Pivotree Inc., a leading provider of frictionless commerce solutions and services, today announced the appointment of Cliff Isaacson as Chief Product Officer. Mr. Isaacson joined the company on January 15, 2024.

As Chief Product Officer, Cliff Isaacson will be responsible for building winning product strategies focused on the evolution of existing products and supporting the development of new products. He will lead product teams and manage the overall solution introduction and product strategy for Pivotree.

“We are thrilled to welcome Cliff Isaacson to Pivotree," said Bill Di Nardo, CEO of Pivotree. "His experience in leading product strategies and expanding solution offerings for large scale enterprise retailers, distributors, and manufacturers will be invaluable as we continue to support our customers with adapting to the ever-changing market and striving to digitally transform their business and retail experience."

Cliff brings over twenty years of industry experience with supply chain and product management expertise. Prior to this role, Cliff led product strategies as Senior Retail Business Consultant for o9 Solutions, as well as leading the implementation of price optimization and supply chain management solutions at Blue Ridge Global as Executive Vice President of Product Strategy.

Prior to joining Pivotree, Cliff founded Prolific Virtue and played a key role in its growth and acquisition by Blue Ridge. He also co-founded CarrierPoint and served as Chief Technology Officer until its acquisition by TransCore, managing strategy and all aspects of pricing and syndicated data management across retail, distribution, manufacturing, and aftermarket sales.

Cliff holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science from Northwestern University and a Master of Science (MSc) in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.

The past year saw developments and updates to privacy regulations across the globe—from India’s Personal Data Protection Bill to Brazil’s General Data Protection Law. However, only 34 percent of organizations say they find it easy to understand their privacy obligations and only 43 percent are very or completely confident in their organization’s privacy team’s ability to ensure data privacy and achieve compliance with new privacy laws and regulations, according to ISACA’s Privacy in Practice 2024 survey report.

More than 1,300 global professionals in data privacy roles responded to the survey, weighing in on privacy topics such as staffing, organization structure, policies, budgets and training.

Privacy Challenges

In addition to difficulty understanding the privacy regulatory landscape, organizations also face other data privacy challenges, including budget. Nearly half of respondents (43 percent) say their privacy budget is underfunded and only 36 percent say their budget is appropriately funded. When looking at the year ahead, only 24 percent say that they expect budget will increase (down 10 points from last year), and only one percent say it will remain the same (down 26 points from last year). Over half (51 percent) expect a decrease in budget, which is significantly higher than last year when only 12 percent expected a decrease in budget.

For those seeking resources, technical privacy positions are in highest demand, with 62 percent of respondents indicating there will be increased demand for technical privacy roles in the next year, compared to 55 percent for legal/compliance roles. However, respondents indicate there are skills gaps among these privacy professionals; they cite experience with different types of technologies and/or applications (63 percent) as the biggest one.

When looking at common privacy failures, respondents pinpointed the lack of or poor training (49 percent), not practicing privacy by design (44 percent) and data breaches (42 percent) as the main concerns.

“When privacy teams face limited budgets and skills gaps among their workforce, it can be even more difficult to stay on top of ever evolving and expanding data privacy regulations and even increase the risk of data breaches,” says Safia Kazi, ISACA principal, privacy professional practices. “By understanding where these challenges lie, organizations can take the necessary measures to remedy them and change course to strengthen their privacy teams and programs.”

Taking Action

One of the ways that organizations are mitigating both workforce gaps and privacy failures is through training. Half of respondents (50 percent) note they are training to allow non-privacy staff to move into privacy roles, while 39 percent are increasing usage of contract employees or outside consultants.

With employee training, 86 percent indicate their organization provides privacy awareness training for employees, with 66 percent providing training to all employees annually, and 52 percent of respondents providing privacy awareness training to new hires. Interestingly, respondents note that their organizations are most often looking at the number of employees completing training (65 percent) as the main metric used to track effectiveness of privacy training, not a decrease in privacy incidents (56 percent).

Despite the challenges faced, 63 percent of organizations say they did not have a material privacy breach in the past 12 months, and 18 percent are not seeing a change in the number of breaches they are experiencing. Respondents are also optimistic: less than one in five (16 percent) say they expect a material privacy breach in the next 12 months.

Value of Privacy by Design

Organizations that practice privacy by design experience some key advantages:

• They have more employees in privacy roles (median staff size 15 vs. nine among all respondents) and are more likely to say their technical privacy department is appropriately staffed (42 percent vs. 34 percent among all respondents).
• They strongly believe their board of directors prioritizes organization privacy (77 percent vs. 57 percent total).
• They are much less likely to see organizational privacy programs as purely compliance driven (35 percent vs. 44 percent total), and more likely as a combination of compliance, ethics and competitive advantage (39 percent vs. 29 percent total).
• Feel their privacy budget is appropriately funded (50% vs. 36% total)

Ultimately, organizations that always practice privacy by design are also much more likely to be very or completely confident in their organization’s privacy team’s ability to ensure data privacy and achieve compliance with new privacy laws and regulations (71 percent versus 43 percent).

Kazi and Jon Brandt, ISACA director, professional practices & innovation for content development and services, will discuss further in an upcoming webinar, The State of Privacy 2024, taking place 25 January at 12:00 PM (ET) / 11:00 AM (CT) / 9:00 AM (PT) / 16:00 (UTC). It is free for members and US$75 for non-members and will be available on-demand for a year afterward.

Now publicly available, Formless harnesses the power of AI to challenge traditional form builders and empower businesses to collect high-quality data and engage customers

Typeform, the intuitive form builder and conversational data collection platform, today announced the public launch of Formless, an AI form builder powered by leading AI systems from OpenAI. With Formless, users can collect structured data through two-way conversations with forms that ask questions, as well as answer respondent questions. Formless enables companies to collect high-quality customer data at scale, while delivering an engaging customer experience. 

Gathering zero-party data, defined as information that customers voluntarily share with companies, is critical to creating exceptional customer experiences today; however, the stakes for data collection are higher than ever. McKinsey & Company research shows that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn't happen. Focused on harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to create human-centered web experiences, Typeform is providing companies with innovative solutions that balance business needs with customer expectations. 

"At Typeform, we believe in a world where businesses give as much to people as they're trying to get, and we've been diligently crafting this vision into reality," said David Okuniev, co-founder, Typeform. "The beauty of Formless is that it enables companies to get great data, while also giving respondents a great experience. In an increasingly digital world, people don't want interactions that make them feel like just a number. Formless offers an ideal blend of the machine-driven efficiency and human-like personalization that today's consumers crave." 

Teams across marketing, sales, customer success, product, and human resources are using Formless to create conversations to generate leads, book sales calls, support their users, collect feedback, engage with their audiences, make product recommendations, and more. Key benefits of Formless include: 

• Enhanced respondent experience: Companies can choose to train the AI on their own data to anticipate and answer respondents' queries. The form can also adjust its questions based on prior answers, making it more efficient and relevant for the respondent. 
• High engagement and completion rates: Users are more likely to complete a form if it feels like a conversation rather than a series of impersonal questions. Powered by conversational AI technology, the natural tone of voice keeps respondents engaged. 
• Deep data and insights: Teams can get structured insights from unstructured data with open text analysis, and if a user gives an unclear or ambiguous response, the AI can ask for clarifications or more details, improving the quality of collected data. In turn, access to higher quality data and insights enables companies to better personalize their marketing efforts, services, offers, and product recommendations.
• Efficient content creation: Creators can develop high-performance, on-brand forms in minutes, saving valuable time that could be spent on higher impact activities. Formless offers customizable templates, and the possibility to let the AI completely build the form.
• Expanded reach: Formless speaks over 120 languages, enabling companies to connect with a global audience without language barriers, expanding potential reach and opportunities. 
• Easy implementation: Formless can easily be embedded into websites with different widget options. It can also be connected through Zapier with more than 1,000 applications. 

"How we ask for information online is ripe for disruption. Historically, forms have been a one-way street that puts the onus on the user and offers them little in return – Typeform is changing that," said Luke Dringoli, VP of Technology, Media Cause. "What Formless offers is a natural way of obtaining information that gets you all the data you need while endearing your audience to your brand."  

"Formless has been very easy to use and set up, especially with the new templates," said Porter Pursley, co-founder, Beehive. "Its interactive nature and conversational interface have really resonated with our audience. We've noticed higher conversion and response rates for our specific use cases and the conversation summaries have proved extremely helpful internally."

The Formless launch bolsters Typeform's position as an AI leader. In addition to delivering Formless, Typeform already offers AI-powered features, like question recommendations, within its flagship Typeform product, providing more than 150,000 customers with form-building capabilities that are taking online interactions from transactional to conversational.

Attendance Insights Predicts Event Attendance, Makes Data-Backed Recommendations to Improve Event ROI

Splash, a global event marketing technology company that enables businesses to host live, hybrid, and virtual events at scale, has introduced the event industry's first predictive AI tool: Attendance Insights. A machine-learning tool that predicts event attendance based on similar events hosted on Splash, Attendance Insights also provides data-backed recommendations to improve expected attendance.

"Over the past year, marketers were introduced to dozens of generative AI tools that have helped enhance everything from event agendas to content creation to promotional efforts. But none of these tools help event professionals actually get revenue in the room," said Kate Hammitt, CMO at Splash. "Splash is changing that with Attendance Insights, the event industry's first-ever predictive AI tool. It allows event marketers to easily understand the data behind their programs, and how to leverage that data to accelerate their organization's event-led growth."

Attendance Insights has been trained by hundreds of thousands of events hosted on Splash over the past five years. Through machine learning, the tool makes accurate attendance predictions and strategic recommendations based on past performance of a customer's events, as well as the performance of comparable events from other customers. Data points such as event type and format, page views, email engagement, guest list size, and number of days away from the event also contribute to Attendance Insights results.

"For so long, event professionals have needed a data partner to help them elevate their programs by identifying trends, tracking the right metrics, and understanding when and how to effectively create and accelerate revenue opportunities through events" said Hammitt. "With so much to manage for a successful event or program, finding the time and necessary skill sets to conduct the strategic, analytical work is often an event professional's biggest challenge. Attendance Insights gives event and marketing professionals that data partner, without adding headcount, and empowers them to create thriving event programs based on sophisticated data analysis."

Attendance Insights is just the first AI tool Splash is offering its customers. The company will continue investing in building and refining predictive AI technology that'll help solve event professionals' most pressing challenges.

Splash is hosting a virtual product launch event for Attendance Insights at 1 pm ET on Tuesday, January 23, 2024.

Beefree, a leader in no-code email creation tools, has appointed Justine Jordan as its Head of Strategy & Community, where she will steer the company's strategy and deepen community engagement using her people-first approach. Leveraging her extensive experience in SaaS and email marketing, Jordan is set to play a pivotal role in driving Beefree's growth and fostering stronger connections within the email marketing community.

Beefree, a pioneer in no-code email creation tools, has announced that Justine Jordan, a veteran in the SaaS and email marketing space, has joined the team as Head of Strategy & Community. Beefree, a key division of Growens (GROW:IM), is renowned for its innovative design tools that empower businesses to create visually compelling, high-performing emails and digital assets. Its tools for designing emails and pages are utilized by over 400,000 users every month across 120 countries, including by industry giants such as Amazon, Google, and Disney.

Justine Jordan's Role at Beefree

In her new role, Justine Jordan will be joining the Management Team and reporting directly to Beefree's CEO, Massimo Arrigoni. Her responsibilities include guiding the strategic direction of the company and ensuring that the leadership team is aligned on key decisions. Justine will also ensure that all employees are fully engaged with the strategic goals, understanding how their work contributes to the company's broader vision.

Additionally, Justine will lead community-focused initiatives, drawing on her extensive experience to understand and respond to the evolving challenges in email marketing. This role is crucial in guiding Beefree through its next growth phase and in embracing technological advancements.

Comments from Beefree's Leadership

Massimo Arrigoni, CEO of Beefree, comments, "In the face of rapidly changing landscapes and the rise of AI, the role of community is as important as ever. We need to be as close as we can to marketers to understand how their jobs are evolving. Justine's extensive experience and insights are invaluable as we navigate these dynamic times and cement Beefree's place at the forefront of email marketing innovation."

Justine Jordan adds, "I'm thrilled to start this new journey with Beefree. It's an opportunity to bring people and product together to collaborate on a shared vision for the future of email marketing. I'm enthusiastic about our role in bringing their voices and stories forward."

Justine Jordan's Career Background

From her early days as a designer, Justine's career has significantly shaped the email industry. She spearheaded the first conference dedicated to the email community, showcasing her leadership and innovation. Her contributions were acknowledged when she was named Email Marketer Thought Leader of the Year in 2015. Her journey includes leading marketing for high-growth B2B SaaS companies, contributing to successful outcomes like ExactTarget's acquisition by Salesforce, and playing key roles in organizations such as Wildbit, Litmus, Help Scout, Postmark, and ActiveCampaign.

Industry-first automation controller for dbt models accelerates deployment and reduces engineering maintenance work by up to 80%

Ascend.io, the leader in data pipeline automation, today announced an integration that allows users to painlessly scale and run sophisticated dbt models in production with a single command. Ascend for dbt represents the industry's first automation and optimization controller for dbt models, giving data and analytics engineers access to Ascend's advanced orchestration capabilities with no added overhead.

Ascend for dbt allows analytics engineers to continue to build with dbt Core while deploying their models to Ascend for intelligent execution. This solves a major challenge with dbt Core, the open-source version of dbt, which requires users to bring in a separate orchestration tool to execute their models. By automating the process of deploying dbt models with DataAware™ intelligence, Ascend helps data teams deliver data products faster and more efficiently.

"With data teams under pressure to innovate faster and generate more value for their organizations, they need systems to automate traditionally manual processes that deploy and maintain data products at scale," said Sean Knapp, founder and CEO, Ascend.io. "This new integration eliminates the pain of operationalizing dbt models, providing a smooth journey from design to production."

With Ascend for dbt, Ascend automatically tracks lineage across multiple dbt projects. By profiling the data against the generated dbt code, Ascend's automation controller identifies every change in code or data that affects a pipeline. This enables Ascend to auto-generate the jobs required to operate a sophisticated network of pipelines with maximum efficiency. Its dynamic intelligence limits unnecessary data processing, reducing cloud bills by up to 30% and engineering operations work by up to 80%.

Ascend's data pipeline automation allows engineers to continue to build ontop of dbt Core. Once the updated models are compiled and pushed into Ascend, the platform automatically identifies any change from previous versions and autonomously orchestrates pipeline operation in response to those changes.

"In addition to the cost and time saving benefits, we see this integration as a critical step in organizations' AI readiness strategy," said Knapp. "AI projects often require entirely new datasets at a speed most data engineering teams are currently not equipped to meet. By launching dbt pipelines in a fraction of the time it traditionally takes, data teams can create and manage new data products at scale and ultimately become more efficient and responsive."

Danfoss, Informatica, S&P Global, UnitedHealthcare, ZoomInfo and many others recognized for digital experiences that delivered business growth

A recent Forrester survey found that more than 60% of B2B buyers base their final purchase decision solely on the digital content and experiences companies provide. That’s why thousands of B2B companies choose ON24 , a leading digital engagement platform for B2B sales and marketing that helps enterprises generate data-driven insights and deliver cost-effective revenue growth. Today, ON24, announced the industry-leading digital experiences of 2023 that drove ROI for their organizations.

“At ON24, our goal is to propel business success through digital engagement, with our customers at the core. We take pride in helping our customers drive deeper engagement with their target audiences and extract meaningful insights that result in revenue growth,” said Callan Young, CMO, ON24. “It is our honor to recognize the leading organizations that exemplify excellence in leveraging our platform to create digital experiences that not only meet but surpass their audience’s expectations.”

The following organizations were recognized for delivering outstanding digital experiences on the ON24 platform in 2023:

1. Danfoss drove product growth and customer retention by leveraging distributor, reseller and customer data to optimize its webinar and digital engagement program.
2. FloQast influenced 82% of event pipeline in Q3 and created 120+ new active opportunities by routing high-quality leads from in-experience demo requests directly to sales.
3. Global X ETFs increased qualified, high-value leads in Australia by 22%, by integrating ON24 engagement data with their CRM and using the platform’s personalization capabilities.
4. Informatica scaled a live event into a hybrid experience across three key regions simultaneously, driving registration and delivering a consistent customer experience on a global scale.
5. Infopro Digital increased conversion rates and registrations by automating processes on the ON24 platform and making real-time adjustments based on customer feedback.
6. Kaspersky drove product adoption and business growth by creating new relationships with prospects and fostering existing relationships with customers.
7. KnowBe4 generated over $300k in pipeline through an ON24-powered digital experience.
8. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) achieved 100% participant satisfaction for its unique and impactful digital experience powered by the ON24 platform.
9. PowerSchool achieved record-breaking registration rates, 75 CTA clicks, over 400 poll responses and 300+ content downloads during an educational experience with ON24.
10. S&P Global doubled marketing qualified leads and boosted engagement by designing an ON24 digital experience personalized to different customer segments.
11. Tata Consultancy Services drove revenue growth with record-high registrations for their webinar on ON24, resulting in 70% attendee participation across 30 countries.
12. Texthelp sourced leads during a webinar series and converted at least 70% of them into marketing-qualified leads within 30 days.
13. TOPdesk increased revenue and improved its customer engagement by 7% YoY and extended the shelf life of its content with an on-demand hub.
14. TravelMediaGroup closed three deals from a single digital experience by creating a seamless and engaging customer experience on ON24.
15. UCB achieved a 50%+ attendee conversion rate by enhancing the HCP’s experience and integrating ON24 engagement data with its business intelligence system.
16. UnitedHealthcare achieved an 80% cost savings, increased attendee score and engagement with a new digital engagement strategy and an always-on content hub.
17. Wood PLC sourced leads, increased audience engagement and automated continuing professional education credits on ON24, across different time zones.
18. ZoomInfo surpassed webinar benchmarks by generating a record number of marketing-qualified leads and 190 scheduled demos, resulting in 10 closed-won deals.

Generaitiv collaborates with numerous creators within the Generaitiv community to train custom AI models and construct new bots.

Generaitiv - a decentralized, community-driven AI app store - introduced Custom AI Engagement Bots to provide digital communities with AI image generator bots specifically trained on their content and/or brand imagery.

These bots help increase online engagement for communities by posting and spreading unique marketing material organically. Moreover, simple text prompts enable the seamless creation of high-quality, high-quantity content.

Over 10 crypto communities have already integrated Generaitiv Custom AI Bots, including the Plague Frogs NFT community, the $BOB token community, the Vita Inu $VINU token community, and the $NPC token community. Notably, all communities using Generaitiv's Custom AI Bots have a combined Market Cap of over $100 million USD.

The $NPC token community is a prime example of Generaitiv’s custom AI image generation bot being leveraged to increase brand recognition and awareness through the generation of new and creative pieces featuring a consistent NPC character.  Members of the $NPC token community have used their bot integration to generate over 3,000 images for a community contest over one weekend.

Generaitiv collaborates with numerous creators within the Generaitiv community to train custom AI models and construct new bots. This partnership allows external communities to reap the rewards of an engagement bot without distraction from their internal goals. Generaitiv provides a full-service bot offering, meaning everything from AI model fine-tuning to bot infrastructure is provided in an intuitive, plug and play bundle.

The platform believes custom AI bots can create compelling customized images bespoke for their communities, helping increase engagement both internally and externally. Generaitiv encourages members of digital communities everywhere to "generait their imagination and list for sale in seconds."

The $GAI Token

$GAI is the token powering the Generaitiv ecosystem It plays a key role, allowing users to access high-value features on the platform without requiring any expenditure. Communities can use $GAI to unlock access to a variety of on-platform features including custom AI model training. The Generaitiv team has big plans for $GAI, making it the cornerstone of the future decentralized network. The token initially launched as an L1 Ethereum token with a total supply of 10 million units, of which 7 million tokens deposited for liquidity.

$GAI aims to solve the problems with centralized and non-interoperable systems currently implemented by popular AI platforms. Token holders will use $GAI to interact with various AI models available on Generaitiv. Meanwhile, AI Bots creators will use the token to train and process large AI datasets. Finally, $GAI will incentivize idle GPU and computing hardware to process these requests. Worldwide GPU shortages have rocked the availability of on demand cloud GPU resources, increasing the viability of decentralized alternatives.

The platform will impose a 5% tax on token buys and sells to fuel the development of the Generaitiv ecosystem and fund AI development. Some of these funds will also grow the $GAI Liquidity Pool, driving growth and maximizing value for holders.

Lastly, Generaitiv increases the benefits for digital communities using its custom AI bots and $GAI token. The platform has implemented a subscription system for communities to create interactive bots and engage with their members.