In a telecom landscape where customer loyalty is fleeting and digital speed is king, Mauritius-based operator Emtel has just armed itself with a serious upgrade. Partnering with Finnish digital BSS provider Tecnotree, the carrier has rolled out a fully integrated, future-proof business support system that promises faster service, sharper engagement, and a leaner sales engine.

What’s New?

The deployment isn’t a routine IT patch. It’s a full-stack transformation that stitches together customer lifecycle management, product and order handling, inventory tracking, point-of-sale systems, and even reseller operations. All of it now connects directly into Emtel’s converged billing engine—think of it as moving from a messy toolkit to a precision instrument.

For customers, that means quicker service resolutions, smarter self-service options, and data-driven personalization on demand. For dealers and resellers, the platform brings automation at the point of sale and greater control over transactions, helping Emtel extend consistency across its network.

Why It Matters

Telecom operators are under intense pressure to keep up with cloud-native rivals, digital-first disruptors, and shifting customer expectations. Legacy BSS platforms often act like anchors, slowing down product launches or making it hard to scale. Emtel’s move with Tecnotree is about cutting that drag.

By centralizing data flows and automating workflows, Emtel is betting on agility—being able to anticipate customer needs, pivot quickly when markets shift, and squeeze more revenue out of existing and future services.

What’s Next

This is only Phase 1. Coming up, Phase 2 will crank up the AI. Tecnotree’s Campaign Manager is set to deliver real-time, event-driven marketing intelligence, giving Emtel the power to run personalized campaigns at speed. Alongside, the launch of a Commission Management Program will let distributors and agents see performance-based incentives transparently—a move that could nudge partners to push harder while keeping trust intact.

The Bigger Picture

Emtel’s overhaul isn’t happening in isolation. Globally, telcos are rushing to modernize BSS stacks as 5G rollouts and digital services demand faster, more flexible architectures. Rivals like Ericsson and Amdocs have been pushing similar upgrades, but Tecnotree’s play here underscores its ability to compete in a crowded space by promising modular, future-ready systems.

For Emtel, the bet is clear: deliver smoother, smarter, and faster digital experiences—or risk losing ground to operators who can.

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Manufacturing companies in the Akron-Cleveland region are increasingly turning inward to build marketing muscle. Following the success of clients like GBA Architectural Products and R.W. Martin, firms are investing in comprehensive training programs that equip internal teams with the skills to drive measurable growth.

Why Internal Marketing Matters

While engineering excellence and strong customer relationships have long defined manufacturing success, translating that expertise into effective digital marketing remains a challenge. Companies like GBA doubled their sales pipeline in 12 months, and R.W. Martin boosted leads from organic traffic by 69% after partnering with advancreative for SEO and marketing training.

“The companies that invest in training their teams develop permanent competitive advantages that continue generating value,” says Julie Stout, Founder of advancreative.

This trend reflects a broader shift: manufacturers are recognizing that internal capabilities—not just outsourced services—create sustainable ROI and reduce dependency on external agencies.

The Training Framework

Advancreative’s program is tailored to the unique challenges of manufacturing marketing and includes three key phases:

Foundation Development:

• Technical SEO audits and optimization training

• Industry-specific keyword research methodology

• Content planning for technical buyers and procurement teams

• Website optimization for manufacturing audiences

Strategic Implementation:

• Case study creation and optimization

• Local and industry-specific SEO strategies

Advanced Capabilities:

• Performance measurement and ROI tracking

• Competitive analysis and market opportunity identification

• Long-term growth strategy development

• Marketing automation and lead nurturing

Beyond Skills: Building a Marketing Culture

The impact of the program extends beyond technical skills. Manufacturing teams learn to translate specialized knowledge into content, improve sales conversations through a deeper understanding of prospect research, monitor competitors systematically, and strategically promote innovations.

“We’re seeing more manufacturing companies realize they need internal marketing capabilities, not just outsourced services,” adds Stout.

By embedding marketing expertise internally, companies create lasting competitive advantages, ensuring that digital campaigns, lead nurturing, and content strategies continue to evolve even as market conditions change.

The Bottom Line

Internal marketing training programs are becoming a strategic imperative for manufacturers aiming to combine technical excellence with marketing savvy. Firms that embrace this approach are not just optimizing campaigns—they’re future-proofing growth.

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Powerful Digital Marketing has unveiled Powerful Clicks, an AI-driven SEO and PPC platform tailored for travel brands seeking cost-effective digital marketing solutions without the high agency fees.

The service blends intelligent automation with travel marketing expertise, enabling tour operators, agencies, and destination specialists to attract and convert customers across every stage of the booking journey.

“Travel brands today need marketing that is both sophisticated and affordable,” said a company spokesperson. “Powerful Clicks combines the efficiency of AI with the insight of travel specialists to maximise every pound of ad spend.”

What Powerful Clicks Offers

• SEO Optimization: Technical SEO improvements, page performance enhancements, structured data, and ongoing blog content.

• Paid Campaign Management: Continuous optimization for Google Search, Display, and YouTube campaigns, with data-driven targeting, bidding, and ad copy adjustments.

• AI Integration: Automated keyword tracking, content suggestions, and ad testing, freeing marketing specialists to focus on strategy and creative oversight.

• Industry-Specific Insights: Campaigns tuned to seasonal demand, destination-specific keywords, and traveler behavior patterns for maximum ROI.

• Transparent Reporting: Clear metrics on CTR, CPC, conversion rate, and return on ad spend, enabling actionable insights.

Why It Matters

Travel brands face intense competition online, with potential customers starting their journey in search engines and social platforms. Traditional agency retainers can be costly, especially for small or mid-sized operators. Powerful Clicks promises agency-level expertise with flexibility, transparency, and affordability, helping brands scale campaigns according to seasonal demand.

By combining AI-powered automation with human oversight, travel companies can boost bookings, optimise ad spend, and maintain a strong digital presence without overextending budgets.

Market Context

The launch reflects a broader trend in the travel industry: operators are increasingly investing in digital visibility and performance marketing to drive direct enquiries and bookings. Platforms that integrate AI and human expertise are emerging as a competitive differentiator, enabling brands to respond rapidly to shifting traveler behavior while measuring impact in real time.

With budgets under pressure, solutions like Powerful Clicks may become essential tools for travel brands looking to maintain relevance and grow sustainably in a highly competitive digital marketplace.

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Purple, best known for powering WiFi logins that double as data goldmines, is making its Guest WiFi solutions easier to buy and deploy—now available directly through Google Cloud Marketplace.

The UK-based company, which already counts retailers, hospitality groups, and large venues among its customers, has joined the Google Cloud Partner Advantage program as a Partner-level partner under the Build engagement model. Translation: organizations running workloads on Google Cloud can now spin up Purple’s WiFi solutions with a few clicks, while keeping procurement and billing within the Google Cloud ecosystem.

Why This Matters

Guest WiFi has long been more than just a convenience. For businesses, it’s a first-party data capture engine—a critical asset at a time when third-party cookies are fading into irrelevance. By plugging directly into Google Cloud, Purple is lowering adoption hurdles for enterprises that want to pair connectivity with customer intelligence.

What You Get: Capture and Engage

Purple’s two flagship products—Capture and Engage—are at the heart of this launch:

• Purple Capture Guest WiFi: Focuses on data collection and compliance, verifying emails, enriching CRM databases, and generating analytics on network usage. GDPR and CCPA compliance is baked in.

• Purple Engage Guest WiFi: Goes beyond connectivity to drive personalized, automated engagement. Think tailored guest journeys, location-based offers, real-time behavior tracking, and integrations with 400+ CRM and loyalty systems. Optional add-ons include paid WiFi tiers and customer feedback surveys.

Together, these tools let businesses transform free guest WiFi into a marketing channel and insights hub—not unlike how Starbucks or airports have turned logins into touchpoints for loyalty and data capture.

Industry Context

The move reflects a larger cloud marketplace trend. SaaS vendors are increasingly prioritizing listings on hyperscaler marketplaces (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) because that’s where CIOs prefer to shop—it consolidates billing, simplifies compliance checks, and accelerates deployment. Purple now joins companies like Okta, Twilio, and Cloudflare, which have successfully scaled enterprise reach through marketplace availability.

What They’re Saying

“Joining Google Cloud Marketplace simplifies how organizations discover and deploy Purple’s Guest WiFi solutions,” said Bob Koch, Senior Vice President, Global Alliances at Purple.

Google Cloud’s Dai Vu added: “Purple can now securely scale and support customers seeking to leverage the benefits of its Capture and Engage solutions.”

The Takeaway

For enterprises, Purple’s debut on Google Cloud Marketplace is less about free WiFi and more about making customer data strategies plug-and-play. With data privacy tightening and customer loyalty harder to win, businesses are looking for every edge. Purple’s bet is that seamless procurement plus advanced analytics will keep it competitive in the crowded MarTech and AdTech stacks.

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Optable is shuffling its leadership deck as it doubles down on AI-driven identity management and data collaboration. The Montreal-based company announced that co-founder Vlad Stesin will step into the CEO role, while founding CEO Yves Poiré transitions to Executive Chairman, a newly created position focused on partnerships and industry strategy. The company also tapped Patrick Viau as Chief Revenue Officer to drive global growth.

Leadership Reset for a Growth Push

The timing isn’t accidental. Optable, launched in 2020, has carved out a niche in helping publishers and media companies make sense of identity resolution and data collaboration—critical functions in a world where third-party cookies are disappearing and interoperability is king.

By promoting Stesin, previously Chief Strategy Officer, the company is elevating one of the architects of its platform vision. Poiré will stay close to the action as Executive Chairman, focusing on alliances and industry alignment, while Viau adds enterprise SaaS firepower to the revenue side.

“Vlad’s acute sense of product strategy and understanding of customer challenges make him the right CEO for this moment,” Poiré said.

Enter “Agentic Collaboration”

Optable’s pitch has always been about simplifying how organizations connect, enrich, and activate data across fragmented ecosystems. Now, Stesin says the company is heading into what he calls the era of “Agentic Collaboration”—AI-powered workflows that replace manual, inefficient processes with intelligent, automated insights.

The vision: advertisers, publishers, and agencies can collaborate at scale on audience insights, campaign planning, and measurement with greater speed and accuracy. Think identity graphs and clean-room-style interoperability, but with AI agents doing much of the heavy lifting.

“We’re moving towards a new chapter of identity infrastructure and data collaboration,” Stesin said, arguing that AI has made it possible to drastically expand the efficiency of data-driven media buys across a growing network of media partners and data sources.

Strengthening the Commercial Engine

That’s where new CRO Patrick Viau comes in. With a résumé spanning Oracle, SAP, Rasa, and multiple high-growth SaaS firms, Viau brings a mix of big-enterprise discipline and startup scaling experience. His mandate: expand adoption of Optable’s platform across both the sell-side and buy-side of the advertising ecosystem.

Stesin calls his addition “critical” as the company rides growing demand for AI-enabled collaboration tools that deliver measurable results.

Bigger Picture

The leadership changes signal Optable’s intent to play offense at a pivotal moment in ad tech. As publishers fight to protect and monetize first-party data, and advertisers hunt for privacy-safe collaboration channels, platforms like Optable are positioning themselves as the connective tissue.

If “data collaboration” was once a buzzword, the rise of AI-driven automation—and the complexity of the media landscape—may finally make it a necessity.

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Hightouch has landed on Forrester’s radar—and it’s making a strong first impression. The data activation platform was named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Data Platforms for B2B, Q3 2025, its debut appearance in the analyst firm’s closely watched ranking.

A Composable Take on the CDP

Unlike traditional customer data platforms, which often require companies to shoehorn data into rigid models, Hightouch pitches itself as a Composable CDP. In plain terms: instead of ripping and replacing infrastructure, B2B companies can use their existing cloud data warehouse and keep data in its native format while still powering personalization, AI-driven campaigns, and account-level insights.

That architectural flexibility was one of the differentiators called out by Forrester, alongside ease of journey building and customer support.

Forrester noted Hightouch’s journey orchestration tool, which allows teams to design multistep engagement flows and even simulate outcomes before launch—a feature many legacy CDPs lack. Customers also highlighted the company’s open data schema and responsive support team.

Real-World Impact

The recognition comes on the back of some big customer wins:

• Ramp boosted new business by 25% through automated prospecting powered by warehouse data.

• Grammarly personalized billions of emails and optimized a nine-figure ad budget across eight ad networks.

• Calendly used Hightouch to personalize experiences for 20 million users, lifting activation by 16%.

• DocuSign built a unified Customer 360 to align its entire sales organization.

These examples underscore a larger point: the platform is not just serving SaaS or B2B firms, but scaling across industries where customer journeys are increasingly complex.

Why It Matters

Forrester’s Wave reports are table stakes for serious CDP vendors; a strong placement signals both credibility and competitive weight. For Hightouch, the recognition validates its composable-first strategy at a time when enterprises are growing wary of “black box” platforms that lock data away.

The broader trend: B2B marketers need the same personalization power that B2C has long enjoyed, but with added complexity—multiple buyers per account, long sales cycles, and intricate product portfolios. A composable approach, if it delivers, could be the bridge.

“Hoping something works isn’t a strategy,” Forrester seemed to echo in spirit. And with AI rapidly reshaping marketing playbooks, companies like Hightouch are betting that agility, not all-in-one rigidity, will win.

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MatrixPoint Consulting has named Steve King as its new Principal of Marketing & Management Consulting, bringing more than 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship, agency leadership, and strategy consulting.

In his new role, King will focus on helping businesses accelerate digital transformation and execute marketing strategies that translate vision into measurable outcomes. Known for blending strategic insight with hands-on execution, he has built a career designing and launching award-winning campaigns across multiple industries.

Before joining MatrixPoint, King led DataPlaces, a consultancy advising startups on marketing architecture, growth engines, and AI-driven solutions. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Caboodle! Toys LLC, where he created the toy industry’s first rewards program and pioneered the “collect to win®” loyalty concept—an innovation that drove customer engagement and industry adoption.

“Steve’s experience and innovative approach to marketing strategy make him a great addition to our team,” said Eran Goren, Managing Partner at MatrixPoint Consulting. “His track record positions MatrixPoint to deliver measurable growth and unlock new opportunities for our clients.”

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ThinkNow, the multicultural market research firm known for decoding diverse consumer behavior, has once again landed on Quirk’s radar. The agency was named a finalist for Marketing Research Supplier of the Year in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards, a recognition that cements its reputation as one of the few research shops blending authenticity with advanced analytics.

The award category covers firms with 2024 revenue north of $5 million, putting ThinkNow in the company of some heavyweight suppliers. Winners will be announced during a virtual ceremony on November 19, 2025.

Why This Matters

The marketing research space has been in flux—AI and automation are rewriting how data is gathered, analyzed, and applied. Yet, ThinkNow stands out for keeping multicultural audiences at the center of its mission.

“We’re integrating more advanced tech into research, but the mission remains the same: staying authentic, earning trust, and helping brands connect with people in meaningful ways,” said Roy Eduardo Kokoyachuk, Co-Founder and Principal at ThinkNow.

That balance of innovation and authenticity is a rarity in an industry where speed often trumps nuance.

A Pattern of Recognition

This isn’t ThinkNow’s first brush with Quirk’s accolades. Back in 2022, the agency was a finalist for work with Myovant Sciences. The company also boasts three Ogilvy Awards for campaigns with Clorox, Covered California, and The Ad Council, as well as spots on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list and the Inc. 5000 Regionals for California.

In a market increasingly saturated with generic data tools, ThinkNow’s repeat recognition highlights the growing demand for multicultural insight at scale. It’s a signal to brands that diversity isn’t a checkbox—it’s a competitive advantage.

The Bigger Picture

As marketers scramble to personalize campaigns for fragmented audiences, research firms like ThinkNow are shaping how inclusive data strategies become standard practice. With major players pushing into multicultural insights—Nielsen, Ipsos, and Kantar among them—ThinkNow’s finalist nod positions it as both a challenger and a specialist.

The question now is whether the firm can parlay this recognition into broader adoption of its tech-driven, culture-first methodology. Either way, November’s award ceremony will be one to watch.

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