Several interesting pieces of research were published this week. They included Hubspot publishing new research, Behind the Scenes: A Marketing, Sale and Customer Success pulse check. AppsFlyer has released the 2023 edition of its State of eCommerce App Marketing report. Infosys released the Digital Commerce Radar 2023: Capabilities and Practices of the Future. Adobe also released data about Amazon Prime Day. It estimated the total UK online spending on the first day of Amazon Prime Day surpassed £581 million.
Anthology
Anthology and Tyton Partners released the 2023 instalment of Driving Toward a Degree. The report identifies the key barriers and opportunities around student support services in higher education. The report highlights the importance of prioritizing equity and excellence to ensure the provision of high-quality education.
Key findings included the following:
- One barrier is the low engagement with support resources, with over 35% of student survey respondents unaware of available critical support services.
- High caseloads significantly limit the success of academic advising; most advisors only meet up with 85% of their students.
- Students who are aware of more support services also report higher rates of belonging to their institution.
- Academic advising, mental health counselling, financial aid services, and career counselling, report limited coordination between each other.
- Advisors with high (300+) caseloads are less likely to remain in their roles, a top barrier to effective advising identified at 4-year public institutions.
Through the report, the authors offer advice to institutions to rectify these issues.
Jim Milton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Anthology, commented, “Our work with partner institutions throughout higher education has highlighted how technology can play a pivotal role ensuring effective practices at scale throughout the student lifecycle. Driving Toward a Degree shines a light on how practices like inclusive and holistic student support services can increase students’ sense of belonging, degree completion, and career outcomes.”
Experian
Experian published a report entitled “Accelerating Model Velocity in Financial Institutions.” Looking at predictive analytics and the Future of ModelOps (model operations) for financial institutions.
Key findings reveal the complexity of the operating environment and the need for sophisticated processes, robust technology infrastructure and a highly skilled workforce capable of navigating data-driven decision-making. Key findings from the survey included the following:
- Model development and deployment currently take an average of 15 months.
- 55% of lenders reported building models that never made it into production.
- 66% of institutions recognize that ModelOps will shape the industry’s Future over the next five years.
Alex Lintner, Chief Executive Officer of Experian Software Solutions, commented, “Model velocity is all about accelerating how quickly financial institutions can respond to market and competitive pressures, and what our findings uncovered is that survey respondents are challenged with inefficient development and deployment that affect their decisioning and ultimately the consumer experience. Our findings shed light on the key barriers to developing and updating models, including a talent shortage and communicating model outcomes with management.
“The findings show that financial institutions have adopted predictive analytics models across their operations and a significant number of respondents intend to implement models across a range of use cases within the next one or two years. Anticipating this market need, Experian has a wide range of tools and data insights to help financial institutions improve their model velocity and overcome issues of model transparency.”
Qualtrics
Qualtrics published data from a survey that investigated the impact of AI on customer experience. It revealed that over 60% of customer experience leaders expect AI to give them a competitive advantage. Generative AI is a game changer, pushing organisations towards using AI faster. 75% of leaders feel pressure to incorporate generative AI into their business strategy. Nearly two-thirds of leaders (senior managers and higher) expect their companies to increase their financial investment in tech tools and training for their CX teams over the next year.
Despite this increase in technology funding, leaders still expect to increase headcount over the next year. Key benefits of AI include increasing process efficiency and reducing burnout. There are concerns among employees, with 25% unsure how AI will benefit them.
Ellen Loeshelle, Qualtrics Director of AI Product Management, commented, “Historically, emerging technologies have elevated the human experience by allowing users to prioritize the skills that they uniquely possess. Incorporating AI gives customer experience teams a powerful way to reduce workloads and let people focus on the issues that humans are made for, without sacrificing insights that drive future improvements and innovations.”
Salesforce
Salesforce published the third edition of the State of IT report. It looked at how companies are rethinking their strategies and tactics amid rising demand for their services, app proliferation, security threats, and ongoing developments in artificial intelligence.
The report’s key findings included the following insights:
- AI and Automation are top of mind. 86% of IT leaders now expect generative AI to play a prominent role in their organizations soon. However, 64% are concerned about ethics, and 62% are concerned about the impact on their careers.
- Security is still a major issue. 67% of IT leaders report having trouble balancing business and security objectives. Threats continue to increase, and IT leaders are investing in data encryption (56%), data backup and restore protocols (53%), Identity and Access Management (52%) and Multi-Factor Authentication (50%).
- Business demands are increasing, and 62% of IT leaders struggle to meet them. While budgets are increasing, 89% are focussing on operational efficiency.
- Data proliferation and business demands prompt new approaches to application development and integration. 69% of IT leaders expect demand for customer-facing apps to increase over the coming 18 months, and 63% say the same for employee-facing apps.
- Sustainability is on the agenda, with IT becoming responsible for carbon accounting. 79% of IT organizations have set greenhouse gas emission reductions, and 87% of those organizations’ leaders feel they can effectively track and report those emissions.
Param Kahlon, EVP and GM of Automation & Integration, Salesforce, commented, “IT departments continue to be asked to do more with less, save on costs, deploy products faster, and deliver better customer and employee experiences. So it’s critical for CIOs and IT leaders to focus on operational efficiency and process excellence. By doing so, teams will be more productive and achieve business success moving forward.”
Tradeshift
Tradeshift published the Q2 Index of Global Trade Health. It showed that the volume of new orders and invoices exchanged between US buyers and their suppliers grew at 3 points above its expected range in Q2. Recovering from 6 points below the baseline in the previous two quarters. This is the fastest growth for two years.
Christian Lanng, CEO and Co-founder at Tradeshift, said, “We saw order volumes starting to tick up in the US last quarter as supply chains worked their way out of a bullwhip cycle. Conditions are still challenging, but the combination of a strong domestic market and high consumer confidence could well give US supply chains enough fuel to ride out the current storm.”
The global outlook remained sluggish, with transaction volume growing 4 points below the expected range. The Eurozone and the UK followed the global trend. With trade activity in the Eurozone 3 points below expectations in Q2 compared to a score of -8 in the previous quarter. In the UK, transaction volumes grew 5 points below the baseline in Q2 compared to -7 points in Q1.
The decline in global demand has impacted the pace of China’s recovery following its lifting of COVID restrictions at the beginning of the year. Transaction volumes between Chinese buyers and suppliers rose 1 point above the expected range, indicating more steady than spectacular progress.
