Listed as a Top 3 Finalist in CSCMP’s 3 Vs Awards that Celebrate the Incredible Potential within Startup Ecosystems

AutoScheduler.AI, an innovative Warehouse Management System (WMS) accelerator, announces being named as a Finalist for CSCMP’s Best Innovative Startup/Early-Stage Award. As a Finalist, AutoScheduler is one of the top three companies in the startup/early-stage category that will present their case at the upcoming CSCMP Conference.

“It is truly an honor to be named to this prestigious list that recognizes innovation for delivering value,” says Keith Moore, CEO of AutoScheduler.AI. “Our technology has deployed successfully to the largest CPGs, manufacturers and distributors, helping better meet on time, in-full deliveries, reduce overall warehouse touches, and improve efficiencies.”

According to a CSCMP announcement, “Due to overwhelming responses and truly exceptional entries, we were forced to delay this announcement, but after careful deliberation and consideration, our panels have made their selections. It is with great excitement that we now reveal the judges' top finalists for the 3 Vs Business Innovation and the Best Overall Innovative Startup/Early-Stage contests.”

AutoScheduler is listed in the Best Overall Innovative Startup/Early Stage category and will present their case at CSCMP’s EDGE 2023 Supply Chain Conference & Exhibition in the exchange’s Innovation Theater on Monday, October 2, 2023, at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee, Florida.

New research from ebbo dives into consumers' willingness to sign up for paid enrollments and how these offers can impact loyalty program engagement.

Subscriptions are everywhere – from streaming content to meal services to apparel boxes, the subscription model has been adopted by many brands to provide convenience to their customers, reach a bigger audience and bring in steady incremental revenue.

And more recently, there's been a rise in subscription-based loyalty programs and incentives, specifically paid enrollment, where consumers can sign up for limited-time benefits or offers in exchange for a fee.

To better understand the impact of paid enrollment and how consumers feel about them, ebbo, a leading provider of end-to-end loyalty solutions, surveyed 1300 U.S. consumers about the factors that drive engagement in these offers as well as how they impact customer loyalty.

ebbo's research found that 54% of consumers are willing to participate in a subscription-based paid enrollment program if the benefits were deemed valuable, with discounts, coupons and/or cash-back on purchases being the most important paid enrollment benefits to consumers at 70%.

• Key findings from the data study include:
• 64% of existing loyalty members would sign up for a valuable paid enrollment.
• 60% of consumers are interested in free loyalty programs that offer paid enrollment benefits.
• 74% of consumers indicated that discounts on products (i.e. a restaurant subscription that gives free drinks or discounted menu items) would incentivize them to sign up for a paid enrollment.
• 71% of consumers are likely to recommend subscription products they're excited about to friends and family.
• 28% of consumers say their preferred brands don't offer paid enrollment.

"Given the rise of the subscription economy, there's no better time to apply this model to loyalty," said Tyler Haskins, EVP of Marketing at ebbo. "Consumers are interested in paid enrollment and it provides an opportunity for brands to better engage them while adding an incremental revenue stream."

Download the full ebbo 2023 Paid Enrollment Data Study here.

Former Demandbase and Replicant CMO Peter Isaacson joins Invoca after the company surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) during its last fiscal year

Invoca, a recognized leader in Conversation Intelligence AI, today announced the addition of Peter Isaacson as chief marketing officer. Isaacson joins Invoca at a pivotal time, as the company expands its industry-leading platform for marketers into the contact center, enabling B2C companies to combine the best of digital and human touch. He will lead all aspects of marketing and help Invoca continue its strong revenue growth as it applies AI to the full buyer journey. 

"Peter has an exemplary track record of driving growth across both the marketing and contact center industries, so we're fortunate to welcome him to the Invoca team," said Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca. "Peter's passion for leading high-performing marketing teams will be essential to Invoca's success as we extend our leadership in Conversation Intelligence AI, accelerate revenue growth, and deliver an outstanding customer experience."

Isaacson joins Invoca as a seasoned marketing executive, having most recently served as chief marketing officer at Replicant, a leader in the Contact Center Automation market. Before his role with Replicant, Isaacson served as CMO at Demandbase, where he created the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) category, grew revenue by more than 9X and established Demandbase as the leading ABM platform. Isaacson also spent 13 years at Adobe as head of brand marketing, VP of worldwide field marketing, and head of the Education vertical.

"I am thrilled to join Invoca as the company continues to revolutionize the way that businesses connect with their customers," said Peter Isaacson, CMO of Invoca. "With Invoca's industry-leading AI, talented team, exceptional partners and unparalleled commitment to customer success, the company is uniquely positioned to build on its leadership in Conversation Intelligence AI."

Invoca Earns Industry-Leading Accolades for Exceptional Products and Customer Success Achievements

• Invoca PreSense, the company's innovative product, which surfaces real-time insights from customers' digital journeys to contact centers, won top product honors at the 2023 Sales and Marketing Technology Awards in the "Product of the Year" category. 
• Invoca also won four prestigious 2023 APPEALIE SaaS Awards, including Analytics and Business Intelligence, Enterprise Marketing and Enterprise Sales categories for the Enterprise customer segment, as well as the SaaS Customer Success Overall Award for DIRECTV, who turned to Invoca's pre-call data empowered DIRECTV agents to improve the call experience, resulting in 110% increase in close rates. 
• Invoca was also named Best Call Management Solution in the Conversational Marketing category in the 2023 MarTech Breakthrough Awards, an honor which the company has now won three times.

Invoca Leads the Pack on G2 for Over 4 Years Running

• Invoca ranked as Enterprise Call Tracking Leader by G2 for the 20th straight quarter in a row.
• Invoca received 39 badges for G2 Fall 2023, including Best Relationship Enterprise, Leader Enterprise, and Leader Mid-Market.
• Invoca competes at the top G2 Enterprise Relationship Index for ease of doing business, quality of support, and the likelihood that users will recommend the company to others.

Invoca Remains Recognized as a Leader in Workplace Excellence for 2023

• Inc. Magazine Best Workplaces: Invoca was recognized for a sixth year in a row for nurturing a positive and supportive workplace culture that encourages innovation and creativity in AI conversation intelligence. 
• Fortune's Best Workplaces in Technology: Invoca named for the fourth year in a row, where 99% of employees at Invoca say it is a great place to work.
• Fortune Best Medium-Sized Workplace: Invoca named for the fifth consecutive year and coming in at #4 in the Top 100 for 2023.
• Fortune Best Workplace for Millennials: Invoca was recognized for the third year in a row, being named #4 in the Top 100 for 2023.

• Together, Cisco and Splunk will help move organizations from threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention

• Combined, Cisco and Splunk will become one of the world's largest software companies and will accelerate Cisco's business transformation to more recurring revenue

• Expected to be cash flow positive and gross margin accretive in first fiscal year post close, and non-GAAP EPS accretive in year 2. Will accelerate revenue growth and gross margin expansion

• Unites two "Great Places to Work" with similar values, strong cultures, and talented teams

• The combination of these two innovative leaders makes them well positioned to lead in security and observability in the age of AI

Cisco and Splunk, the cybersecurity and observability leader, today announced a definitive agreement under which Cisco intends to acquire Splunk for $157 per share in cash, representing approximately $28 billion in equity value. Upon close of the acquisition, Splunk President and CEO Gary Steele will join Cisco's Executive Leadership Team reporting to Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins.

The acquisition builds on Splunk's heritage of helping organizations enhance their digital resilience and will accelerate Cisco's strategy to securely connect everything to make anything possible. The combination of these two established leaders in AI, security and observability will help make organizations more secure and resilient.

"We're excited to bring Cisco and Splunk together. Our combined capabilities will drive the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability," said Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco. "From threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention, we will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and resilient."

"Uniting with Cisco represents the next phase of Splunk's growth journey, accelerating our mission to help organizations worldwide become more resilient, while delivering immediate and compelling value to our shareholders," said Gary Steele, president and CEO of Splunk.

"Together, we will form a global security and observability leader that harnesses the power of data and AI to deliver excellent customer outcomes and transform the industry. We're thrilled to join forces with a long-time and trusted partner that shares our passion for innovation and world-class customer experience, and we expect our community of Splunk employees will benefit from even greater opportunities as we bring together two respected and purpose-driven organizations," Steele added.

In today's hyperconnected world, data is everywhere, with every organization relying on it to run their business and make mission-critical decisions every day. Factoring in the acceleration and adoption of generative AI, expanding threat surfaces, and multiple cloud environments, it creates a level of complexity that is unlike anything organizations have faced. Organizations need a better way to manage, protect, and unlock data's true value and stay digitally resilient.

Together, Cisco and Splunk will address these challenges head on.

The combination of these two established leaders with complementary capabilities in AI, security and observability will unlock the true value of data and will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and digitally resilient.

Specifically, Splunk's security capabilities complement Cisco's existing portfolio, and together, will provide leading security analytics and coverage from devices to applications to clouds.

Cisco and Splunk's complementary capabilities will provide observability across hybrid and multi-cloud environments enabling the company's customers to deliver smooth application experiences that power their digital businesses. Cisco and Splunk are well positioned to help customers responsibly harness the power of AI given their substantial scale, visibility into data, and foundation of trust.

The union of these two organizations will allow for greater investments in new solutions, accelerated innovation, and increased global scale to support the needs of customers of all sizes.

Cisco's acquisition of Splunk will also build upon both companies' reputations for being purpose-driven with similar values, strong cultures, and incredibly talented teams. The acquisition will unite two "Great Places to Work" with a shared passion for innovation and inclusion and will remain a great place to work and the premier place for software talent.

Komprise, the leader in analytics-driven unstructured data management, today announced the general availability of Storage Insights, the industry's first unified, consistent view of both data usage and storage consumption across vendors and clouds without having to contend with multiple consoles and multiple storage consumption definitions.

Storage costs are continuing to grow unchecked; 73% of organizations are spending more than 30% of their IT budget on data storage and backups, according to a recent Komprise survey. At the same time, preparing for AI and optimizing cloud costs are top data storage priorities.

Amid these pressures, IT is shifting from managing storage to delivering data services tailored to each department’s needs. With Storage Insights, Komprise customers can view new storage metrics, such as free and used space across vendors or shares with the highest volume of modifications indicating possible anomalous activity. This allows IT to quickly spot trends, drill down and execute plans and actions in one place to drive the best possible return on data storage investments.

“The Storage Insights functionality will give us the ability to see our storage footprint across our hybrid cloud,” said Matt Madill, storage systems administrator at Duquesne University. “It’s a single interface that will show us important metrics like capacity usage in every storage location, which will save us a lot of time and ensure we make the right decisions for our departments and users.”

Spot trends with global visibility across data and storage metrics

Storage Insights gives administrators the ability to drill down into file shares and object stores across locations and sites, including relevant metrics by department, division or business unit, such as:

• Which shares have the greatest amount of cold data?
• Which shares have the highest recent growth in new data?
• Which shares have the highest recent growth overall?
• Which file servers have the least free space available?
• Which shares have tiered the most data?

Track and manage what matters to your organization

• Storage Insights includes over 25 columns that users can customize and filter to understand the current state of enterprise storage assets across sites;
• Users can see details on capacity, percentage of modified or new data and can filter by shares, status, data transfer roles, and more;
• Easily sort your shares and view by largest, most cold data, highest recent modified data, least free space, most and least data archived or tiered by Komprise and more;
• Dig into specific file servers such as NetApp, Dell EMC Isilon (PowerScale), Pure Storage, AWS, Azure, Windows, etc. to analyze system health and ensure maximum ROI and cost savings.

From insight to action without disrupting the hot data path

In addition to powerful analytics, Storage Insights leverages Komprise Transparent Move Technology to execute plans and move data without obstructing data access and with no disruption to users or applications. Examples of actions include:

• Tier cold data transparently from the shares that have the highest amount of cold data to cheaper storage;
• Identify cloud migration opportunities such as moving least modified shares or copying project data to data lakes;
• Spot potential security threats and ransomware attacks on data stores with anomalous activity such as high volume of modifications;
• Set alert thresholds to instantly see unusual activity or other data requiring fast actions such as storage nearing capacity.

“As unstructured data continues to grow explosively, enterprise storage is becoming more distributed across on-premises, multi-cloud and edge environments, and often across multiple vendor systems,” said Kumar Goswami, cofounder and CEO of Komprise. “This latest release gives customers an easier, faster way to proactively manage and deliver data services across this complex hybrid IT environment while optimizing their data storage investments.”

The server-to-server connections deliver greater efficiency and transparency, while providing differentiated access to premium inventory for advertisers

Yahoo Advertising today announced strategic partnerships with FreeWheel, Magnite for its streaming ad server SpringServe, and Publica by IAS, to enable direct server-to-server connections with direct-to-publisher offering Yahoo Backstage.

The move allows connected TV (CTV) publishers to more seamlessly extend their premium inventory through Yahoo Backstage. It also further solidifies Yahoo Advertising’s commitment to optimizing media investments for its growing roster of Fortune 500 advertisers, especially across one of today’s fastest-growing channels, CTV.

"Our partnerships with FreeWheel, Magnite, and Publica by IAS enable us to provide greater value to both advertisers and publishers within the Yahoo DSP,” said Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer, Yahoo. “In an increasingly complex digital landscape, creating instant connections, maximizing efficiency, and ensuring transparency are paramount. We look forward to working with these partners to support our customers, and will continue to seek out ways to optimize together.”

Available exclusively through the Yahoo DSP, Yahoo Backstage is a direct path to curated, premium publisher inventory. To date, in addition to Yahoo owned and operated properties like Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance, over 100 leading publishers are featured within the offering. Among the 100, Yahoo Backstage includes nearly 40 CTV publishers, the largest representation of direct CTV supply available today. Now live, Yahoo Backstage supports transparency, control, and supply path optimization (SPO), while maximizing media spend and ROI for brands.

Integrations with FreeWheel, Magnite’s streaming ad server, SpringServe, and Publica by IAS directly benefit CTV publishers by effortlessly extending their premium inventory through Yahoo Backstage. In addition, advertisers gain unprecedented, direct access to this inventory. The server-to-server connections between Yahoo Backstage and FreeWheel, Magnite, and Publica by IAS champion efficiency and transparency, promising a frictionless exchange of high-quality CTV inventory.

“We’re proud to be teaming up with Yahoo,” said Cameron Miille, VP, North American Head of Revenue and Growth, FreeWheel. “At FreeWheel, we take great pride in working with the most premium suppliers in today’s TV ad ecosystem, and integrating with industry partners to provide buyers with the most direct access. Today’s announcement is a great example of how we continue to innovate, simplify and improve the overall media supply chain.”

“More than ever, media owners need technology that works for them, and that includes easy access to an array of emerging demand channels such as Yahoo Backstage," said Sean Buckley, Chief Revenue Officer, Magnite. “By combining easy access to demand with innovative monetization tools, we continue to drive increased transparency, value, and performance for nearly every major media owner in streaming.”

“CTV is one of the industry’s fastest growing and most dynamic channels,” said Sean Galligan, Chief Revenue Officer, Publica by IAS. “By connecting with Yahoo Backstage, we’re supporting our collective CTV publisher partners and furthering transparent media buying across high-quality inventory.”

Yahoo Advertising will continue to offer advertisers the control to make informed buying choices. In addition to serving advertisers, publishers also benefit from Yahoo Backstage, gaining direct access to quality demand through a streamlined pipeline, enhancing their existing buying paths. Publishers also receive dedicated support from Yahoo Advertising’s experienced team, ensuring their business needs are effectively managed.

The server-to-server integrations become particularly beneficial for CTV advertisers, given that CTV spend is projected to reach $25.9 billion this year, according to GroupM.

Through the Yahoo DSP, Yahoo Backstage amplifies advertiser and publisher reach, and drives optimal outcomes.

Mundial Media, the first media platform uniting multicultural voices, today announces $2.0 million in pre seed funding led by a syndicate of family office investors, including New Day Industries, a family office focused on breakthrough software technologies. “We’ve been closely tracking AI-enabled martech companies and were excited to find a deeply technical team focused on contextual technologies for multicultural audiences, with the unique experience to solve the biggest pain point in multicultural advertising – enabling brands to engage with multicultural audiences,” said Gerard Goetz, General Partner at New Day Industries.

Mundial Media was born out of the need for an end-to-end marketing platform that marries best-in-class multicultural learnings with a data-driven platform to create emotional connections. Mundial Media’s proprietary contextual engine, Cadmus AI, provides marketers with scale and reach that is culturally nuanced and differentiated. Given the market’s turn to privacy-first, Mundial Media targets audiences through first-party contextual technology rather than third-party cookies.

The Company’s mission is to solve for market fragmentation and provide an authentic solution that resonates with brands and audiences. With this investment, Mundial Media will scale its AI-enabled technology to meet the needs of diverse audiences and brands. “We believe the time is right to introduce a new platform focused on brand safety and privacy while providing brands and agencies with scaled reach across authentic multicultural offerings. Mundial’s proprietary AI-enabled contextual technology creates brand-safe segments at scale for targeting the right audience with the right advertisement at the right time and place,” said Mundial Media Co-Founder and CEO Tony Gonzalez.

Today’s launch includes the announcement of $2.0 million in funding from a group of investors who are experts in the marketing automation and digital media ecosystem and understand the nuances of the multicultural marketplace. The investor syndicate includes New Day Industries, Barlow Family Investments, and executives from Amazon.com, Inc., UnitedHealth Group, and Prodege LLC.

The Mundial Media team is led by CEO Tony Gonzalez, who previously was the Founding President of My Code, along with a team that brings domain expertise across multicultural marketing and digital media and marketing automation, having played key roles at My Code – CTO Ramon Cendejas, PhD, the first engineer and former SVP of Data and Technology; Adrian Ruiz, who led product and was an early employee; and Patricia Linares the former Corporate Development Director. They are joined by Mariana Magadan who previously led multicultural sales initiatives at Dotdash Meredith.

Oversubscribed seed round validates the potential for Katalys' transformative embedded commerce technology to transform the future of performance marketing.