KDDI Web Communications Inc. has announced its partnership with Vonage, a global leader in cloud communications helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation and a part of Ericsson, to bring Vonage Communications APIs to customers in Japan, starting today.

With Vonage's Communications APIs, businesses in Japan can bring new communications capabilities to customers such as online calling and two-way messaging, to build better connections and deeper engagement. In addition, security can be enhanced with simple, seamless two-factor authentication powered by the Verify API, while Vonage's conversational commerce application, powered by Jumper.ai, enables businesses to create AI-powered omnichannel experiences that boost sales and increase customer satisfaction.

Masato Yamazaki, President, KDDI Web Communications, said, "KDDI Web Communications has been providing Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) API solutions since 2013. In offering Vonage's Communications APIs and Vonage Conversational Commerce, we have leveraged Vonage's extensive experience and expertise as a pioneer in the Japanese CPaaS market to create an environment that makes it easier for Japanese businesses to adopt CPaaS. We provide "value-added" services that are close to our customers, such as opening a sales website that is highly visible to Japanese people, developing an implementation support system, and setting up customer support in Japanese."

"We are excited to partner with KDDI Web Communications to enable more businesses in Japan to take advantage of Vonage's CPaaS platform," said Tetsuro Nishimura, Country Manager, Japan, at Vonage. "The Vonage platform makes it easy to embed verification, fraud detection, automated alerts - not to mention voice, video, and customer insights - directly into every interaction. Furthermore, Vonage Conversational Commerce enables brands to create omnichannel, messaging-first customer buying experiences across popular messaging, social and web platforms.

"This partnership not only offers us a great opportunity to innovate together in Japan, but also to enable more businesses to differentiate themselves and create meaningful connections and engagements with customers."

As of 2023, the demand for CPaaS in Japan was poised to reach a valuation of $668.7 million. The industry in Japan is likely to expand with a 28.50% CAGR from 2023 to 2033, reaching $8,902.50 million by 2033. KDDI Web Communications plans to develop services that leverage its existing expertise and cultivate CPaaS and communications-related partners to help solve customers' communications problems.

Founded in 2001 in the United States, Vonage serves more than 120,000 business customers, has a global community of more than one million registered developers and a highly scaled platform. Vonage's solutions have facilitated transformative projects for multiple startups and established companies across Asia including Carousell, PT. Telekomunikasi, Kakao, Doctor Anywhere, Manulife, PUBG Corporation, Insung Information, Spacely and more.

New research explores how enterprises use a data foundation layer for both intelligence and activation, and how this layer is undergoing transformation

A new white paper released today from Winterberry Group, a strategic advisory consultancy, explores the business and economic considerations of building an enterprise “data layer” to support the integration, management and activation of data and identity. “Demystifying the Data Layer: Transformation of Marketing Data Infrastructure (February 2024)” documents the components of this layer inside many organizations, and how they are changing – both in Europe and North America.

According to Winterberry Group, in the United States alone, $27 billion will be spent in 2024 on data, data services and data infrastructure to support an estimated $270 billion in U.S. media buying across data-driven channels. Data spend to support not just these channels – but the enterprise decision-making behind media and marketing selection – is projected to rise to more than $33 billion by 2027, the Company reports. The paper explores core solutions in the data layer, including: master data management; identity graphs; data clean rooms; data lakes; customer data platforms; analytic data environments, data warehouses; customer relationship management platforms; and LLM [large language models] data warehouses.

U.S. Marketing Data, Data Services and Data Infrastructure Spending Projections, 2024-27. Source: Winterberry Group, Demystifying the Data Layer: Transformation of Marketing Data Infrastructure, February 2024.

The paper is the culmination of insights derived from more than 60 expert interviewees in the advertising, marketing, publishing, regulatory, legal and agency sectors, conducted between October 2023 and February 2024. The interviews were supplemented by 200 respondents across the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, who answered a comprehensive survey.

“Several market forces are transforming how enterprises responsibly collect and use data for marketing activation,” said Michael Harrison, managing partner, Winterberry Group, and a co-author of the research. “Increased privacy regulation, a rapid shift toward digital-centric performance media, and the evolution of tech driven by machine and learning and generative AI [artificial intelligence] are helping to build a centralized data infrastructure that can support many business use cases – involving insights, activation, optimization and measurement. We’re seeing brands and companies embracing this layer as foundational.”

Harrison noted that the data layer directly supports two other layers that comprise marketing and advertising technology ecosystems today: the intelligence layer, which supports deriving insights to inform decision-making in strategy; and the activation layer, where inbound and outbound communications channels reach customers and prospects – and are increasingly driven by both data and analytics. “Getting it right, understanding how to source, unify, parse and stage the data, is vital to successful business outcomes,” he said.

The paper also details some of the transformation underway in the current “omnichannel era” of marketing within and about the data layer:

• A shift toward cloud-based environments, to help manage scalability, flexibility, and aspects of cost-efficiency. Hybrid hosting approaches, which combine on-premises and cloud environments, are gaining traction, enabling optimized performance while ensuring robust data security and privacy measures;
• The design and establishment of persistent first-party identity graphs to link proprietary PII [personally identifiable information] data with third-party assets, enriching customer insights and personalization capabilities;

Marketing Organizations’ Intent to Invest in Data Services, 2024. Source: Winterberry Group, Demystifying the Data Layer: Transformation of Marketing Data Infrastructure, February 2024.

• The evolution of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) from “systems of record” to unified intelligence and data management platforms capable of integrating persistent and non-persistent identifiers to support more relevant marketing efforts;
• Growing demand for Data Clean Rooms (DCRs) to enable collaboration within and across brands and media providers for targeted planning, analysis and measurement in a more secure, privacy-safe environment.
• Addressing challenges in content and audience data adoption and integration, particularly structured and unstructured data residing in digital asset and content management platforms. These efforts support the development of Large Language Models (LLMs) within the intelligence layer, enhancing data-driven insights and decision-making processes.

The Winterberry Group research is commissioned by numerous data and adtech/martech companies: LiveRamp, Habu, Treasure Data, mParticle, Acxiom and Aqfer.

“Data is critical to not only know customers, but deeply understand them across the many enterprise touchpoints and devices, screens, and browsers they engage with,” said Daniella Harkins, SVP of product GTM, LiveRamp. “As signal loss drives investment in first-party data, enterprises must extend the value of that data and enhance their identity strategies through strategic partnerships that unlock new insights driven by new second and third-party data relationships.”

“As the Winterberry research highlights, privacy-enhancing technologies such as clean rooms are now essential for ethical data-driven collaboration,” said Matt Kilmartin, co-founder & CEO, Habu. “It's imperative for companies to possess flexible tools designed so both technical and business users can achieve any use case, driving business growth efficiently. And, these tools should be interoperable, empowering organizations to collaborate and scale with any partner, regardless of the cloud platform from which their data resides.”

“In the age of hyper-personalization and artificial intelligence, it’s never been more important to get your data layer right as Winterberry Group highlights in its research. We believe a CDP that brings together data and decisioning is the future-proof customer data foundation that global enterprises need to orchestrate enriched customer experiences and drive profitable growth,” said Karl Wirth, chief product & technology officer, Treasure Data.

“We’re experiencing a major platform shift right now as (predictive) AI is multiplying the value that can be extracted from customer data,” said Michael Katz, CEO, mParticle. “As such, the benefit of the CDP is evolving from creating operational efficiency via simplifying martech integrations to impacting business outcomes through better decisioning at scale. While every vendor will have some sort of AI offering, it’s important to look for a diverse set of ML pipelines to create the most surface area for generating business outcomes.”

“Winterberry’s report underscores the rapid evolution of marketing data, driven primarily by expanding digital channels, regulatory shifts, and technological advancements,” said Dana Goff, SVP and head of industry and solution strategy at Acxiom. “The findings reaffirm what we’ve long recognized at Acxiom – these changes, while challenging, offer opportunities for growth and innovation. To capitalize on this potential and thrive in a data-driven future, brands must adopt cloud-native, privacy-compliant data management and analytics solutions. Establishing a robust data strategy, supported by a strong foundation, is the path forward for businesses aiming for sustained market success in the digital era.”

Accomplished customer experience leader with track record of driving industry-best gross retention rates joins leading digital conversations company

LivePerson, the enterprise leader in digital customer conversations, today announced the appointment of Chief Customer Officer Kevin Meeks. An established customer experience leader with a track record of success driving revenue and improvements in gross retention, Meeks will be the company's first Chief Customer Officer, responsible for helping customer brands fully realize the value of their investments in LivePerson's award-winning platform for AI-empowered digital customer conversations.

Over the past two decades, Meeks has led winning customer-centric organizations at high-growth companies, including building and scaling both pre-sales and customer success teams. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President, Customer Success at VMware, where he led a 1,400-person global success organization. During Meek's tenure, VMware achieved annual recurring revenue of over $4 billion and double digit improvement in gross retention rates.

Prior to VMware, Meeks led customer success, experience, and renewals organizations in roles including Vice President, Customer Success at DocuSign, Chief Customer Officer at Apptio, and Senior Vice President, Global Customer Success and Renewals at Splunk, where he drove double-digit improvement in both net and gross retention rates. He has also served as a consultant to chief customer officers and leadership teams at the world's top enterprises — working hand-in-hand with them to develop highly effective customer experience roadmaps — including as a member of the Strategic Advisory Board at Gainsight, the world's leading customer success platform.

"Kevin is a tried-and-true leader with a proven track record helping customers get the most out of their investments in enterprise software. I can think of no better fit for LivePerson's first-ever Chief Customer Officer role, and am confident that with his guidance, we will expedite success for both our customers and the teams that support them," said John Sabino, CEO of LivePerson. "On a personal note, this marks the third time I've worked with Kevin, and I've experienced firsthand his expertise and commitment to adding value to every touchpoint with  customers. It's a true pleasure to welcome him to LivePerson's team of experts."

"Having admired LivePerson's innovation leading an entire industry forward, I'm excited to join the company at this pivotal time in its history, and to team up again with John as he leads us to a new period of high performance and growth." said Meeks. "As a customer success leader, I'm particularly impressed by the caliber of LivePerson's enterprise customers — and I'm especially looking forward to spending time in the field with them."

StreamAlive empowers webinar, meeting, training and other presenters using Zoom with a fun and frictionless way to acknowledge and engage with all attendees via visual interactions

Enterprises doing "good, but not great" when it comes to implementing digital trust, according to annual State of Digital Trust survey

DigiCert, Inc., a leading global provider of digital trust, today released its 2024 State of Digital Trust Survey that checks in on how enterprises around the world are managing digital trust in their organizations. While digital trust overwhelmingly remains a critical focus for all enterprises, the latest report shines a light on the growing divide between the 'leaders' -- those who are getting it right, and the 'laggards' -- those who are struggling.

The difference between leaders and laggards revealed some clues and potential best practices when it comes to digital trust. The top 33% digital 'trust leaders' enjoyed higher revenue, better digital innovation and higher employee productivity. They could respond more effectively to outages and incidents, were generally better prepared for Post Quantum Cryptography and were more readily taking advantage of the benefits of the IoT. Meanwhile, the bottom 33% 'laggards' performed comparatively poorly in all those categories and found it harder to reap the benefits of digital innovation. In addition, the leaders were more likely to centrally manage their certificates, more likely to employ email authentication and encryption (S/MIME) technology, and generally employed more mature practices in digital trust management.

The 2024 survey included a series of questions to determine how well (or poorly) each respondent was doing across a wide range of digital trust metrics. After the scores were totaled, the respondents were split into three groups: leaders, laggards, and those in the middle. Comparing the results between leaders, laggards, and those in the middle, notable differences emerged:

Leaders exhibit far fewer issues on core enterprise systems (no system outages, few data breaches, and no compliance or legal issues) and experienced no IoT compliance issues, whereas half (50%) of the laggards did so. Leaders also have significantly fewer issues due to software trust mishaps--for example, none of the leaders experienced compliance issues or software supply chain compromises, compared to 23% and 77% of the laggards, respectively.

"As the threat landscape continues to expand, so does the gap between organizations who are leading the way in digital trust and those who are falling behind," said Jason Sabin, CTO at DigiCert. "Those who fall within the 'leaders' group and those who are a 'laggard' are well aware of who they are. The danger, however, is those organizations who fall in the middle and are not taking action due to a false sense of security."

"For organizations to be champions of digital trust, they must understand and actively implement the structure, processes, and activities that make it possible," said Jennifer Glenn, Research Director, Security and Trust Group, IDC. "This includes keeping up with changes to industry standards, maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements in each geography, managing the life cycle of digital trust technologies, and extending trust into digital ecosystems. Companies that focus their efforts on digital trust — and make it a strategic imperative for the business  the benefits are notable, including reliable uptime, reduced risk of data compromise, and improved user trust."

Third annual “State of Business Communication” report illuminates how businesses can tangibly harness AI to enhance communication, efficiency, and performance

Grammarly, the company helping over 30 million people and 70,000 teams work smarter and faster wherever they write, today announced its third annual “State of Business Communication: AI’s Potential to Turn Overload Into Impact” report, uncovering the potential of generative AI to save a staggering $1.6 trillion in U.S. communication productivity each year. In partnership with The Harris Poll, the study exposes how generative AI brings both new solutions and challenges to the problem of poor communication that plagues U.S. businesses.

New AI gaps and risks pose serious threats to businesses, jeopardizing their ability to reap the benefits of the technology. The data shows that leaders and workers have been communicating more (78%) and in more channels (73%) this past year, and it’s causing more stress than ever, particularly among workers (+16% over last year). At the same time, both groups are seeing early benefits from using generative AI, including saving a day a workweek—which adds up to around $16,455 per worker per year. But even though it’s helping, most workers still wish their companies were more open to implementing AI (58%) and don’t know how to use AI well (52%).

“Companies not using generative AI for communication are already way behind, and those that are, are far from realizing its full potential,” said Matt Rosenberg, Grammarly Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Grammarly Business. “The data is clear that generative AI offers monumental benefits, but can also add more distractions at a time when teams need ways to communicate better, not add more to the mix. Our report should be a wake-up call for businesses to stop with the piecemeal approaches, get aligned with their employees, and hone a clear strategy that empowers their entire workforce with AI if they are to realize its impact.”

The study of U.S. business leaders and knowledge workers underscores the changing nature of workplace communication and the ways that generative AI is impacting how we work and interact. Additional findings include:

• Workers spend nearly half of their workweek on writing tasks (19.08 hours), and time spent reviewing and editing especially increased (+11% year-over-year)
• 92% of leaders and 84% of workers who use generative AI do so at least weekly, and it’s already delivering business results for leaders like increased efficiency (52%), higher productivity (50%), saved costs (38%), and higher customer engagement (37%)
• Workers using generative AI say that it makes them better at their job (77%) and has transformed how they communicate at work (71%), and that they ultimately believe AI will enhance their work, not replace them (66%)

Leaders, your communication problem is worse than you think: There’s a 24% gap between workers’ (63%) and leaders’ (87%) perceived effectiveness of their organization’s overall communication. Fewer workers this year also say their senior leadership communicates effectively (64%, down 8%)—compared to 90% of leaders who say the same. With leaders reporting that communication directly drives business outcomes like productivity (64%), customer satisfaction (51%), and brand reputation (45%), it’s time for a reality check to tackle the problem.

Focus on better, not more, to address communications overload: Most leaders and workers find constant work notifications challenging (56%), struggle to manage all of the communications they receive (54%), and spend too much time trying to get messages across in the right way (55%). Despite the AI deluge, more workers this year also wish they had better tools to help them be more effective (66%, vs. 58% last year). Facing an overwhelming surge of communication in more places, teams need ways to improve the quality of communication, not simply pile on more.

Chart a clear course to close AI gaps and move past the hype: Despite extensive generative AI use and promising early benefits, poor communication remains a pervasive problem, and leaders and workers are at odds with each other in their use of AI. 89% of leaders report using generative AI for professional purposes, but only 53% of workers say the same—a symptom of the lack of a cohesive AI approach. While 82% of leaders are planning investments in AI, those investments will go to waste if not paired with a company-wide AI strategy that focuses on literacy, education, and training.

For more findings and insights on the state of workplace communication and the role of generative AI in reshaping it—including breakdowns by demographic, function (customer support, marketing/sales, HR), and more—download the full Grammarly report: “State of Business Communication: AI’s Potential to Turn Overload Into Impact.”

Additional resources:

• Read our blog post: The 2024 State of Business Communication Report: What You Need to Know
• Join the webinar today, Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET for a deep dive into the research findings
• Learn more about Grammarly and how its generative AI features change how businesses run

Methodology

This study was conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Grammarly from September 29, 2023, to October 3, 2023, among 1,002 knowledge workers and 253 business leaders. It also references findings from a similar study conducted from October 14 to 31, 2022, among 1,001 knowledge workers and 251 business leaders, as well as a prior study fielded from October 1 to 12, 2021, among 1,001 knowledge workers and 251 business leaders. This online survey is not based on a probability sample, and therefore, no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

“Gen AI” or “generative AI” refers to artificial intelligence capable of generating text and other types of content.

Year-over-year percentage changes and percentage gaps between groups should be interpreted as percent point changes and are statistically significant.

Tagado, the AI analytics provider of high-res CX data intelligence, has announced the launch of its new feedback trends monitor, that automatically allows CX, service and product teams to segment feedback into issues so evolving trends can be instantly prioritized, assigned, resolved and monitored over time.

Traditional planning and task management solutions used by CX, service and product professionals are disconnected from direct customer feedback, but Tagado's new monitor bridges this gap by bringing customer insights directly to the forefront of CX and product management. It features intelligent recognition of similarities in feedback, allowing issues to evolve dynamically. Supported by metadata, this tool pinpoints issues that are not only highly relevant but also directly tied to ROI, and can be integrated into the user's existing task management software.

"Tagado's new monitor empowers CX, product and service teams to continuously use customer feedback to drive product and customer experience decision-making," says Gilad Gans, Active Chairman at Tagado. "This underlines how the Tagado platform helps customer-obsessed organizations adopt data-driven practices that put customer feedback in the center."

Tagado's new monitor also features an Alerts function, notifying users of changes within CX data to highlight emerging trends as they happen. Tagado's Alerts can be customized to identify changes in CX data, based on specific topics, metadata (e.g. UK customers only) or thresholds (e.g. hourly changes over 300%).

While the new monitor allows users to actively define the issues they want to follow, Alerts examines the full set of CX data to notify users of trends occurring in real-time. This means for the first time support and customer success teams can monitor the issues they have predefined while also being alerted to anomalies occurring in real-time within the data so they can see trends emerge as they happen.

StructuredWeb, a provider of the leading enterprise through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) platform, is proud to celebrate its 25th anniversary. This milestone marks a quarter century of unparalleled innovation, during which StructuredWeb has been at the forefront of developing cutting-edge technologies to empower brands and their channel partners.

Since 1999, StructuredWeb has been dedicated to transforming the channel marketing landscape. The company quickly distinguished itself as a pioneer in the transformation of channel marketing through TCMA. From content syndication to personalized video, StructuredWeb’s novel approach has become the standard for efficient and effective marketing through distributors, resellers, and partners.

StructuredWeb's commitment to innovation did not stop there. Recognizing the potential of artificial intelligence early on, the company became the first in channel marketing to leverage Generative AI to enhance marketing strategies, campaign creation, and analytics. By introducing ChannelGPT in 2023, StructuredWeb offers its clients not just tools, but strategic advantages in increasingly competitive markets.

"Over the past 25 years, StructuredWeb has consistently pushed the boundaries of what's possible in channel marketing," said Daniel Nissan, founder & CEO of StructuredWeb. "Our dedication to innovation and our customers' success has been the driving force behind our achievements. As we celebrate this significant milestone, we also look forward to the future, where we will continue to lead the way in utilizing technology to solve complex channel marketing challenges."

StructuredWeb's journey has been characterized by continuous growth and evolution. From its early days as a visionary startup to its current status as a global leader in AI-powered TCMA software, the company has remained steadfast in its mission to deliver exceptional value and service to its clients. Today, StructuredWeb's platform is trusted by some of the world's leading brands across various industries, helping them to achieve their marketing goals with efficiency and scalability.

“I am filled with immense gratitude towards our talented team. Each milestone we've achieved and every innovation we've introduced has been made possible because of the hard work and dedication of our employees,” added Nissan. “As we celebrate this significant anniversary, I want to extend my deepest thanks to every member of the StructuredWeb family. Their contributions have been instrumental in our success, and I am excited to see where our collective creativity and innovation will take us in the years to come.

As StructuredWeb celebrates this landmark anniversary, it also reaffirms its commitment to driving the future of channel marketing. With ongoing investments in research and development, the company is poised to introduce even more innovative solutions that anticipate and meet the evolving needs of marketers worldwide.