Two major conferences were held last week: Salesforce held Dreamforce, and Workday held Workday Rising. There were several announcements from both.
Salesforce has revealed how Indiana Fever has used Salesforce to significantly increase sales well over the average in what has been an extraordinary season to date. Salesforce is to make a major investment in AI training. At Dreamforce, Salesforce has announced the Agentforce Partner Network. Following the announcement around Agentforce, its latest iteration of AI technology.
Salesforce Ventures announced an additional $500 million AI fund. The additional funds will bring Salesforce Ventures’ total investment in AI startups to $1 billion over the last 18 months.
Accenture announced the launch of Regenerative AI. The program aims to help disadvantaged communities across the UK to build AI skills.
Panzura has launched Symphony to help organisations deal with the complexities of unstructured data.
TechnologyOne has announced that East Lothian Council has selected OneCouncil to replace its Microsoft Dynamics GP solution.
Pipefy has announced Rafaela Costa’s appointment as Global Vice President of Alliances & Channels and Professional Services.
Mangopay has announced that Sergi Herrero has been appointed CEO of the payment infrastructure provider.
Rithum, a leading global eCommerce network and platform, has announced the appointment of Lou Keyes as CEO.
Chargebee, a leading provider of innovative subscription billing and revenue growth management solutions, announced the opening of its second office in Europe and sixth overall.
Enterprise Times talked with Nicky Tozer, EMEA Senior Vice President at Oracle NetSuite, at SuiteWorld 2024 in Las Vegas. Enterprise Times met with Nick Parece, VP of IT at NOBULL at SuiteWorld 2024 in Las Vegas. He talked about moving down a D2C route with NetSuite.
BICS
BICS announced the appointment of Surash Patel as Managing Director of BICS. Patel commented, “I am honoured to lead BICS through this new chapter. It’s an exciting time as we embrace the bold ambitions of Proximus Group for international growth.
“I look forward to working with BICS’ leadership team to champion innovation and excellence, creating value and opportunities for our customers worldwide.”
Guillaume Boutin, CEO of Proximus Group, added, “I have full confidence in Surash that his leadership and experience in fostering growth within the B2B communications industry make him ideally suited to lead BICS. He will play an important role in the next phase of our Proximus international activities, together with Telesign and Route Mobile, to create a global leader in digital communications.”
Certinia
Certinia announced that it was one of the launch partners of the new Salesforce Agentforce Partner Network. This is a group of leading technology partners dedicated to extending the value of Agentforce for our customers.
Raju Malhotra, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Certinia, noted in a blog, “As a first-mover on the Agentforce Partner Network, we are developing several use cases to help transform the potential of Customer Success organizations, including a Certinia Customer Success Agent—an AI-powered assistant designed to empower Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to automate complex processes and make more strategic, data-driven decisions.”
Deltek
Deltek published an interview with Christoffer Bondgaard, Chief Financial Officer at Kunde & Co. who have used Deltek Maconomy for over 20 years. Over that period it has moved to the cloud and is now looking forward to leveraging AI.
Bondgaard shared three tips for others looking to migrate to cloud-based solutions.
- “If you’re using an on-premises ERP today, I’d recommend a one-to-one migration to the cloud. This will help retain familiarity while opening up a new world of possibilities.”
- “You may be excited to deploy new cloud capabilities right away, but you’ve got to take the time to test the technology and ensure everything works first.”
- “To help keep things simple and accelerate time to value, identify low-risk, high-reward use cases that will best demonstrate the benefits of your cloud migration.”
Infor
Infor published several customer stories this week. The included a blog and video case study from Endries that has implemented Infor Industry AI to help with parts matching for its database of over 750,000 SKUs.
It revealed how Safran Aerosystems completed its one ERP strategy with a single Infor solution across 20 sites with a cloud-based solution.
Infor also announced that ebebek had selected Infor’s PLM solution for Fashion with the support of KBL + Consulting, an Infor partner.
Inforlogic
The Infor partner Inforlogic has launched a new website to support its 10th anniversary and partnership with Infor over Infor Syteline. It brings industry insights, customer success stories and details on how Inforlogic’s consulting team is helping manufacturers embrace digital transformation. The website provides a clear, concise resource to highlight the business benefits of Infor Syteline (CloudSuite Industrial).
Infosys
Infosys announced its collaboration with the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) (NSE, BSE: LICI). This is the largest life insurance company in India. It will spearhead its digital transformation initiative called DIVE (Digital Innovation and Value Enhancement).
Infosys will enable the creation of a cutting-edge NextGen Digital Platform, which will focus on delivering seamless omnichannel engagement and data-driven hyper-personalized experiences to LIC’s customers, agents and employees.
Metro Bank, the UK’s community bank, has entered into a long-term collaboration with Infosys. This is to enhance some of its IT and support functions while digitally transforming the bank’s business operations.
Infosys announced it is extending its strategic collaboration with Posti, the leading delivery and logistics services provider in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics. As part of the engagement, Infosys will help Posti enhance customer experience and operational efficiency. While continuing to innovate, scale, and grow its IT operations.
Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of Infosys, has kicked off its ‘Month of Gracious Giving’ initiative this September across Infosys Development Centers in India. As part of this inaugural initiative, Infosys employees participated in producing over 200,000 seed balls in an hour. These seed balls will be used for reforestation projects across more than 20 locations in India. Thus helping restore native flora, promote biodiversity, and support local ecosystems.
Jitterbit
Jitterbit has announced App Builder 4.0 (formerly Vinyl), which delivers new capabilities for rapid AI-infused and low-code application development. This release includes powerful AI assistance capabilities now available to App Builder 4.0 customers through a global beta.
Vito Salvaggio, Jitterbit’s Senior Vice President of Product Management, said, “The industry is witnessing an unprecedented increase in demand for custom applications, yet many organizations are constrained by limited development resources. With App Builder, teams can now develop scalable, secure applications in minutes, regardless of their technical expertise. Our AI assistant further reduces the learning curve and expands the range of potential use cases.”
Makip
Makip announced that the fashion online shopping site “CEL STORE” operated by SUNDAY Co., Ltd. is now using the Unisize size recommendation engine. It has also started the implementation of Unisize on People Tree. This is a fair trade brand operated by Fairtrade Company Inc. Unisize continues to roll out its solution across Japanese fashion sites.
Newgen Software
Newgen Software announced that Old Second National Bank, one of the oldest banks in the US, has opted for Newgen’s advanced digital account opening and maintenance solution, built on the NewgenONE low-code platform.
Sylvia Balogh, EVP of Retail Banking at Old Second National Bank, said, “The Newgen team was extremely proactive, responsive, and accommodating throughout our RFP and contract execution process. We are looking forward to working through the milestones with speed and efficiency, as well as bringing value to our customers upon implementation of the platform.”
Precisely
Precisely has published the 2025 Outlook: Data Integrity Trends and Insights report in partnership with Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. The report sheds light on the most pressing challenges businesses face in achieving AI readiness. As well as other data initiatives and how they’re prioritizing investments in data integrity to overcome them.
Key findings include:
- While 60% of organizations state AI is a key influence on data programs (a 46% increase from 2023), only 12% report that their data is of sufficient quality and accessibility for effective AI implementation.
- 76% of organizations say data-driven decision-making is a top goal for their data programs.
- 67% still don’t completely trust the data they rely on for these decisions. A rise from 55% in 2023.
- 62% say a lack of data governance is the primary data challenge inhibiting AI initiatives.
- 42% say a shortage of skills and resources continues to be one of their biggest challenges to data programs. Up from 37% in 2023.
Murugan Anandarajan, PhD, Professor and Academic Director at the Center for Applied AI and Business Analytics at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, stated, “While organizations are eager to benefit from AI’s capabilities, a talent shortfall impedes AI integration. Our research findings highlight that gap, with 60% of respondents citing a lack of AI skills and training as a significant challenge in launching AI initiatives – a signal to business leaders that upskilling must be a strategic imperative.”
TSIA
TSIA publications last week included:
A Framework for sustainable growth: The Customer Success Value Impact. It proposes a framework that elucidates the value of customer success management by highlighting its direct impact on key business metrics and customer outcome achievement. (subscription required)
Which Practices and Metrics Are MSPs Overlooking in Offers and Sales? A survey Insight from TSIA’s KPIs and Best Practices for Measuring Managed Services Survey. The insight highlights results from the 2024 KPIs and Best Practices for Measuring Managed Services survey, discussing which practices MSPs are and aren’t currently adopting and which key metrics they are not and should be tracking. (registration required)
An article that considers XaaS and the Various Models of Revenue Recognition and whether they are subscription revenues in terms of revenue recognition. (subscription required)
A survey insight titled, The Power of Customer Success in Reducing Churn from TSIA’s 2024 Justifying the Value of Customer Success Survey. (registration required)
An abridged version of a report titled Optimizing Spare Parts Management, which looks at the adoption of best practices, utilizing technology, and controlling costs in field service spare parts management. (registration required)
TSIA also started a quick poll, which will run through to October 4th. It aims to capture the current state of Project Management, its contribution, and Project performance data. (registration required)
Workday
At Workday Rising US, Workday made several announcements from its annual conference.
Workday Wellness is a new AI-powered solution that will provide companies with a real-time view of which benefits and wellness offerings their employees want and use. Workday Wellness will empower companies with AI-driven recommendations on how to improve their benefits program. Thereby be able to deliver a more personalised wellness experience for their employees.
It announced continued AI momentum with Workday Ventures, the strategic capital arm of Workday, Inc. Workday Ventures has made 10 new AI investments since the beginning of 2023 as part of its focus on AI innovations that help organisations move forever forward.
Workday launched 12 new Industry Accelerators to help customers rapidly modernise their HR and finance operations through the combined power of Workday and its partner ecosystem.
Evisort signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Workday. With Evisort, Workday will add AI-powered document intelligence solutions across its finance and HR suite.
Workday also unveiled four new AI agents to dramatically simplify work across HR and finance. Recruiter, Expenses, Succession, and Workday Optimise Agents will anticipate and streamline common business workflows. Thus drive productivity and free users up to do more strategic, meaningful work.
Zoho
The company has announced several enhancements around integrations and support for iOS environments.
- The Zoho Doc Scanner is now readily available for the latest iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia devices.
- Zoho Notebook is now compatible with Apple’s latest updates. We’ve got interesting features that will take your day-to-day note-taking experience to the next level with the fresh iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11.
- Also, for iOS 18, there are five new additions to Zoho OneAuth for an improved Apple Experience.
Zoho also held Zoholics Nigeria and announced continued momentum in the country. In 2023, it grew by 31% and its partner network by 21%. Over the last three years, it has achieved a CAGR of 43%. It also announced a collaboration with Bridge International Academies in order to support the education of underprivileged children.
Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria, said, “As we continue to grow our presence in Africa, our focus is on ensuring that our expansion positively impacts the local economy, communities, and the broader business ecosystem.
“This approach aligns with our transnational localism strategy, which emphasises being rooted in local markets while staying globally connected. To support this, we are committed to hiring local talent, strengthening our partner network, and creating products tailored to the local market. Additionally, to serve the community, we are supporting the education of children and also undertaking sustainability initiatives.”
