From Microsoft splitting Teams from its Office Suite to Google potentially acquiring HubSpot, a lot is happening between these two tech giants.

Both companies continuously explore avenues to enrich customer engagement and streamline operational processes. This quest for enhanced connectivity and understanding of the consumer landscape is where integrating with, or in Google’s case, acquiring Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms like the online marketing software company HubSpot becomes a strategic imperative.

Companies like Google can leverage sophisticated analytics, personalized marketing tools, and comprehensive project management solutions by considering the incorporation or acquisition of the platform. The potential acquisition by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, of HubSpot—valued at US$35 billion, as exclusively reported by Reuters—underscores the importance of CRM systems in achieving these goals.

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Alphabet’s eye on HubSpot

Alphabet’s contemplation of making a bid for HubSpot emerges as a noteworthy move in the tech industry, particularly under the intensified regulatory gaze of President Joe Biden’s administration in the United States. This acquisition, if pursued, would mark a significant venture for a leading tech entity into high-value deal-making amidst regulatory scrutiny.

This potential deal could represent Alphabet’s most substantial acquisition to date, offering an opportunity to strategically employ its substantial cash reserves, which stood at US$110.9 billion at the end of the last year.

Recent discussions have taken place between Alphabet and investment bankers from Morgan Stanley regarding a possible bid for HubSpot. These talks have focused on the bid’s valuation and the likelihood of obtaining approval from antitrust regulators. However, Alphabet has yet to extend an offer to HubSpot, and the outcome remains uncertain, as noted by sources who wished to remain anonymous while sharing insights on these private considerations.

In response to inquiries about these discussions, a representative from HubSpot stated the company does not engage in speculation or rumors, emphasizing their ongoing commitment to their business and clientele. Requests for comments from Alphabet and Morgan Stanley have not received immediate responses.

Following the revelation of these discussions, HubSpot’s stock experienced an 11% increase to US$693, whereas Alphabet’s shares saw a slight decrease of 1%, pricing at US$153.34.

Since its public debut in 2014, HubSpot has carved a niche in providing marketing software to small and medium-sized enterprises. Despite reporting a net loss of US$176.3 million in 2023 from revenues of US$2.2 billion, the company’s growth potential has captivated investors, as evidenced by a 50% surge in its stock price over the past year.

Google Alphabet eyes HubSpot acquisition (Source – X)

The future of CRM: What this means for Google and HubSpot

Currently, the discussions about Google potentially acquiring HubSpot are speculative, with no confirmation regarding whether this collaboration will materialize. Should such an acquisition proceed, it represents a significant shift for both companies.

Integrating HubSpot’s CRM capabilities could provide Google with deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences, potentially enhancing its user engagement through the use of HubSpot’s analytics and marketing tools.

The acquisition would enable Google to broaden its portfolio, especially within the CRM space—a sector where it has not yet established a strong foothold. This expansion could open up access to new markets and customer segments, particularly targeting small to medium-sized businesses that predominantly use HubSpot.

Furthermore, Google’s cloud computing services could see substantial benefits from incorporating HubSpot’s CRM solutions, potentially improving Google’s position relative to competitors like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

Positioning the acquisition as a competitive enhancement in the CRM and broader software market could assist Google in navigating the complexities of regulatory approval, presenting the deal as a countermeasure to the market dominance of entities like Salesforce and Microsoft.

Such an acquisition could also quicken Google’s growth within the burgeoning CRM market, offering a pathway to expand its market share and influence significantly.

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Regulatory scrutiny and market dynamics

This acquisition speculation comes at a time when Google faces multiple antitrust allegations, including a significant lawsuit challenging its dominance in online search. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is exploring new growth avenues following a shortfall in advertising sales, as Google and YouTube vie for ad budgets against platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Amazon.com.

The technology sector is witnessing a resurgence in deal activity, exemplified by Synopsys’ agreement to acquire Ansys for around US$35 billion and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s acquisition of Juniper Networks for US$14 billion. In the first quarter alone, technology mergers and acquisitions have surged over 42% year-on-year to approximately US$154 billion, as reported by Dealogic, highlighting the sector’s dynamism.

Overall, Google acquiring HubSpot could mark a pivotal development, potentially creating new synergies between their technologies and market strategies. This development could offer both companies opportunities for growth and innovation within the dynamic landscape of CRM technology.

The post Google parent Alphabet eyes HubSpot: A potential acquisition shaping the future of CRM appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Earlier this year, Salesforce announced that it would release software incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into its customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Leveraging generative AI, the tool will help salespeople, customer service agents and marketers do their jobs better.

Called Einstein GPT, it is the world’s first AI for CRM. The cloud-based software has since seen major advancements. The proprietary AI technology was the highlight of the recently concluded Dreamforce 2023. And it’s no surprise that Salesforce has allocated a lot of its resources to generative AI.

As with other major tech companies, Salesforce also announced job cuts earlier this year. However, this did not slow down innovation at the company. According to a report by Bloomberg, Salesforce is hiring more than 3,000 people across departments, a huge shift in its direction after eliminating 10% of its workforce earlier this year.

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Bloomberg also reported that Salesforce is putting its money on AI, in the hope that the technology will fuel a new cycle of tech investment. This includes plans for its data cloud product that helps customers organize information from multiple sources.

Statistics are showing favorable results for Salesforce’s decision. In fact, an upcoming IDC study shows that the company and its partner ecosystem, fueled by the new wave of generative AI, will create a net gain between 2022 and 2028 of more than US$2 trillion in business revenues and 11.6 million jobs.

The AI Cloud, which was unveiled in June 2023, is a suite of capabilities optimized for delivering trusted, open, and real-time generative experiences across all applications and workflows. It is built for CRM, supercharging customer experiences and company productivity by bringing together AI, data, analytics, and automation to provide trusted, open, real-time generative AI that is enterprise-ready.

IDC predicts that the Salesforce AI economy will generate a net gain of US$2.02 trillion in worldwide business revenues and 11.6 million jobs worldwide, between 2022 and 2028

Salesforce and AI

At the core of the success of AI Cloud and Salesforce will be Einstein AI. Einstein is foundational to Salesforce’s Customer 360 platform, which now powers over one trillion predictions per week for customers across sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and IT.

At Dreamforce 2023, Salesforce announced new capabilities of its generative AI tool. They included new generative AI capabilities with Einstein Copilot, a conversational AI assistant built into every CRM application and customer experience. Einstein Copilot, integrated seamlessly into users’ flow of work, will drive productivity by enabling them to ask questions in natural language and receive relevant and trustworthy answers that are grounded in secure proprietary company data from Salesforce Data Cloud.

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Another update is the Einstein Copilot Studio. Addressing specific business needs, Copilot Studio will give companies an easy way to customize Einstein Copilot with specific prompts, skills and AI models. This capability will help businesses close sales deals faster, streamline customer service, or turn natural language prompts into code, among hundreds of other business tasks.

At the same time, Einstein Copilot Studio will provide integrations to make Einstein Copilot available beyond Salesforce applications, for use across other consumer-facing channels like websites to power real-time chat, Slack, WhatsApp, or SMS.

Using Einstein Copilot Studio to build new skills. (Source – Salesforce)

The Einstein Trust Layer

To ensure the results generated do not infringe on data privacy and security standards, both Einstein Copilot and Einstein Copilot Studio will operate with the Einstein trust layer. The Einstein trust layer is a secure AI architecture, natively built into the Salesforce platform. Designed for enterprise security standards, the Einstein trust layer allows teams to benefit from generative AI without compromising their customer data, while at the same time letting companies use their trusted data to improve generative AI responses.

Features of the Einstein trust layer include:

• Integrated and grounded – Built into every Einstein Copilot by default, the trust layer grounds and enriches generative prompts in trusted company data through an integration with Salesforce Data Cloud.
• Zero-data retention and PII protection – Companies can be confident their data will never be retained by third-party large language model (LLM) providers, and customer personal identifiable information (PII) masking delivers added data privacy.
• Toxicity awareness and compliance-ready AI monitoring – A safety-detector LLM will guard against toxicity and risks to brands by “scoring” AI generations to provide confidence that responses are safe. Additionally, every AI interaction will be captured in a secure, monitored audit trail, giving companies visibility and control of how their data is being used.

Salesforce has also announced the Einstein 1 platform. The Einstein 1 platform gives companies the ability to safely connect any data to build AI-powered apps with low code and deliver entirely new CRM experiences. This creates a unified view of data across an enterprise, regardless of how the data is structured in internal systems, and allows organizations to customize user experience and action data using a variety of low-code platform services.

How the Einstein trust layer works. (Source – Salesforce)

“A company’s AI strategy is only as good as its data strategy,” said Parker Harris, co-founder and CTO of Salesforce.

“We pioneered the metadata framework nearly 25 years ago to seamlessly bridge data across applications. It’s the connective tissue that fuels innovation. Now, with Data Cloud and Einstein AI native on the Einstein 1 platform, companies can easily create AI-powered apps and workflows that supercharge productivity, reduce costs, and deliver amazing customer experiences.”

Salesforce commits to developing responsible AI technologies.

The new Data Cloud, now natively integrated with the Einstein 1 platform, allows companies to unlock siloed data at scale to create rich, unified customer profiles and deliver entirely new CRM experiences.

• Data at Scale: Einstein 1 platform supports thousands of metadata-enabled objects, each capable of having trillions of rows. Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud are also re-engineered onto the platform.
• Automation at Scale: massive amounts of data can now be immediately made available as actionable Salesforce objects on the Einstein 1 platform. Flows can be triggered at any change on any objects at scale, up to 20,000 events per second, and can interact with any system in the enterprise, including legacy systems, through Mulesoft.
• Analytics at Scale: Einstein 1 platform’s common metadata schema and access model allows Salesforce’s variety of insights and analytics solutions – including reports and dashboards, tableau, CRM analytics, and marketing cloud reports – to work on the same data at scale.

“Our latest innovations represent our vision for the future of AI, data, CRM and trust. This next generation of Einstein, along with the new Einstein 1 platform, extends the frontiers of trusted and accessible AI-powered solutions built for businesses. Organizations in ASEAN can now truly harness the value of their data and implement AI-powered solutions to drive productivity and deliver personalized customer experiences at scale,” commented Sujith Abraham, senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce ASEAN.

The post Salesforce bets big on Einstein and AI appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Southeast Asia is going through a rapid and unprecedented digital revolution, which is being fueled by growing consumer classes, a strong start-up industry, cheap and readily available devices, and young, tech-loving populations who have embraced social media and e-commerce. The Southeast Asian countries’ roadmap for digital transformation is changing the region.

According to Human Resources Online, Malaysia expects the digital economy to generate 500,000 new positions, provide Internet connection to every home, and provide full access to an online learning environment by 2025.

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Many organizations that have digitized are better positioned to use technology to accomplish realistic and measurable business objectives as Southeast Asia makes a move to the digital economy.

Tech Wire Asia had the chance to speak with Gibu Mathew, Vice President and General Manager in Asia-Pacific at Zoho Corp, on how fast the digital transformation is happening in Asia and how Zoho is empowering businesses across many industries as we move into the endemic phase.

Changing APAC region’s business ecosystem 

Gibu Mathew, Vice President and General Manager in Asia-Pacific at Zoho Corp

According to Mathew, looking back at the pandemic from two years ago, the first step was to set up virtual meetings and have basic communication between employees within the business. This level of basic communication, Matthew claimed, was a necessity.

The payment was also a significant issue for those selling directly to customers. Therefore, setting up those websites and e-commerce sites and establishing digital payments is crucial.

On the other hand, IT teams at mid-sized businesses had to set up employee computers using remote control software and set up any essential software, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoho Meeting, or whatever is necessary for the employees.

“These are only basic growing pains that will occur during the transition. However, even if it was simply the basics, it is more crucial to expedite real transformation in how organizations do business than focusing only on the basics. So, if you ask me from the tools perspective or how the ecosystem has changed, what will make you stand out as a company is how you will actually be able to provide exceptional customer experience. So, those are the really significant changes,” Matthew explained.

Technological advancements that benefitted businesses

According to Mathew, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for statistical analysis has been paradigm-shifting in terms of technological development, particularly for business software.

He claimed, however, that there is no way to demonstrate the benefits because they are already evident. He asserts that AI is a massive game changer since it enables businesses to empower their employees to make better-informed decisions, following a major transition that we have seen in the past, such as the auto sector or other aspects of the machine.

Mathew explained, “One major issue firms face is with training, skilling, or upskilling their employees. This has been somewhat reduced because AI nowadays is about helping people to do their jobs better rather than replacing them. So that’s actually a very significant change and/or future of the technology that has advanced significantly over the past two years.”

Can design be successfully integrated into the digital transformation process?

For Mathew, the user experience (UX) aspect of technology implementation in a business is typically not given as much thought. So, lots of software ends up being shelfware because it’s so challenging to use.

“Therefore, design is a crucial component. That means you must ensure that your staff members utilize the tools you have created. Additionally, the tools you use for your core business can be modified for different stakeholders,” said Mathew.

Similarly, businesses should be able to alter the CRM’s front end for different roles so that no one can feel overwhelmed. Otherwise, they’ll encounter resistance from members of their own team.

With the news of the great resignation, a huge issue for businesses, it will be difficult for new employees to understand the system when they start working. Companies must therefore make it simple for the new employee to get on board.

“In fact, we introduced the first data design studio with Canvas. You can create a stunning user interface (UI) with just a drag and drop without writing any code. The new generation of employees entering the workforce today are already savvy and make use of social media and other tools in their personal lives. So, they expect the same standard, especially for business software,” Mathew added.

Source – Shutterstock

Drawing the privacy line

Mathew believes that in order to succeed, companies must adhere to the law. Today, much of the business software used, particularly by non-business users for personal purposes, infringes on privacy. By using the software, they sell a portion of their rights. They think the software is free, but there’s always a price to pay.

“Are you, as a company, helping your competitors by using advertisement-driven software? For instance, the largest companies in the world have been utilizing today’s AI for years. Therefore, unless they have proper business practices, keep in mind that when you consume products from the largest firms in the world, you are sharing your unique “secret sauce,” because of the data you are sharing with them,” continued Mathew.

Today, privacy must be respected at all costs. A company is essentially showing their value, not just in terms of the technical service they provide, especially if they are trying to establish themselves as a regional player or want a good chance of selling to countries in Europe. Having a proper privacy perspective adds value to the business.

How Zoho helps businesses stay up to date in the digital world

“When you look at the smartphone itself, how do we help businesses stay relevant, particularly in terms of technology? We have a low-code platform called Zoho Creator. We created the platform before smartphones became widely used,” stated Mathew. “Customers that use Zoho Creator were able to export applications as iOS and Android apps and upload them to the Play Store or App Store when smartphones came in.”

Zoho allowed them to keep using the old platform without making any changes or charging them extra. One of the critical things that Zoho makes sure of is that they work to keep technology updated and backward-compatible with all of their new releases.

“So, from a customer perspective, the reassurance that we give to our customers is we do whatever is needed to ensure that you are always up to date. If we have a new device to support, we will do it. If there are new experiences that our customers expect, we build on them,” concluded Mathew.

The post Keeping pace with the evolving business ecosystem with the right digital transformation roadmap appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

As one of the more advanced economies in Asia Pacific, Singapore has been aware of its environmental shortcomings as the effects of climate change become increasingly noticeable. Between 2008 and 2010, significant policy change took place with the release of the National Climate Change Strategy as part of the establishment of the National Climate Change Secretariat in 2010 under the Prime Minister’s Office.

As a business capital, organizations will play a crucial role in helping Singapore achieve its net zero emissions goals “by or around mid-century.” A big pillar of this carbon transformation will be the progressive raising of carbon tax levels beginning in 2024 – alerting businesses and individuals alike that carbon spending will be incrementally unwanted as time goes on.

At its first full-fledged Dreamforce conference since 2019, and at the same time as the release of its Trail to Net Zero for Singapore report, leading CRM provider Salesforce announced the launch of its Net Zero Marketplace, a unique carbon credit marketplace that allows organisations to transparently and directly purchase carbon credits from ecopreneurs, AKA sustainable technology startup entrepreneurs, in a seamless e-commerce experience by perusing a virtual catalogue of independently curated carbon credits. After starting in the US next month, the Net Zero Marketplace will expand internationally in 2023.

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YouGov surveyed 1,000 managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Salesforce report, with the majority (81%) supporting Singapore in setting net zero emissions target for 2050. Despite strong awareness among Singaporean businesses, there has been a massive move toward mass digitization in recent years, and no industry is exempt. This has seen surging demand for data storage and computing power, prompting energy efficiency concerns and the expanding carbon footprint of tech products.

Source: Trail to Net Zero for Singapore report

One of the clearest technological adoptions during this global digital transformation drive has been the overnight take-up of cloud computing services. Salesforce encourages the Singapore government to push the adoption of cloud, citing an Accenture study that cloud migrations helped to achieve a monumental 84% reduction in carbon emissions in contrast to legacy infrastructure like on-premises storage.

The report went on to highlight how important a role technology will play to shore up an unpredictable “climate crisis”, highlighting the development of environmental AI, such as for detecting the pollution of levels in Singapore’s water supply. A shared digital platform between the public and private sectors can help track emissions and predict emission patterns, ensuring “better decision making, and a single source of truth” for measuring emissions both within the SME and in its supply chain.

And as digital innovations continue to evolve while renewable energy remains a limited option for the country, Salesforce is encouraging the Singapore government to invest heavily in emerging low-carbon technologies such as Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) and hydrogen. But research also highlights that while many workers are ready to embrace this change, most feel their organizations do not supply enough sustainability roles, tools, and training to effectively make a difference.

Speaking of digital transformations, one of the big talking points of Dreamforce 2022 was the release of Salesforce Genie, a hyperscale real-time data platform that will be the underlying architecture of the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Genie itself has the foundation of a data lake, capable of turning data into highly personalized customer experiences across a series of verticals including sales, service, marketing, and commerce – continuously adapting to changing data flows and ingestion needs in real time.

Alongside Genie and Customer 360, Dreamforce witnessed a slew of big-time partnership announcements with the likes of AWS, WhatsApp, McKinsey and Snowflake. Digital transformation and sustainability initiatives like the Salesforce research into Singapore were major conversation fodder this year, but the biggest talking point was Slack. Specifically, Slack canvas.

Slack saw major adoption gains in recent times as digital collaboration and communication platforms took off in the wake of imposed distances between colleagues. Slack canvas was built from the ashes  of shareable document software Quip, to more competitively take on leader Microsoft Teams and emergent players Zoom and Google Meet. Slack canvas will essentially be collaborative documents, or ‘canvasses’, with shared files, checklists, integrate with data from the Salesforce Sales Cloud so that Customer 360 data can be interacted with directly in Slack.

The post Digital transformation, sustainability the driving (Sales)force for Singapore appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the uptake of e-commerce and online sales channels as an alternative to physical store shopping around the world, and in Australia, the picture is no different.

While some brick-and-mortar retailers were well-positioned to transition towards online selling, others such as Kmart and popular department store David Jones Australia struggled to quickly shift their businesses online when the coronavirus induced a nationwide shutdown. Both popular retail chains’ web services were brutalized by users on product review sites, with the David Jones Australia website in particular drawing heavy flak for not delivering ordered items, sending out the wrong items, and failing to respond to its customer complaints.

The scathing reviews were unsettling for Australia’s most well-known store chain – in a bid to modernize, David Jones had been posting significant web sales increases over the past two years as the company turned towards a more digital shopping experience.

“Whilst our stores remained open during the lockdown, our online store sales doubled. This sales growth, coupled with dispatch and delivery delays associated with the increased volumes, led to unprecedented demands on the customer services teams,” said Daniele Iezzi, the customer services general manager at David Jones and Country Road Group

“We saw increases of up to 500% in customer contact. Call volumes increased so quickly that at one stage customers were telephoning us every two seconds. Needless to say, wait times for calls ballooned out to levels we weren’t comfortable with.”

Gartner reports are pegging traditional retailers to broadly embrace digitalization by 2025, as retailers have been forced to contend with the e-commerce reality – especially following the pandemic causing major shutdowns and store closures. Most store chains of a certain scale have had to adapt various segments of their business, from rerouting supply chains to experimenting with digital in-store experiences, to accepting cashless payments as a means of avoiding physical contact.

For David Jones Australia, the company has decided to support its growing online sales by moving its maligned customer service operations to run on Amazon Connect and Salesforce cloud-based systems, to better manage customer feedback and ensure customer fulfillment is taking priority.

Customer services GM Iezzi told Salesforce Live for Retail & Consumer Goods that the retail chain tried to go digital-first too fast, and at the time was not prepared in the customer service area for the significant increase in online sales.

“This placed pressure on the customer services team. The increase in online sales drove a 50% growth in phone calls to the team with the main inquiry being related to order status,” explained Iezzi. “Coupled with outdated systems, this demand was creating an experience that didn’t live up to our customers’ expectations.”

David Jones decided to retain its customer relationship services in-house rather than outsourcing them, allowing the company to have a more direct grasp of their customers’ expectations, and brought in Deloitte to build a new platform based on Amazon Connect and Salesforce’s Service Cloud.

Salesforce has repeatedly been ranked as one of the top customer service and support software vendors, with Gartner rating its Service Cloud solution as the best for innovation in customer relationship management (CRM), noting that Service Cloud had improved 125 features over last year’s edition, including real-time AI-based case classification, skill-based routing and WhatsApp support extensions.

David Jones Australia is also using Amazon Connect’s artificial intelligence (AI) virtual assistant to automatically respond to certain overflow customer calls. “Upon successfully matching your number to your profile, the virtual assistant will greet you by name. Using natural language understanding, the virtual assistant will then determine the reason or intent for your call,” Iezzi elaborated.

“If you’re ringing to check on the status of your order, Amazon Connect will locate the order in your Salesforce profile, confirm its details with you, and then [make] an API call to our order management system and to our delivery partners [to] relay the order status to you, without the need for human intervention,” he continued. “This is really powerful as order status inquiries are still the main source of customer contacts to our team.”

For out-of-hours calls, the system will create an ‘unresolved case’ in Service Cloud, filling in the details and reason for the call automatically. Amazon Connect can also determine to transfer calls to an agent, by looking at the customer’s profile info in Salesforce, identifying the caller by their phone number.

The digital customer care platform has provided David Jones some of the space to pivot to additional support channels, such as transitioning store staff who were not working much during the lockdown, and redeploying them to handle excess online queries.

“One of the great features of Amazon Connect and Service Cloud is the flexibility to scale up quite easily,” noted GM Iezzi. “As a result, we could redeploy these team members quickly using their own devices, and we could call on team members from any state to work with us remotely. They were able to hit the ground running.”

In addition, David Jones Australia also increased its live chat and chatbot capacities, including using chatbots to better understand customer intent early and to obtain necessary customer information “such as their name, a case number or product information, helped reduce our handling time, and increase agent productivity in chat.”

Iezzi says the capabilities of Amazon Connect and Salesforce allowed the retailer to keep “every channel of communication open” despite customer care agents undergoing the transition to work-from-home during Australia’s lockdown period.

Buoyed by the recent customer response improvements, David Jones plans to identify opportunities “to automate further customer intents so that we can deflect more calls away from the customer services team.”

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“As we continue to leverage the power of Amazon Connect used in conjunction with Service Cloud, we will continue to gather information and insights about our customers, as each contact creates a case in the customer’s profile in Salesforce,” said Iezzi.

David Jones is also planning to provide better tools to supplement the customer’s in-store experiences as well. “We’re looking to implement chat and messaging in-store,” Iezzi confirmed. “This will give customers more options in how they’d like to engage with our store teams, and allow sales assistants to view their customer’s shopping history, allowing them to sell the right product more easily and more efficiently. Naturally, this will be integrated with Service Cloud.”

The post Why Aussie department store David Jones went cloudwards for CX appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Reports and studies have often said that the biggest challenges to ensuring data privacy is understanding how and where data is stored within a business, and monitoring and policing who has access to it.

According to some vendors and solutions providers, however, the best way to ensure data privacy is to optimize the existing CRM system.

The argument does make sense if you consider all the data that a CRM system holds and weight it against some of the features that CRM systems are typically able to offer.

Here’s a quick dive into how you can optimize your CRM system to ensure that you’re able to comply with all prevailing data privacy requirements and regulations:

# 1 | Visibility

In any business, the sales team plays a key role. The data they collect and use to do their job usually includes sensitive information about other businesses and individuals.

Further, as relationships with customers develop over time, companies tend to collect more data than necessary during the sales process.

Using a CRM allows companies to ensure that they collect all the information and store it in the right way, without losing anything valuable — this would be impossible to do on spreadsheets or process or project management tools.

Essentially, a CRM gives businesses visibility into all the data they have on customers — which is the first step to understanding what data needs protection or must be kept private and whether existing processes that leverage data are able to comply with the regulations or not.

# 2 | Security

When you’ve got customer data, it’s easy to forget that you have a responsibility to protect that data. Further, you need to make sure that the data is only accessed by the right people within your organization and for the right purposes.

Using a CRM allows companies to not only protect data but also adds a layer of security in terms of the software protects the data itself.

If the data is stored in the cloud, the CRM provider or vendor is also equally liable to protect the data you store, as a result, you’ve got increased security as no additional cost — which of course goes another step further in terms of data protection.

# 3 | Governance

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Most importantly, regulations require that companies govern access to data.

When companies use a CRM, they’re better able to define who has access to data and from where (blocking out access from unauthorized locations and regions).

As a result, CRMs provide a strong sense of support and direction when it comes to meeting strict data regulations such as the EU’s GDPR and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act.

The post Smart CRMs can help businesses keep customer data safe appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

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Tech Wire Asia | 10 July, 2019

Usually, organizations focus on getting AI working in areas such as operations and supply chain in order to drive efficiencies and reduce costs, but the technology can really work wonders for sales teams.

Top-of-the-line CRM vendors, therefore, are incorporating elements of AI into their solution to enable sales teams to get more out of their data.

Although each solution has its own custom features, here are three key AI-based sales enhancements that delight teams and help them go the extra mile to close a deal.

# 1 | Data mining and social insights

Sales teams often interact with several different prospects and customers. Keeping track of their specific businesses might therefore be a little tough.

However, with an intelligent CRM, AI could help keep track of what’s current with companies — tracking news from the internet.

This information not only helps salespeople appear well informed but also provides them with new opportunities to approach clients; opportunities they might have otherwise missed.

Further, CRM systems, with help from AI, could also track the organization’s internal data sources for transactions with related companies, information from contracts, and even inbound requests or queries to help join the dots and present a more exciting and timely proposal to prospects and customers.

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# 2 | Real-time deal-sizing

Sales teams usually rely on just the CRM system for all their daily tasks. From reaching out to customers, logging discussions, and tracking progress, to follow-ups and renewals — everything is done on the CRM.

However, since AI can tap into data from other sources as well, it can help sales teams quickly key in customer requirements to generate better quotes based on pre-set pricing policies as well as current inventory.

Some new-age CRMs also use AI to help salespeople tap into warehouse and supply chain data to provide clients with answers should the need arise.

# 3 | Communications assistance

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Most commonly, AI systems these days are helping salespeople do more with their time when working with their CRM by serving as an assistant.

AI, powered by devices such as Amazon Alexa, can help listen in on conversations with customers and transcribe call logs instead of have the sales representative type it out.

Finally, the CRM, with help from AI, could also support salespeople with better emails drafts, suggestions about things that are top of mind in the customer’s industry, and so on.

The post Here’s how sales teams can leverage AI to delight customers appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Rapid advancement in customer relationship management (CRM) technology is looking to pay closer attention to how customers interact.

As a result, CRM technology now delivers hyper-personalization

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In the fast-paced digital era, tailored and quick responses are the new standard of customer satisfaction.

Hence, not only do businesses need to act swiftly but also in a personalized manner — which will eventually lift sales figures as well.

According to a report, global AI-enabled CRM business activities will be worth over US$123 billion by 2024.

The same report also forecasted that AI in the CRM vertical within Asia-Pacific (APAC) will grow at the highest CAGR within the same timeframe.

This means to say that more businesses in APAC will be investing in AI-enabled CRM solutions to support their strategies.

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How will AI-enabled CRM technology support sales and marketing

More businesses are turning to CRM technology to bolster their sales and marketing strategies.

The customer-centric digital tool can help sales reps achieve higher targets with data analytics.

Data captured by the CRM technology that Westpac New Zealand is using help the bank create more productive customer engagements that will lead to better sales.

Westpac’s Head of CRM Development David Quinn said that the technology will help them “better understand which banking and financial services each customer needs and what [Westpac] should be delivering to them.”

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A CRM system can streamline all data from different contact points automatically.

So, the system dashboard will provide necessary information for decision-makers before they launch new sales campaigns.

Not only does it give leaders greater visibility but also helps execute sales campaigns faster. On top of that, marketing teams can do more with less as chatbots aid with automation.

More recently, Westpac Australia launched a new chatbot to all its customers.

Since its ‘soft launch’ in March this year, more than 70 percent of customers it interacted with had their problems solved and required no further support.

Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer said that “this means quicker service for customers and fewer calls to [Westpac] call center.”

Also, data captured through different chats will be integrated into the CRM system, providing leaders even more accurate representation of their customers.

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The intel will be highly useful for future product developments that target specific groups.

This helps with increasing customer response rate and effectively targeting specific market groups.

In the end, all reports will show that business technology is growing at lightning speed.

However, not all businesses are ready for AI disruption in their day-to-day processes like CRM.

This is especially clear in Asia, where fragmented regulatory support for AI will impact many businesses. Despite that, the technology tsunami will not stop there.

Businesses can start by understanding how CRM technology can support their sales and marketing strategies first.

Then, there’ll be other bleeding edge technologies to help scale the digital maturity curve.

The post What can businesses learn from Westpac’s use of AI-enabled CRM? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Luckily, digitally transforming restaurants can help deliver better consumer journeys and make the business smarter, more efficient, and more intelligent.

It is in the interest of restaurateurs to understand business technology and how it can bring them greater success.

Some believe technology in the people-oriented business will cultivate a hands-off approach and take away the human touch.

However, that cannot be farther from the truth.

What tech does for food establishments is to take the guesswork out of managing customers by relying on a more data-driven approach.

Since pricing and quality are always areas that the food industry competes on, data can better equip owners to make decisions that delight without an actual increase in annual improvement budgets.

McDonald’s recently invested in US$300 million in an analytics firm Dynamic Yield for this very reason. McDonald’s started in 1955 and this was it’s biggest tech-investment ever — and for good reason.

However, not everyone is McDonald’s. Here are three very basic but really game-changing ways restaurateurs can use business technology to up their CX (without breaking the bank):

# 1 | Ensuring consistency in service

Let’s be real: Good servers are hard to find and harder to train.

They are the last-mile when it comes to restaurants and worthy of investments to make sure your CX is consistent.

Bleeding-edge technology such as virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) can ensure knowledge transfer is more effective across the organization.

For example, the operations manager can introduce data from a real-life scenario via AR technology so that staffs from all outlets are clear on their SOPs.

This is also a cost-efficient way to train new staffs that join the establishment.

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# 2 | Letting food be the star

Food should always be the star of the show when it comes to a restaurant. Indeed, that’s the foundation of a good CX for restaurants.

Business technology like enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems can help restaurateurs ensure food is always as best and available as they can be.

Not only can an ERP system help chefs collect and store data about their inventory across its various locations but also manage demand for supplies more effectively.

In the long run, this system can ensure executives are always communicating the right information to business leaders to help them make better decisions.

# 3 | Managing the expectations of customers

Just like any other business, food establishments need to maintain a strong relationship with their customers.

It’s not just about taking orders and serving it to the table.

Restaurants will earn major brownie points if they understand customers better using a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

For instance, if a customer had previously mentioned an allergy, it will be useful to store that data in a CRM system for his next visit (with the customer’s consent).

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By doing so, the CX you provide will be memorable as it shows care and concern. Above that, all wait staff will be aware of that data when they look into the CRM system to avoid any miscommunications.

The food business has always been about the people and the experience.

This means to say that restaurants will definitely have to stay relevant to customers by climbing the digital maturity curve.

Restaurateurs can ensure top-notch CX with digital tools so that hungry customers are always coming in.

The post Can digital tools really help restaurants delight their customers? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

These are deliverables of a good customer relationship management (CRM) system as well as results of a sound marketing strategy.

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This means to say that CRM systems can help businesses launch marketing campaigns that will drive customer engagement. Here’s how.

#1 | Focused targeting and segmentation

For marketing campaigns to be engaging, the content has to be relevant.

Instead of processing customer data one-by-one to create content that is to the point, a CRM system can easily identify the strongest links that the database has with the existing marketing strategy.

Besides that, marketers can use CRM software to segment the database by not only industry and jobs but also interests and activities.

Focused targeting and segmentation can be tedious but necessary steps for marketers to make educated decisions that will drive engagement.

Fortunately, with CRM software, the process will only be within a few clicks.

#2 | Personalized content

Based on the focused targeting and segmentation, marketers can personalize their messages to ensure for better engagement rate.

Personalized content is more likely to receive responses as it delivers a stronger brand experience for the customers.

Bleeding edge CRM technology enables brands to not only address recipients by their first names, but also by other details.

Hence, the delivery will come across as much more genuine.

Traditionally, personalization is a privilege that only small businesses are able to achieve because they usually have a smaller database.

Catering the same for larger groups will naturally take more time.

With CRM, all marketers will be able to deliver mass personalization at their fingertips.

#3 | Recycled blueprint

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CRM technology’s backend is expansive. With behind-the-scenes data analytics, marketers can also assess the performance of different campaigns all at once.

It’s only logic if marketers want to replicate the campaigns that have shown success and they can do exactly that with CRM.

Instead of guesstimating what will work or not and consequently, wasting marketing dollars, marketers can recycle successful campaigns for new market groups.

This will lead to lower marketing expenses but higher conversion rates for the business.

In the end, CRM is not just about having a centralized database.

Like all enterprise technology, it is growing to become an integral part of the business with all the underlying parts connected.

The post 3 ways your CRM can help launch better marketing campaigns appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.