Retail and eCommerce highlights this week includes Salesforce’s entrance into the Customer Data Platform arena via its purchase of Evergage. BigCommerce and OroCommerce introduce new platform functionalities. Huawei head to court to protect its patents.
Salesforce to buy Evergage
Salesforce has acquired Evergage, a real-time personalisation and customer data platform (CDP). The company works with hundreds of companies – including Autodesk, Carhartt, CenterState Bank, Citrix, Publishers Clearing House, Zumiez, and many more. Evergage delivers data-driven experiences in the moment across every channel including web, email, mobile, adtech, social, call-centre, in-store and in-branch.
Evergage’s real-time, cross-channel personalisation and machine learning capabilities complement Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s robust customer data, audience segmentation and engagement platform. It enables companies to deliver more relevant experiences during moments of interaction across the entire customer journey.
Big Commerce launches multi-currency features
BigCommerce has introduced a comprehensive suite of multi-currency features. These will streamline merchants’ cross-border operations and provide international customers with localized shopping experiences tailored to their native language and currency.
The suite is available across all plan types at no additional cost. BigCommerce’s multi-currency solution enables its merchants to natively present, transact and settle purchases in more than 100 foreign currencies. The payment is done through pre-built integrations with leading payment providers Adyen, Elavon, Klarna, PayPal Express Checkout and Stripe. In addition, BigCommerce plans to add support for Barclaycard, BlueSnap and PayPal powered by Braintree in early 2020.
A worldwide study conducted by PayPal found that 76 percent of online shoppers prefer to have the option to pay for purchases in either their local or preferred currency. The launch of BigCommerce Multi-Currency is the latest advancement in the company’s efforts to support merchants investing in international growth.
OroCommerce upgrades platform
OroCommerce has announced its latest OroCommerce LTS 4.1 release. The updated platform includes a long list of revamps and updates to virtually to every corner of its eco system.
OroCommerce aimed to raise the productivity bar for its customers. The company streamlined commands for easier navigation, improved the dashboard and put special emphasis on B2C eCommerce. This update also touches on the way data is managed, filtered, and exported. The CMS saw its share of workflow improvements – not to mention new widgets. OroCommerce introduced Symfony 4.4 LTS, made significant upgrades to the back-end. It also launched integrations and API improvements to give customers a better experience.
OroCommerce’s platform has also added Google Tag Manager to the platform. Customers can now add tracking tags to your OroCommerce store pages to better track product views, page views, clicks. Know when customers make changes to their shopping carts, initiate the checkout or refund process. Customers can make use of Google’s enhanced eCommerce to complement Google Analytics reports with detailed view of the customer journey.
Huawei sues Verizon for patent infringement
Huawei has filed patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon in the US District Courts in Texas. The company is seeking compensation for Verizon’s use of patented technology that is protected by 12 of Huawei’s US patents.
“Verizon’s products and services have benefited from patented technology that Huawei developed research and development,” said Dr. Song Liuping, Huawei’s Chief Legal Officer.
As a communications equipment and smart device provider, Huawei re-invests 10% to 15% of its revenue in R&D each year. The company says its has spent more than $70 billion on R&D in the past decade. This has resulted in more than 80,000 patents worldwide – including over 10,000 patents in the US alone.
Before filing the lawsuits in Texas, Huawei negotiated with Verizon for a significant period of time. The company provided a detailed list of patents and factual evidence of Verizon’s use of Huawei patents. The two parties were unable to reach an agreement on license terms.
Since 2015, Huawei has received more than US$1.4 billion dollars in patent license fees. To date, it has paid over US$6 billion dollars for the legitimate use of patented technologies developed by industry peers. Eighty percent of these license fees have gone to companies in the US.
