In hospitality and retail, consumers say the least personalized parts of their experiences are during their stay and while in store, providing key opportunity for brands

Medallia, Inc., the global leader in customer and employee experience, today announced the findings of its new research report, Understanding Personalization Efforts in the Hotel and Retail Industries. 

In a research study of 1,749 hotel guests and 1,905 retail consumers, Medallia found a strong link between personalization and overall satisfaction, validating earlier research that showed 61% of consumers are willing to spend more with companies if they offer a customized experience. But the new study revealed hotel and retail brands have significant opportunities to improve and capture more revenue: Just 23% of consumers report experiencing high levels of personalization after recent hotel stays and only 26% say the same after recent retail interactions.

The study also found customers who rate the level of personalization they received as a 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the most personalized, are far more likely to also rate their overall satisfaction as very high. Those who do not perceive their experience as being personalized report lower satisfaction ratings.

“It’s no surprise to see the clear link between personalization and satisfaction, but also not surprising to see brands struggling to keep up with consumer expectations for more customization,” said Andrew Custage, Head of Insights for Medallia Market Research. “The challenge for companies — especially in hospitality and retail, where consumers frequently engage across multiple digital, contact center, and in-person touchpoints — has always been capturing and understanding customer data fast enough to act on it. But generative AI technology is now making it possible for brands to automate insights and actions at scale to deliver more personalized experiences.”

Other key findings from the new report include:

The greatest opportunity to maximize personalization for hotel guests is during the stay itself

• Guests are less likely to find personalized experiences at this stage of the customer journey — features of personalization possible during the hotel stay averaged only a 46% recall rate, but other parts of the journey like interacting with customer service, during the booking, post stay, and during the check-in and check-out processes all averaged higher.
• Additionally, hotels can offer greater personalization when rewarding guests based on their status by allowing guests to make customized selections during the booking process, giving them more opportunities to provide feedback and allowing them to choose the support channels they prefer when they need customer service.

Retailers deliver more personalized experiences at certain touchpoints than others

• Retailers provide more tailored interactions for mobile app users, web visitors, loyalty program members and customers who interact with a brand’s customer service team. These individuals are much more likely to report higher levels of personalization compared to non-loyalty program members and customers who interact with retailers in person.
• These personalization gaps highlight an opportunity for retailers to step up and win a greater share of business and loyalty. After all, the majority of retail customers agree that customized, personalized and quality service leads to them choosing a brand more often and spending more when doing so.

Andrew Custage presented this new research at Medallia’s Experience ‘24 conference in early February, where the company also announced four new generative AI capabilities and a new Agile Research solution.

Survey Methodology

Medallia Market Research gathered responses from 1,749 hotel guests and 1,905 retail consumers about a recent visit or transaction in November 2023 using Medallia Agile Research and Medallia’s Sense360 research panel. Weighting has been applied based on U.S. census distribution of age and gender.

Data rightsizing solution supports company's Data First mission advocating starting data work earlier to drive better business outcomes from SAP transformation projects

Optimizing data volumes through early assessment of SAP data to enable cost savings, faster system migrations and improved overall system performance

Syniti, a global leader in enterprise data management, today announced it has acquired Proceed Group's Rightsizer software, a tool for identifying archiving opportunities and to determine infrastructure sizing as organizations embark on their SAP S/4HANA transformations. Rightsizer enables businesses to gain agility, relieve strain on internal resources, increase efficiencies in deployment, and maintain actionable data while keeping business operations running smoothly. The acquisition will expand and complement Syniti's current portfolio of solutions and build on the company's Data First approach to digital strategy of prioritizing data work at the start of any business transformation project.

With the acquisition of Proceed Rightsizer, Syniti customers will be able to begin working on their data earlier than ever before as they prepare for their journey to implementing SAP S/4HANA. When conducting an SAP migration, businesses need support to securely extract and import the data and documents stored within SAP environments and decommission the SAP and non-SAP legacy data that's no longer required. That's in addition to retaining the data required for regulatory and business reasons, ensuring continuity. Assessing and optimizing data earlier, understanding what to archive and what to delete, helps customers realize value faster from their existing data and infrastructure, setting the right Data First foundation for SAP transformations.  With rightsized data, businesses can focus on the data that is most important to their operations and can realize increased efficiency from their existing investments.

Syniti will begin incorporating the Rightsizer software into its Data Assessment Express offering, which offers customers rapid visibility into their SAP data to identify data challenges and opportunities. It provides customers with earlier access to relevant data information with suggested actions to accelerate data quality, data governance, analytics or data migration projects. These solutions facilitate the company's Data First approach by driving the importance and real benefits of data-driven transformation efforts and further enhances Syniti's capabilities and offerings in the SAP ecosystem.

Kevin Campbell, CEO, Syniti, said: "I've never had a customer tell us they started their data work too early or that their data is too clean. This is particularly true for any business transformation project, as we have seen in the thousands of SAP migration projects that we've delivered on for our customers including our recent successful go-live at Bridgestone. We continue to see the Data First strategy proving to drive better business benefits than antiquated lift and shift approaches."

Nick Parkin, founder, Proceed Group, said: "Syniti and Proceed are long-time partners, having worked together on many successful data projects. Both companies believe that maximizing the value of your SAP S/4HANA transformation means getting your data in shape prior to the move. Rightsizer is a natural fit for Syniti's innovative solutions and its Data First mission, which is critical towards ensuring every client is thinking about their data as a first step to delivering faster business benefits from their system implementations."

Experienced technology executive will drive global marketing strategy to accelerate growth

Mitel®, a global leader in business communications, today announced it has appointed Eric Hanson to its executive team as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). 

Hanson will lead Mitel’s global marketing strategy, including solutions marketing for Mitel’s extensive communications portfolio, demand generation, brand, partner engagement marketing, customer marketing, and global communications.

“Over the past year, we have strengthened the Mitel solutions portfolio, expanded our channel community, and doubled the number of customers we serve,” said Tarun Loomba, President and Chief Executive Officer for Mitel. “Eric’s deep knowledge of the communications market and proven ability to drive demand in this space will accelerate our growth objectives and help solidify Mitel as the clear leader in unified communications.”

Hanson brings nearly 30 years of executive and marketing expertise to the Mitel team. Most recently, he was CMO at OneSpan, a provider of electronic signature and cybersecurity software, where he drove new programs that increased enterprise demand generation and improved the company’s brand and reputation in targeted market segments. Previously, Hanson served as CMO at Fuze where he was instrumental in contributing to the business and product innovation momentum that led to the company’s acquisition by 8x8 in 2022.

Prior to his time in the technology sector, Hanson was CEO and cofounder of SPY, a creative studio. Under his leadership, the company experienced tremendous growth, working on advertising campaigns with brands such as Nike, Toyota, and Apple and films including Iron Man, Hunger Games, and Avatar.

“When you pair its heritage of innovation with the recent acquisition of Unify, Mitel has an incredibly exciting story to tell,” said Hanson. “I am thrilled to join a world-class team at such a pivotal time, and I look forward to helping elevate the Mitel brand, empower partners, and provide clear paths for customers to use communications technology to drive engagement and better business outcomes.”

New third-party app integrations and actions in Grammarly enable businesses and professionals to simplify workflows and reclaim time lost to constant context-switching

Grammarly, the company helping over 30 million people and 70,000 teams work smarter and faster wherever they write, today announced the general availability of its app actions feature for all business, individual, and education customers. App actions enable customers to complete actions in popular third-party applications wherever writing with Grammarly is happening, making it easier to get work done without wasting time switching between tools, so teams stay focused and efficient. 

The increasing weight of application and information overload is causing a massive productivity drain, distracting teams from strategic work and costing businesses significant time and money. Knowledge workers lose up to five working weeks per year navigating between different apps, and 64% say they’re exhausted by incessant context-switching. App actions help people reclaim their workday by letting them carry out tasks—like creating a project ticket, linking to a file, or scheduling a meeting—from one place within Grammarly.

“Application overload is crushing productivity. We all know the pain of navigating an endless stream of apps, files, and channels,” said Matt Rosenberg, Grammarly Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Grammarly Business. “Opening up access to app actions is a major step toward our vision to power the AI-connected workplace by helping people work better and faster without distractions. Unlike many generative AI offerings that make the problem worse by locking people into one platform, Grammarly connects to the tools they already use so they can stay focused on getting their job done.”

Expanding support with new connections and capabilities

Grammarly is uniquely able to provide a connective layer across apps and workflows because it works where people do, on over 500,000 apps and websites. Since first announcing app actions in beta, Grammarly has listened to customer feedback to expand the feature with new integrations and functionality in a dozen of the most-used workplace apps, with more to be added over time. With app actions, customers can:

• Find, link to, or create new tasks to manage work in Asana, Atlassian Jira, monday.com, Smartsheet, and Wrike
• Find and link to a file or page in Atlassian Confluence, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Microsoft SharePoint
• Reference, link to, or create a new contact in HubSpot
• Access, format, and share links to schedule meetings via Calendly
• Find and insert animations and images from GIPHY and Unsplash

“At Smartsheet, we bring people, content, and work together in our enterprise work management platform. Adding a workplace AI tool like Grammarly to our integration suite simplifies collaboration for customers by eliminating the need to switch between their go-to apps,” said Bani Bedi, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy at Smartsheet. “With the Smartsheet app action in Grammarly, more teams everywhere can work where they want to work, quickly find and kick off tasks, manage projects, and get the job done.”

“HubSpot is all about helping businesses grow, and partnering with an enterprise AI tool like Grammarly makes it even easier for our shared customers across marketing, sales, and support to access the HubSpot experience and get more value out of our product,” said Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. “Grammarly’s app action for HubSpot lets teams effortlessly tap into our platform to create and pull customer contacts into wherever they’re writing. That means faster work and more focus on what matters: building great customer relationships.”

Delivering impact across use cases

Customers already see significant results from using Grammarly. People at 96% of the Fortune 500 rely on Grammarly, and businesses report it saves them an average of 19 working days—the equivalent of an estimated $5,000+ in productivity—per employee per year. Making app actions generally available with more connections and capabilities will help customers further simplify workflows to save more time and costs.

Teams and professionals are seeing impact from app actions, using the feature to better collaborate on projects, find and link to relevant documents, make text more engaging with visuals, and more.

“With app actions, Grammarly seamlessly bridges the gap between our frequently utilized tools, helping us work faster and equipping our team to take action and access up-to-the-minute institutional insights from Confluence, Jira, and monday.com, no matter where they work,” said Jeff Ugai, Chief Operating Officer at Bitfocus.

“Grammarly’s app actions help me stay in the zone and churn out good work by putting everything I need at my fingertips, so I can stay in the flow and not get lost in other tabs,” said Stacey Roshan, Ed-tech Consultant.

The announcement follows Grammarly making its generative AI features generally available as it sees strong demand from enterprises and professionals for an AI writing partner that works across their tools, understands their context, and upholds security and privacy. The app actions feature maintains all of Grammarly’s enterprise-grade security and privacy practices and commitment to responsible AI, so customers can trust that their data remains secure.

All app actions are available today for all Grammarly Business, Premium, and Education customers, and Grammarly Free users benefit from connections to GIPHY and Unsplash.

MGID Ads deploys AI across campaign optimization, data analysis, and creative generation

MGID, the global advertising platform, has launched a new dashboard for MGID Ads, its self-service advertising campaign planning and execution suite. The new platform presents users with a new, more powerful intuitive interface that surfaces numerous AI-powered features, doubling the speed of campaign setup. 

Users will be guided through MGID Ads with informative tooltips through the entire campaign creation process, from creative development to ad placement, leveraging extensive data analytics for maximum performance alongside a CPC calculation feature, a step-by-step tracking setup, and AI-generated creatives.

The new dashboard has increased campaign metrics from 9 to 27 whilst 100 creatives can now be launched simultaneously in the time it previously took to launch one. Asynchronous validation also instantly alerts users of potential errors, with detailed descriptions of how to resolve them.

“Advertisers always have more to do than there are people to do it, so we’ve overhauled MGID Ads to make it as easy as possible to work efficiently with native ads,” said Matthew Villa, Head of Sales US at MGID. “By weaving AI into the very fabric of our new dashboard, advertisers can leave the heavy lifting to technology while focusing on driving audience attention, maximizing performance, and delivering measurable results.”

Alembic uniquely predicts marketing ROI using contact-tracing mathematics developed during the pandemic; WndrCo leads the round

Alembic, the leading holistic marketing attribution platform for enterprises, today announced it received $14 million in series A funding. The round was led by WndrCo, the venture capital firm started by DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. Existing investors MXV Capital, the venture capital firm started by Braze founder Mark Ghermezian, and Liquid 2 Ventures, the venture capital firm started by Joe Montana, also participated in the round. 

Alembic will use the funds to enhance its engineering capabilities, broaden its product range and accelerate client acquisition.

Alembic’s software predicts revenue and ROI from marketing, applying AI and mathematics developed during the pandemic for identifying causes, treatments and mortality in disparate data and populations. Alembic analyzes and evaluates unstructured and complex data to predict marketing ROI and future revenue based on the results. Alembic is proud to have Fortune 200 and top brands as customers, including NVIDIA, Texas A&M and North Sails.

Justin Wexler, who led the investment for WndrCo and joins Alembic’s board of directors, said, “At WndrCo, we continually ask Fortune 500 CMOs about their top challenges. The most common response is around proving the effectiveness of marketing spend. Our investment in Alembic is the culmination of our search for a company that solves this problem. We are looking forward to partnering with Alembic’s brilliant team to bring the power of AI and cutting-edge statistics to the marketing organizations behind the world’s leading brands.”

Using only anonymous and privacy-respecting aggregate data, Alembic accurately models marketing results and proves quantitatively how value is generated by marketing and sales activity. Alembic provides a real-time view to optimize all marketing activity and sales funnel movement. The Alembic platform leverages unstructured data from TV, radio, social media, out-of-home, sponsorship and digital marketing to predict revenue and profit for its customers. The visibility and transparency of marketing spend and outcomes facilitates reporting, informs strategy and breaks down silos between marketing, finance and business operations.

“Our customers say, before Alembic, what they used to evaluate marketing was like an ultrasound that only looked at one part of the body. Alembic is like a full body MRI scan that shows you a holistic view with much greater detail and precision,” said Tomás Puig, Alembic co-founder and CEO.

“Deploying AI allows companies to increase productivity in ways not possible before,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Alembic is using AI developed for scientific research applications to predict ROI from marketing. NVIDIA marketing is using Alembic with great success.”

“Alembic has a breakthrough solution for a problem I’ve seen throughout my career: Measuring results from marketing initiatives. WndrCo is thrilled to lead the series A round for Alembic and enable the company to introduce its innovative solution to a wider audience. All enterprise marketing organizations should consider Alembic to solve this problem in marketing,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, founding partner, WndrCo.

“In sports and in business, it’s difficult to predict outcomes, but Alembic enables enterprises to accurately predict revenue and ROI from all the components of their marketing mix. For this reason, Liquid 2 Ventures is proud to invest in Alembic. We believe that Alembic will be a winner along with its customers in applying the most advanced mathematics and AI available for predicting marketing ROI,” said Joe Montana, managing director, Liquid 2 Ventures.

“MXV Capital invests in Alembic because its novel, unique, quantitative approach helps enterprises understand which actions and plans from marketing drive the most value. Using AI and mathematics developed during the pandemic for identifying causes, treatments and mortality in populations, Alembic analyzes unstructured and complex structured data to predict revenue and ROI from marketing and improve planning strategy. It’s a great example of how AI initially developed for epidemiology can be applied to predict and help improve business outcomes,” said Mark Ghermezian, founder and general partner, MXV Capital.

“Alembic enables me, for the first time, to show what impact to the organization our marketing dollars today will have on future revenue. Our most recent success has been around time to event analysis — an AI modeling solution initially applied in healthcare. We are leveraging Alembic to guide finance on which marketing spend will provide the most ROI with accuracy,” said Aristomenis Capogeannis, senior director, enterprise revenue marketing, NVIDIA.

“With a plethora of content and proliferation of channels, marketers are constantly faced with choices. Alembic’s AI-driven correlation engine not only provides confidence in decision-making, but delivers return on intelligence and investment for enterprises like NVIDIA, Texas A&M and North Sails,” said Laura Maness, Alembic independent board director and global CEO, Grey.

Collaboration makes one of the leading AI coding assistants available to the entire DigitalOcean customer community

Tabnine, the creators of the industry’s first AI-powered coding assistant for developers, today announced a strategic partnership with DigitalOcean, the developer cloud optimized for startups and growing digital businesses. DigitalOcean now delivers Tabnine’s AI coding assistant to startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the world, empowering them to accelerate and simplify the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) process without sacrificing privacy, security, and compliance.

As the volume and complexity of applications continue to grow, software engineering teams are struggling to keep pace with the demands of their businesses. Generative AI is emerging as a leading solution, with AI coding assistants demonstrating how AI can accelerate and simplify the entire SDLC. Independent research shows that developers who use AI coding assistants are proving to be significantly more productive, creating a competitive advantage for engineering teams who adopt generative AI in their work.

“AI-enabled software development tools and practices are the answer to continued pressure on engineering teams to efficiently deliver more applications and features — especially for those at startups and SMBs with less resources at their disposal,” said Eran Yahav, Co-founder and CTO of Tabnine. “Our partnership with DigitalOcean gives their entire customer community the power of a private, personalized, and protected AI coding assistant.”

As the originator of the AI coding assistant category, Tabnine’s mission is to accelerate software development through AI for engineering teams of every size. Tabnine currently serves more than one million developers, generating more than 1% of the world’s code and typically automating 30-50% of code generation. By joining forces with DigitalOcean, a leader in cloud infrastructure for startups and growing digital businesses, this partnership expands Tabnine’s reach to even more teams and makes it easier for them to benefit from generative AI.

Professional engineering teams are excited to embrace this new class of generative AI tools, but are concerned about the privacy of their code and the provenance of the code used to train the AI models. Tabnine’s partnership with DigitalOcean will give DigitalOcean customers an AI coding assistant that not only delivers world-class AI agents and code recommendations, but also prioritizes privacy and protection. Tabnine’s AI models are trained exclusively on permissively licensed open source code to ensure that the recommendations from Tabnine never expose customers to legal risks. In addition, Tabnine offers a variety of deployment options to satisfy customer privacy and has a zero data retention policy across its secure SaaS offerings. The combination of Tabnine’s capabilities and approach to security and compliance satisfies the needs of developers and engineering leadership alike.

"DigitalOcean and Tabnine are joining forces to unlock the power of AI-enabled software development for developers at startups and growing digital businesses worldwide,” said Fer Oliveira, VP of Partnerships at DigitalOcean. “This groundbreaking partnership makes generative AI technology accessible to everyone, accelerating innovation and leveling the playing field for businesses of all sizes.”

The Tabnine Pro plan is available now for purchase on the DigitalOcean Marketplace.

Education is fueling Canva’s growth as the platform evolves into an all-in-one classroom tool shaping the future of education technology 

• Doubles education users in a year, adds 10 million since launching safe AI and Classroom Lessons
• Colleges, universities, and schools rapidly adopt Canva as their preferred visual communication tool
• Accelerates mission to shape the future of edtech and become the go-to education platform

Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today announced that its worldwide K-12 and higher education user base has exceeded 60 million – a figure that has more than doubled in just the past year. This surge is a result of Canva's commitment to steering the future of edtech, with the company doubling down on investments in the education sector to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global educational landscape. 

“The rapid growth we’ve seen in our education product reflects the increasing demand for visual communication tools and visual literacy in the classroom. We’re offering a platform that both empowers teachers to engage with students today and helps students build the skills they’ll need to be competitive in the future,” said Jason Wilmot, Head of Education for Canva. “Today’s students will enter a workforce with jobs that look very different. We’re proud to be supporting our global education community with the essential tools for navigating this shift.”

As design becomes table stakes in the workplace – more than 1.2 million people now list Canva as a core skill on their LinkedIn profile, nearly doubling in the past 12 months – schools and colleges are on the frontlines for preparing students to be career-ready.

Equipping 60 million students and teachers with cutting-edge tools

Canva announced its biggest-ever education launch in October 2023, which included a new library of over 5,000 customizable curricular lessons – featuring classroom materials developed in collaboration with experts like NASA and The New York Times – advanced accessibility features, and a suite of AI tools to save teachers time and boost student creativity.

Since launching these products, Canva has welcomed over 10 million new education users to its platform in just three months, reaching 60 million users globally, and underscoring the demand for a comprehensive learning tool for students and educators.

Visual communication is now pivotal in both professional and educational contexts, with 94% of business leaders expecting employees to possess design skills as visual communication becomes required across every profession, according to Canva’s visual economy report. AI is being rapidly adopted in almost every profession, with teachers leveraging the technology to streamline tasks and increase student engagement. Canva’s AI in Education Study also revealed more than three-quarters of teachers are enthusiastic about integrating the technology into their classrooms.

Bringing visual communication to schools and colleges

Canva for Districts brings the power of Canva’s entire visual communication platform to K-12 students, teachers and administrators. In the United States, Canva has been made available to 24 million students and teachers in districts across the country like Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, Houston Independent School District in Texas, and Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky.

Wichita Public Schools, the largest and most diverse school district in Kansas, was the first district to partner with Canva starting in 2021. With 96 schools, over 5,000 teachers, and 47,000 students who speak over 100 languages, Canva empowers educators to save time and communicate with students on every level.

“Canva empowers our team to move faster while increasing engagement with our students,” said Robert Dickson, Chief Information Officer, Wichita Public Schools. “We have a beautifully diverse population of students with various learning differences. With Canva, our teachers save time by creating things with one tool that can easily be adapted to meet the needs of all students. Even more exciting, Canva is also giving agency to students who are becoming better communicators and collaborators, essential lifelong skills.”

Countries like the United States, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines and Brazil each have millions of users leveraging Canva as a learning tool. Over the past year, Canva launched partnerships with local schools across Europe, including Rocket School in France, I.E Business School in Spain, and has recently partnered with Poland's Ministry of Education where Canva will be providing its tools to over 5 million users across Polish schools.

The demand for visual communication tools is present at the collegiate level, with colleges and universities looking to equip students for an increasingly visual workforce. Launched just a year ago, Canva for Campus brings the power of Canva’s entire visual communication platform to college and universities. Canva is experiencing a surge of interest from new higher education partners, including the University of California (UC), the world’s leading public research university system, which recently brought the platform to more than 500,000 students and faculty across the university’s network. This agreement demonstrates UC's commitment to visual communication tools as a crucial factor in student success and an essential skill in today’s workplace.

Canva’s commitment to shaping the educational landscape

Since launching in 2019, Canva for Education has evolved into an end-to-end resource for students, educators, and educational administrators worldwide. Driven by Canva’s belief in leveling the playing field, it is ensuring that every classroom, regardless of its location or resources, has equal access to cutting-edge technology, completely free of charge.

Investing in the future of education has emerged as an integral component of Canva’s growth strategy – Canva’s mission to empower the world to design naturally extends into classrooms where educators can drive engagement, students can embrace creativity, and administrators can visually communicate.

The company's strategic investments span every step of the education journey, accelerating its vision to become the edtech platform of choice. With a presence in over 600,000 schools worldwide, Canva is at the forefront of a new era in education, democratizing advanced learning tools and making them more accessible and engaging than ever before.