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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Financial services firms such as banks and insurance companies often get criticized for failing to keep pace with customers’ digital expectations — including by their own employees, as Cognizant acknowledges in its latest TV commercial. The 30-second spot takes place in a theater where team members of a major institution have gathered for a rousing […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Despite the introduction of natural language processing, machine learning and other technologies into major software packages, nearly half of B2B marketers say artificial intelligence plays no role in their current strategy, according to research from EverString and Heinz Marketing. In ‘The State of Artificial Intelligence in B2B Marketing,’ EverString and Heinz surveyed 300 marketers, mostly […]
David Hanson is well aware of the reasons business professionals might be a little easy about robots coming into the enterprise, but he believes job security should be the least of their concerns. The founder and chief designer of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics took the keynote stage at OCE Discovery in Toronto on Monday, but […]
There’s a common misconception that I keep hearing when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) implementation in marketing and sales. It often comes across that companies are expected to implement AI in-house. But that’s not the case at all. Your typical B2B marketing and sales organization can’t buy AI, but they can access AI-powered services. […]
When Deborah Leff was preparing her presentation for IBM Think, she looked online to find the best antonym to the word “insight.” The top results were “ignorance” and “stupidity.” While not exactly an example of data science in action, the findings showed Leff, IBM’s global sales leader of business analytics, the stark difference between those […]
At the AI World Forum in November I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on facial recognition that included Jahanzaib Ansari, Co-Founder and CEO of Knockri. In our discussion the audience learned that artificial intelligence is biased, as is quite often the recruitment process (though perhaps unconsciously). AI, and machine learning, is only as […]
The digital transformation has demanded a lot from businesses during recent decades. In many cases, companies have been forced to adapt to evolving technologies at rapid and often uncomfortable speeds. Early adopters of emerging technologies can gain a significant competitive advantage in this data-fuelled digital landscape. Luckily, my peers and I at G2 Crowd have […]
You’ve seen the news, and you know that technology is taking people’s jobs at factories, fast food restaurants, and more. Is your B2B career next? According to McKinsey Global Institute’s latest report, “Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation”: “Automation and AI will lift productivity and economic growth, but millions of […]
Even before I actually played it myself, I could foresee the moment when somebody tries to highjack HQ Trivia’s popularity for marketing purposes. I first became aware of this ridiculously addictive iPhone game in much the same way that I learned about Pokemon Go more than a year ago: a sort of social media osmosis […]
This is the story as I heard it: Meg Whitman, then the CEO of eBay, was being walked through the user experience design of an early version of its online auction service. In other words, she literally went through the process of trying to put an item up for bid, and saw how many steps […]
It was the kind of conversation about marketing with artificial intelligence that made SAS exec Monique Duquette tilt her head in confusion: a customer who said she wanted AI to tell her which campaigns were successful and which were not. “I asked, ‘Do you have reporting?’ (She said) ‘Yes.’ Well, then why do you need […]
Cisco is using market research from a survey of knowledge workers across 10 countries to demonstrate potential interest in having virtual assistants take over some of the most mundane administrative tasks in the enterprise: running meetings and conference calls. The networking giant this week released the data as a followup to the launch of Cisco […]
Is the rise of artificial intelligence profoundly changing what it means to work? AI is all around us, and its applications run from the mundane to the fantastic. But many are questioning the growing symbiosis between machines and humans. As machines begin to manage more of our professional lives, are we at risk of losing […]
