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AI, News

Dataiku 11 Unveils Enhanced Toolset to Scale AI

New release provides advanced capabilities for experts and automation for business users to help embrace Everyday AI

EVERYDAY AI CONFERENCE – LONDON: 20 June 2022 – Dataiku today announced Dataiku 11, a pivotal update of the company’s data science and AI platform that helps organizations to deliver on the promise of Everyday AI. This packed release provides new capabilities for expert teams to deliver more value at scale, enables tech-savvy workers to take on more expansive challenges, helps non-technical workers more easily engage with AI, and provides strengthened AI Governance to ensure projects are robust, transparent, and ready for success at scale.

Dataiku 11 builds on Dataiku’s recent market momentum, in which the company crossed $150 million in annual recurring revenue and hired tech finance veteran Adam Towns as CFO. The company now serves more than 500 enterprises globally, helping leaders from Boeing to Unilever to speed workflows, prevent customer churn, and improve financial performance.

Empowering the Expert Technical Community

In Dataiku 11, tech experts can now access expanded tools to do more and deliver more value from AI projects. Release highlights include:

  • Built-in tooling for advanced users that reduces technical overhead and increases day-to-day efficiency when crafting custom code, performing model experiments, or sourcing high-quality datasets.
  • An end-to-end, visual path for computer vision tasks so that advanced and novice data scientists alike can tackle complex object detection and image classification use cases, from data preparation through to developing and deploying deep learning models.
  • A collaborative, managed framework for image annotation removes the need for teams to use outside tools or services for data labeling, ensuring tight alignment between subject matter experts, labelers, and modelers.

“Expert data scientists, data engineers, and ML engineers are some of the most valuable and sought-after jobs today,” said Clément Stenac, CTO and a co-founder of Dataiku. “Yet all too often, talented data scientists spend most of their time on low-value logistics like setting up and maintaining environments, preparing data, and putting projects into production. With extensive automation built into Dataiku 11, we’re helping companies eliminate the frustrating busywork so companies can make more of their AI investment quickly and ultimately create a culture of AI to transform industries.”

Collaborating With Your Skilled Workforce

Dataiku 11 also empowers non-coders— including subject matter experts, citizen data scientists, and knowledge workers — with easy-to-use, no-code tools that help any employee harness the power of AI to move the business forward. New tools include:

  • Visual time series forecasting enables professionals to create robust business forecasting models without coding.
  • A centralized feature store and new sharing workflows make it easier for teams to safely reuse work, speeding projects responsibly.
  • Powerful what-if accelerators help teams evaluate the best path to optimize business outcomes. For example, what changes could a manufacturer make to factory conditions in order to achieve the maximum production yield? Or for a bank, what adjustments to a consumer’s financial profile would lead to the lowest predicted probability of their defaulting on a loan?

Expanding Confidence and Control

Dataiku 11 continues the pursuit of Responsible AI practices and AI Governance with new capabilities to help organizations manage trust and risk for their organization. Core to this expanded offering is a central registry for visibility into all types of data and analytics projects together with final sign-off prior to production. Automatic flow documentation and proactive model stress testing further strengthen AI models, instilling executive confidence in projects and building trust with data consumers and stakeholders.

“Dataiku 11 takes a valuable step forward to help our organization thrive with AI and self-service analytics. They’re making AI easier to use for technical and non-technical staff alike while delivering powerful results that have a substantive effect on our bottom line. Best of all, we don’t need to hire an army of technical experts to reap the benefits of AI; instead, we’re empowering the skilled workforce we already have,” stated Ignacio Toledo, Data Science Initiative Lead at ALMA Observatory, Dataiku Neuron and Frontrunner Award Winner.

Dataiku unveiled Dataiku 11 today at its premier data and AI conference in London, held today in Tobacco Dock and attended by more than 700 global data leaders and practitioners. The product will be GA in July.

Learn more about Dataiku 11 here: https://discover.dataiku.com/dataiku-11/.

News

The Recruitment and Retention Race

Covid-19 has changed the world for good, and as the world of work has changed, the expectations and demands of employees have grown. As the world starts to emerge from restrictions and lockdowns, the race to secure resources has begun and, within organisations, human resources and the quality of those human resources are crucial. Therefore, it is vital that organisations promote, understand and execute a flexible and attractive recruitment process in order to be in a better position to fill jobs promptly with quality candidates.

That being said, employees now have different expectations when pursuing new roles because of the shift in their priorities, especially when considering their work/life balance. Steven Atkins, Global Analytics Enablement Director, SplashBI, discusses how employers need to think about 24/7 recruiting in a way that they’ve never thought of before, to keep up with the change of employees’ expectations and provide long term success.

Putting candidates first

As businesses were plunged into lockdown for months, employers were forced to quickly adapt in order to ensure businesses ran as usual by transitioning to remote working. As a result of this successful approach, 85% of employees want to continue to use a “hybrid working” model to keep a better work-life balance.

It is crucial for employers to ensure flexibility as this is now one of the top incentives for employees. Pre-pandemic, location has always been crucial when searching for a job. What used to be a significant barrier to applying for a new job, is now no longer a problem. If candidates lived five hours away from the workplace, traditionally they wouldn’t apply for the job. Now, with remote and hybrid working, opportunities are farther afield allowing employees to have a vast choice of jobs because they aren’t tied down to a certain location..

Additionally, the hybrid model benefits employers too. It means they can spread their recruitment net much further and look for talent across counties, countries and continents.

Over the past year, employees have proved that they can get the same work done at home just as well as they could within the office. It is therefore viewed as a win-win situation for both employees and employers to continue the hybrid way of working as we move on from the pandemic. Companies will have to adapt quickly or they will be left behind as prospective employees will now expect this type of flexibility in their working lives to be the norm, rather than the exception. 

In today’s rapidly changing world of work, offering some flexibility in employee work schedules is key to retaining and attracting top talent, whether it’s allowing employees to work from home or letting them work outside of the standard nine-to-five schedule, depending on their availability.

Listening to your workforce

Offices are reopening their doors – and business leaders need to start planning. A hybrid model that suits one employee might not suit everyone, and imposing rules that completely undermine the concept of flexible working undermines the concept as well. Employees need to be educated about the advantages of face-to-face interactions with colleagues as well as understand their perceptions of hybrid working. They need to highlight to clients and suppliers the value of hybrid working – before companies stumble by default back into unhealthy, unproductive working models.

The bottom line is that business owners and managers need to acknowledge that managing employees has become  a lot more complicated. As a result, organisations need to put in place a powerful Human Capital Management (HCM) solution. HCM is vital to help HR hire and onboard  the right candidates but even more so for your current employees, to increase engagement with work-life solutions that help motivate employees and deliver a great employee experience. Active management is going to be crucial if they want to build a productive, well-balanced, and committed workforce. In addition, employee wellness and mindfulness are critical things to consider to ensure your teams are best placed to cope with the new demands placed on them.

Understanding and utilising data

As many organisations struggle with the new ways of working, data should sit at the heart of the decision making. Companies harvest all kinds of valuable and usable data from their employees and they need to capitalise it. Decision making is a critical function within any business and decisions that have been taken based on data nearly always produce better outcomes – with 91% of businesses stating that data-driven decision-making is important to the growth of their business. So, if organisations use this methodology for product development or marketing, why don’t they use that approach when it comes to recruitment and retention?

Organisations need to select data from across their HR infrastructure, such as an ATS or Talent System, and then begin the analysis journey to understand employee behaviour.  Organisations are now utilising and maximising people analytics tools that can help drive successful decision making, and more importantly, based on evidence to support these decisions.  In order to analyse past and present data, predictive analytics in HR is needed to forecast future outcomes and identify patterns that may be crucial for organisations retaining their current talent. With the help of these tools, businesses can not only select the important data but crucially analyse the data efficiently.

Conclusion

It is vital for organisations to ensure they never stop recruiting and boosting their investment in Talent Acquisition. Maximising people resources not only helps drive business success but it helps drive recruitment and retention success. For employers, hiring decisions can now be based on talent rather than geography. Employee outlook has dramatically changed over the last twelve months but organisations who don’t adapt, run the risk of losing their talent to other businesses that meet employees personal and professional goals.

Organisations have skills and talents in the workforce but do they really understand what those skills are and where they are located? Do they know how they are measured in terms of diversity? Can they drill into the information to see which areas are doing well and which are doing not so well? Harvesting and utilising people analytics data will ultimately help drive internal mobility for employees and drive better company culture as well as drawing in new talent and retaining your experts, and all the while delivering improved business outcomes.

 

 

News

The Smart Cube announces 40% revenue growth and strong outlook for 2022

Stellar growth across analytics business as need for data-driven insights soars

The Smart Cube, a global provider of strategic research and analytics solutions, today announced it has grown revenues by more than 40% and doubled its advanced analytics business in 2021. Over the year, The Smart Cube strengthened its position in the market, addressing the evolving analytics and insights needs of businesses worldwide and across industry sectors, through its unique AI+HI (Artificial Intelligence + Human Intelligence) approach.

The doubling of the company’s analytics business was driven by increasing client demand for data-driven business performance improvements, across procurement, supply chain, sales and marketing functions.

Key highlights

  • Grew revenues from existing client base by 117% and by almost 50% from new clients
  • Client base now includes four of the top five global CPG companies and three of the top five Life Sciences companies
  • Achieved 95% revenue retention
  • Recruited 326 new team members worldwide

Solution investments

The Smart Cube’s solution portfolio has continued to evolve based on market and client feedback. Recognising the market need for increased visibility, the company launched a major update to its Supplier Risk Intelligence solution including partnering with Bureau van Dijk to strengthen this solution with robust data. Demand for supplier risk analysis experienced a 167% spike in demand in the previous year.

The Smart Cube also rolled out significant updates to Amplifi PRO, the free, on-demand digital procurement intelligence platform – including 80 brand new sourcing destination dashboards, 3,800 new commodity price indexes, and a 25% increase in category insight reports. Access for procurement professionals was extended through a partnership with Coupa, making Amplifi PRO available via Coupa’s Business Spend Management platform. Overall, the active subscriber base has doubled.

The company has also invested in its Revenue Growth Management Solution, in particular strengthening modules on assortment planning, pricing and promotion, demand forecasting and market mix modelling, in response to client work, feedback and evolving market needs.

Industry recognitions

The Smart Cube secured industry recognition throughout the year, being listed on the inaugural ProcureTech 100 list of procurement technology providers, and the Spend Matters 50 Providers to Know.

The company also gained recognition from Analytics India as a Great Place to work for Data Scientists and moved into the ‘Growth’ segment of the PeMA 2021 quadrant.

Recognising the company’s ongoing commitment to creating a diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace for all, The Smart Cube was named as both a Great Place to Work® in India for the 4th consecutive year and as being among the Top 50 – India’s Best Workplaces™ for Women 2021 (Mid-size Companies Category) in its inaugural year.

“We’re proud to be able to partner with our clients, providing the data, visibility and counsel needed to navigate the uncharted waters that have disrupted functions from procurement to marketing, across multiple industries, over the last year,” said Gautam Singh, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “As our clients’ businesses and their needs continue to evolve, we’ll continue to provide the forward-thinking solutions needed to enable their success.”

 

News

Acoustic Forges Alliance with KPMG to Deliver Consistent, Personalized Marketing Across Channels

Acoustic, an open and independent marketing cloud and analytics provider, announced today that it has entered an alliance with KPMG. This new alliance will provide KPMG Marketing Consulting and Acoustic Marketing Cloud customers with enhanced implementation support in their pursuit of providing their own end consumers with personalized, cross-channel experiences.

Acoustic Marketing Cloud is a powerful and easy-to-use product suite that enables marketers to develop a deep understanding of customer behavior that in turn enables brands to build a loyal following, drive revenue, and boost engagement. An omnichannel marketing platform, it enables marketers to activate, accelerate, and optimize highly personalized customer journeys.

Acoustic Marketing Cloud offers:

  • An easy-to-use, centralized interface for executing multichannel campaigns
  • A program that builds personalized conversations across an individual’s journey based on behavior and preferences for every customer
  • Automated support for ongoing, recurring, and triggered campaigns and programs
  • Built-in content management to store, templatize, and distribute content
  • A consolidated dashboard for campaign performance
  • An open, integrated worldview which allows marketers to select their “best fit” integrations

With this new alliance, KPMG will provide valuable consulting services to support and enhance Acoustic Marketing Cloud, ensuring that it is tailored to an individual marketer’s unique needs and requirements. These services include discovery prior to implementation, configuration based upon each customer’s specific goals and influencing factors, and campaign builds and migrations.

“This alliance is a ‘win-win’ for our joint customers,” said Ryan Doubet, Managing Director, Marketing Technology Consulting at KPMG. “We’re thrilled to work with Acoustic to empower marketers at some of the world’s leading brands, making it simple and seamless to create highly personalized, effective customer journeys.”

“Acoustic is proud to provide our Marketing Cloud customers with access to the premier implementation and consulting services that KPMG offers,” said Dennis Self, CEO at Acoustic. “We’re enthusiastic about this partnership and look forward to working closely with KPMG.”

KPMG and Acoustic’s offerings will help marketers to increase conversions, strengthen retention, and ultimately drive revenue. At the same time, this combination of leading MarTech with leading consulting services will allow joint customers to centralize digital data collection, gain insight into customer and prospect behavior, and simplify the overall marketer experience.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to take advantage of this strategic alliance, please visit this page.

About KPMG LLP

KPMG LLP is the U.S. firm of the KPMG global organization of independent professional services firms providing audit, tax and advisory services. The KPMG global organization operates in 146 countries and territories and has close to 227,000 people working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients. Some or all of the services described herein may not be permissible for KPMG audit clients and their affiliates or related entities.
KPMG is widely recognized for being a great place to work and build a career. Our people share a sense of purpose in the work we do, and a strong commitment to community service, inclusion and diversity, and eradicating childhood illiteracy. Learn more at www.kpmg.com/us.

About Acoustic 
Acoustic is an independent marketing cloud and digital experience solutions provider that offers an open, B2C, omnichannel marketing automation platform that enables exceptional customer experiences across digital channels including email, mobile, SMS, social media, and more. The Acoustic Marketing Cloud delivers over 122 billion personalized messages annually for an international client base, including Fortune 500 companies. It offers an integrated suite of CX solutions that include digital marketing, marketing analytics, content management, personalization, mobile marketing, and omnichannel marketing automation. Tealeaf by Acoustic provides customer experience insights that enable teams to quickly identify, recreate, diagnose, prioritize, and fix customer experience friction in real-time. DemandTec by Acoustic is an AI-automated lifecycle pricing solution that helps retailers to deliver optimal everyday pricing, promotions, and markdowns across all retail channels. Learn more at www.acoustic.com.

News

The Great Digital Disconnect: Not even a third of UK workers deliver ANY business value from data, despite 79% claiming ‘above average’ skills

Whilst transformation initiatives across the UK have accelerated at breakneck speed, the pace of digital upskilling has failed to keep up, creating a far deeper skills chasm than previously reported. A new survey from Alteryx, the analytics automation company, showed a critical imbalance between self-perceived data knowledge and the skills needed to deliver business value – highlighting an overly confident workforce that are unaware of the data skills they don’t yet know.

In a survey of over 1,000 UK employees who work with data in large companies, Alteryx found that more than three quarters (79%) classify their data skills as above average. While data is consistently classified as the main outcome driver behind modern business decisions, just 29% – the ‘data champions’ – are proficient at using that data to deliver business value.

Despite the clear link between data-driven insights and business agility, this lack of knowledge and skills inflation is stalling business transformation efforts across the UK. While the historic digital skills gap centred on a lack of hireable talent, we now see a new phenomenon: a lack of talent in those available to hire. Hindering every organisation trying to leverage data-driven insights for a competitive edge due to a lack of analytic talent.

When asked about specific knowledge areas, Alteryx uncovered that respondees ranking their data skills as ‘above average’ were in fact primarily skilled in basic data preparation techniques of getting the data ready, such as gathering, sharing, and handling. As exhibited by our ‘data champions’, more advanced analytic workflow skills that deliver business value such as descriptive (22%) and prescriptive (16%) analytics** are far more rare.

“Digital transformation has moved beyond boardroom discussions. It’s now mission critical for UK businesses to be able to assess, analyse, and adapt to constantly shifting requirements through data,” comments Alan Jacobson, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Alteryx. “Employees with strong data skills are a core requirement for developing business resiliency and the ability to pivot at speed. Despite the inherent value of data-led decision making, there is a critical disconnect between what skills are reported and the reality. The majority of data workers are frequently unaware of what they don’t know – and are missing the key skills to deliver on what is needed to drive this transformation forward.”

Overall, just one third (33%) of data workers reported they were confident in their ability to identify trustworthy data, to clean data (36%), and to share it securely (38%). Businesses are at a watershed moment where resiliency is intrinsically linked to the ability to thrive, yet with key analytic skills missing from the workforce, the speed and trajectory of this digital journey is thrown into question.

Despite this new divide between the vision for, and the reality of, data work, 71% of workers overall believe the pandemic has increased “the importance of having strong data skills to make informed business decisions”. Highlighting the need for greater upskilling and data literacy, the majority of workers believe more training in data work would result in “better” (78%) and “faster” (66%) decisions.

 

Plugging the Skills Gap Chasm

While many workers do not currently have the advanced skills required, the 29% of respondees who do use advanced data strategies – our ‘data champions’ – feel their skills enable them to not only save money (71%), but also generate additional revenue (67%), and deliver business value (79%).

Not every worker needs to become a data scientist, but by ensuring these ‘data champions’ are at the helm of teams, businesses can effectively build their own internal pool of talented data workers, with the skills, desire, knowledge and analytical expertise to be successful and thrive.

 

Strategies to Create the Data Champions of the Future:

  • Delivering the right training and support: Only 17% of UK respondents say they receive the right kind of data training at work. Through analytic investigation training, businesses can empower workers to consume and understand data to ensure greater business value is delivered from it.
  • Integrate critical upskilling incentives: 63% of those surveyed grapple with an unknown unknown; believing data work won’thelp to further their careers. Contradicting this, however, 71% of data champions with perfect*** skills know they will progress faster using advanced analytics.
  • Keep data analytics as simple as possible by using the right tools for the job. Just 27% of data workers have the ‘perfect’ tools to analyse data. Half of data workers describe a lack of dedicated data analytics software (48%), and 42% report no access to easy-to-use, code-free applications.
  • Upskilling teams to drive data literacy:  Investment in continuous data analytics education is vital. Data workers on average feel data-literacy initiatives would empower the overall workforce (42%) and enable them to work more independently (41%).

 

“It is clear that finding and hiring ready-made data experts is even more difficult than previous data suggests, but there is significant promise to be found in these ‘data champions’,” Richard Timperlake, VP, EMEA, at Alteryx adds. “While every organisation sits on a wealth of data that could be used to gain a competitive edge, it’s impossible to leverage it for insights without analytic talent. Only by integrating and driving upskilling and data literacy initiatives will businesses effectively plug this skills chasm.

“Contrary to popular belief, upskilling in data and analytics doesn’t necessarily involve learning advanced maths or computer programming. Flexible, self-service platforms with easy drag-and-drop automation and fully automated, explainable machine learning can empower data workers to easily leverage the latest data science best practices to help drive analytic maturity into their enterprise.”

 

ECommerce, Marketing, PR and SEO, News

If 40% of luxury purchases are influenced by digital experience, how can luxury brands safeguard their ongoing success?

Statista’s Luxury Goods Report states that online luxury sales are “projected to grow at twice the market rate” and to have captured “18% of all sales revenue by 2023”. An additional 40% of luxury purchases are in some way influenced by a digital experience but, while luxury consumers get convenience from ecommerce, retail stores aren’t going anywhere.

Traditionally, luxury items are bought after being seen and touched and tried on. Nowadays though luxury brands need to offer more authenticity and personality to engage new buyers, such as millennials (aged 23 to 36), who are reaching their peak spending age. Millennials are also waiting longer before starting families, so they can more easily cash in on their growing spending power.

Recent research by digital experience analytics platform Contentsquare revealed that the luxury watch and jewellery consumer is over 8% more mobile when compared to digital shoppers from a cross-section of industries.

The findings from Contentsquare, which boasts luxury brands including Harvey Nichols, Kurt Geiger, Clarins, L’Oreal, Belstaff and Tiffany as clients, took a closer look at user navigation and conversion to assess the behaviour of the watch and jewelry luxury shoppers.

With the lines between digital and bricks-and-mortar becoming blurred, unifying data sets from all different viewpoints is crucial in painting a thorough picture of the modern-day shopper, Contentsquare’s MD Duncan Keene commented:

“Our report aimed to shed light on the unique online behaviours of watch and jewelry luxury consumers, to help companies grasp a better understanding on how they could better convert insights into action. In order to get a more holistic picture of this unique consumer segment, our research was conducted with a 360-degree analysis approach in mind.”

Contentsquare’s resulting research data suggests that, on average, the luxury watch and jewelry consumer is over 8% more mobile when navigating websites, makes only 3.7 visits on mobile, compared to 6 on desktop, before making an online purchase, and on average views 10.5 pages per visit on mobile compared to 5.6 pages per visit on desktop.

Duncan continued:

“To boost engagement, you must create stories that resonate and motivate them to like your posts and respond through comments. On the other side of engagement, you should be responsive to direct messages or comments. Take advantage of the opportunity to show off your brand personality — be helpful, and highlight your appreciation for their business.

“Brands need to look at more than just mobile versus desktop data sets. They also need to assess the layout of their websites and which page types support ecommerce conversions most. How do these pages impact the overall site journey? By evaluating customer intent and experience, pages can be tailored to help the consumer achieve their end goals.”

A Euclid study revealed that “almost half (48%) of millennials shop in-store a least once per week.” But those in-person shopping sessions don’t always lead to the checkout counter. Instead, they spur online buying instead. This means that luxury brands should consider boosting their ecommerce investments to offer a seamless multi-channel shopping experience.

One of the best ways to stand out is in offering fast and free shipping. This may not seem revolutionary but it will mitigate the main reason shoppers abandon their shopping cart, as Contetnsquare’s research has revealed time and again.

Fast shipping and easy store returns are only a couple of ways to offer excellent customer service to millennial luxury fashion shoppers though as Duncan explains:

“In order to translate the in-store experience that luxury brands excel at into ecommerce success, personalisation is required to maximise customers’ online experiences. Offering your multi-country customer base the ability to shop in their local currency and providing them with custom-tailored shopping experiences are now essential elements to success.”

While many luxury brands tend to focus on the homepage as a key touch point for the ecommerce shopping experience, Contentsquare’s data indicates that this page is only viewed less than two times by luxury watch and jewelry consumers who make purchases, if at all.

Category, product and check-out pages benefit from significantly more views by both mobile and desktop users, compared to the homepage, editorial and information sections of websites, so the research found that it is more beneficial to invest in the checkout and payment and delivery pages.

The research also found that buyers click on the search bar 53% more than on the menu (13%) when they are on the homepage, so the interaction with the search bar seems to be a positive signal of the buyer’s intent.

While it may seem easy enough to treat all consumers equally, the proof is in the data which demands a stronger need for teams to go through specific trends regarding different user segments.

By assessing these insights from Contentsquare, luxury watch and jewelry brands are able to identify the most important online behaviors of their consumer and optimize their journey towards conversion.

To grow online, traditional luxury brands need to adapt and embrace millennial shopping trends. Gucci for example is just one old luxury brand that is proving the ecommerce opportunity is the way forward.

Adapting product offerings for a growing online and multi-channel customer base, and provide more experiential online shopping options, are key to future-proofing businesses.