LogMeIn Finds that 85% of Customer-Facing Teams Are Frustrated with Lack of Technology Needed to Meet Customer Expectations

LogMeIn has announced the results of a global study conducted in partnership with Ovum to understand how support agents are faring in the age of ever-rising consumer expectations. The findings reveal that the vast majority of surveyed agents believe that the technology tools provided to customer-facing employees are not evolving as quickly as their needs are.

Today’s customers expect agents to have increasingly detailed knowledge of products, services, and company policies so they can achieve first contact resolution (FCR). However, the reality is that only 35% of agents say this is possible, as the majority (57%) do not have any AI tools, and more than half (53%) do not use a knowledge base.

The study surveyed 750 customer-facing employees, customer experience (CX) managers, and content managers in seven countries across North America, EMEA and APAC, and found that agents in physical locations are worse off than their counterparts in contact centers. Only 30% of field agents have AI tools compared to 44% in contact centers, and the unpleasant result for customers is that 20% of interactions require a call-back and 13% get transferred.

“We know that there is a direct correlation between agent frustration and customer discontent, and 85% of customer-facing employees expressed a very high degree of frustration because they can’t meet customer expectations,” said Ken Landoline, Principal Analyst, Ovum. “As the study highlights, all customer support employees need to be better equipped to meet rapidly growing customer expectations. Employees want to step up but are hampered by mediocre training and outdated, inefficient tools. Clearly this needs to change, or customer loyalty and revenue will ultimately suffer.”

AI’s Untapped Potential

AI-powered knowledge management tools offer a powerful solution to customer-facing employees working inside or outside of the contact center who need instant access to company information, and 56% of surveyed knowledge base users are either extremely or very satisfied with them. Knowledge bases reduce the amount of time it takes to find information (66% think they are easy to search) and serve as a single source of truth for employees across teams and departments. LogMeIn, who commissioned the study with Ovum, is already working closely with companies to help reduce internal escalations by up to 30% with Bold360’s Advise solution, which leverages AI-powered knowledge management.

AI deployments for customer service and support also go beyond knowledge management. The majority are for automating routine tasks (60%) and assisting agents in real time (50%), followed by AI for customer journey mapping. Seventy-five percent of agents have a feedback system in place to advise management of issues they are facing during the course of their workday, and one-third utilize automatic pop-ups that recommend helpful next-best actions.

Yet, AI adoption is still in early stages. The majority of managers who participated in the survey are still formulating their AI strategy (38%) or only have an early-phase strategy in place (28%). The dominant approach to implementation is to put ad hoc point solutions in place for a few selected use cases (44%).

“A lack of tools for customer service agents creates a vicious circle: staff can’t meet customer expectations which creates employee frustration, turnover, and of course, a poor customer experience,” said Ryan Lester, Senior Director of Customer Engagement Technologies at LogMeIn. “Even though powerful technologies like AI-based knowledge management tools can reverse the trend, adoption is slow and it’s hurting these organizations. Poor customer experiences have a negative impact on sales and repeat business, so this is a pressing issue that businesses need to address at the highest levels.”

Class of Your Own Announces School Curriculum Partnership with Bentley Systems

The Year in Infrastructure 2019 Conference – Class of Your Own, a UK-headquartered provider of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, math) curriculum and built environment-focused learning programs for secondary school students, today announced a partnership with leading global provider of software solutions for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, Bentley Systems.  The new, future-focused global curriculum, Design Engineer Construct!® (DEC) for the World’s Infrastructure, has developed over several years through Bentley Institute’s support of Class of Your Own’s DEC programs and provides opportunities for students to gain hands-on knowledge and skills for careers in infrastructure professions.

DEC is currently accredited and used in schools throughout the United Kingdom. The new program is already expanding into schools in Ireland, Lithuania, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates and offers technology education and project-based, real-world experiences through interaction with industry professionals. The DEC curriculum for students ages 11 to 18 years is offered at intermediate levels to encourage and excite learners and is enhanced by Bentley’s engineering design and 3D modeling technologies including ContextCapture, OpenBuildings, OpenRail, and OpenRoads ConceptStation. The more advanced Future Infrastructure qualification framework, for students ages sixteen and older, including foundation level study at colleges and universities, focuses on rail, highway, port, and hyperloop projects.

Alison Watson, founder and chief executive of Class of Your Own, said, “Our vision is to inspire and engage young people and their teachers to reach their full potential through world class education. So, we’re very excited to partner with Bentley to offer the new curriculum, which applies industry knowledge and skills gained in the existing DEC program to the most exciting infrastructure projects around the world. Our students are provided with face-to-face support from world-class sector professionals thanks to industry partners who truly understand what DEC can do. Expanding the program outside the UK means we can offer genuine, meaningful opportunities for students and teachers around the world. We’re helping the surveyors, technologists, engineers, architects, and managers of future infrastructure!”

Earlier in 2019, Bentley Institute and Class of Your Own hosted the first ever Future Infrastructure Challenge: DEC Hyperloop challenge in London. The event included students from four schools in the UK whose assignment was to conceptualize a design of a hyperloop transport system and stations for their own towns, and then to adapt to Singapore. Students from Drummond Community High School from Edinburgh, Scotland won the challenge, and were awarded a complimentary trip from Bentley to attend its Year in Infrastructure Conference, held October 21 through 24 in Singapore.

David Robertson, director of digital advancement research for Bentley Systems, said, “Our partnership with Class of Your Own demonstrates the two organizations’ shared goal of providing students with valuable learning experiences that apply to real-world infrastructure professions and encourage students to pursue those professions. Bentley is very excited to participate in this important learning initiative to advance career opportunities for students around the world.”

Trend Micro Debuts World’s Broadest Security Services Platform for Organizations Building Cloud Applications

Trend Micro Incorporated, the global leader in cloud security, has announced the launch of Trend Micro Cloud One, a security services platform for organizations building applications in the cloud. Cloud One allows developers to rapidly build applications using the cloud services they want, while managing their organization’s risk.

Cloud One delivers the industry’s broadest range of security capabilities in a single platform. Designed to help organizations meet their most strategic cloud priorities, it allows customers to migrate existing applications to the cloud, deliver new cloud-native applications and achieve cloud operational excellence. The first-of-its-kind platform has the flexibility to solve immediate customer challenges and the innovation to rapidly evolve with cloud services. At its heart, Cloud One includes the world’s leading workload security service that is already in use by thousands of organizations. It is complemented by enhanced container security and brand-new offerings for application security, network security, file storage security and cloud security posture management to ensure cloud infrastructure is optimally configured.

Many cloud security solutions are often hard to manage and deploy, inflexible and fail to provide the level of visibility IT teams need to manage fast-emerging risks.

Trend Micro’s all-in-one platform approach is designed to deliver simplified, automated and flexible protection, regardless of where an organization is on the journey to the cloud. Customers using the platform will benefit from a single-sign-on to all services, common user and cloud-service enrolment, visibility from a single console and a common pricing and billing model.

“We have been helping our customers with secure cloud transformation since the birth of the cloud, over a decade ago,” said Nilesh Jain, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro. “Customers have a mix of legacy servers, virtualized data centers and newer services such as containers and serverless applications, and all of which can be protected using Cloud One.”

Trend Micro’s new cloud security platform supports the leading cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

“As more companies move their infrastructure and applications to the cloud, and adopt a shared responsibility model, we want our customers to have the option of the broadest choice from the best products in the market,” said Dave McCann, Vice President, AWS Migration, Marketplace and Control Services at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Trend Micro’s new cloud security platform represents another example of new innovation, that is available via AWS Marketplace. By leveraging AWS Marketplace features like SaaS Contract API, Private Offers, and Consulting Partner Private Offers, customers can contract directly from Trend Micro, or their consulting partners around the world. We are committed to empowering our shared customers with easy and fast procurement and provisioning.”

 By considering cloud projects and objectives holistically, Trend Micro Cloud One is able to provide enterprise grade security, while leveraging the benefits and efficiencies of the cloud.

The Cloud One platform will be available in Q1 2020 with three services fully integrated: workload security, network security and application security. The other components will be available as stand-alone solutions in Q1 2020 and integrated into Cloud One by the end of 2020.

Trend Micro Cloud One – Workload Security
Trend Micro Cloud One – Container Image Security
Trend Micro Cloud One – File Storage Security
Trend Micro Cloud One – Network Security
Trend Micro Cloud One – Cloud Posture Management
Trend Micro Cloud One – Application Security

ServiceNow Names Gina Mastantuono as Chief Financial Officer; Bill McDermott as its New CEO

ServiceNow has announced that Gina Mastantuono will join ServiceNow as Chief Financial Officer, effective January 13, 2020. Mastantuono joins the company from Ingram Micro, where she served as Chief Financial Officer.

“Gina is a highly experienced technology industry CFO and incredibly capable global leader who will be a great partner to me and a perfect fit for ServiceNow,” said ServiceNow President and CEO Bill McDermott. “I want to thank John Donahoe and ServiceNow’s Board of Directors for conducting such a high-quality global search and providing me with an exceptional slate of candidates to consider. Gina is the right person to join me and our leadership team, help continue ServiceNow’s remarkable momentum, and drive our next phase of shared growth and success with our customers.”

Mastantuono brings more than 20 years of financial experience to ServiceNow, including in the cloud, IT and mobility solutions industries. Since 2016, she has served as CFO of Ingram Micro, a leading provider of global technology and supply chain services with more than $50 billion in revenue in FY2018 and 200,000 customers worldwide. Mastantuono led the company’s global finance organization, including financial planning and analysis, M&A, treasury and risk management, accounting and reporting, internal audit, tax, investor relations and global business processes.

“I’m honored to join Bill and the ServiceNow team,” Mastantuono said. “ServiceNow is highly regarded by its customers and has tremendous momentum and opportunity to enable digital transformation and help make work, work better for people. I look forward to joining ServiceNow and helping the company continue to deliver incredible value for customers and shareholders.”

Prior to Ingram Micro, Mastantuono was Revlon’s SVP, chief accounting officer, controller and international CFO from 2007 to 2013. Mastantuono also held various executive finance roles at InterActiveCorp., a $6-billion, publicly-traded operator of a portfolio of global brands, and Triarc Companies, Inc., a consumer products company with holdings that include Snapple, RC Cola and Arby’s. She began her career at Ernst & Young in the entrepreneurial services group. Mastantuono has also been honored as one of CRN’s “Power 100” and twice listed on the National Diversity Council’s Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology.

ServiceNow announced on October 22 that McDermott is joining the company as President and CEO by year-end, succeeding President and CEO John Donahoe, who is stepping down to become CEO of Nike. McDermott has now formally assumed the role of President and CEO and joined ServiceNow’s Board of Directors. Donahoe will continue to serve on ServiceNow’s board through his current term, which ends in June 2020. 

“Bill made a great choice in naming Gina as ServiceNow’s next CFO,” Donahoe said. “Gina brings the perfect combination of experience, global leadership capabilities and passion for ServiceNow’s purpose. She will be as strong partner to Bill and the leadership team as they continue to drive customer success and deliver shareholder value.” 

Bengaluru Tech Summit Celebrates Innovation in Both IT & BT

Bengaluru Tech Summit has taken off giving a big boost to innovation in IT and also biotechnology. The event is perceived to be a platform to present the entrepreneurs to the world. The event organized by the Karnataka government will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), impact of Blockchain and IoT, cyber security, space and drone revolutions, electric vehicles, 5G, genomics, trends in agriculture, smart therapeutics, biotherapeutics and smart immunologics in cancer care.

The three day event which is held from November 18 to 20 at the Bangalore Palace has participation of 21 countries as against 12 nations last year. These include UK, Netherlands, Australia, Finland, Vietnam and Lithuania.

Addressing reporters CN Ashwath Narayan, Karnataka’s Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for IT, BT and S&T said, “One of the new additions this year is the robotics competition – R2- RoboRecharge Robotic Premier League. Students from all over the State will be a part of the biggest robotics championship to be held in India.”

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson Vision Group on biotechnology said that in 2015, biotech sector in India was envisaged to be $100 billion by 2015. "What we meant by a bio-economy was that it was technology-driven biosciences business that would be able to provide the much needed efficiency to the companies’ growth. We are already $51 billion bio-economy in 2019."

She said that the gorowth in this industry has happened because Bengaluru has been always inclined to prove its expertise in scientific research and related academics. The city is home to research centers of excellence in science. This has resulted in development of advanced  scientific talent pool which Bengaluru has taken advantage of. Further it houses the largest base of first generation entrepreneurs who are technology driven."

In the biotech sector too, the city is known for its capability in not just drug development but diagnostic technology. There are 3,900 start-ups in this space and 900 came up in the last one year. It is important to note that the biotech sector is highly capital intensive and not like the information technology sector. It has attracted technology like artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning all of which is utilized in diagnostics which is useful to make faster disease detection.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, chairman, Vision Group on Information Technology, said that the event has been able to sustain itself because of investment in talent. There are many opportunities with technology spanning from blockchain to genomics. Progress on these fronts have happened only because Bengaluru is a research and development hub. "We need to sustain and grow in Karnataka and showcase to the world the expertise in technology from this state."

The summit will also feature multi-track conferences, an international exhibition, global innovation alliances, RoboRecharge, workshops, product launches, makers zone and bio-posters. Some of the highlights of the summit would include TCS IT Quiz, BT Quiz, Thought Leaders Conclave, STPI IT Export Awards, Smart Bio Awards and Bengaluru Impact Awards.

Over 3,000 delegates including 240 from abroad have confirmed their participation; 200 speakers; 200 start-ups and SMEs and 250 exhibitors are taking part at the summit.

Rostec Attracts UAE Investor for VR-Technoloiges at Dubai Airshow

During the International Dubai Airshow 2019, Russian Helicopters Holding Company (part of Rostec State Corporation) signed with the Emirati Tawazun Holding Company an agreement on the basic terms of the transaction of the purchase of a stake in VR-Technologies.

The document was signed by Director General of Russian Helicopters Andrey Boginsky and  Director General of Tawazun Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani. The agreement defines the main parameters of the future transaction, including the stake to be acquired by the UAE investor;  Tawazun will become the owner of half of the shares of VR-Technology company, which is developing promising helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles. The transaction is planned to be finalized in the 1st quarter 2020.

Upon the acquisition of a stake in VR-Technologies, Tawazunrepresentatives will enter the company's Board of Directors, and their rights will be equal to those of the members representing Russian Helicopters.

“I am sure that the investments of our partners will fasten thedevelopment of VRT300 and VRT500 projects and will give impetus to new developments of advanced helicopter and UAV systems. Our agreements also provide cooperation in promoting these products in the markets of the Middle East and GCC in particular. Both rotorcrafts have good prospects in the region, where solutions for the development of urban air mobility are becoming increasingly popular", noted Sergey Chemezov, CEO of Rostec State Corporation.

“The agreement signed today lays the foundation for long-term cooperation in the format of not just colleagues, but business partners. With the support of Rostec State Corporation and RT-Business Development, we were able to achieve full understanding with Tawazun, without which it would be impossible to implement such significant and large-scale projects. As equal partners, we plan to invest at least 400 million euro in the development of VR-Technologies, which will help make the company's products competitive and in demand all over the world," said Andrey Boginskiy, Director General of Russian Helicopters Holding Company.

Also commenting on the signing, Abdullah Nasser Al Jaabari, Chief Officer and Head of Tawazun Strategic Development Fund, said: “This agreement stems from the Fund’s commitment to support the UAE’s strategic vision of investing in advanced industries and transferring relevant technologies".

The International Dubai Air Show is the first foreign site to showcase the VRT500 project. The model of the helicopter is presented at the joint exposition of Russian Helicopters and Tawazun Holding Company. The helicopter has the largest passenger and cargo cabin in its class with a total capacity of up to 5 people. At the same time, the outline dimensions of the rotorcraft were reduced due to the coaxial rotor placement, which permits to operate the helicopter in the restrained urban conditions.  VRT500 is equipped with a modern avionics complex based on the “glass cockpit” principle, and its key systems were developed by the best international manufacturers.

Karnataka CM Yediyurappa Inaugurates Bengaluru Tech Summit 2019

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S.Yediyurappa inaugurated the three-day Bengaluru Tech Summit at the Bengaluru Palace on Monday. The tech summit is being organized for the last two decades to showcase the prowess and skill in the field of information technology. The summit will see more than 250 exhibitors, 3,500 delegates, 200 speakers, 34-panel discussions and 12,000 visitors. 

The highlights are special delegations from 20 countries and a separate panel discussion for women entrepreneurs to highlight the role of women in the tech space. Global tech leaders, investors, research heads, policy makers and startups from India and abroad attending the tech summit.

This IT event will mainly focus on Artificial Intelligence, Cyber- Security, Space and Drone Revolutions, Electric vehicles, 5G, Genomics, Trends in Agriculture. Karnataka Government also plans to honour all State-based Unicorns at the Bengaluru Tech Summit- 2019. Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayanan also participated in the event.