ScanSource , a leading hybrid distributor connecting devices to the cloud, today announced the release of its third annual Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report, highlighting ScanSource’s ESG strategy and progress for the 2022 calendar year. The report includes disclosures developed in alignment with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) framework for Multiline and Specialty Retailers & Distributors.

Following its formation in 2020, ScanSource’s ESG Steering Committee – a cross-functional team with members across the business – has guided ESG strategy and driven progress for the company’s ESG initiatives, including the development of its annual ESG reports. Building on how ScanSource embeds ESG considerations into business strategy, this report emphasizes ScanSource’s commitment to people, culture, and communities.

Highlights from the report include:

• ESG materiality matrix, which prioritizes key ESG issues based on importance to stakeholders and the business
• Materiality matrix priorities, including business ethics; diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I); data security and privacy; and employee engagement, training and development
• DE&I program expansion, including new educational opportunities and employee resource groups
• Community impact and support for 80+ nonprofits through financial donations, volunteering or drives
• Estimates for Scope 1 and Scope 2 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions
• Waste reduction initiatives, such as ScanSource’s recycling program
• Alignment with the SASB reporting framework

Customers can now enjoy highly personalized and conversational support experiences across a wide array of inquiries

Simplr, a bot-first CX outsourcing solution that offers automation and human agents, and Solo Stove, designers of beautiful, easy-to-use fire pits and camp stoves, today announced the launch of the first chatbot in the outdoor recreation space that is powered by generative AI. The result for Solo Stove customers will be first-rate support experiences across both simple and complex customer service inquiries.

Simplr's chatbot is powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT alongside a set of AI-training parameters called Cognitive Paths that guide the chatbots to the right customer resolution without risk of hallucination. By partnering with Simplr, Solo Stove is able to ensure that every interaction through the chatbot perfectly replicates their brand's tone and policy guidelines, can engage in complex, multi-turn interactions with customers, and identify the fastest path to resolution possible. Additionally, enterprise-grade security protocols prevent any customer data from being transferred back into any publicly available sources.

"Solo Stove has found continued success through an unmatched devotion to our customers' happiness and satisfaction," said Gretchen Mock, Community Support Manager at Solo Stove. "This is in large part driven through our desire to leverage the latest in technological innovation to improve both customer service efficiency and effectiveness. We are honored that our collaboration with Simplr has produced the first generative AI chatbot in our industry and will help raise the bar for customer expectations when it comes to how they interact with brands."

ChatGPT's ability to learn and understand language allows it to generate responses that are not pre-scripted. It gives the chatbot the ability to reply with personalized and contextually relevant responses to use in real-time, making it particularly useful in customer service. However, the overwhelming amount of data available to ChatGPT sometimes results in the bot generating incorrect or off-brand responses. Simplr's Cognitive Paths drastically decreases the overall volume of information available to the LLM-powered chatbot and eliminates the chance of hallucination. For Simplr partners like Solo Stove, this means they can take full advantage of the CX powers of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, while bearing none of the risks.

"We partner with brands who seek to be leaders in their respective industries when it comes to upending customer expectations for the better. Since their founding, Solo Stove has been an exemplar in this regard," said Eng Tan, Simplr CEO. "We are proud to partner with them to move the entire outdoor recreation space forward when it comes to using generative AI to improve customer satisfaction and time to resolution, and drive greater customer retention and loyalty."

England Publish Interactive is the flagship publishing software created by technology specialist Content Catalyst and used by analyst firms to launch subscriber portals that maximise the value of their research.

Publish Interactive was united with its parent company under the Content Catalyst brand during a recent brand refresh and website redesign.

The change enables Content Catalyst to move forward with plans for growth under one brand and with a website that showcases its full capabilities and the impact of its partnerships.

Daniel Lord had the idea for Content Catalyst in 2003 while working as a Senior Market Research Analyst. Like other analysts, he manually created resources such as market models, conceptual diagrams, and exhibits. It occurred to him that his customers must also manually reformat research.

Daniel believed he could use technology to automate aspects of his job, reducing the manual burden on analysts and increasing the value of research. More than two decades later, Content Catalyst remains privately owned with a team of expert analysts, technologists, and client success managers.

Content Catalyst helps analyst research firms to expand and deepen their customer relationships by making their research products and services easier to discover, reuse and share with customers while providing usage analytics that helps grow their business.

Daniel Lord said, “For over two decades, we’ve helped our partners to maximise the impact of their insight through technology, and we remain committed to this mission.”

“With our new look and refreshed branding, we’re looking forward to helping even more analyst firms to leverage technology to create first-class subscriber experiences.”

RevSpring recognized for significant expansion in its leading patient engagement platform solutions since 2021

RevSpring, the leading provider of healthcare engagement and payment solutions, was named today as a vendor with the Most New Capabilities in the 2023 KLAS Patient Engagement Ecosystem Report. The Report shows which vendors achieved the most new product development progress during the past two years and how the overall healthcare communications and financial payments industry has matured during the same time period. With dozens of significant product announcements since 2021, RevSpring’s growth in patient engagement has notably accelerated to meet customer and market needs.

“As a company, we are laser-focused on delivering innovative solutions that meet the needs of our customers and the patients they serve,” said Scott MacKenzie, CEO of RevSpring. “We are proud to be recognized by KLAS Research for the strides we have made in building upon our patient engagement platform. Our expanded capabilities connect and improve a patient’s experience everywhere they engage with our customers, from preservice through post-service and payments.”

Increasingly, healthcare organizations seek consolidated vendor options as they adopt or replace technology. Using a single vendor allows organizations to improve efficiency and interoperability and reduce complexity. RevSpring’s Engage IQ™ platform is a wholistic engagement platform that responds to the needs of provider organizations. Engage IQ empowers providers to create a consistent patient experience and coordinate connected patient interactions from pre-service to post-service to payment.

The Report, along with additional deep-dive content, is available on the KLAS website. Readers will find an update to KLAS’ 2021 report, designed to give healthcare organizations, including payer and provider organizations, a current state of what capabilities vendors offer to meet their core patient engagement needs.

ToolJet, the open-source low-code platform for developers announced today that it has secured an investment from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund and GitHub via the M12 GitHub Fund to fuel its next stage of growth.

Popular among developers, with close to 20,000 stars and 350 contributors on GitHub, ToolJet has become the go-to solution for thousands of innovative teams across Fortune 500 companies, scaleups, and startups worldwide. Leveraging the power of open-source technology, ToolJet empowers customers to seamlessly enhance the platform's capabilities by effortlessly integrating JavaScript-based plugins, enabling endless possibilities for customization and extensibility.

“We're thrilled to have Microsoft and GitHub join us on our journey,” said Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil, CEO of ToolJet. “Their investment is a testament to the strength of our platform, community and our vision to democratize software development by making it more accessible to everyone.”

“We believe that low-code development is a key way for businesses to accelerate their innovation and we are committed to supporting ToolJet in their mission,” said Priyanka Mitra, Partner at M12 and co-founder of the M12 GitHub Fund. “We were impressed by Navaneeth and the Tooljet team, and their approach to low-code enterprise app building via the engagement of the open source community.”

The investment will play a pivotal role in ToolJet's strategic initiatives as it focuses on expanding its workforce and advancing the artificial intelligence capabilities within the platform. With this infusion of resources, ToolJet is poised to bolster its talented team by attracting top-tier talent across various domains. By harnessing the power of AI, ToolJet aims to enhance its platform's intelligence, enabling developers to leverage advanced algorithms and automation to streamline their development workflows further. This strategic allocation of funds will empower ToolJet to accelerate innovation, fueling its mission to revolutionize software development and deliver unparalleled value to its ever-growing user base.

ToolJet's low-code framework places paramount importance on data privacy compliance, addressing the growing concerns of organizations. With a steadfast commitment to safeguarding sensitive information, the platform offers the flexibility of secure on-premise installation, enabling users to retain control over their data even without internet connectivity.

Headroom, a startup offering embedded AI-powered video conferencing technology, announces its integration with Lucid Software, the leader in visual collaboration software, to enhance the workplace collaboration experience by allowing Lucid users to hold Headroom virtual meetings directly inside the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite.

The Headroom integration for Lucid introduces a seamless workflow enabling users to transition from brainstorming to decision-making without leaving the Lucid platform. Users can kick off a Headroom video meeting with a simple click within Lucidchart or Lucidspark, fostering real-time collaboration. Participants can see and hear each other in context, with the ability to start a discussion while looking at a specific flowchart, brainstorm, dashboard or other visuals.

"It is becoming impossible to manually process all of the data from all of the meetings and conversations; there's just too much of it. Because it's not understood or remembered, 90% of what you discuss gets lost," said Andrew Rabinovich, CEO and co-founder of Headroom. "That's where Headroom comes in. Video conferencing and AI are essential components in building comprehensive collaboration suites for virtual and hybrid teams."

This fusion of AI and visual collaboration accelerates productivity by minimizing disruptions. Headroom's advanced AI capabilities provide real-time engagement analysis, automated action items, meeting summaries, video highlights and key insights extraction, while Lucid's dynamic visual platform facilitates ideation, quicker alignment and strategy development. All that information saved within Lucid, contextualized by the Headroom conversation recordings, transforms into a searchable, shareable knowledge base.

"Our integration with Headroom provides a way for users to connect in real time and collaborate in a visual space, providing context to complex conversations in an engaging way, while also creating a visual artifact that can live on well past the meeting is over," said Dan Lawyer, Chief Product Officer of Lucid Software. "Lucid's Visual Collaboration Suite allows teams to facilitate better decision-making and align more quickly and adding Headroom provides another facet to help increase clarity and accelerate innovation."