AI and machine learning are enabling omnichannel strategies to scale by providing insights into the changing needs and preferences of customers, creating customer journeys that scale, delivering consistent experiences.

For any omnichannel strategy to succeed, each customer touchpoint needs to be orchestrated as part of an overarching customer...

Chief procurement officers (CPOs), key people who decide where and how to spend a company’s budget, have a front row seat to the unnerving trend of employees flocking to Amazon to buy what they need for work with little or no regard to policy. The allure is just too great compared to the alternative - corporate purchasing software with comparatively terrible UX.

While some company...

• 70% of Americans with incomes of $150,000 or more who shop online have Amazon Prime memberships
• Amazon Prime international customers will grow at a 56% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2016 to 2018
• Amazon shipped more than 5 billion items in 2017 with Prime worldwide
• By 2022 there will be 56 million Amazon Prime Video subscribers in the U.S., and 122 million worldwide

Net Sales at Amazon reached $177.9bn in 2017, a 31% increase from $136bn in 2016 and 

Acquiring new customers requires investing significant time and money, so it’s always more prudent to make every effort to keep the ones you have. Even a modest improvement in customer retention can significantly help grow your business.

You probably have all the tools you need in your CRM system, but it’s possible that your employees aren’t using the system fully. Perhaps they think the system doesn’t make their job any easier, or the data is unreliable.

Here are five pointers to...

Global ICT spending will hit almost $4 trillion (£2.8tn) in 2018 according to IDC – and while the consumer market will have the largest share, major investments will take place in the manufacturing, banking, and professional services spaces.

The consumer market will account for $1.5tn in ICT spending in 2018, IDC added, but on the industrial side, banking, discrete manufacturing, telecommunications and professional services will be the four largest industries for spending. Banking will be the...

Enterprise mobility management (EMM) provider MobileIron and Google Cloud have announced they are to collaborate on a new end-to-end platform for enterprise cloud services.

The two companies will combine Orbitera, a cloud commerce platform which Google Cloud acquired in 2016, with MobileIron’s app distribution, security, and analytics. The proposed result will be aimed at operators and enterprises, with potential features including customised bundles and customised branding.

As MobileIron sees it, the...

Global spending on digital transformation technologies, such as hardware, software and services, is expected to grow at a CAGR rate of 17.9% between now and 2021, according to new analysis from IDC.

Worldwide spending on DX technologies is expected to be nearly $1.3 trillion in 2018, marking an increase of 16.8% over the $1.1 trillion spent in 2017.

A major part of DX spending in 2018, amounting to $662 billion, will be used for enhancing existing technologies that support new or expanded operating models as...

Company steps up investment in Einstein platform

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending Salesforce's annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco. The event saw an astonishing 170,000 attendees, made up of customers, partners and members of the Salesforce community.

Salesforce is firing on all cylinders at the moment following a monster quarter in which revenue grew 25 percent, making it the fastest enterprise software company to reach $10 billion in annual revenue.

One of the most interesting areas...

(c)iStock.com/ThomasVogel

Organisations investing in artificial intelligence (AI) anticipate a 39% revenue rise by 2020, while faster growing firms are more likely to be further ahead in their AI initiatives, according to a new study from IT consulting firm Infosys.

The survey, which polled 1,600 senior business decision makers at large organisations globally, found that alongside the revenue rise, businesses which forge ahead with AI will expect a 37% reduction in costs by 2020. More than three quarters...

(c)iStock.com/Pekic

A few months ago, we discussed an interesting idea: in your enterprise, you don’t have users—you have “internal customers.” In other words, rather than treating employees as users who must use your app, you should think of them as customers—people with different choices who should use your app because they want to.  

That idea has been kicking around a lot in our heads recently, so we thought we’d...