Q&A with Ginger Shimp, Senior Marketing Director at SAP

Media 7 | January 29, 2021

Ginger Shimp, Senior Marketing Director at SAP, is an award-winning marketer with 25+ years’ B2B experience. Since 2004, she has helped companies in myriad industries run better by telling, not only the SAP story but the stories of her customers and their customers. Developing content, engaging channels, deploying tactics to educate, stimulate interest and drive demand: Marketing isn’t just what she does, but defines who she is!

MEDIA 7: You have been associated with SAP for more than 17 years. How has the journey been like?
GINGER SHIMP:
I love where I work. SAP employs some of the most phenomenal marketers, and the opportunity to work with them on a daily basis is energizing and inspiring.

When we’re young and just beginning our careers, it can be soul-crushing to hear a potential supervisor say we’re not a good “fit”. We don’t fully appreciate the implication of that sentiment. But as we mature and have the experience working in a variety of roles for myriad employers, we realize how crucial “fit” is.

We spend one-third of our lives, one-half of our waking hours, five days per week at work. It’s very important that we like where we work. I have learned to approach my work with a philosophy that I want others to want to work with me. Of course, I don’t get this right 100% of the time, but it’s what I aim for. Even if I don’t care for them personally or really dislike working with them, I try to keep in mind that I don’t want them to have that impression of me.

Fortunately, at SAP, those times are extremely rare. Our people, our culture, and of course our customers, are simply extraordinary. I believe in our products and services. I have faith in, and respect for, and admiration for our customers. At SAP, we don’t just sell software, we improve people’s lives. SAP customers represent 98% of the top 100 most valued brands in the world. Did you know that SAP customers:

-produce more than 78% of the world’s food, more than 85% of the world’s pet food, and more than 62% of the world’s movies;
-represent 100% of the world’s top 20 greenest automotive companies and 100% of the world’s top 15 greenest IT software and services providers;
-distribute more than 76% of the world’s healthcare products?

That’s an awesome responsibility, a humbling privilege, and one heck of an exciting journey. I love my job!

M7: In all these years, what are some of the most effective marketing strategies that you have put in place, which have helped you to drive revenue?
GS:
Definitely an integrated strategy will win out over a random act of marketing every time. That’s not to say we shouldn’t experiment with tactics. For example, I worked with a colleague, Jeff Janiszewski, several years ago to develop an audio drama called Searching for Salaì as a means of using real storytelling techniques to gain the attention of a business audience who perhaps hadn’t really paid attention to SAP previously. We had tremendous success with that.

So last year another colleague, Julie Stoughton, and I asked ourselves how we could use that tactic and build upon the prior success. What we wound up with was another audio drama but one that had even more business structure to it, The Retrofuturist Chronicles. Listeners who enjoy the show head over to our landing site — www.inspirethefuture.com — and read the blogs, which not only continue the experience but also build an elegant bridge to SAP products and solutions. They get immersed with everything from animated videos that talk about business pains through the eyes of a child to in-depth white papers. My colleague Aswin Mannepalli did a masterful job concepting and scripting the 30-second videos which allow visitors to determine which business pains are a fit for them. (There’s that word “fit” again.) In fact, the whole team has poured their hearts and souls into the effort, which all began with one of our VP’s, Michelle Schooff, thinking about how her little nephews approached the pandemic versus the messages that were flooding our inboxes. I love how we were able to take previous tactics that had worked well, experiment with new ideas, and blend them all to create a solidly integrated and extraordinarily compelling campaign.

We launched this campaign for six industries and our results exceeded not only our stated expectations but also our most fervent hopes. We’re currently developing season two and not only will we add another eight industries, but we’ll also look to see what else we can do to rise above the noise in the marketplace while delivering value to our customers and prospects.

Another tactic I am using on a different campaign also came about from brainstorming with Jeff at around the same time we developed the audio drama. This one was far more untried; in fact, we couldn’t find any other example of it. While Searching for Salaì involved our taking an existing tactic — the audio drama — and tuning it for a business purpose, this other tactic came about from our own experiences. We call them audio whitepapers. We were researching how whitepapers are still one of the most valued offers in a B2B marketer’s arsenal yet how difficult it is to get senior executives to read one. We asked ourselves about our reading habits and somewhere in the conversation, Jeff and I got to talking about the types of books we read versus the ones we listen to. Turned out we both listen to non-fiction. We talked about how we listen on our phones while traveling and/or exercising. We talked about smart speakers. And suddenly, we had this crazy idea. So back we went to researching. We discovered (at that time):

-CEG research found 49% of the nearly 500 CEOs surveyed say they download white papers.
-An IDG survey of IT professionals found that 72% of respondents stated that they found that white papers were extremely useful in their decision-making process.
-A Harvard Business Review study confirmed that senior executives are incredibly time-crunched.
-Edison Research revealed that Americans spend nearly four hours per day consuming audio and 44% of them have listened to an audiobook.
-18% of Americans own a smart speaker, and 71% listen to more audio once they purchase one.

So, we asked ourselves: How can we use this audio trend to increase our total market AND increase our hit rate with senior executives?
We started to connect the dots among the points above and the thought hit us ― audio white papers … white papers delivered in audiobook format.

First, we engaged an analyst firm to position our message to 15 industries via white papers, framing the unique benefits including use cases and customer stories.

Next, we hired a professional voice-over artist to record the papers in the form of an audiobook.
Finally, since this had never been done before, we blazed our trail by posting them as videos on YouTube (unlisted so they wouldn’t come up in search results) with chapter indexes to allow listeners to skip around. Then we promoted them on a landing page which required registration. We knew that registered listeners could distribute the link to others who could subsequently access them sans registration, but it was a good start.

Overall, we overshot our goal, delivering 144% of the plan by the end of the year.

Results:
-21% of listeners were C-Suite level
-55% of listeners were VP level
-24% of listeners were Director level
-34% of listeners were from companies with revenue < $500M
-19% of listeners were from companies with revenue between $500M and $1B
-47% of listeners were from companies with revenue >$1B

To emphasize the point I made at the beginning, you have to have an integrated strategy. These audio whitepapers were a significant contributor to an overall integrated campaign:
-9.16% average open rate on whitepaper emails
->18.8K total whitepaper downloads on a goal of 10,000
->33K total engagements on a goal of 20K
->234K blog views on a goal of 100K
28% cross-industry share of voice on a goal of 21%
-~4.5K blog referrals
-Lead volume %YoY = an increase of 630%
-Marketing new pipe value %YoY = an increase of 65%

It’s an exciting time to be in marketing. Web events will continue to play a strong role and we need to rise above the noise.



M7: Given SAP’s target customers, what marketing channels do you use, and which ones do you see as the most promising?
GS:
I could have answered this question so much more easily a year ago but 2020 has forced us to rethink. However, I am a firm believer in audio. I still love video, but I think we’re all getting a bit fatigued with it. If I had to bet, I’d bet on smart speakers becoming a very intriguing tool in the B2B marketer’s toolbox so I would look for unique ways to integrate sound. There’s such an emotional connection to be had when you can hear the passion and the enthusiasm in someone’s voice versus merely reading words in print. And I’m an inveterate reader, so for me to opine in this way … well, I must really believe.

M7: How do you target content to your audience, and what are the challenges that you face while producing effective content?
GS:
The best thing about marketing technology is we never have to fear an overwhelming sense of ennui while working. We always have something to learn, something new to try.

What’s more, digital transformation is all around us. The Internet of Things enables us to connect to and follow almost any device or asset. Connected networks and in-memory platforms provide immediate access to a stunning range of data. Business processes can be harmonized across all functions and departments. You can respond at the moment. Because you are armed with real-time insight into your most pressing questions. Digital transformation is about how technology profoundly improves the performance and impact of businesses.

Digital transformation is no longer a question of when, but one of how fast. So we marketers must adapt to this business environment at an amazing pace. One that leaves us breathless. And we’re not always funded to achieve the results that our teams expect of us, so we have to get creative. Fast.

I’ve found that the key is to get the seminal asset created, quickly and cost-effectively. This is the motherload of information and we always keep this behind a gate; no one gets it for free. It could be a whitepaper or a video or a microsite, etc.
Once we have this created, we run it through something I’ve termed a Digital Chop Shop©, creating derivative pieces as fast as the speed of thought, each one tuned to how different target audiences like to consume information.

These derivative pieces will be the first things that our prospects see and that’s why I say we start at the end — with the whitepaper for example — and then work backward to create the remaining content.
Let me give you an example from our 2016 Live Industries campaign:
We began with a seminal piece of content that was laden with a valuable insight: SAP’s CEO and Chief Transformation Officer co-authored a white paper on value creation in a digital economy. This became our starting point.

First, we versioned that single white paper into 25 industry-specific assets. Next, we created 10-20 blogs, 2 infographics, 5 tweet cards, and podcasts, videos, and webinars from each industry paper.
Working with our industry sales team, who were a tour-de-force in their own right, we created pitch decks to explain SAP’s Digital Transformation story to each industry, a “TED Talk” video, a one-page summary, 25 industry-specific whiteboards to train the sales team on how to pitch the pitch (on a whiteboard), and 25 value surveys to see where people were in their digital journey.

Thus, our single white paper spawned over 650 snackable, socially sharable, digitally native content pieces. But we didn’t stop there. Because we knew we had to connect with prospects who had never had a relationship with SAP, we had to establish ourselves quite firmly as thought leaders. The key to this was begun in 2013 when SAP started openSAP, an Enterprise MOOC platform for massive open online courses (MOOC), hosted at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and provided to the public free of charge. While the MOOC concept is already quite popular in academia, SAP is one of the first companies to adopt it for business-related training purposes. We worked with openSAP to develop separate sets of courses focused on digital transformation and tailored for IT Users, IT Leaders, and Business Leaders.

Our marketing team uniquely activated each industry with a full complement of industry-specific whitepapers, videos, infographics, blogs, surveys, presentations, MOOCs, email and social promotions, and more, all housed within unique industry-specific online hubs.
And as you can see, we had something for those who like to read, listen, talk, look at pictures, interact, etc.


Say “no” when we know we can’t. And then our teams will trust us even when we need to integrate our personal lives into our work lives.

M7: What do you believe are the top three product marketing challenges in the post COVID-19 era?
GS:
In no particular order:
Without a doubt finding a way to build relationships. We’re particularly challenged currently at replacing in-person events. Getting that going will require time to think and reflect on how to do events. I’ve banned the terms “unprecedented” and “new normal” from my marketing because they’ve become so overused but you get the idea. It’s an exciting time to be in marketing. My team is currently working on a strategy so that we’re not mindlessly doing one web event after another. Web events will continue to play a strong role but as I’ve said before, we need to rise above the noise.

What’s more, direct mail has been hampered because people were not going into their offices. My opinion is that there will be a role for direct mail post-COVID-19, but this is our opportunity to do something fresh.
Additionally, we marketers have been focused on storytelling for quite some time, but few people take the time to truly understand the basics of story structure. We hear “make the customer the hero” and we don’t question that. Yet it’s absurd. At the heart of the story, the structure is the concept of pity-fear-catharsis … how we transition along that path.

The old standard was: Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.
In our case, we need to care about our heroes and their struggles so that we pity them. We sympathize with them. At times we even empathize with them. Then we fear for them. We need to be concerned about whether they will be able to resolve their business pains. Finally, we need to celebrate their victories and want to share their successes with others. Or perhaps commiserate their downfall and strategize how to recover. We’ve got to become master storytellers for our messages to resonate with our intended audiences.


I am a firm believer in audio. I still love video, but I think we’re all getting a bit fatigued with it. There’s such an emotional connection to be had when you can hear the passion and the enthusiasm in someone’s voice versus merely reading words in print.



M7: You are an avid writer and extremely active on social media. What is your secret to maintaining a healthy balance between your personal and professional life?
GS:
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Hasn’t been for many, many years. And this pandemic has only shown a very bright light on that fact. What we have is a work-life blend. If I need to visit my dentist to get my teeth cleaned at 10am on a Tuesday, I schedule it. If I need to run to the grocery store between meetings on any given day in order to get dinner ready, I do it. But then I will likely also be online for a couple hours at 9pm, or over the weekend. One of the first things I do in the mornings is to check my email and respond to anything that came in overnight. I always have my phone with me so I’m completely accessible but in all my years, I’ve never once encountered a marketing emergency. It’s a myth. At best, it’s like the sighting of a rare wildebeest. At worst, it’s like an imaginary unicorn.

We need to quit beating ourselves up about this. We need to manage our reputations, do what we commit to do. Say “no” when we know we can’t. And then our teams will trust us even when we need to integrate our personal lives into our work lives. As I mentioned earlier, we spend one-third of our lives, one-half of our waking hours, five days per week at work. And we’re constantly trying to connect on a “human” level. So this is a fact of life.
So no: there’s no balance; there’s a blend.

M7: What is the marketing mantra that you swear by? Any advice for budding marketers?
GS:
I have a couple of quotes on my bulleting board and I think it’s obvious why they appeal to me.
Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.
—  Arthur Ashe
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
—  MC Escher
Taken together: Don’t wait for “perfect” but also keep striving to rise above the status quo.

ABOUT SAP

SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP® system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enable more than 437,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

More THOUGHT LEADERS

If you are clear about your business objectives, you can find data to support them, says TetraNoodle's Founder Manuj Aggarwal

Media 7 | February 8, 2022

Manuj Aggarwal, Founder at TetraNoodle Technologies, takes us through the potential of AI and big data of becoming a complete game-changer for businesses today. Read on to find out how businesses can leverage these technological innovations to fuel their growth....

Read More

Q&A with Bibhakar Pandey, Vice President & Leader of Customer Experience, Marketing Services at Capgemini

Media 7 | August 26, 2021

Bibhakar Pandey, Vice President & Leader of Customer Experience, Marketing Services at Capgemini, is a dynamic leader with more than 25 years of industry experience leading global, multi-cultural experience teams across North America, Europe, and APAC. Bibhakar has built a career on achieving year-on-year success in driving business-growth objectives and empowering organizations to address challenging business needs through the application of cloud, mobile, content, commerce, analytics, and social technologies. He has built teams with lean and agile cultures and employed new and emerging digital technologies. He has been an enterprising leader, mentor, and coach, driving continuous performance excellence within his team. He has successfully incubated and scaled businesses including marketing services and interactive and digital engineering....

Read More

IDC fosters an action-oriented 'Let's try it attitude,' says Ronita Bhattacharjee

Media 7 | November 23, 2021

Ronita Bhattacharjee, Vice President, META Region, Conferences at IDC in this insightful conversation shares with us the vision, mission and principles which IDC stands for. She also throws light on the importance of market research, and the varied changes, and challenges of marketing resulting from digitalization. Read on to find out about the most-awaited IDC Middle East CIO Summit 2022....

Read More

If you are clear about your business objectives, you can find data to support them, says TetraNoodle's Founder Manuj Aggarwal

Media 7 | February 8, 2022

Manuj Aggarwal, Founder at TetraNoodle Technologies, takes us through the potential of AI and big data of becoming a complete game-changer for businesses today. Read on to find out how businesses can leverage these technological innovations to fuel their growth....

Read More

Q&A with Bibhakar Pandey, Vice President & Leader of Customer Experience, Marketing Services at Capgemini

Media 7 | August 26, 2021

Bibhakar Pandey, Vice President & Leader of Customer Experience, Marketing Services at Capgemini, is a dynamic leader with more than 25 years of industry experience leading global, multi-cultural experience teams across North America, Europe, and APAC. Bibhakar has built a career on achieving year-on-year success in driving business-growth objectives and empowering organizations to address challenging business needs through the application of cloud, mobile, content, commerce, analytics, and social technologies. He has built teams with lean and agile cultures and employed new and emerging digital technologies. He has been an enterprising leader, mentor, and coach, driving continuous performance excellence within his team. He has successfully incubated and scaled businesses including marketing services and interactive and digital engineering....

Read More

IDC fosters an action-oriented 'Let's try it attitude,' says Ronita Bhattacharjee

Media 7 | November 23, 2021

Ronita Bhattacharjee, Vice President, META Region, Conferences at IDC in this insightful conversation shares with us the vision, mission and principles which IDC stands for. She also throws light on the importance of market research, and the varied changes, and challenges of marketing resulting from digitalization. Read on to find out about the most-awaited IDC Middle East CIO Summit 2022....

Read More

Related News

SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

Complete Support for MISRA C 2023 in New Release of C & C++ Testing Solution Enables Seamless Compliance

Prnewswire | June 01, 2023

Parasoft, a global leader in embedded software testing solutions, has announced the release of C/C++test 2023.1 with complete support of MISRA C 2023 and MISRA C 2012 with Amendment 4. MISRA C is the most popular coding standard for safe and secure C software development. The new release helps developers automate static code analysis and coding standards compliance, increase productivity, and shorten time to market. The latest version introduces a wide range of new features and enhancements designed to: Boost productivity throughout the software development life cycle. Expedite time to market. Automate compliance. Ensure the delivery of safe, secure, and reliable applications. With the publishing of MISRA C 2023, developers now have the rules to ensure safe and secure use of C11 features, such as: Atomics (_Atomic, ) Multi-threading ( ) Parasoft's compliance reporting module has been updated accordingly, ensuring that the MISRA conformant reports are available in Parasoft DTP, consolidating testing results in intelligent dashboards, detailed reports, and actionable analytics. This allows companies to satisfy compliance with the most up to date version of the MISRA C 2023 standard. To learn more about the release of C/C++test 2023.1, register for the upcoming webinar, "Get Complete MISRA C 2023 Support in New Parasoft C/C++test Release," on June 8 at 9 a.m. PDT. One of the major highlights of C/C++test 2023.1 is the comprehensive and continuous enforcement of safety and security coding standards. The inclusion of MISRA C 2023 introduces 19 new rules and three new directives that apply when writing code. This includes further guidance on the use of: Unused objects Small integer constants Chained initialization Variably modified arrays "Parasoft is devoted to ensuring that our customers are supported with the latest technology in software test automation. This release of C/C++test completely supports the latest MISRA C 2023 standard and contains other software test automation solutions that reduce effort and costs and ensure delivery of safe, secure, and high-quality applications," said Igor Kirilenko chief product officer at Parasoft. Development teams can expect a remarkable 25% improvement in flow analysis performance. In addition, fewer files will be excluded from the analysis and result in higher result's accuracy. Expanding its support for DevOps CI/CD workflows, C/C++test 2023.1 presents the new C/C++test Bazel integration package. This integration empowers developers to seamlessly incorporate Parasoft's static analysis into any Bazel CI pipeline, streamlining the development process. Teams can simplify static analysis deployments for Bazel-based projects and reduce the time required to integrate and maintain the toolchain. Request a demo to see how Parasoft's solution can help embedded development teams achieve compliance with the latest edition of the coding standard and deploy their products to the market. About Parasoft Parasoft helps organizations continuously deliver quality software with its market-proven, integrated suite of automated software testing tools. Supporting the embedded, enterprise, and IoT markets, Parasoft's technologies reduce the time, effort, and cost of delivering secure, reliable, and compliant software by integrating everything from deep code analysis and unit testing to web UI and API testing, plus service virtualization and complete code coverage, into the delivery pipeline. Bringing all this together, Parasoft's award winning reporting and analytics dashboard delivers a centralized view of quality enabling organizations to deliver with confidence and succeed in today's most strategic ecosystems and development initiatives — security, safety-critical, Agile, DevOps, and continuous testing.

Read More

AI APPLICATIONS, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

Dataiku 12 Accelerates Into the AI Era With Power and Control

Globenewswire | June 01, 2023

Dataiku, the platform for Everyday AI, today unveiled Dataiku 12, their latest breakthrough release packed with transformative new features designed to help organizations confidently harness AI in their advanced analytics initiatives with enhanced transparency and strengthened governance features. As businesses strive to stay ahead of the innovation in advanced analytics and AI, ChatGPT, and Large Language Models have become central to boardroom discussions. Companies must balance the pressure to deploy AI for a competitive edge with the need to manage potential risks to their reputation and operations. For many, the risks are overwhelming due to poor visibility and inconsistent processes across data, analytics, and AI tools used by various teams. Dataiku 12 addresses these challenges while providing total confidence, control, and trust in AI outputs. The new features include: OpenAI GPT Integration: Dataiku allows business users to incorporate OpenAI's GPT models into data projects by extending datasets and performing tasks using a visual interface and natural language prompts, all while maintaining transparency and trust in project outputs. Causal Machine Learning (ML): Causal predictions ensure that correlation is not confused with causation, when doing so would be harmful to the business or other stakeholders. Dataiku democratizes these capabilities ensuring that anyone building ML models can understand the “why” behind their results. Universal Feature Importance: Some ML models offer limited explanations for decisions, undermining trust with stakeholders. Dataiku centralizes model explainability, so teams have a consistent way to explain models that builds confidence and trust with business users. Model Overrides: A core principle of AI safety is maintaining human oversight. In some cases, predictive models don’t have the best or safest answer, so Dataiku allows experts to create strict rules to enforce model outcomes for known cases, based on real-world experience. Model Risk Project Views: With AI projects across teams at different stages of development, it is difficult to manage risks and allocate resources. Dataiku allows business and analytics leaders to easily spot and mitigate risks in AI projects, increasing trust in project outputs. Transparent Automated Feature Generation: Feature engineering can be a "black box" in the AI modeling process, increasing perceived risk. Dataiku gives people transparency and control over this ML technique, helping to understand where new features originate. "As we advance further into the era of AI, delivering trust via transparency and governance is now essential for any business aiming to stay at the forefront of innovation. Dataiku 12 directly addresses this need,” said Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO at Dataiku. “We’re empowering companies to confidently explore the vast potential of AI, while providing robust mechanisms for oversight and risk management. This fusion of power and control is the key to unlocking the full potential of AI in the most responsible way possible." "I was excited to get an early preview of the new features in Dataiku 12,” said Marlan Crosier, Senior Data Scientist at Premera Blue Cross. “We can immediately apply both Universal Feature Importance and Model Overrides to improve model explainability and ensure that our work produces the highest quality outputs for our business." About Dataiku Dataiku is the platform for Everyday AI, enabling data experts and domain experts to work together to build AI into their daily operations. Together, they design, develop and deploy new AI capabilities, at all scales and in all industries. Organizations that use Dataiku enable their people to be extraordinary, creating the AI that will power their company into the future. Founded in 2013, Dataiku has proven its ability to develop its founding vision for Everyday AI, and to execute on its growth. With more than 500 customers and more than 1,000 employees, Dataiku is proud of its rapid growth and 95% retention of Forbes Global 2000 customers. Connect with Dataiku on their blog, Twitter (@dataiku) and on LinkedIn.

Read More

GENERAL AI, AI APPLICATIONS, SOFTWARE

Miro Announces AI-Powered Solution to Supercharge Innovation for Global Enterprises

Prnewswire | May 29, 2023

Miro®, the visual workspace for innovation, today announced Miro AI - a set of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered features that optimize the most common and complex workflows on Miro. The features are available to all enterprise customers and users. Miro AI harnesses the power of large language models and generative AI - including leveraging Miro's own in-house models - to streamline a variety of processes and workflows, helping teams bring products and services to market more quickly. Miro is a critical tool in hybrid work environments where distributed, cross-functional teams must collaborate on complex workflows, including customer research analysis, strategy workshops, technical diagramming, and customer-centric product design. Miro AI is optimized for these workflows and functions across the platform to ensure every team member has access to the same information and capabilities designed for innovation. As an enterprise-grade solution, Miro AI is designed with security and privacy in mind. Miro has partnered with Azure OpenAI Service by Microsoft, a secure and enterprise-ready AI partner, enabling it to build enterprise-ready features at scale. Utilizing Miro AI does not change the robust admin controls on the platform, company admins can still track, manage, and update permissions with ease. Input data is only kept for the period that it's being processed in order to generate the output. No input data is stored after that, and information placed on Miro is not used to train AI models. "Miro AI plays a key part in helping teams accelerate every stage of the product life cycle. It's especially valuable for supporting enterprise product teams responsible for research and development to accelerate the creation of new products and services", says Varun Parmar, head of product at Miro. "Miro AI can perform tasks like creating technical diagrams, interpreting code, and clustering and summarizing board content. The goal is maximizing output and eliminating tedious overhead." "AI should enrich and support the work you do, and I'm already seeing multiple ways in which Miro AI will benefit my team," says Vlore Krug, Head of Organizational Development, mobile.de, Germany's biggest online vehicle marketplace. "Our agile coaches often facilitate brainstorms with up to 15 participants. At the end of an activity we spend a huge amount of time 'clustering' comments and ideas posted in sticky notes. With Miro AI, these notes can be organized and summarized automatically in seconds. This means less time spent on time-intensive, manual tasks where we risk losing concentration and momentum, and more time collaborating with customers or colleagues." Miro will initially bring 12 AI features to market. These include the ability to generate, summarize, and cluster ideas based on sentiment and keyword, bring ideas to life by automatically generating images based on text, and instantly visualize complexity using sequence diagrams. "Miro AI will be invaluable in supporting our client-facing activities," says Martin Gleitsmann, Business Strategist at not yet normal, a business development agency based in Hamburg, Germany. "We want every participant - from Designer to CMO - to feel included and empowered in our creative and innovation processes. AI-based technology will help to eliminate the knowledge gaps for participants during sprints providing them with a helpful tool of expression. In addition, with Miro AI supporting our operations, we can really deep-dive with our clients on Miro to make observations that bring us a deeper, more complex understanding of trends - eliminating the human research-bias and doing this in seconds, rather than hours or days." Miro AI exemplifies Miro's ability to bring big, innovative ideas to life through constant iteration and experimentation and is purposefully built with its users in mind, addressing the most common and most complex challenges that slow innovation. New features and improvements will be introduced on a rolling basis. Miro invites its Community to share the features they would like to see next by visiting the Miro AI Wish List. About Miro Miro is a visual workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to build the next big thing. The platform's infinite canvas enables teams to lead engaging workshops and meetings, design products, brainstorm ideas, and more. Miro, co-headquartered in San Francisco and Amsterdam, serves more than 50M users worldwide, including 99% of the Fortune 100. Miro was founded in 2011 and currently has more than 1,500 employees in 12 hubs around the world. To learn more, please visit https://miro.com.

Read More

SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

Complete Support for MISRA C 2023 in New Release of C & C++ Testing Solution Enables Seamless Compliance

Prnewswire | June 01, 2023

Parasoft, a global leader in embedded software testing solutions, has announced the release of C/C++test 2023.1 with complete support of MISRA C 2023 and MISRA C 2012 with Amendment 4. MISRA C is the most popular coding standard for safe and secure C software development. The new release helps developers automate static code analysis and coding standards compliance, increase productivity, and shorten time to market. The latest version introduces a wide range of new features and enhancements designed to: Boost productivity throughout the software development life cycle. Expedite time to market. Automate compliance. Ensure the delivery of safe, secure, and reliable applications. With the publishing of MISRA C 2023, developers now have the rules to ensure safe and secure use of C11 features, such as: Atomics (_Atomic, ) Multi-threading ( ) Parasoft's compliance reporting module has been updated accordingly, ensuring that the MISRA conformant reports are available in Parasoft DTP, consolidating testing results in intelligent dashboards, detailed reports, and actionable analytics. This allows companies to satisfy compliance with the most up to date version of the MISRA C 2023 standard. To learn more about the release of C/C++test 2023.1, register for the upcoming webinar, "Get Complete MISRA C 2023 Support in New Parasoft C/C++test Release," on June 8 at 9 a.m. PDT. One of the major highlights of C/C++test 2023.1 is the comprehensive and continuous enforcement of safety and security coding standards. The inclusion of MISRA C 2023 introduces 19 new rules and three new directives that apply when writing code. This includes further guidance on the use of: Unused objects Small integer constants Chained initialization Variably modified arrays "Parasoft is devoted to ensuring that our customers are supported with the latest technology in software test automation. This release of C/C++test completely supports the latest MISRA C 2023 standard and contains other software test automation solutions that reduce effort and costs and ensure delivery of safe, secure, and high-quality applications," said Igor Kirilenko chief product officer at Parasoft. Development teams can expect a remarkable 25% improvement in flow analysis performance. In addition, fewer files will be excluded from the analysis and result in higher result's accuracy. Expanding its support for DevOps CI/CD workflows, C/C++test 2023.1 presents the new C/C++test Bazel integration package. This integration empowers developers to seamlessly incorporate Parasoft's static analysis into any Bazel CI pipeline, streamlining the development process. Teams can simplify static analysis deployments for Bazel-based projects and reduce the time required to integrate and maintain the toolchain. Request a demo to see how Parasoft's solution can help embedded development teams achieve compliance with the latest edition of the coding standard and deploy their products to the market. About Parasoft Parasoft helps organizations continuously deliver quality software with its market-proven, integrated suite of automated software testing tools. Supporting the embedded, enterprise, and IoT markets, Parasoft's technologies reduce the time, effort, and cost of delivering secure, reliable, and compliant software by integrating everything from deep code analysis and unit testing to web UI and API testing, plus service virtualization and complete code coverage, into the delivery pipeline. Bringing all this together, Parasoft's award winning reporting and analytics dashboard delivers a centralized view of quality enabling organizations to deliver with confidence and succeed in today's most strategic ecosystems and development initiatives — security, safety-critical, Agile, DevOps, and continuous testing.

Read More

AI APPLICATIONS, SOFTWARE, FUTURE TECH

Dataiku 12 Accelerates Into the AI Era With Power and Control

Globenewswire | June 01, 2023

Dataiku, the platform for Everyday AI, today unveiled Dataiku 12, their latest breakthrough release packed with transformative new features designed to help organizations confidently harness AI in their advanced analytics initiatives with enhanced transparency and strengthened governance features. As businesses strive to stay ahead of the innovation in advanced analytics and AI, ChatGPT, and Large Language Models have become central to boardroom discussions. Companies must balance the pressure to deploy AI for a competitive edge with the need to manage potential risks to their reputation and operations. For many, the risks are overwhelming due to poor visibility and inconsistent processes across data, analytics, and AI tools used by various teams. Dataiku 12 addresses these challenges while providing total confidence, control, and trust in AI outputs. The new features include: OpenAI GPT Integration: Dataiku allows business users to incorporate OpenAI's GPT models into data projects by extending datasets and performing tasks using a visual interface and natural language prompts, all while maintaining transparency and trust in project outputs. Causal Machine Learning (ML): Causal predictions ensure that correlation is not confused with causation, when doing so would be harmful to the business or other stakeholders. Dataiku democratizes these capabilities ensuring that anyone building ML models can understand the “why” behind their results. Universal Feature Importance: Some ML models offer limited explanations for decisions, undermining trust with stakeholders. Dataiku centralizes model explainability, so teams have a consistent way to explain models that builds confidence and trust with business users. Model Overrides: A core principle of AI safety is maintaining human oversight. In some cases, predictive models don’t have the best or safest answer, so Dataiku allows experts to create strict rules to enforce model outcomes for known cases, based on real-world experience. Model Risk Project Views: With AI projects across teams at different stages of development, it is difficult to manage risks and allocate resources. Dataiku allows business and analytics leaders to easily spot and mitigate risks in AI projects, increasing trust in project outputs. Transparent Automated Feature Generation: Feature engineering can be a "black box" in the AI modeling process, increasing perceived risk. Dataiku gives people transparency and control over this ML technique, helping to understand where new features originate. "As we advance further into the era of AI, delivering trust via transparency and governance is now essential for any business aiming to stay at the forefront of innovation. Dataiku 12 directly addresses this need,” said Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO at Dataiku. “We’re empowering companies to confidently explore the vast potential of AI, while providing robust mechanisms for oversight and risk management. This fusion of power and control is the key to unlocking the full potential of AI in the most responsible way possible." "I was excited to get an early preview of the new features in Dataiku 12,” said Marlan Crosier, Senior Data Scientist at Premera Blue Cross. “We can immediately apply both Universal Feature Importance and Model Overrides to improve model explainability and ensure that our work produces the highest quality outputs for our business." About Dataiku Dataiku is the platform for Everyday AI, enabling data experts and domain experts to work together to build AI into their daily operations. Together, they design, develop and deploy new AI capabilities, at all scales and in all industries. Organizations that use Dataiku enable their people to be extraordinary, creating the AI that will power their company into the future. Founded in 2013, Dataiku has proven its ability to develop its founding vision for Everyday AI, and to execute on its growth. With more than 500 customers and more than 1,000 employees, Dataiku is proud of its rapid growth and 95% retention of Forbes Global 2000 customers. Connect with Dataiku on their blog, Twitter (@dataiku) and on LinkedIn.

Read More

GENERAL AI, AI APPLICATIONS, SOFTWARE

Miro Announces AI-Powered Solution to Supercharge Innovation for Global Enterprises

Prnewswire | May 29, 2023

Miro®, the visual workspace for innovation, today announced Miro AI - a set of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered features that optimize the most common and complex workflows on Miro. The features are available to all enterprise customers and users. Miro AI harnesses the power of large language models and generative AI - including leveraging Miro's own in-house models - to streamline a variety of processes and workflows, helping teams bring products and services to market more quickly. Miro is a critical tool in hybrid work environments where distributed, cross-functional teams must collaborate on complex workflows, including customer research analysis, strategy workshops, technical diagramming, and customer-centric product design. Miro AI is optimized for these workflows and functions across the platform to ensure every team member has access to the same information and capabilities designed for innovation. As an enterprise-grade solution, Miro AI is designed with security and privacy in mind. Miro has partnered with Azure OpenAI Service by Microsoft, a secure and enterprise-ready AI partner, enabling it to build enterprise-ready features at scale. Utilizing Miro AI does not change the robust admin controls on the platform, company admins can still track, manage, and update permissions with ease. Input data is only kept for the period that it's being processed in order to generate the output. No input data is stored after that, and information placed on Miro is not used to train AI models. "Miro AI plays a key part in helping teams accelerate every stage of the product life cycle. It's especially valuable for supporting enterprise product teams responsible for research and development to accelerate the creation of new products and services", says Varun Parmar, head of product at Miro. "Miro AI can perform tasks like creating technical diagrams, interpreting code, and clustering and summarizing board content. The goal is maximizing output and eliminating tedious overhead." "AI should enrich and support the work you do, and I'm already seeing multiple ways in which Miro AI will benefit my team," says Vlore Krug, Head of Organizational Development, mobile.de, Germany's biggest online vehicle marketplace. "Our agile coaches often facilitate brainstorms with up to 15 participants. At the end of an activity we spend a huge amount of time 'clustering' comments and ideas posted in sticky notes. With Miro AI, these notes can be organized and summarized automatically in seconds. This means less time spent on time-intensive, manual tasks where we risk losing concentration and momentum, and more time collaborating with customers or colleagues." Miro will initially bring 12 AI features to market. These include the ability to generate, summarize, and cluster ideas based on sentiment and keyword, bring ideas to life by automatically generating images based on text, and instantly visualize complexity using sequence diagrams. "Miro AI will be invaluable in supporting our client-facing activities," says Martin Gleitsmann, Business Strategist at not yet normal, a business development agency based in Hamburg, Germany. "We want every participant - from Designer to CMO - to feel included and empowered in our creative and innovation processes. AI-based technology will help to eliminate the knowledge gaps for participants during sprints providing them with a helpful tool of expression. In addition, with Miro AI supporting our operations, we can really deep-dive with our clients on Miro to make observations that bring us a deeper, more complex understanding of trends - eliminating the human research-bias and doing this in seconds, rather than hours or days." Miro AI exemplifies Miro's ability to bring big, innovative ideas to life through constant iteration and experimentation and is purposefully built with its users in mind, addressing the most common and most complex challenges that slow innovation. New features and improvements will be introduced on a rolling basis. Miro invites its Community to share the features they would like to see next by visiting the Miro AI Wish List. About Miro Miro is a visual workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to build the next big thing. The platform's infinite canvas enables teams to lead engaging workshops and meetings, design products, brainstorm ideas, and more. Miro, co-headquartered in San Francisco and Amsterdam, serves more than 50M users worldwide, including 99% of the Fortune 100. Miro was founded in 2011 and currently has more than 1,500 employees in 12 hubs around the world. To learn more, please visit https://miro.com.

Read More

Spotlight

SAP

SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ ...

Events

Resources