Monica Behncke wasn’t necessarily thinking about the potential of AI in B2B when she let her teenage son plan their vacation at an amusement park, but she was quick to recognize the parallels. Speaking at last week’s SiriusDecisions Summit Canada in Toronto, the research firm’s VP and group director noted how amusement parks involve a […]
Ninety-three per cent of sales professionals and 87 per cent of marketers believe virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence technologies could improve cross-functional relationships, according to the results of a survey released by Conversica. The Valentine’s Day Sales and Marketing Report is based on responses from approximately 1,000 U.S.-based sales and marketing professionals and explored […]
While the overwhelming majority of B2B sales professionals have high hopes for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help them do their jobs, less than half have actually started to implement such tools, according to the results of a recent survey released by InsideSales. Based on a set of questions fielded to more […]
Customer churn accounts for one of the most expensive business losses. Attracting new customers involves substantial marketing costs, compared to retaining existing ones. Although the churn rate varies significantly by industry, from 5% for SaaS companies up to 38% for telecom organizations, all companies aim to reduce these rates as much as possible by identifying […]
The data-driven insight is clear: if you watch a film starring Nicholas Cage, you face a high risk of falling into a swimming pool and drowning. Andy Pulkstenis was clearly trying for a laugh, and he got one. The director of advanced analytics at State Farm Insurance in Bloomington, Ill, was leading a breakout session […]
As more enterprise firms and their customers start to question the use of data in analytics, research and artificial intelligence tools, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is offering an 18-point set of guidelines to ensure ethics in quantitative decision-making. Based in Catonsville, Md., INFORMS was established in 1995 following a […]
It may have started out as a site offering Moneyball-style analytics for the college basketball crowd, but a firm called Automated Insights could become better known for using natural language generation as a way for enterprises to finally see greater value from business intelligence and data warehouse projects. Founded by a Cisco distinguished engineer and […]
B2B marketers are going to spend 2019 buying customer data platforms, fine-tuning the tools they use to handle account-based marketing and begin applying artificial intelligence for ‘midcycle engagement,” according to a series of predictions from Forrester. The Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm published a report on the likely trends for both marketing and sales teams […]
Zoho on Thursday expanded its CRM Plus collection of software applications to include tools for customer service teams such as Zia, an intelligent assistant that uses voice recognition features much like Apple’s Siri to address critical questions or complaints. Although Zia (which stands for “Zoho intelligent assistant”) has been available to CRM Plus customers for […]
Showpad on Wednesday will announce an acquisition that will bring artificial intelligence-based voice recording and transcription analysis to its customer base of sales professionals as a way of boosting their productivity and effectiveness. The Chicago-based firm, whose software offers a range of sales enablement capabilities to B2B firms, said it has purchased Voicefox, a two-year […]
Infogroup CMO Tony Marlow has some advice for his peers: the only way to effectively target B2B audiences is to mirror the seamless, personalized shopping experiences that consumers have grown to crave. A provider of data, analytics and marketing services based in Papillon, Nebraska, Infogroup announced the hiring of Marlow as well as four other […]
PwC estimates that AI will add $15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030. IBM predicts that blockchain technology’s contribution will have reached $3.1 trillion by then. Clearly, both technologies have the potential to be extremely valuable. Even more intriguing is their convergence. Today, AI is still a limited technology that can be said to […]
Lots of CEOs in the AI space show off examples of robots that look and sound a bit like human beings. Suzanne Gildert, CEO of Sanctuary AI, may be the first to show off one that is designed to look exactly like herself. Speaking at the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) conference in Toronto on Monday, […]
HR services firm Morneau Shepell is trying to tackle some of the biggest challenges affecting the mental health of business professionals by improving the artificial intelligence capabilities of a chatbot it introduced earlier this year. Speaking at the IBM Innovate conference in Toronto on Thursday, Morneau Shepell CIO Michael Lin said the chatbot, dubbed Ava, […]
Recruiting is hard. Recruiting great leaders is even harder. Managers are arguably one of, if not the most integral function within an enterprise, and therefore investing the time and resources into finding the right talent is essential. According to a Deloitte survey, 81 percent of respondents named talent acquisition the most important challenge last year. […]
Customer relationship management provider Affinity is using artificial intelligence technology to sift through employees’ e-mail and calendar data in hopes of easing the search for “warm” introductions to prospects and customers. San Francisco-based Affinity described Alliances, which was released on Monday, as a tool that will create a “relationship graph” to help those in sales […]
As Microsoft’s chief data scientist, Ozge Yeloglu’s job is not to develop specific products but simply help further customer success with tools like artificial intelligence. There are some occasions, however, when she just has to say no. Speaking at last week’s Elevate Tech Fest in Toronto, Yeloglu — who works for the software giant’s Canadian […]
SAP used the TechEd 2018 conference to introduce a new version of its Data Hub that will bring together different kinds of business applications and information no matter where it sits so organizations can improve the way they do things like upsell, cross-sell and conduct account-based marketing campaigns. Speaking to customers and partners in Las […]
Concured has already brought artificial intelligence to augment the creative creative stories brands tell through content marketing. Its next chapter will focus on sales enablement. Based in London, Concured uses AI to address a lot of the unknown questions that make the creative process in content marketing so difficult. Its technology ingests data to help […]
A few days ago, Randy Guard was sitting in a quiet boardroom in San Diego’s Grand Hyatt where, only steps away, some of his biggest and most marquee customers were discussing their IT and business strategies as part of his firm’s Analytics Experience. The SAS CMO didn’t need any software, however, to know what was […]
