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Tag Archives: Accelerate

Pinecone emerges from stealth with $10 million to accelerate AI workloads

January 28, 2021   Big Data
 Pinecone emerges from stealth with $10 million to accelerate AI workloads

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Pinecone Systems, a company developing a database platform for AI workloads, today emerged from stealth with $ 10 million in funding. A company spokesperson told VentureBeat the funds will be put toward customer acquisition and product R&D as Pinecone’s platform launches for self-onboarding.

AI models take data, whether images, sentences, or user behavior, and convert them into complex collections of numbers called vectors. Using a machine learning model is often a question of finding out which vectors are nearest or most similar to others, but existing ways of doing this can be slow and inaccurate.

Pinecone aims to make AI queries faster, more accurate, cheaper, and easier to use with fully managed serverless vector database technology. Founded by developers from Facebook and Google — along with CEO Edo Liberty, who ran Yahoo’s Scalable Machine Learning Platforms group and later Amazon AI Labs — Pinecone’s database supports deployments of personalization, semantic text search, image retrieval, data fusion, deduplication, recommendation, anomaly detection, and other real-time applications.

Developers can use Pinecone to configure and launch services with custom machine learning models, transformations, and rankers. They’re also able to add or update data in batches or streams; data is turned into vectors and the index is updated in real time. Moreover, they can monitor and track deployments for operational health and support queries to find similar or top-ranking items.

Liberty claims Pinecone, which connects to third-party data sources, can scale to billions of high-dimensional vectors while keeping latencies below 50 milliseconds for queries, updates, and embeddings with horizontal container distribution. Pinecone ostensibly has a real-time indexing speed 30 times higher than open source libraries.

“One of the largest retailers in the world reports using Pinecone to serve real-time shopping recommendations based on their own deep learning models. They saw an immediate 18.5% lift in revenue per recommendation compared with their previous solution,” a Pinecone spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Pinecone’s database is 100% serverless and API-driven, which means customers always have the computing resources they need, when they need them, without having to worry about infrastructure or maintenance.”

Wing Venture Capital led the seed investment in Sunnyvale, California-based Pinecone announced today.

“The modern enterprise is built on data and powered by AI,” Peter Wagner, a founding partner at Wing Venture Capital and the newest member of Pinecone’s board of directors, said in a statement. “The data cloud has emerged as its foundation with the ascendance of Snowflake. Pinecone is poised to unleash data teams and their ML-based applications in a similar fashion.”

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Accelerate Your Enterprise Connectivity with TIBCO Cloud

December 24, 2020   TIBCO Spotfire
cloud integration 696x365 Accelerate Your Enterprise Connectivity with TIBCO Cloud

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Businesses today face unprecedented challenges responding to market volatility, increasing the importance of business agility as the means to successfully adapt to changing market conditions. One key enabler of business agility is the ability to quickly connect digital assets no matter where they are hosted to create new capabilities or streamline processes. 

Accelerated Connectivity = Greater Agility

This growing pressure means many teams are looking for ways to reduce time to market for new connectivity applications as much as possible. As the number of apps created across the company increases, there is an opportunity to streamline development through the reuse of digital assets like APIs. However, the process of tracking down API specs and manually documenting them for consumption in applications can be a time-consuming process that could be spent on more valuable tasks. 

New connections could be created even faster if there was a way for developers to easily discover APIs created by different teams across the business to reuse in new integration apps. To help our customers navigate this challenge and reduce time to market, the TIBCO Cloud makes it easy for application developers across your business to share and discover digital assets. 

Service Discovery with TIBCO Cloud 

The TIBCO Cloud provides a centralized resource for developers to discover and share APIs or other REST services created across the TIBCO Cloud. Using a simple drop-down box, developers can easily find and consume APIs or register a new API that can be reused by other developers. 

 Accelerate Your Enterprise Connectivity with TIBCO Cloud

In today’s volatile market environment, even the smallest time saving can make a difference as businesses quickly pivot to meet new demands. Utilizing the registry allows developers to focus on more valuable work such as defining and building new product capabilities by promoting the reuse of assets across teams.

The TIBCO Cloud makes it easy for application developers across your business to share and discover digital assets.  Click To Tweet

Learn More 

For an example using API discovery to streamline integration app development, check out this demo where you will learn how to easily use TIBCO Cloud Integration to automate your marketing lead generation process. 

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DeepMind’s improved protein-folding prediction AI could accelerate drug discovery

December 1, 2020   Big Data

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The recipe for proteins — large molecules consisting of amino acids that are the fundamental building blocks of tissues, muscles, hair, enzymes, antibodies, and other essential parts of living organisms — are encoded in DNA. It’s these genetic definitions that circumscribe their three-dimensional structures, which in turn determines their capabilities. But protein “folding,” as it’s called, is notoriously difficult to figure out from a corresponding genetic sequence alone. DNA contains only information about chains of amino acid residues and not those chains’ final form.

In December 2018, DeepMind attempted to tackle the challenge of protein folding with a machine learning system called AlphaFold. The product of two years of work, the Alphabet subsidiary said at the time that AlphaFold could predict structures more precisely than prior solutions. Lending credence to this claim, the system beat 98 competitors in the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) protein-folding competition in Cancun, where it successfully predicted the structure of 25 out of 43 proteins.

DeepMind now asserts that AlphaFold has outgunned competing protein-folding-predicting methods for a second time. In the results from the 14th CASP assessment, a newer version of AlphaFold — AlphaFold 2 — has average error comparable to the width of an atom (or 0.1 of a nanometer), competitive with the results from experimental methods.

“We have been stuck on this one problem — how do proteins fold up — for nearly 50 years,” University of Maryland professor John Moult, cofounder and chair of CASP, told reporters during a briefing last week. “To see DeepMind produce a solution for this, having worked personally on this problem for so long and after so many stops and starts, wondering if we’d ever get there, is a very special moment.”

Protein folding

Solutions to many of the world’s challenges, like developing treatments for diseases, can ultimately be traced back to proteins. Antibody proteins are shaped like a “Y,” for example, enabling them to latch onto viruses and bacteria, and collagen proteins are shaped like cords, which transmit tension between cartilage, bones, skin, and ligaments. In SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus, a spike-like protein changes shape to interact with another protein on the surface of human cells, allowing it to force entry.

It was biochemist Christian Anfinsen who hypothesized in 1972 that a protein’s amino acid sequence could determine its structure. This laid the groundwork for attempts to predict a protein’s structure based on its amino acid sequence as an alternative to expensive, time-consuming experimental methods like nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray crystallography, and cryo-electron microscopy. Complicating matters, however, is the raw complexity of protein folding. Scientists estimate that because of the incalculable number of interactions between the amino acids, it would take longer than 13.8 billion years to figure out all the possible configurations of a typical protein before identifying the right structure.

 DeepMind’s improved protein folding prediction AI could accelerate drug discovery

Above: AlphaFold’s architecture in schematic form.

Image Credit: DeepMind

DeepMind says its approach with AlphaFold draws inspiration from the fields of biology, physics, machine leaning, and the work of scientists over the past half-century. Taking advantage of the fact that a folded protein can be thought of as a “spatial graph,” where amino acid residues (amino acids contained within a peptide or protein) are nodes and edges connect the residues in close proximity, AlphaFold leverages an AI algorithm that attempts to interpret the structure of this graph while reasoning over the implicit graph that it’s building using evolutionarily related sequences, multiple sequence alignment, and a representation of amino acid residue pairs.

By iterating through this process, AlphaFold can learn to predict the underlying structure of a protein and determine its shape within days, according to DeepMind. Moreover, the system can self-assess which parts of each protein structure are reliable using an internal confidence measure.

DeepMind says that the newest release of AlphaFold, which will be detailed in a forthcoming paper, was trained on roughly 170,000 protein structures from the Protein Data Bank, an open source database for structural data of large biological molecules. The company tapped 128 of Google’s third-generation tensor processing units (TPUs), special-purpose AI accelerator chips available through Google Cloud, for compute resources roughly equivalent to 100 to 200 graphics cards. Training took a few weeks. For the sake of comparison, it took DeepMind 44 days to train a single agent within its StarCraft 2-playing AlphaStar system using 32 third-gen TPUs.

DeepMind declined to reveal the cost of training AlphaFold. But Google charges Google Cloud customers $ 32 per hour per third-generation TPU, which works out to about $ 688,128 per week.

Measuring progress

In 1994, Moult and University of California, Davis professor Krzysztof Fidelis founded CASP as a biennial blind assessment to catalyze research, monitor progress, and establish the state of the art in protein structure prediction. It’s considered the gold standard for benchmarking predictive techniques, because CASP chooses structures that have only recently been experimentally selected as targets for teams to test their prediction methods against. Some were still awaiting validation at the time of AlphaFold’s assessment.

Because the target structures aren’t published in advance, CASP participants must blindly predict the structure of each of the proteins. These predictions are then compared to the ground-truth experimental data when this data become available.

The primary metric used by CASP to measure the accuracy of predictions is the global distance test, which ranges from 0 to 100. It’s essentially the percentage of amino acid residues within a certain threshold distance from the correct position. A score of around 90 is informally considered to be competitive with results obtained from experimental methods; AlphaFold achieved a median score of 92.4 overall and a median score of 87 for proteins in the free-modeling category (i.e., those without templates).

 DeepMind’s improved protein folding prediction AI could accelerate drug discovery

Above: The results of the CASP14 competition.

Image Credit: DeepMind

“What we saw in CASP14 was a group delivering atomic accuracy off the bat,” Moult said. “This [progress] gives you such excitement about the way science works — about how you can never see exactly, or even approximately, what’s going to happen next. There are always these surprises. And that really as a scientist is what keeps you going. What’s going to be the next surprise?”

Real-world applications

DeepMind makes the case that AlphaFold, if further refined, could be applied to previously intractable problems in the field of protein folding, including those related to epidemiological efforts. Earlier this year, the company predicted several protein structures of SARS-CoV-2, including ORF3a, whose makeup was formerly a mystery. At CASP14, DeepMind predicted the structure of another coronavirus protein, ORF8, which has since been confirmed by experimentalists.

Beyond pandemic response, DeepMind expects that AlphaFold will be used to explore the hundreds of millions of proteins for which science currently lacks models. Since DNA specifies the amino acid sequences that comprise protein structures, advances in genomics have made it possible to read protein sequences from the natural world, with 180 million protein sequences and counting in the publicly available Universal Protein database. In contrast, given the experimental work needed to translate from sequence to structure, only around 170,000 protein structures are in the Protein Data Bank.

DeepMind says it’s committed to making AlphaFold available “at scale” and collaborating with partners to explore new frontiers, like how multiple proteins form complexes and interact with DNA, RNA, and small molecules. Improving the scientific community’s understanding of protein folding could lead to more effective diagnoses and treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, as these are believed to be caused by misfolded proteins. And it could aid in protein design, leading to protein-secreting bacteria that make wastewater biodegradable, for instance, and enzymes that can help manage pollutants such as plastic and oil.

 DeepMind’s improved protein folding prediction AI could accelerate drug discovery

Above: A ground-truth folded protein compared with AlphaFold 2’s prediction.

Image Credit: DeepMind

In any case, it’s a milestone for DeepMind, whose work has principally focused on the games domain. Its AlphaStar system bested professional players at StarCraft 2, following wins by AlphaZero at Go, chess, and shogi. While some of DeepMind’s work has found real-world application, chiefly in datacenters, Waymo’s self-driving cars, and the Google Play Store’s recommendation algorithms, DeepMind has yet to achieve a significant AI breakthrough in a scientific area such as protein folding or glass dynamics modeling. These new results might mark a shift in the company’s fortunes.

“AlphaFold represents a huge leap forward that I hope will really accelerate drug discovery and help us to better understand disease. It’s pretty mind blowing,” DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said during the briefing last week. “We advanced the state of the art in the field, so that’s fantastic, but there’s still a long way to go before we’ve solved it.”

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Accelerate Your Digital Transformation with PowerBanking [VIDEO]

November 11, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

PowerObjects currently partners with many of the largest retail and commercial banks globally, empowering them to deliver omnichannel customer service, business process automation, and intelligent customer insights. All while enabling banks to adhere to stringent data protection and governance policies. And we can do it for your bank, as well! Why are we so successful helping banks transform…

Source

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How to Accelerate Your Time-to-Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

June 24, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

xHow to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales.png.pagespeed.ic.FtUcTDSoax How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Through the COVID crisis, growth in the SaaS sector continued to hold steady. Indeed, the pandemic shines a spotlight on the need for digital transformation in sales, revenue operations, and finance. Spend on SaaS solutions continues to grow to meet the increasing demand for technology to enable remote sales and finance teams. 

As Satya Nadella eloquently stated in April 2020, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

xsatya nadella quote on digital transformation remote work.png.pagespeed.ic.7etJXdRtTl How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Whereas other industries have been hard-hit by problems related to the pandemic, the enablement of remote sales teams and the lack of supply chain issues has allowed many companies in the software industry to continue selling and serving their customers. 

At DealHub, we were curious about the impact of sales technology use on our customers’ ability to be productive and generate revenue during this difficult time. As experts in the area of Configured Price Quote, we wanted to understand the performance patterns of all the closed-won deals during COVID-19. We measured the sales cycle duration and time-to-revenue from quote to close from March to May 2020. We compared traditional CPQ, delivered by either a PDF or Word document, against our innovative DealRoom sales proposal software. 

Time-to-Revenue: CPQ vs. PDF/Word

Analyzing our software industry customers’ performance from March to May 2020, we measured sales cycle duration from quote to close. We compared the use of Configure Price Quote (CPQ) inside our DealRoom sales proposal software vs. the use of Word/PDF to generate price quotes. We determined that CPQ software is outperforming PDF/Word formats for quote generation in two key areas:

  • sales cycle duration (time-to-revenue)
  • time spent in creation (operational efficiency)

Average Sales Cycle Duration Results (March-May 2020)

DealRoom reduces the sales cycle duration by an average of 3.5X in days compared to PDF/Word documents.

xDealHub average time to win faster time to revenue 352x625.jpg.pagespeed.ic.hHatx4MQ5F How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Average time spent creating a quote (March-May 2020)

We also determined that it takes significantly less time per person to create, manage, and execute a price quote inside DealRoom compared to quoting with a PDF/Word document.

xDealHub average increase in sales efficiency faster time to revenue 352x625.jpg.pagespeed.ic.FbI9EUfAD6 How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Accelerate Your Time-to-Revenue

DealHub consolidates the entire sales cycle from opportunity to close which accounts for the increased efficiency and acceleration of the sales cycle. Instead of logging into several disconnected software solutions, DealHub delivers complete horizontal connectivity – all the solutions you need are in one platform.  With everything in one location – from sales collateral, configure price quote, and contract negotiation, to SoW, forms, and eSignature – sales teams reduce admin time, generate proposals in minutes, and close deals faster.

xDeal Acceleration Platform 1200px 625x625.png.pagespeed.ic.4Wl oSgL0X How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

The Impact on Revenue Operations

Reducing the sales cycle allows Revenue Operations to access the new revenue within the same fiscal quarter, rather than the next quarter. Maintaining this positive cash flow is essential to the financial health of companies dealing with economic disruption.

During the current and next phases of COVID-19, sales teams must be empowered to carry out their daily work on the front line of business while collaborating with their team, serving their buyers, and driving revenue.

At DealHub, we built DealRoom to help our customers who use Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales withstand market turbulence and enable them to respond to their buyers quickly from any location and to leverage a reduced sales cycle for higher revenue growth.

Read the full article on How to Accelerate Your B2B Sales Cycle here.

xcompare top cpq vendors for microsoft dynamics crm 625x327.png.pagespeed.ic.Wv3YLt4EKc How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales


Article by: Gideon Thomas – VP Marketing & Growth, DealHub.io | LinkedIn

xGideon 150x150.png.pagespeed.ic.0ggAGuM1a1 How to Accelerate Your Time to Revenue Inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 for SalesDealHub Configure-Price-Quote solution is rated the #1 CPQ software for ease of use, easiest setup, and best support. Sales teams configure quotes and proposals faster with fewer errors. DealHub’s highly intuitive CPQ minimizes administrative tasks, empowers sales teams to engage more effectively with buyers, and streamlines sales operations to reduce the sales cycle and increase revenue. It operates natively within Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and includes: dynamic sales playbooks, interactive content sharing, document generation, contract management, and e-signature. Request your personalized demo to learn how DealHub will accelerate your sales process and help your team close deals faster.

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Three Supply Chain Trends Accelerate In Response To Current Crisis

May 22, 2020   SAP
 Three Supply Chain Trends Accelerate In Response To Current Crisis

In Episode 33 of the SAP Experts Podcast, Martin Barkman, Senior Vice President & Global Head of Solution Management for Digital Supply Chain at SAP, outlines the supply chain agenda in the age of COVID-19. This post looks at the current state of the discussion among consultancies, SAP experts, and customers about which trends will accelerate throughout the current crisis.

Transparency

In a situation like the current crisis, it is easy to forget where the economy came from. As Hans Thalbauer, then SAP SVP of Digital Supply Chain and Industry 4.0, pointed out in an episode of the SAP Experts Podcast recorded in late 2019, volatile political and social environments were some of the most pressing issues supply chain leaders were facing even before COVID-19 entered the stage. After all, the pre-coronavirus times were those of Brexit, the Sino-American trade wars, and widespread social unrest.

The bad news is: COVID-19 does not replace these types of disruptions, and instead is likely to even exacerbate them. First, the evolving “dance” phase is playing out at different speeds in different countries. Each country is at the constant peril of a second wave necessitating a return of harsh interferences with businesses’ operations (and, as a result, with the supply chains crossing their territory). Second, the crisis is heating up the dynamic of preexisting crises – just take US-China relations or the widening political cleavages within the EU as examples. The good news is: The business world has already learned a great deal about how to handle these types of uncertainties and upheavals. The food supply, for example, has remained stable in most markets even throughout the toughest lockdowns.

This is in part thanks to the visibility into stock levels, demand development, and supply chain constraints afforded by modern business technology. Consultancies like BCG and McKinsey are therefore united in prescribing one concept for handling the uncertainties at hand: A “nerve center” or “control tower” that has visibility over the entire supply chain, rendering the future in alternative scenarios and respective reaction protocols. The phase of volatility and uncertainty ahead, it thus seems, will be a major argument for reinforcing “insight-to-action” capabilities in supply chain management: The ability to act quickly, on the basis of real-time data and predictions.

Automation

Even before COVID-19 entered the scene, automation was high up on the agenda of supply chain leaders, as the promise of producing in a more agile manner with higher transparency and lower costs is a convincing case in itself. Now, reports of consultancies like Kearney and EY highlight that this case was further reinforced by the epidemic.

First, having fewer humans crowded around a given production line reduces the risk of viral transmission among them. This not only serves to protect the workforce but also the continuity of the operations themselves: Regulators keen on enforcing physical distancing rules will have fewer concerns about factories with fewer humans in them, and sick leaves will not have as much of an impact on production plans.

Second, the traumatic experience of the West’s inability to adequately equip its healthcare system with protection equipment and testing kits is reinforcing the political desire to repatriate manufacturing. If this pressure persists (and is perhaps intensified by consumer and/or shareholder preferences), manufacturers could see a paradigmatic shift in the way they operate. As BCG points out, “(artificial intelligence) also allows (manufacturers) to operate a larger number of small, efficient facilities nearer to customers – rather than a few massive factories in low-wage nations – by deploying advanced manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing and autonomous robots that require few workers.”

A recession boosting the adoption of such automation technologies would not be without historical precedent. In fact, it would rather be the norm. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, it has been in recessions that the adoption of automated processes has really spiked alongside the pressure to lower costs. It would not be a surprise if this historical pattern repeats itself in this crisis.

New business models

Until there is a vaccine against the coronavirus, the economy will be held in an artificially suppressed state – a condition the Economist aptly terms the “90% economy.” As consumers are deprived of income and spending options, a drought in revenue will eat its way up the value chain, creating a shortfall in cash flow on all levels. When it comes to spending and investments, businesses will have to find ways to do more with less. For suppliers, this implies that being able to service increasingly cash-strapped customers will become a competitive advantage.

In the short term, this usually takes the form of more generous payment terms – offering the option to defer payments or to pay in installments, for example. But as the economy will likely persist in dire straits for an extensive period of time, new business models could emerge that more closely align spending and consumption.

Take what KAESER KOMPRESSOREN has been doing for quite some time as an example: Instead of selling its compressors (which would require a considerable upfront investment on the part of its clients), it installs the compressors on clients’ sites while retaining ownership. Then, they charge for the compressed air – a classic pay-per-use model. This allows KAESER KOMPRESSOREN’s customers to upgrade their compressors while aligning their cash outflows with their cash inflows, alleviating their liquidity situation. Another variant on the same theme is the addition of services to an existing product.

Hoval, for example, sells predictive maintenance as a value-added service on top of its heating systems. This adds a revenue stream to Hoval’s business that ensures customer loyalty while not requiring too high of a startup investment.

What’s next

Imagine supply chains once this crisis has abated: There is a good chance that future companies will have deeper insight into their operations thanks to increased transparency, they will do more with less, thanks to a higher level of automation, and they will deliver value to their customers in entirely new ways.

Regardless of how bad the recession is going to play out, the companies that master these three points will be more resilient and more profitable down the line. Yes, the future may be uncertain, but we will surely see some interesting times ahead in supply chain management.

Explore “Global Supply Chain Management For A Rapid And Dynamic Transformation Environment.”

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The Integration Platform that will Accelerate your Digital Business

April 6, 2020   TIBCO Spotfire
Images 2 1920x400 1 e1585781052489 696x365 The Integration Platform that will Accelerate your Digital Business

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Businesses across the globe are operating in a bit of a fog right now, trying to figure out how best to adapt in order to weather rapidly changing market conditions. Those businesses that are able to do so in times of crisis will also be able to rapidly adapt in the future when new opportunities surface. 

Quickly adjusting business operations and even evolving your business model to maintain business continuity requires agility and scalability. One of the best ways to set yourself up as an agile, scalable business is by implementing a digital business platform. 

A digital business platform is a foundational hub that integrates your systems and data as well as enables your people, apps, and devices to communicate in a dynamic setting. To help you understand the benefits of a digital business platform, and to choose which vendor provides a suitable solution for your business, independent analyst firm Aragon Research has published The Aragon Research Globe™ for Digital Business Platforms, 2020.

The report discusses the value provided by a digital business platform and ranks vendors it found best met the requirements for building such. As the only major analyst evaluation for digital business platforms, this report scores vendors across a number of key capabilities including Integration, Process Automation, IoT, and Analytics.

A good digital business platform solution enables new digital business strategies by allowing its users to proactively reach customers and partners. While traditional approaches still require your customers and partners to reach out to you as the first point of contact, leading solutions place customers at the center, allowing you to reach them wherever they are, through a variety of channels. 

TIBCO was named a leader in The Aragon Research Globe™ for Digital Business Platforms, 2020 for the second consecutive year, noted specifically for its flagship iPaaS solution, TIBCO Cloud Integration. It’s streaming analytics and visual analytics capabilities—part of the TIBCO Connected Intelligence Platform—also contributed to TIBCO’s placement in Aragon’s report. 

Aragon subscribers can access this report as part of their subscription, but for a limited time, TIBCO is making an abridged version of this report available at no cost or obligation. Download the complimentary report to help you compare digital business platforms and decide which might be the right investment for you. Then, try TIBCO Cloud Integration for 30 days at no charge to get started on your digital business platform strategy.   

Aragon Disclaimer: Aragon Research does not endorse vendors, or their products or services that are referenced in its research publications, and does not advise users to select those vendors that are rated the highest. Aragon Research publications consist of the opinions of Aragon Research and Advisory Services organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Aragon Research provides its research publications and the information contained in them “AS IS,” without warranty of any kind.

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Live Webinar: How Financial Services Firms are Using the Microsoft Power Platform to Accelerate CRM by “Minding the Gap”…Even Around Salesforce!

March 20, 2020   CRM News and Info

Have you been to London? Then it’s likely you’ve ridden the Tube (subway) and heard an announcement politely saying as you enter or exit: “Mind the gap.” This deceptively benign statement was put there to warn you to watch out for the space between the platform and the train because if you don’t “mind the gap,” you can trip or fall. That could mean going to the hospital or at the very least, having a bad day. Either way, you slow down or even end your journey to your destination—and you’ll probably slow down the train, as well.

What is the connection between minding the gap and financial services?

“Mind the gap” has been adopted by business experts as an analogy. In an Inc. article, entrepreneur Josh Linker said, “While the gaps in your organization aren’t screaming for attention, they can be a wellspring of opportunity…the rallying cry for you to explore what’s missing, what’s not there, and what could be.” The act of minding gaps in your operations could mean failing to realize your vision (or at least slowing it down) or reaching it faster.

How do you realize your vision…and realize it quickly? Use the Microsoft Power Platform to mind the gap

Nobody wants to delay realizing their goals or vision, and they certainly want to avoid missing goals and missteps along the way. You do that by identifying the gaps—processes, technologies, methodologies—then look for ways to address them with the right technology. The issue is, unfortunately, that traditional approaches of customizing off-the-shelf software that is already in place or spending lots of time and money building a custom application doesn’t work or is cost-prohibitive. That’s when it’s time to turn to the Microsoft Power Platform.

The Microsoft Power Platform: A low-code, rapid application development environment that bridges the gaps

Smart financial services firms are already using the Microsoft Power Platform to quickly and easily build apps, automate workflows, and extend solutions they already use—not just Microsoft applications. Even software like Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP can be extended by the Power Platform to bridge any gap.

This might sound too good to be true, but it works—fast and cost-effectively. Plus, you don’t have to uproot, change, or replace applications or systems you’re already using. If you’re happy with what you have but just have that one gap to fill, the Power Platform does it with finesse. Here are a just a few examples of AKA financial services clients that have put the Power Platform into action and are already seeing results:

Automated Client Reporting…From Salesforce: The asset management arm of a life insurance company was risking penalties and losing huge investors, but they didn’t want to replace Salesforce. AKA built a Power Platform solution “surrounding” Salesforce that streamlined the process, resulting in empowered, happy employees who can put their focus on delivering white-glove customer service.

Client Engagement Hub with Next Best Action…Within Dynamics 365 CRM: A global asset management firm had a goal to double sales growth, but their current system had a poor user interface, did not offer personas, and did not offer insights for next best actions. AKA designed in the Power Platform and rolled out in just 3 months a Client Engagement Hub with Next Best Action—fully integrated with Dynamics 365 CRM and Marketo.

Mobile Trade Approval App…Integrated with Salesforce: Portfolio managers for an investment firm were slammed with emails for trade approvals. They needed an easy, fault-proof way to approve/disapprove trades from mobile devices. In a one-day workshop, AKA designed a Power App that integrates with Salesforce, enabling the managers to approve trades with the click of a button on their mobile devices.

Build an app to bridge that gap

Would you like to see for yourself how the Power Platform works? Sign up for our webinar, hosted by AKA financial services experts Tom Berger and Michael Quattlebaum, where you’ll see how other financial services firms have used the Power Platform to accelerate their CRM systems by eliminating gaps:

LIVE Webcast
Bridging Gaps and Building Apps – IN DAYS, NOT MONTHS
How 5 Financial Services Firms are Using the Microsoft Power Platform to Accelerate their CRM–Including Salesforce

April 7, 2020 | 1 pm EDT / 10 am PDT 

During the webcast you’ll learn about the Power Platform and what makes it the best choice above custom development or customizing existing software. We’ll discuss several typical gaps the Power Platform bridges, followed by 5 real-life examples of how the Power Platform is being used at by financial services companies.


ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
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Article by: Amy Spencer | 212-502-3900

Amy leads the team that is responsible for go-to-market strategies, messaging, and demand generation for AKA’s financial services practice. The better part of her 25+ year career has been dedicated to working for Microsoft’s most successful ERP and CRM partners, including The Taylor Group (aka ManagedOps.com & Surebridge), Navint (acquired by Tribridge and then DXC), Innovia Consulting, and now AKA Enterprise Solutions.

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How to Accelerate Your Sales Cycle: CPQ Integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

November 27, 2019   CRM News and Info

xHow to Accelerate Your Sales Cycle CPQ for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales.png.pagespeed.ic.nDsTtWN7we How to Accelerate Your Sales Cycle: CPQ Integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

How important is it to you to respond quickly to customers’ requests for price quotes, and to produce accurate proposals that reflect their unique specifications?

Sales leaders we’ve spoken with agree that delivering accurate quotes in a timely manner helps their teams close deals faster. If you agree, then integrating leading-edge technology that ensures your sales team has the tools they need to accelerate their sales cycles should be high on your list of priorities for the upcoming year. 

CPQ Partner Apps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

In April 2019, Microsoft announced that Dynamics 365 for Sales had partnered with the “best CPQ solution providers to deliver deep product integration with Dynamics 365 for Sales.” 

These partnerships allow sales organizations to harness the power of configure-price-quote (CPQ) solutions to quickly, consistently and accurately configure their pricing and produce quotes from within their Dynamics 365 for Sales environment.

So What is CPQ?

CPQ software (also known as Configure-Price-Quote) is a tool that integrates natively with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales to accelerate deals by quickly producing price quotes and sales proposals. Product configuration options and pricing rules help sales reps create quotes in minutes without the need for Excel spreadsheets and manual calculations. 

A sales playbook guides reps through the quote creation process to ensure customers are getting the right products at an optimized price. By reducing error-prone manual tasks, a CPQ helps businesses streamline their sales process and helps move deals along the pipeline.

Below are the ways CPQ and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales work together to increase efficiency. Consider making the integration before your 2020 sales kickoff so your sales team can achieve better results in the new year.

The Benefits of CPQ-Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Integration

Aberdeen Research reported on the benefits of CPQ in their study on best-in-class organizations. Let’s take a look at 4 of these benefits and how they will help your sales organization raise the bar on performance against goals and elevate the customer experience.

CPQ Improves Organizational Capabilities for Faster, More Profitable Sales Deals

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Source: Aberdeen Group, March 2015

Improved Sales Team Response to Request for Quotes

Sales reps who don’t use CPQ waste time searching for updated pricing sheets, supplier lists, sales assets, and proposal materials because they’re not integrated into the workflow. 

Aberdeen’s research revealed that CPQ users ship an average of 21.9 proposals per rep per month, versus 9.9  proposals per month per rep for companies that don’t use CPQ.

Lack of efficiency affects not only response time, but quote accuracy as well. When sales reps use Excel spreadsheets or stand-alone tools that aren’t integrated with their CRM, it’s difficult to respond to requests for quotes quickly and the chances for error increase significantly.

Generate Complex Quotes with Ease

In a separate 2013 Aberdeen CPQ study, 86% of organizations that use CPQ report that their sales reps are kept well-informed of pricing, promotions, and suppliers (compared to 73% of non-CPQ companies).

A CPQ is updated in real-time and gives sales teams a single source of truth about current pricing, promotions, supply levels, and discounts and allows sales reps to generate complex quotes easily. CPQ integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM ensures an automated, streamlined workflow from which sales teams can rapidly produce error-free proposals, quotes, and other sales documents.

Pricing and discounting rules built into the CPQ ensure a degree of flexibility in pricing that gives sales reps the agility to manage pricing by exception without the need to check with managers. Customers appreciate not having to wait for approvals and it gives them greater confidence in your organization.

Use of Personalized Quote, Proposal and Contract Templates

Templates are an essential part of automating the sales process and the CPQ solution will be a central repository for quote, proposal and contract templates. This ensures all quotes that go out are on-brand, follow pricing and discounting rules, and adhere to legal and regulatory guidelines.

Templates are a great way to streamline proposal and quote production, but customization and personalization are crucial to ensuring customers feel like they are not just a number. Personalization helps build trust with customers and CPQ software pulls customer information and data from the CRM into the proposal to reflect customer needs and previous conversations.

Avoiding “No Decision” Sales Losses

The Aberdeen study brings up an interesting point about “no decision” sales losses and how CPQ helps eradicate these disappointments. The study reveals that 39% of sales organizations that use CPQ are able to avoid “no decision” sales losses, compared with 19% of companies that don’t use CPQ.

CPQ-enabled sales teams use guided selling, and workflow of questions, to gather deal specifics and plug them into the software. Information such as buyer data, product requests, and time constraints are entered into the CPQ early in the opportunity management process. Armed with this data, sales teams can evaluate the deals to learn, based on predictive analytics, which are destined to win or fail.  

A Stronger, More Efficient Sales Team

CPQ enables your sales team to be more efficient, respond faster, and use data to learn where to focus their efforts.

Are you ready accelerate your quote to cash cycle? Integrate CPQ with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and you’ll soon see that your sales team is celebrating more closed deals and happier customers.

DealHub.io is a CPQ partner for Dynamics 365 for Sales. Learn the advantages of DealHub CPQ integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales in this video:

xcompare top cpq vendors for microsoft dynamics crm 625x327.png.pagespeed.ic.Wv3YLt4EKc How to Accelerate Your Sales Cycle: CPQ Integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

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Social Impact Organizations Accelerate Their Missions With Suite Pro Bono Events

July 10, 2019   NetSuite
DSC 3833 Social Impact Organizations Accelerate Their Missions With Suite Pro Bono Events

Social Impact Organizations Accelerate Their Missions With Suite Pro Bono Events

Posted by Morgan St. Clair, Oracle NetSuite Social Impact Communications Manager

This past spring at the sixth annual Hackathon 4Good at SuiteWorld, nearly 100 customers, partners and NetSuite employees teamed up to solve challenges for NetSuite Social Impact customers, MANA Nutrition and Art in Action. MANA Nutrition manufactures therapeutic food to save children’s lives – helping the 17 million children worldwide under 5 years old who suffer from severe acute malnutrition. The winning Hackathon 4Good MANA team, MANA-Festation, delivered a visually appealing dashboard for data analytics. Art in Action, the other NetSuite Social Impact customer at the Hackathon, provides art lessons to over 600 schools using new and upcycled items. The winning Art in Action team, Heart for Art, automated processes of using purchased and donated materials.

Oracle NetSuite Social Impact supports nonprofits and social enterprises of all sizes globally. The Suite Pro Bono program brings passionate employees, partners and customers from the NetSuite community together to help Social Impact customers use NetSuite more effectively. Opportunities include our quarterly pro bono projects, Buildathon 4Good and the annual Hackathon 4Good event.

logo buildathon4good lq 101117 black Social Impact Organizations Accelerate Their Missions With Suite Pro Bono Events

Buildathon 4Good Launches in North America for Second Year 

The Buildathon 4Good is an in-person Suite Pro Bono event where teams of NetSuite employees work collaboratively with nonprofit and social enterprise customers to address and solve for a particular NetSuite challenge.

Since the Buildathon 4Good events started, over 300 NetSuite employees have been matched with 54 charities globally. Eligible nonprofits and social enterprises have received 1:1 technical support which has resulted in countless hours saved operationally, giving organizations more hours to put towards their missions.

The North America Buildathon 4Good events will launch at Oracle NetSuite in Redwood City, Calif. followed by a Showcase Happy Hour. Just a few days later, the Buildathon 4Good: New York City will take place.

 The Buildathon 4Good Showcases are open to the public from 4-6 p.m. in the Bay Area and New York City. Learn what solutions were built that day with presentations from the organizations followed by a networking hour. Check out the NetSuite Events page to RSVP. Additional Buildathon 4Good events will be posted as they are announced.

Posted on Wed, July 10, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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