has focused on persistent debt and challenged lenders to help consumers out of it. Stacey West discussed how Direct Debits can help.

After discussions with Bacs, the organisation behind Direct Debit in the UK, it became clear that flexibility in both payment date and frequency can have a significant impact on take-up rates. Offering consumers the option to choose a date, or dates, which suit them best – perhaps to coincide with payday – can have a positive effect. Given the rise of the ‘gig economy’ and the number of people being paid weekly, considering a move away from just a monthly frequency for Direct Debit collection is also worth looking at to encourage more people to opt to pay this way. Find out more about how to promote Direct Debit at www.bacs.co.uk/marketingdirectdebit.

It’s also worth addressing another potential misconception, which is that only minimum or full payments can be taken through Direct Debit. In fact, any % or amount is available — this flexibility could be very useful relating to these two initiatives. Some issuers make it easier than others to change to a more flexible payment structure and this is expected to expand. It would also help with demonstrating to the regulators that customers are being treated fairly.

Increased Direct Debits may result in a loss of revenue for issuers, but this loss may be far outweighed by the cost of provisioning for stage 2 or for the actions required in a persistent debt situation. This trade-off may help issuers build a business case for incentivising Direct Debit usage.

Read the full post

Persistent Debt Top 5 Collections Posts for 2018: NPL, DCAs and IFRS 9

Another approach to persistent debt is helping borrowers before they fall behind on payments. Stacey West discussed ways to do this, which will also help lenders avoid higher provisions under IFRS 9.

There are a host of metrics an issuer could use when trying to detect the accounts that are most likely to fall into financial difficulties, including more trend-focused data, transactional data and bureau information, with the latter providing a wider customer view. If accounts fall into the pre-delinquency subpopulation, reviewing their other products held is also key — issuers need to be aware of the potential knock-on effect for other business lines and the broader relationship.

Example metrics include the following, although the full list FICO recommends is more extensive:

  • Change in % payments to balance over 3 or 6 months to determine if payment amounts are decreasing.
  • Reaching highest balance levels.
  • Overlimit for the first time or first time in X months.
  • First use of cash or increase in usage.
  • Recent limit decrease.
  • Recent bounced/late payments.
  • Recent direct debit cancellation.
  • Sudden use of card after period of inactivity.
  • < 18 months in persistent debt.

The chosen predictive metrics need constant review as they will vary in line with any economic changes.

Consistency with other account management treatment needs to be considered to prevent sending mixed messages and confusing the customer. For example, you don’t want to offer an increase or allow overlimit spending while also making contact relating to potential problems.

Read the full post

Follow this blog in 2019 for more insights into collections and recovery challenges.

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Top CRM Blogs of 2018: Countdown, Part 1

January 11, 2019   CRM News and Info

After several years of instability on this list, 2018 saw things settle down a bit. In past years, blogs would make the list for a flurry of great posts one year, then fizzle the next. Sometimes, bloggers would change careers and their CRM content would dry up. Once in a while, a great blogger would get hired by a major vendor and see his or her output bent to fit the corporate line.

That didn’t happen much in 2018. Much like the core CRM world, the CRM blog world settled down. The major players stayed major; cracking the top 20 became tough — only two new entries made it in 2018. Regular, disciplined blogging leads to thoughtful, informed posts, which is how the 10 blogs below found their way to this year’s list.

Our criteria remain unchanged after 10 years of ranking blogs: You may not be a vendor (though there are good vendor blogs out there), and if you work for one your blog must be vendor-agnostic. You must have posted at least seven times in the last calendar year, and your primary focus must be on CRM, or at least be what CRM analyst Brent Leary describes as “CRM-ish.”

Some rose on the list, some fell. How did your go-to blog fare? Take a look at the list, starting with number 20.

20. Toolbox Tech CRM Blog

The volume of CRM content of the
Toolbox Tech CRM Blog dropped by almost 75 percent in 2018, which left a mere 72 posts about CRM. That number of points suggests that the blog would be something of a grab bag, and it is. Reporter’s notebook-style posts, opinion pieces and news analysis elbow for position within the blog.

There’s no distinct identity here; authors range from freelance journalists and tech industry execs to the cryptic “CRM Desk,” which sounds like a well-informed piece of furniture.

However, the sheer volume of content means that almost any topic of value is covered here. Don’t expect it to be in-depth or particularly timely — its post about SAP’s acquisition of CallidusCloud, which was announced in January and finalized in April, ran in November — but do expect posts that will provide a firm foundation and help in learning the basics of the rapidly evolving CRM world.

Posts in 2018: 72

Favorite Post:
Nearly One-Third of Salespeople Think CRM Fails them on Productivity

19. Kerry Bodine & Co.

People in business are all about acting, doing, going and moving.
Kerry Bodine & Co. (coauthored by Amelia Sizemore) is like a big stop sign for businesses. I don’t mean that it’s a destroyer of momentum, but that it’s a reminder to pause and think about what you’re doing and where you’re going before you take off, or you could be motoring into trouble.

An expert on the process of journey mapping and measuring customer sentiment, Kerry also is a major advocate for the concept of businesses honestly examining what they really hope to gain from their customer experience initiatives, and whether those objectives properly sync with what the customer wants.

For example, one post makes the simple but incredibly profound and frequently overlooked point that a customer journey and a customer lifecycle are two entirely different things. Treat them that way, and the customer’s going to feel it. Another post riffs off an older post about customer support and reaches a new conclusion about its impact on CX.

The blog has some self-promotion for the business — maybe too much this year — but it offsets that with a very helpful
perpetual listing of CX events that’s a really useful practical tool. If you care about CX, this blog needs to be on your reading list.

Posts in 2018: 23

Favorite Post:
Jobs to be Done: a Lens to Keep Journeys Customer-Focused

18. Lynn Hunsaker

In a world where facts are fighting a constant, uphill battle against noise,
Lynn Hunsaker’s blog speaks forcefully and effectively. She stakes out her idea, makes an assertion, and then applies some jiu jitsu to her skeptics: “You don’t believe me? Well, here’s what a bunch of other experts, analysts and researchers have to say about it.”

Her posts aren’t essays, or musings or meditations — they’re logical arguments with supporting evidence.

She doesn’t come right out and say it in her Customer Think blog posts, but her underlying theme is one of business coherence and balance — getting the proportions correct so that any one aspect of your efforts doesn’t cannibalize your other efforts.

An example of that was her great post “Acquisition Addiction’s Impact on Customer Experience ROI,” which points out that there are three opposing forces at work within marketing departments: maximizing profits, maximizing revenue, and creating and keeping customers.

If CX is so important, why is acquisition prioritized, lauded and rewarded? This isn’t an easy thing for a C-level executive to admit, so Lynn lays down the numbers and makes it hard to argue against her.

She used this formula repeatedly in 2018, and if you pay attention you should be able to detect why companies say CX is important even while customers say CX is getting worse. Let her give you a dose of reality, then square up your CX efforts.

Posts in 2018: 10

Favorite Post:
Acquisition Addiction’s Impact on Customer Experience ROI

17. Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

It takes some kind of skill to jump wildly from topic to topic and still seem like you’re discussing the same theme in a coherent way. That sums up
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff’s blog in 2018 — all over the map, yes, but headed somewhere with a purpose.

Ranging from flying cars to customer acquisition to the flagging power of blogs (ahem!), she covers a ton of ground, can talk tech as easily as she can outline business concepts, and seems like she’s having a lot of fun sharing things she’s learning.

With fewer guest bloggers than in 2017, there’s more Dr. Natalie in the blog in 2018 — which is a good thing. A Salesforce VP (and program executive in the Innovation and Transformation Center), she keeps the blog mostly vendor-agnostic (hey, Dreamforce is so enormous that it demands CRM blog space the way a black hole demands matter).

She also offers smart takes on key issues without getting mired in the perspective of customer, business or employee — she has them in mind, but she’s able to consider all their perspectives.

Easy to read, brimming with information and totally unpredictable, Dr. Natalie’s blog is a grab-bag of thought-inducing viewpoints.

Posts in 2018: 17

Favorite post:
Why Artificial Intelligence is an Agent’s Best Friend

16. ScienceSoft

An eastern European software development company,
ScienceSoft’s team finds the time to write posts that outline the basics of CRM very concisely, providing a useful introductory-level foundation of knowledge about the technology.

While there’s an emphasis on areas that the company wants to stress — Salesforce gets a lot of nuts-and-bolts attention, as does the worthy topic of customer support — the blog doesn’t feel forced or laser-focused on driving leads.

That’s because the writing is clear, relaxed and readable, and best of all, well-organized. The structure is well thought out, and as a result the thoughts are well-structured.

If you’re objective is to look over the horizon and imagine the next big thing, this isn’t your blog. If you want to make sure your CRM knowledge foundation is strong before expanding your capabilities, it is.

Posts in 2018: 11

Favorite post:
Sales Automation: Why, What, How

15. Customer Experience Matrix

Don’t be confused by the confusing name of David Raab’s extremely insightful (and never really confusing) blog,
Customer Experience Matrix.

Customer experience is just one part of the coverage area, which spans marketing, analytics, and the category of technology that’s been dubbed “customer data platforms” (CDP).

David explains how to screen CDP vendors in this helpful post. David has a knack for getting deep into the technology and providing a spreadsheet’s worth of supporting numbers, while at the same time maintaining a sense of humor and readability.

For example, a post about the collapse of public faith in U.S. institutions affects trust, and the ability of companies to speak to their customers has the wry headline,
Collapse of Civilization Makes Marketers’ Jobs Harder.

Raab also examined Salesforce’s efforts to pull customer data together via its Mulesoft acquisition (and subsequent announcements at Dreamforce), and Adobe’s moves in the CX and commerce spaces, and turned a skeptical eye toward hot technologies like blockchain.

If you’re a CIO who works closely with sales and marketing, you need to read this blog. Raab includes detail that an IT junkie will love, and he weaves it into a business narrative that puts the technology into context — something no other blogger does so well.

Posts in 2018: 37

Favorite post:
Why are There So Many Types of Customer Data Platforms? It’s Complicated

14. Nick Baggott’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

This year,
Nick Baggott’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog got down in the weeds, focusing almost entirely on the digital marketing side of things. Nick talked about engagement — a fascinating and ever-changing topic when it comes to social media — and the use of tools like WhatsApp for reaching the right customer segments with the right messages.

Nick squeezed in some high-quality content about the right ways to do search engine optimization. He also penned a very good piece about influencing the influencers — something many companies try to do in a half-hearted or haphazard way, but which he says is crucial to the success of a company’s social media marketing.

This year, Nick’s biggest contribution was to highlight the outstanding work of others, then offer his own extra expertise on top of it. It’s a workmanlike blog, from a hard-working advocate for changing the way businesses market themselves.

Posts in 2018: 10

Favorite post:
Content Marketing Institute Advice on Influencing Influencers

13. Duct Tape Marketing Blog

Targeted at smaller businesses, John Jantsch’s
Duct Tape Marketing Blog continues to generate good advice for people in sales, marketing, and any other part of the buyer-seller experience.

A lot of posts offer personal advice about how to manage a busy work life — not a bad thing for anyone to learn more about, really — while others dig into the details of how to succeed, like
The Seven Steps to Marketing Success — How to Build a Marketing System, penned by John himself.

It’s the marketing-oriented posts that keep the blog on this list; they go to the discipline of CRM rather than the technology of CRM. Posts include frequent podcasts with experts like Shep Hyken, Allen Gannett and Jantsch himself, meaning that this blog delivers its messages through more media than most.

This frequent blog is part beginner’s course, part upper-level classes, and part expert advice, all rolled into one.

Posts in 2018: Many (the format precludes an exact count)

Favorite post:
Six Ways to Enhance Your Sales Pipeline with a CRM

12. B2B Lead Blog

A word that kept coming up this year on this blog, penned by Brian Carroll and others, was “empathy.” That might have sounded weird a few years ago — after all, this is B2B, not B2C! — but in 2018 it finally started to penetrate businesses’ collective minds that if you want to provide a great customer experience, you need to understand how customers feel. How they react to your business is based on their needs and preferences, not on what the business wants or what it assumes customers desire.

I particularly enjoyed
How Sales Hustle and Automation Can Hurt Customer Experience, which nails a truth all people who are sold to know, but which most people selling (or managing salespeople) never seem to internalize while on the job.

The blog always has been exceptionally good at providing solid advice and thoughtful examinations of the current marketing thinking in posts like
Transform Your Customer Success and Accelerate Growth, but this year showed that the team at this blog has embraced customer experience fully, and what that means.

It’s not enough anymore to just close deals — you need to close deals in a way that leads to the customer’s next purchase. It’s fun watching this evolution unfold in the posts of this blog.

Posts in 2018: 30 or so (the format makes an exact count difficult)

Favorite post:
Why Marketers Fail at Customer Empathy and How to Fix It

11. CX Journey

Annette Franz’ valuable, thought-provoking posts in
CX Journey fell a little in quantity in 2018, but the quality increased.

Her musings on CX, corporate culture and employee experience are insightful and full of actionable ideas, but perhaps the greatest value of the blog is to drive home the point that all of these very human considerations are intertwined. Employees suffering through work drudgery can never deliver a great experience, and culture sets the tone for employees.

CRM and loyalty efforts are reflected through this prism. Executives can talk a big game about the importance of CX, but unless they grasp the fact that CX balances on the top of a fairly complex structure, and ensure that structure is sound, the CX talk is just talk.

There are a few guest posts, but most of the time the blog is Annette’s own writing — which simultaneously can be on the long side and concise. That is a clumsy way to say there’s a lot of meat to each post.

Many times, you’ll get a checklist of things to do, or watch for, or measure. Her
post on journey mapping should be required reading for anyone new to or confused by the topic.

When you realize that the point of the blog is to drive business for her consulting company, and that there’s very little self-promotion in the posts, it becomes clear she walks her talk: Customer engagement needs to be about the customer first. This is an excellent blog that keeps getting better.

Posts in 2018: 44

Favorite post:
What’s in Your CX Budget?

10. Destination CRM

In May, the old reliable blog
Destination CRM stopped updating, which was a shame, since for years it had been a helpful reporter’s notebook-style blog that delivered consistent, high-quality content.

It wasn’t flashy, but it was very effective in spotlighting influencers and people working in CRM who should be influential. Since it was written by reporters (this year, exclusively by Sam Del Rowe), there almost always was a link to any studies or research mentioned.

In 2018, the blog focused a lot on customer behavior — how customers want to buy, what they’re doing online, what they like and dislike about customer service, and so on.

The blog didn’t grab onto the customer experience train; it seemed a step behind, talking to the business about how it should react to customers instead of trying to get out in front of experience. This is still valuable information to learn and consider as you try to adjust your CX focus.

Posts in 2018: 10

Favorite post:
Majority of Online Shoppers are Multitasking, Study Finds end enn Top CRM Blogs of 2018: Countdown, Part 1

Stay tuned for Part 2.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.


Chris%20Bucholtz Top CRM Blogs of 2018: Countdown, Part 1
Chris Bucholtz has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2009. His focus is on CRM and other topics surrounding buyer-seller relationships. He is director of content marketing for
NewVoiceMedia, and a speaker, writer and consultant. He also has written four books on World War II aviation.
Email Chris.

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Tradeshow Tips We Learned in 2018

January 5, 2019   CRM News and Info
Untitled 19 Tradeshow Tips We Learned in 2018

Remember That Your Work is Not Over After the Show

Patience is key when it comes to following up after trade shows. Depending on your industry, the sales cycle can last weeks, even months. That is why maintaining an open line of communication with your new contacts is key to keeping them moving from one stage of the sales funnel to the next.

After the show, you should expect to have an 8-9 touch point system in place to help close the deal. This starts with a thank you email after the event and outreach from your sales team, whether it’s an email, phone call or demo. Kristin also recommends for you to enter your contacts into an automated email campaign related to the event and their particular interests. “We’ve generally found that the sweet spot for people to remember who you are after the event is two months, and that’s if you continue to reach out and engage them in conversation.”

We hope that you’ve gathered some useful tips to help you launch your trade show strategy in 2019. If you’re interested in learning more about what we do and chatting about trade shows with Kristin, make sure to catch us in person at one of these events in 2019.

Act-On 2019 Trade Show Schedule

2/11 -2/12 – Digital Summit Phoenix – Phoenix, AZ

3/26- 3/27 – The Digital Marketing for Financial Services Summit Toronto – San Francisco, CA

4/10 – 4/11 – Digital Summit LA – Los Angeles, CA

5/5 – 5/8 – Sirius Decisions 2019 – Austin, TX

5/28 – 5/31 – MAC 2019 – New Orleans, LA

6/11 – 6/12 – Digital Summit PDX – Portland, OR

6/25 – 6/26 – Digital Summit Denver – Denver, CO

8/28 – 8/29 – Digital Summit Chicago – Chicago, IL

9/25 – 9/26 – Digital Summit Detroit – Detroit, MI

10/13 – 10/18 – CRMUG – Orlando, FL

11/13 -11/14 – Internet Summit – Raleigh, NC

12/3 -12/4 – Dallas Digital Summit – Dallas, TX

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Top Ten CRM Software Blog Posts for 2018

January 1, 2019   Microsoft Dynamics CRM
CRM Blog Top Ten CRM Software Blog Posts for 2018

What topics were the most popular with CRM Software Blog readers in 2018? Take a look:

1. Managing System Views & Dashboards in Dynamics 365 by Aaron Back, MCP, ACE Microtechnology
There are many out-of-the-box System Views and Dashboards that come with Dynamics 365. Sometimes, there are Views or Dashboards that go unused and are a hindrance rather than a help. Other times, you may want to create your own custom System Views or Dashboards to replace the out-of-the-box ones. This post explores how you can accomplish these tasks.

2. Getting Started with PowerApps with Dynamics 365 by Aaron Back, MCP, ACE Microtechnology
PowerApps “is a service that lets you build business apps that run in a browser or on a phone or tablet, and no coding experience is required.” This post walks you through PowerApps with extensive screen shots and shows you that creating apps is easy to do and easy to share.

3. Understanding Dynamics 365 Hubs by Aaron Back, MCP, ACE Microtechnology
Dynamics 365 offers multiple ways to access the data for specific teams, departments, or groups within your company. However, Microsoft introduced additional options through what they call Hubs. There are multiple Hubs available, but it depends on the subscription you purchased for your company. This post will walk you through the various Hubs and how they can benefit your team.

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing vs. ClickDimensions by StravaTechGroup
There are two mainstream marketing automaton options for Dynamics 365. This post is an initial review of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing and a high-level comparison to ClickDimensions.

5. Dynamics 365 Record Hierarchy by Aaron Back, MCP, ACE Microtechnology
Dynamics 365 (CRM) has a neat feature, Record Hierarchy, that can be easily overlooked, but can provide great visual insight into your customers. The Record Hierarchy in Dynamics 365 is a simple concept: it boils down to relationships. The Hierarchy options can help you visualize or find important customer data within Dynamics 365. This extensive post will walk you through the many ways you can use it.

6. How to Organize Dynamics CRM Documents in SharePoint by Dianna Davis – Dynamics Objects
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint integration helps users to easily view and share stored documents and increase productivity and strengthen collaboration between the different business units and teams in their organization. This post will show you how to get the most out of the integration of these two powerful applications.

7. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Word Templates – Create, Generate, and PDF by Dianna Davis – Dynamics Objects
CRM Word Templates are documents created once, with attributes/fields from CRM entities and related entities, to generate Word documents and reports using the CRM function “Word Template” in the user interface of a record. If you don’t want to create your own Dynamics CRM Word templates, you can download these free word templates for Invoice, Quote, Order, Opportunity, and Case. You can modify the images and content of the template and add or remove fields not required in your document.

8. Dynamics 365 v9: MultiSelect Option Set Fields by Beringer Technology Group
There are several new features available in D365 v9, one of these features is MultiSelect Option Set fields. With this feature, you can have one field with a list of options, and you can select more than one option from the list! Imagine if your company offers multiple services and customers can sign up for more than one service – the MultiSelect Option Set will solve this problem as well.

9. The Better CRM: Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce? Forrester study says Dynamics 365 by JourneyTEAM
Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce, which should you choose for your business? This post summarizes the Forrester study that examined the two options and made recommendations.

10. Dynamics 365 v9: What’s New and Improved! by Beringer Technology Group
There are a lot of new and exciting features in Dynamics 365 v9, also called Potassium. Whether you’re an end user, a customizer, an administrator, or a developer, there is something new and improved that you will love! This post discusses some of our top picks.

Want to check out the hottest topics for 2019? Visit www.crmsoftwareblog.com and sign up for the RSS feed or subscribe to receive new blog posts via email.

Are you a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Partner that is interested in writing for the CRM Software Blog? Contact us.

By CRM Software Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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A look back at some of AI’s biggest video game wins in 2018

December 29, 2018   Big Data

For decades, games have served as benchmarks for artificial intelligence (AI).

In 1996, IBM famously set loose Deep Blue on chess, and it became the first program to defeat a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. But things really kicked into gear in 2013 — the year Google subsidiary DeepMind demonstrated an AI system that could play Pong, Breakout, Space Invaders, Seaquest, Beamrider, Enduro, and Q*bert at superhuman levels. In March 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo won a three-game match of Go against Lee Sedol, one of the highest-ranked players in the world. And only a year later, an improved version of the system (AlphaZero) handily defeated champions at chess, a Japanese variant of chess called shogi, and Go.

The advancements aren’t merely advancing game design, according to folks like DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis. Rather, they’re informing the development of systems that might one day diagnose illnesses, predict complicated protein structures, and segment CT scans. “AlphaZero is a stepping stone for us all the way to general AI,” Hassabis told VentureBeat in a recent interview. “The reason we test ourselves and all these games is … that [they’re] a very convenient proving ground for us to develop our algorithms. … Ultimately, [we’re developing algorithms that can be] translate[ed] into the real world to work on really challenging problems … and help experts in those areas.”

With that in mind, and with 2019 fast approaching, we’ve taken a look back at some of 2018’s AI in games highlights. Here they are for your reading pleasure, in no particular order.

Montezuma’s Revenge

 A look back at some of AI’s biggest video game wins in 2018

Above: Map of level one in Montezuma’s Revenge.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Foundation

In Montezuma’s Revenge, a 1984 platformer from publisher Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, and a host of other platforms, players assume the role of intrepid explorer Panama Joe as he spelunks across Aztec emperor Montezuma II’s labyrinthine temple. The stages, of which there are 99 across three levels, are filled with obstacles like laser gates, conveyor belts, ropes, ladders, disappearing floors, and fire pits — not to mention skulls, snakes, spiders, torches, and swords. The goal is to reach the Treasure Chamber and rack up points along the way by finding jewels, killing enemies, and revealing keys that open doors to hidden stages.

Montezuma’s Revenge has a reputation for being difficult (the first level alone consists of 24 rooms), but AI systems have long had a particularly tough go of it. DeepMind’s groundbreaking Deep-Q learning network in 2015 — one which surpassed human experts on Breakout, Enduro, and Pong — scored a 0 percent of the average human score of 4,700 in Montezuma’s Revenge.

Researchers peg the blame on the game’s “spare rewards.” Completing a stage requires learning complex tasks with infrequent feedback. As a result, even the best-trained AI agents tend to maximize rewards in the short term rather than work toward a big-picture goal — for example, hitting an enemy repeatedly instead of climbing a rope close to the exit. But some AI systems this year managed to avoid that trap.

DeepMind

In a paper published on the preprint server Arxiv.org in May (“Playing hard exploration games by watching YouTube“), DeepMind described a machine learning model that could, in effect, learn to master Montezuma’s Revenge from YouTube videos. After “watching” clips of expert players and by using a method that embedded game state observations into a common embedding space, it completed the first level with a score of 41,000.

In a second paper published online the same month (“Observe and Look Further: Achieving Consistent Performance on Atari“), DeepMind scientists proposed improvements to the aforementioned Deep-Q model that increased its stability and capability. Most importantly, they enabled the algorithm to account for reward signals of “varying densities and scales,” extending its agents’ effective planning horizon. Additionally, they used human demonstrations to augment agents’ exploration process.

In the end, it achieved a score of 38,000 on the game’s first level.

OpenAI

 A look back at some of AI’s biggest video game wins in 2018

Above: An agent controlling the player character.

Image Credit: OpenAI

In June, OpenAI — a nonprofit, San Francisco-based AI research company backed by Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Peter Thiel — shared in a blog post a method for training a Montezuma’s Revenge-beating AI system. Novelly, it tapped human demonstrations to “restart” agents: AI player characters began near the end of the game and moved backward through human players’ trajectories on every restart. This exposed them to parts of the game which humans had already cleared, and helped them to achieve a score of 74,500.

In August, building on its previous work, OpenAI described in a paper (“Large-Scale Study of Curiosity-Driven Learning“) a model that could best most human players. The top-performing version found 22 of the 24 rooms in the first level, and occasionally discovered all 24.

What set it apart was a reinforcement learning technique called Random Network Distillation (RND), which used a bonus reward that incentivized agents to explore areas of the game map they normally wouldn’t have. RND also addressed another common issue in reinforcement learning schemes — the so-called noisy TV problem — in which an AI agent becomes stuck looking for patterns in random data.

“Curiosity drives the agent to discover new rooms and find ways of increasing the in-game score, and this extrinsic reward drives it to revisit those rooms later in the training,” OpenAI explained in a blog post. “Curiosity gives us an easier way to teach agents to interact with any environment, rather than via an extensively engineered task-specific reward function that we hope corresponds to solving a task.”

On average, OpenAI’s agents scored 10,000 over nine runs with a best mean return of 14,500. A longer-running test yielded a run that hit 17,500.

Uber

OpenAI and DeepMind aren’t the only ones that managed to craft skilled Montezuma’s Revenge-playing AI this year. In a paper and accompanying blog post published in late November, researchers at San Francisco ride-sharing company Uber unveiled Go-Explore, a family of so-called quality diversity AI models capable of posting scores of over 2,000,000 and average scores over 400,000. In testing, the models were able to “reliably” solve the entire game up to level 159 and reach an average of 37 rooms.

To reach those sky-high numbers, the researchers implemented an innovative training method consisting of two parts: exploration and robustification. In the exploration phase, Go-Explore built an archive of different game states — cells — and the various trajectories, or scores, that lead to them. It chose a cell, returned to that cell, explored the cell, and, for all cells it visited, swapped in a given new trajectory if it was better (i.e., the score was higher).

This “exploration” stage conferred several advantages. Thanks to the aforementioned archive, Go-Explore was able to remember and return to “promising” areas for exploration. By first returning to cells (by loading the game state) before exploring from them, it avoided over-exploring easily reached places. And because Go-Explore was able to visit all reachable states, it was less susceptible to deceptive reward functions.

The robustification step, meanwhile, acted as a shield against noise. If Go-Explore’s solutions were not robust to noise, it robustified them into a deep neural network with an imitation learning algorithm.

“Go-Explore’s max score is substantially higher than the human world record of 1,219,200, achieving even the strictest definition of ‘superhuman performance,’” the team said. “This shatters the state of the art on Montezuma’s Revenge both for traditional RL algorithms and imitation learning algorithms that were given the solution in the form of a human demonstration.”

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2018 Best of Data Availability and Security – Recovering and Securing Your Data

December 24, 2018   Big Data
blog best of 2018 data availability security 2018 Best of Data Availability and Security – Recovering and Securing Your Data
Griffin Binko avatar 1513266803 54x54 2018 Best of Data Availability and Security – Recovering and Securing Your Data

Griffin Binko

December 19, 2018

Next up, as our Best of 2018 series moves along, we have Data Availability and Data Security. So far we covered the best of Data Quality and Big Data.

Read on for the top ten Data Availability and Security posts.

Highly available data means data that is accessible virtually without interruption. What stands in the way of high availability and your data? We kick off the countdown with a list of common reasons why data may become unavailable. Read more >

IBM’s security implementation on the IBM i platform is good, but that doesn’t mean that it’s immune from data breaches. All PCs and servers on the same network as your IBM i server are potential attack points for a data breach. There’s no doubt that cyber criminals know that the IBM i server is a rich target. Implementing encryption in IBM i Db2 is an essential part of an in-depth defense strategy. But there are lots of pitfalls to avoid. Read more >

This has been a turbulent year for IT professionals working in all industries. Resilience has routinely made the headlines as technology-related disasters have impacted scores of organizations. IT professionals are called upon to provide an enterprise infrastructure that can sustain severe shocks and protect information. Read more >

All organizations should have a disaster recovery plan in place. However, the importance of disaster recovery is even greater for companies that rely heavily on data to drive their business, and that need to restore data-based operations quickly in order to get back to business following a disaster. Read more >

Unless you work with IBM i systems, you may not think much about this line of computers. But perhaps you should. Although IBM’s midrange systems, which date back to the release of the AS/400 in the late 1980’s, are now older than plenty of people in the IT workforce, they remain an important part of IT infrastructures. Read more >

The Ultimate Buyers Guide to HA DR Solutions 2018 Best of Data Availability and Security – Recovering and Securing Your Data

What makes System i different from other platforms? A large part of the answer lies in the CPU architectures that System i servers use: System i relies on IBM POWER microprocessors, whereas most other modern computers and servers use the x86 architecture. And just what does System i’s use of POWER chips mean? Read more >

What is data availability, and what does data availability mean for your business? Put simply, data availability refers to the ability of data to remain accessible at all times, including following unexpected disruptions. Read more >

You know hackers want to steal your data. But do you know why? Understanding hackers’ motives is important for developing strong data protection strategies. If you don’t know exactly why attackers want to steal your data, it’s difficult to plan effective measures for stopping them. Read more >

In the world of data security there are many different types of encryption, but arguably the two most common are AES and PGP. With so many three-letter acronyms in the technical landscape, it’s easy to get lost in data security conversations. So let’s catch up! Read more >

Every so often, we encounter someone still using antiquated DES for encryption. If your organization hasn’t switched to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), it’s time for an upgrade. To better understand why: let’s compare DES and AES encryption! Read more >

Check out our Whitepaper on choosing the right HA/DR solution!

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