Tag: Technology

Singapore – Consumer insights tool InsightzClub has announced the rollout of its new data discovery tool for its existing insight dashboard, aimed at driving real-time automation of insights discovery.

Through the tool, InsightzClub allows customers to run self-discovery with the accumulated data with an accessible user interface (UI). Traditionally, to obtain cross tabulations involves data processing on statistics which are time-consuming and exhaustive.

The release of the tool comes after the launch of its passive embedded insights technology on its app last December 2020, to gather data behaviorally rather than survey-based data.

“The data discovery tool is a no-code, drag and drop tool aimed to support insights and marketing teams to have the power to explore the data. The addition of the data discovery tool to our real-time dashboard is also part of the end-to-end customer automation stack,” said Padmanabhan Ramaswamy, co-founder of InsightzClub.

Singapore – The Singapore arm of digital experience agency Bray Leino Splash has announced four new hires for its country operations, including a new user experience (UX) director.

Jaffry Jalal takes the helm as Bray Leino Splash SG’s UX Director, who has previously worked with TBWA\Singapore and Havas as its UX design lead, and most recently a lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic. He has previously worked with brands such as Singapore Airlines, MasterCard, and Michelin to help them create digital products and immersive experiences.

“I’m excited BLS continues to invest in experience design capability and I’m thrilled to be at an agency who has the technical chops to bring good design to life,” Jalal stated.

Other hires include Kein Wai E, who joins as the agency’s technical project director and is from technology company Deltatre; Stephanie Holzhuber, who is the agency’s new senior account director and is from advertising agency Cheil Worldwide; and Jamie Phua as the new account director and is from ad agencies Y&R, TBWA, and Digitas.

Speaking about their appointments, Kien Wai stated, “Joining BLS Singapore is like a homecoming of sorts as the marrying of creativity with technology is definitely something close to my heart and that I’ve missed in recent years.”

Meanwhile, Holzhuber commented, “BLS is an agency who are able to deliver truly seamless customer experiences for their clients by bringing data, technology, and creativity together. I look forward to our exciting future ahead.”

Lastly, Phua stated, “In the last few years, It’s become apparent to me that the pillars of UX and technology are critical if agencies are to really help brands create relevant solutions for present-day consumers, so being able to leverage these capabilities at BLS is what excites me the most.”

These new hires are welcomed by BLS Singapore’s managing director Joshua Lee.

“Each of these hires has ‘runs on the board’ when it comes to connecting technology, creativity, and business results for their respective clients. I couldn’t be happier welcoming such wonderful talent to the team. Not only are they at the top of what they do, but they are passionate and hardworking to boot,” Lee stated.

Sydney, Australia – Australian-based adtech company Cartelux has launched its centralized marketing solution, and it has decided to pilot it to the Australian arm of global automotive brand Kia, specifically in its dealer’s network.

Through the solution, Cartelux’s technology will assist Kia in driving local innovation by simplifying and automating ad creation, approval, and media buying process. This then enables dynamic personalization of creative assets by each dealer, while delivering a consistent brand campaign for Kia. 

For Nikolas Souliotis, digital marketing manager at Kia Australia, their partnership with Cartelux means achieving success in the digital age between the brand itself and its numerous dealers nationwide.

“The Cartelux platform offers an entirely new playground allowing better marketing alignment across national and local tiers through scalable video and data consolidation. This enables us to see consumers through the same lens and drive better results and greater efficiencies – it’s the future of performance-driven retail marketing,” Souliotis said.

Meanwhile, Randy Han, global lead for Kia at Google noted that Kia’s partnership with Cartelux means creating more engaging video content for the automotive brand, as Kia has been looking for simple ways to create dealer ad content at scale.

Patrick Doble, global general manager at Cartelux, commented, “Kia is one of the world’s most innovative and fastest growing brands. The program for Kia will commence with providing digital video advertising, which geo-targets campaigns based on the dealers primary marketing area.”

Virginia, USA – dentsu Media has expanded its existing partnership with media analytics company Comscore which will add dentsu’s M1 advanced audiences platform to its local market agreement.

One of Comscore’s services is instigating change in television measurement by enabling the adoption of advanced audiences and the move to impressions, which allow the industry to go beyond age and gender and evaluate based on consumer behaviors, interests and lifestyles.

“We believe in the meaningful progress that our agencies can deliver for our clients through the use of M1’s advanced audience capabilities for local investment, and Comscore’s transformative approach to data and currency makes us even stronger,” said Jennifer Hungerbuhler, EVP, managing director, local video and audio investment at dentsu Media. 

She added, “Furthermore, the integration of over 10 million additional households into Comscore’s measurement footprint was a real driver for us, and we look forward to transacting on the audience-based data in 2021.”

Meanwhile, Carol Hinnant, chief revenue officer at Comscore commented, “We are excited to continue our partnership with dentsu Media. They are forward thinkers and we are proud to expand our efforts with them.”

Wellington, New Zealand – TTC, a global software assurance provider in New Zealand, has been approved by the country’s Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) to be the first Web Accessibility service supplier on the Government Marketplace, a platform that allows businesses and government agencies to engage with each other by facilitating the direct buying and selling of products and services between the two parties.

TTC helps organizations modify their technology deliverance, increasing the speed and quality of technology development while reducing risk and cost.

Through this initiative, TTC will be providing technology services including but not limited to accessibility testing & audit, training, and digital accessibility consulting, broadening the scale, reach, and ease of providing accessibility solutions within the government’s procurement process, and enabling the practice of greater digital inclusion and usability practices.

Grant Borrie, founder and director of technology at TTC, expressed they couldn’t be more thrilled to be given the green light to offer their services for Web Accessibility on the Marketplace.

“Creating inclusive digital experiences is something we firmly believe should be a priority for all businesses. We understand that improved digital accessibility and inclusion benefits employees, customers, and service users, so to be part of an initiative that will allow the conversation and capabilities around accessibility to expand even further is something we’re ready for,” Borrie said.

Singapore – Insider, a growth management platform, has announced the launch of a new design system that aims to deliver a consistent experience for enterprise marketers building cross-channel experiences.

Through the new user experience (UX), marketers can now find and use products based on use cases and goals such as product discovery, as well as easily understand all their cross-channel marketing efforts and monitor ROI metrics closely in a single dashboard.

Furthermore, the new UX can help create streamlined campaigns and delivery across channels like website, email, and push notifications to speed up execution, as well as easy tagging and filtering to organize campaigns, streamlined reports for faster insight discovery, and time-saving features to boost marketers’ productivity.

According to Muharrem Derinkok, co-founder and VP of product at Insider, the new UX responds to the major concern of marketers mulling whether they should invest in upgrading their UX, specifically for an enterprise setting. Insider hopes to break the impression among marketers that enterprise UX is “clunky, slow-to-load platforms that require significant training.”

“The underwhelming experience is precisely the ceiling we wanted to shatter with our fresh and thoughtful approach to designing our new platform. With over 25% of our 2020 roadmap invested in our design system – we’re thrilled to bring a breakthrough experience to enterprise marketers,” Derinkok said.

Another feature in the new UX is creating cross-channel journeys easier with another Insider product, Architect. Architect is an Insider product that helps marketers develop individual online channel journeys for consumers online to get them to buy a product by means of various online advertising platforms such as email marketing and Facebook ads.

“The new experience is further enabling brands to accelerate their time to market, leading to bigger, better, and faster results. Our clients have always looked up to us for taking bold steps in solving some of the most pressing problems of experience disruptors who are behind the growth of top global brands,” said Hande Cilingir, co-founder and CEO at Insider.

Clinger added, “We have helped our customers to deliver hyper-personalized and delightful experiences to their customers. It’s now their turn to experience the same intuitive experience in their daily workflows as we redefine what’s possible for enterprise marketing technology.”

Singapore – Global SaaS analytics platform AppsFlyer has announced the launch of its new predictive analytics feature, PredictSK, a new solution that will be a part of its SKAdNetwork suite, SK360

SKAdNetwork is about to become a major part of campaign measurement and optimization on iOS, following Apple’s latest privacy changes. This deterministic attribution framework provides advertisers with some data on their iOS campaigns, and while Apple has been continuously making updates to improve its offering to advertisers and app developers, it also introduces critical limitations.

Through the new solutions suite, brands are able to configure and optimize their conversion value, validate their data and keep it fraud-free. They will also be able to integrate with their choice of partners, all through a dedicated, centralized analytics dashboard. 

PredictSK is made in response to the current limitation of SKAdNetwork where advertisers rely on short window time in measuring campaign performance. With only 24 hours of user activity to work with, optimization is nearly impossible. With PredictSK, advertisers will be able to leverage early signals of engagement, which is usually in the first 24-72 hours, to predict long-term campaign performance. 

Furthermore, PredictSK puts mobile attribution in SKAdNetwork on ‘auto-pilot’, removing the measurement and timing barriers and allowing advertisers to maintain and strengthen their competitive edge in this new reality.

According to Barak Witowski, vice president for core product at AppsFlyer, the company’s developed solutions have always been at best for the benefit of advertisers, adding that PredictSK will help brands be empowered against limited data availability.

“AppsFlyer’s SK360 suite will empower brands to eliminate the uncertainty brought on by limited data availability and limited measurement capabilities, while maintaining end user privacy, by combining multiple solutions for maximum coverage,” Witowski stated.

He added, “Moreover, PredictSK will enable measurement across all user events to quickly and accurately predict user loan-to-value (LTV), helping advertisers save precious time and money. With SK360, Advertisers can stay in the driver’s seat while complying with the strictest privacy requirements,”

Meanwhile, Liwei Chen, staff product manager at Twitter, stated that they were working closely with AppsFlyer in delivering a fully operational plug-and-play SKAdNetwork solution.

“The solution was designed together to validate all advertisers’ needs from SKAdNetwork are met: data trust, granularity, optimization, and measurement. This is another exciting step for advertisers, delivering upon our promise of helping drive business success while maximizing end-user privacy,” said Chen.

The new product will be available after Apple starts enforcing its AppTrackingTransparency framework in early spring. The SK360 suite will continue to support the ecosystem throughout Apple’s upcoming privacy updates.

Bangkok, Thailand – Global enterprise software firm R3 has launched Conclave, a confidential computing platform that secures sensitive business data while being used. 

The platform allows firms to securely aggregate their datasets to solve shared business problems for their customers and across markets, without revealing the actual data to anyone. It paves the way for a new generation of trusted services that can detect fraud, reduce cost, build high-value multi-party analytics, and more, where the owners of the data control how it is processed.

Furthermore, the platform is built to be developer- and business-friendly. It has a high-level, intuitive API allowing users to easily write applications on any operating system, as well as code in their language of choice.

For David E. Rutter, CEO at R3, the recently-developed platform responds to a greater need in protecting proprietary data, which is key for a greater commercial opportunity, yet seldomly sent out due to issues of privacy and mistrust.

“R3’s Conclave is uniquely designed to solve this problem of trust through the promise of technologies such as confidential computing and Intel SGX. Conclave offers best-in-class technology, backed by the rich experience of our developers and business team, to empower customers to bring about a new era of privacy in data sharing, processing and analysis,” Rutter stated.

Conclave is powered by Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX), to which Anand Pashupathy, general manager of security system software at Intel, said will “help improve the privacy and integrity of data and algorithms in multiparty systems.”

“The developer-friendly capabilities delivered in R3’s Conclave can help expand the use of Intel SGX for enterprise applications,” he added.

Conclave is currently available as a stand-alone platform and is compatible with R3’s flagship blockchain platform Corda Enterprise. Full integration between Corda Enterprise and Conclave is forthcoming.

Singapore – Support for employees working remotely has been rated as the top strategy for SMEs across APAC in regards to their growth and success, new statistics from technology company Cisco shows.

According to the research, 41% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Asia Pacific (APAC) rated it as important as online sales platforms for success and growth. With the shift to a hybrid work environment here to stay, SMEs in the region are expected to continue to invest in technology solutions that support this trend. 

As a result of the business disruptions caused by the pandemic in the past year, using technology to reduce cost is the top business goal for one in five (18%) SMEs across APAC in the next 12 months. This is especially prevalent in mature APAC markets such as Australia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, where more than one-quarter (26%) of those surveyed selected it as their top goal compared to 17% in emerging markets India, China, Indonesia, and Thailand. 

Finding alternative channels to sell and deliver products is a challenge that half (50%) of SMEs in APAC are currently facing, followed by improving employee productivity (44%) and boosting revenue (40%). Such conflicts are manifested by SMEs who are seemed overwhelmed by the global pandemic.

Furthermore, improving employee productivity (44%) is the second-largest business challenge that SMEs in APAC are facing. In mature APAC markets, employee engagement (42%) is the top priority for digitization efforts across SMEs.

For Bidhan Roy, managing director and head of commercial and small business for Cisco Asia Pacific, Japan, and Greater China, the study reveals that the pattern of SME revamps in their remote work support has not only been evident in APAC, but also globally. 

“In the current climate, where online is a major consumption channel and dispersed workforces are the norm, our research also finds security and privacy among the chief considerations for SMEs when selecting technology solutions. It is crucial for SMEs, who may have limited resources, to work with technology partners that can help them identify secure, reliable, and value-for-money technology solutions that best fit their needs, as well as provide ongoing, one-stop, and customized support throughout the lifetime of the products and their digital transformation journey,” Roy said.

The findings are based on a survey by Analysys Mason of senior business and IT leaders at 1,600 SMEs with 50 to 150 employees, based in eight markets across APAC. 

Singapore – Consumer behavior in retrospect to brand loyalty has seen a greater shift, most notably caused by desire for customers to have their received services personalized and to be recognizing privacy, a report from analytics firm Futurum Research and software company SAS shows.

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Significant pandemic-induced shifts in consumer behavior and opinions include changes in loyalty drivers and acceptance of immersive tech. In response, the majority of brands are rethinking superior customer experience and accelerating their technology development and deployment plans to meet the needs of the evolving consumer.

In the report, it is stated that the global state during the pandemic has heightened the interest of the general public to lean towards acceptance of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) and an integral part of the consumer process. Due to such response, a third of brands surveyed are speeding up investments in technology over the next two years. Some technologies include voice-based AI assistants, customer support holographics, and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) technology.

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In terms of customer view on technology, statistics showed their interest on the following:

  • Drones – last year, 23% of consumers expected delivery by drone or autonomous vehicle in the coming year; now 60% expect it by 2022. 
  • Smart assistants – last year 65% of consumers expected to use them by 2025, but now 70% plan to use them by 2022 
  • Chatbots – last year 36% of consumers expected to use chatbots to have questions answered or receive customer support about a brand, products or services. Now, 54% want a live person, and not a bot, available to talk to them. 
  • AR and VR – about 69% of consumers surveyed expect to use AR and VR to sample products in 2021. In addition, 63% of consumers are willing to use AR and VR to visit remote locations, up from 56% in the previous survey. 
  • Telemedicine – 67% of consumers are open to telemedicine. 

In a ‘socially distant’ market, hybrid digital and physical experiences have become increasingly common as both brands and consumers look to technologies that provide convenience and safety – from the increased use of telemedicine to contactless payments and online ordering combined with curbside pickup. Brands that want to deliver truly personalized experiences must pivot to include these forms of engagement in the customer experiences they provide,” SAS noted in the report.

Due to such high demand, business disruption has been evident as six out of 10 brands reported that they’re unable to deliver their regular products to their customers. About 28% of brands have been unable to adjust and adapt and are riding things out until ‘normal’ returns. 

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In response to such disruption, some brands have accelerated development in online consumers tracking systems for behavior and habits (66%), mobile apps for customer engagement (64%), shared customer records for cross-departmental use (68%) and real-time product or inventory awareness systems (64%).

“The Experience 2030 global study, released in late 2019, clearly indicated that brands are planning to invest heavily in immersive CX technologies and AI-fueled automation over the next decade,” said Wilson Raj, global director of Customer Intelligence at SAS. 

He added, “This Pulse report stresses that organizations have not changed these priorities, but urgently stepped up these investments to respond to the pandemic and ensuing disruptions. Brands have chopped timeframes in many of the areas identified in Experience 2030.” 

The survey was conducted during June and July 2020, as Futurum Research surveyed more than 600 global consumers, executives, marketers and technology professionals.