iTWire - Enterprise Solutions

Twilio hits new highs in contact centre recognition while advocating for AI transparency

2024-09-09T23:03:28+10:00

Growing from a developer-first programmable telephony platform, Twilio products are now embedded in organisations big and small worldwide. About a third of the world's email goes through Twilio SendGrid, while companies like Electrolux have replaced their contact centres with Twilio Flex.

iTWire has been following Twilio with keen interest for many years, finding it an innovative product much beloved by the software developer community. Twilio head of solution engineering APJ Christopher Connolly took time from his busy schedule to speak with iTWIre about its current growth and how the company is now a major force in contact centre software, being recognised as a strong contender against the likes of Genesys.

A little background: Twilio began life as a toolkit for developers, by developers, helping the world's software engineers make phone calls, send text-based messages, implement IVR systems, and do all kinds of telephony-related things, all via code. The developer focus was a major factor in Twilio's adoption. Twilio made it easy for devs globally to take up Twilio services, to register SIM cards, to perform all kinds of functions, well-backed with solid documentation and code samples. Unlike other platforms, everything you wanted to do was available through an API, while competitors typically offered a web portal that was supplemented by a limited API.

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Twilio embraced the developer community with events and swag; this writer attended a Twilio developer day event in 2018, working through an RPG-style set of missions called TwilioQuest. The missions demonstrated how to make use of the platform. While we worked through the missions a highly entertaining 8-bit Universe soundtrack regaled us. At the end of the day, the three highest scorers won an achievement, along with the most clever username ("Thrillio"). You can see our photo memory here. For the record, iTWire came in second out of all the assembled clever people. I'd like to see other tech publications beat that.

See how our #developers in Sydney crushed TwilioQuest. Mission completed ? #TwilioEngage #Superclass pic.twitter.com/BbtVNruC4L
— twilio (@twilio) May 17, 2018

Going forwards, Twilio developed its Flex contact centre product, built entirely on top of Twilio APIs. Whether rightly or wrongly, at the time iTWire viewed Flex positively, but as a cool tool that was more proof of the amazing things you could do in Twilio, rather than something genuinely intended as a "real product."

Well, how wrong we were! Today, Twilio is still fully committed to its global network of enthusiastic software developers, but is also proving to be a major force in the contact centre market. Flex is not simply a proof of concept; it's a true, genuine, and fully-featured contact centre solution. It's so powerful, so convenient, so efficient that, Connolly said, customers like ANZ Bank and Electrolux are using Flex to replace their traditional contact and make the move to a cloud digital, cloud native world.

As way of background, Connolly explained Twilio entered the Australian market in 2018. "It had been in the US for some time," he said. However, while Australian born, he lived in the US for nine years and on moving back to Australia found despite its US presence, few Australians knew what Twilio does. Even today, six years later, "I'm still trying to explain we do more than messaging," he said. "A lot of people box us into SMS" - echoing my own miscomprehension too, that Twilio is vastly larger than may have been thought.

Fortunately, "we're growing leaps and bounds," Connolly said. "We've exploded in Australia. We've brought on the ANZ Bank and other amazing customers in a short time."

Some of these customers are on the bleeding edge. Some are early adopters wanting to expand into customer experience. However, many are traditional businesses such as MYOB and others.

The business has continued to grow, though transitioned to a remote-first business since COVID. "Our business is strong in APJ," Connolly said. "We have the ISV component to embed our tech inside other's capabilities, as well as direct business. We also have B2C, and the Authy app (now Verify)."

"Verify is a bit unknown," Connolly said, "but if you've ever used OTP - one-time passwords on your phone, which is hundreds of thousands of people, you've used it." Earlier this year, Twilio replaced Authy with the Verify API, which is a consolidated version of earlier versions of its phone verification and 2FA APIs.

Along its journey, Twilio acquired SendGrid, the well-known programmable email platform. "We've made a tremendous amount of integration. Twilio SendGrid processes about a third of the world's email every 30 days, we have private links to Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others," he said. "It's been folded into the comms platform and is part of our stack."

So, with Twilio, you can "use email, SMS, and so on independently, or go up the stack and opt for more out-of-the-box and less code."

This is where capabilities like the Flex contact centre come in, which features in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Communications Platform as a Service. It's something that gives Connolly personal pride. "I came from Genesys, and Twilio wasn't initially on quadrants or market analysis so this is good recognition of what we've achieved. Our strategy is good, and customers such as ANZ and Electrolux are using the Flex capability to replace their contact centres," he said.

Macquarie Bank has recently gone live with Flex and 1,500 users, and their migration was under 12 months. "To move to cloud, to digital, to omni-channel within 12 months - it brings you personal pride," Connolly said.

Under the hood, Flex uses Twilio APIs, of course, but also SendGrid for its email sending. "It's all absorbed and integrated."

It's a similar story with Segment, Twilio's tool for analysing customer data. "All email outreach uses SendGrid by choice," he said, "but we believe in choice, so you can plug in MailChimp or other tools."

In Australia specifically, Connolly says the company goes to market directly, as well as via software and services and partners. "Partners like Synergy and Cloudwave extended our reach into Government panels," Connolly said. "Then there's the ISV component where partners like Atlassian embed our tech inside Jira. It's all serviced out of Australia."

Twilio is also growing its team. "We have a healthy set of individuals with engineering mindsets." In fact, coming back to Australia from the United States Connolly says it was so refreshing to see technologists really going deep, coding, and building solutions. "A lot of US-based companies in Australia only have sales. Twilio has engineering on-shore, a guest engineer component, and more connection to the product. We can influence the product roadmap here in Australia."

One example he cites is the MOLI mobile line identification protocol, which only exists at Australian telcos. "No other country uses this standard," Connolly said. Yet, "one of our local engineers got it into our product."

"As we're a virtual carrier around the world, now customers can use MOLI without any separate agreement with carriers."

It's a great example of taking local Australian engineering work, and offering functionality globally.

Another Australian Twilio customer Connolly referred to is Domino’s Pizza. "They moved from the legacy on-premises IVR capability to the cloud, using Twilio IVR to distribute calls to stores. It was built mostly in-house, with some Twilio professional services involved."

And, the previously mentioned ANZ Bank is doing more than contact centre. "The ANZ+ app is an innovative app for home loan origination," he said. "All its communications come through Twilio - voice, video, and text. It reimagines what banking can look like."

"ANZ+ is all in-app. There's no branch or broker. You can speak with a coach in the app. It provides challenges and pushed the limit of our platform, but was all done in house by about five engineers in Melbourne. They went down the infrastructure-as-code path through Terraform pipelines and GitHub actions. They can hit run and completely stand up an environment in 10 minutes with users, code, routing workflow, and validating the whole product."

"ANZ Bank is a world leader in their adoption of tech," Connolly said, "and the digital experience they provide is pretty cool."

Elsewhere, Mox, a virtual bank by Standard Chartered Bank, the Union Bank of the Philippines, and others are all going down the same path, leveraging Twilio. "They can do digital voice and make two-way comms from the app over WiFi. They don't need phone services."

Other customers include Fisher and Paykel, doing "some cool things in contact centre and communications," and Foxtel, "using Twilio Segment to understand data, customer behaviour, and churn, and influence what they can do about it."

Having a customer analytics platform such as Segment allows Twilio customers a lot of options. "Imagine if once you understand something about the customer you can make a real-time outreach to them. Display an ad or text, play a video, make a phone call ... the real-time data gives context into AI models to allow real-time actions."

And, when it comes to AI, the Twilio portfolio offers a rich suite of AI-based tools and functionality. These are things from predicting churn and customer lifetime value and next-best activity scenarios, as well as customising conversations based on what the customer has done in the past.

These are under the hood; more visibly, Twilio has added Copilot capabilities for contact centre workers, surfacing insights over customer information and event history, and more.

These features all combine to bring vast AI-based customer insights that help a company trace all the way from their customer satisfaction scores down through phone calls, messages, and interactions, down to individual workers and customers that contributed to that score.

As he speaks with customers, Connolly sees the rise of AI voicebots as something that's most exciting to them. "Since the 1990s we've been pushing speech systems in one form or another like Telstra 101 or Vodafone Lara. They've evolved completely from there," he said. "In January we did a hackathon to set the state of the art for voicebots. It's moved at lightning speed. We added capability in our cloud comms platform to be the voice you want, to let you put in a prompt, connect real-time data ... when we show customers what they can do with it, this excites them the most."

Of course, it's not all roses. "Companies worry about how to make sure they're not displacing workers, and whether AI offers commercial practicality," he said.

On the first point, Connolly suggests AI can and should take some tasks that can help human agents focus on more important matters. "If you're calling to reschedule a flight, a bot can help. But if you're calling about losing something on a flight, or a death on a flight, the bot isn't the best option."

Additionally, "data privacy is of growing concern locally, especially in the age of AI" to which Connolly says it is important to ensure a privacy-first approach when embarking on an AI strategy.

Additionally, "informed consent is the number one challenge we have as a whole industry, and that responsibility is on regulators as much as it is on companies."

These conversations arise in every country, he indicates, with no country more or less concerned than others. On this, "messaging opt-in and opt-out has become the norm. GDPR is the standard," Connolly said.

"We think there will be an extension of those where the responsibility and consent is embedded in the model. Right now customers have the right to be expunged, but what does it mean for AI models? We advocate for coming back to nutrition facts; have transparent usage and labelling on how the data is used, and allow people to opt-out or not opt-in."

Twilio wants to be transparent with how it uses data and how it employs AI. "AI is exploding everywhere and in all businesses," Connolly said. "AI nutrition labelling is something we want to push as an industry standard. It's essentially food packing for AI. We open-sourced nutrition-facts.ai to clearly state where the human sits in the loop, data retention, redaction, etc. Putting these labels on products say 'this is the AI inside' so it is clear to customers."

Nuix announces launch of Cognitive AI in Nuix Discover

2024-09-04T14:56:54+10:00

Investigative analytics and intelligence software provider Nuix, has announced new enhancements to its Discover platform.

Nuix says it will be soon be releasing Cognitive AI as a feature of Discover., and with its launch of additional AI capabilities in Discover - to add to the continuous learning features already in place - such as Cognitive AI capabilities, customers will soon be able to “dramatically accelerate the speed, accuracy and efficiency for identifying relevant documents and information that is critical to their case”.

Jonathan Rubinsztein, Group CEO Nuix said: “Discover is a key focus for Nuix and we are continuing to innovate and invest heavily. Our Cognitive AI will dramatically improve the efficiency and quality of document review, boosting speed and relevance with AI technology, and delivering profound time and cost savings.

“Customers will soon be able to use Nuix’ own language models to easily find, categorise and risk score types of documents and also dramatically reduce the time for identification of sensitive information that may need redaction or other urgent action.

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“We are currently in testing and are encouraged by the early feedback and excited about the step change in value Cognitive AI will offer our customers. After this initial phase, we will also be offering customers the ability to use the Cognitive AI results to further tune Discover’s predictive coding feature, which we expect will deliver another step-change in value.

“Our near-term plan is to then also offer customers additional features to add even more value on top of Cogntive AI, including tools to easily build their own AI models which they can customize for their unique business needs, and automatically redact sensitive information.

“We are extremely excited about the future of Discover and what Cognitive AI will soon bring to customers. These feature enhancements come hot on the heels of recent improvements we have also made in response to customer feedback in a range of important areas like native excel redaction, names normalization, coding enhancements and efficiencies, conversion of video files and many, many more including tighter integration with our Nuix Neo technology,” Rubinsztein concluded.

realestate.com.au launches AI-powered room renovation tool

2024-08-29T11:10:03+10:00

realestate.com.au today announced that it has bolstered its property owner dashboard experience with a new AI-generated styling tool that allows users to digitally renovate property images.

The room visualisation feature, powered by Roomvo, is available on desktop and app for logged-in property owners and has been used to restyle over 500,000 property images in the first month since launch. It aims to help property owners build their confidence and support them to take the next step in their property journey.

REA Group Executive General Manager, Consumer Product, Jonathan Swift, said REA continues to invest in emerging technologies to enhance its products and create personalised experiences.

“We have leveraged AI and machine learning models for over a decade at realestate.com.au and more recently our focus has been on experimenting with generative-AI to drive our consumer strategy forward.

“Personalisation underpins the realestate.com.au consumer experience and our AI-generated personalised homepage delivers 7.5 million individual recommendations via hundreds of different layout combinations every day. We know these tailored experiences drive deeper engagement, delivering value to our customers.

“We’re excited to add a room renovation tool for property owners and believe there is a future where this technology has the potential to unlock how Australians connect with their next home, not just their current home. The way consumers search for property on realestate.com.au in five years from now will look very different to today’s experience.”

Homeowners can makeover their home using 11 different preset styles including modern, rustic or coastal, or apply their own changes to walls, floors and benchtops selecting from various paint colours, flooring types and tile options.

Roomvo CEO, Pawel Rajszel, said: “We’re excited to partner with realestate.com.au and offer Australians an opportunity to easily reimagine their living spaces. We want to make home designing accessible to all, empowering homeowners to realise their dream spaces. Working with home décor manufacturers and retailers across the globe, we’re now excited to bring Roomvo to the Australian real estate market. We know Australians love property and Roomvo enables homeowners to bring their vision to life.”

For more information on realestate.com.au’s restyling tool and to see how your home could be transformed, property owners can visit www.realestate.com.au/property/my-property.

Capgemini and America’s Cup Media to bring a new dimension to the 37th America’s Cup experience with WindSight IQ

2024-08-26T13:23:41+10:00

Breakthrough technology will visualize the wind live on screen, allowing fans and commentators to better understand optimum routes and team tactics, and making coverage of the sport more accessible than ever before

Capgemini and the America’s Cup Media today revealed WindSight IQ, the product innovation they will bring to the broadcast of the Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup, as part of their global partnership announced earlier this year. For the first time, viewers and race commentators will be able to actually see the wind and how it varies across the racecourse in real-time. Furthermore, a yacht simulator will take the wind data and calculate the optimal routes around the course, enabling commentators and viewers to predict what teams on the water should do or analyze how teams could have won a race. A feat of engineering and design, WindSight IQ means that commentators and viewers will have more data and insight into the pinnacle event of international sailing than is available to the competing teams on the water.

Tech is now an integral part of how fans consume sports

Viewing habits are changing, a recent study by the Capgemini Research Institute found that 84% of fans say emerging technologies have enhanced their overall viewing experience. With 77% of Gen Z and 75% of Millennials preferring to watch sport outside of live venues, the viewing experience on screen is more important than ever. Wind patterns are a key factor in sailing that can change the course of a race and make the difference between winning or losing. For the first time, these wind patterns will be revealed and visualized by WindSight IQ to bring a whole new dimension to the race experience for fans and broadcasters.

“WindSight IQ is an innovation America’s Cup Media have been evaluating for a long time now, our objective has been to take another quantum leap in using technology to increase the understanding of sailing and the intricacies that the sailors at the pinnacle of our sport have to conquer. But to achieve our objective we needed to find a partner that was equally driven by pushing the boundaries of technology and innovation which Capgemini clearly were. So, for the Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup WindSight IQ is a significant advancement for the consumption of our sport,” explains Grant Dalton, CEO of the America’s Cup Event. “Four elements determine the race winner: the boat design, the team, the water, and the wind. Before and during the race, commentators will now be able to see the real-time wind patterns and explain to the viewers the options for the competing yachts. Being able to see the unseen wind and compare teams’ actual performances and tactical decisions to the optimum routes, will mean audiences can follow and engage in the racing on a whole new level. We are really looking forward to the impact WindSight IQ will bring to this year’s Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup viewing experience.”

Revealing the wind to millions in real time

Due to the technical challenge, no-one has been able to accurately demonstrate visualization of the wind in real-time yacht racing conditions – until now. Combining its expertise in technology, engineering, data and design, Capgemini and America’s Cup Media, the host broadcaster for the event, will use LiDAR (light detection and ranging), sensor fusion and scientific computation to reveal the wind in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) graphics. The wind field data is also fed in real-time to a yacht simulator and used to create a live ‘ghost boat’ simulation that can be projected onto the racecourse through AR and VR graphics. It will show the optimal path that the crews should take given the measured variations in wind pressure, sheers, orientation, and speed.

To accurately collect raw wind data, three LiDARs have been positioned along the Barcelona waterfront overlooking the racecourse, scanning the full race area. Each LiDAR has an average 6.5km scanning range up to a maximum of 12km, and measures wind speeds, every 1.5 meters from 0 to 12km, up to 38m/s (73 knots) with an accuracy of <0.1m/s. WindSight IQ supplements the LiDARs with wind data directly from the racing yachts and buoys’ wind sensors. All these data streams are fused using innovative algorithms to enable a wind field to be created over the entire racecourse. The wind field is refreshed every second based on the sensor measurements and predictive wind models.

“Through technological innovation, combining laser sensor technology with advanced engineering and new visualization techniques, WindSight IQ brings together the digital and physical worlds,” explains Keith Williams, Capgemini’s Chief Engineer for WindSight IQ. “The wind plays a decisive role in the teams' choices during the race, and by visualizing it, viewers can now see and comprehend the detailed pattern of wind speed and direction across the racecourse, as well as the best potential paths to be followed. The core challenge of this innovation lies in combining both engineering and design; accurately capturing the intricate patterns of the wind and also portraying it in a way that fans and commentators can easily see and understand. Our goal is to make the coverage of the Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup more captivating and immersive than it has ever been.”

WindSight IQ is a turnkey solution designed, built and operated through a partnership between America’s Cup Media and Capgemini, combining its expertise in technology, engineering, data and design to feed the America’s Cup Media broadcast systems with real-time wind field visuals and AR/VR designs. The three LiDARs used as part of the solution are supplied by LUMIBIRD.

Transforming sport through technology and innovation

The Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup partnership builds on Capgemini’s already strong track record in adding value to the fan experience and sporting performance through its sports sponsorships.

For the 2023 Ryder Cup, Capgemini provided Outcome IQ, a tool that puts the intelligence of real-time data in the palm of every fan’s hand and helped enhance fan experience by tracking outcome probabilities shot by shot.
As Worldwide Partner of Rugby World Cup France 2023, Capgemini played a central role across multiple areas to support a smooth delivery of the tournament and enhance the fan experience.
As part of a multi-year partnership with Peugeot Sport, Capgemini makes its advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence expertise available to Peugeot Sport’s experts. Capgemini provides the Peugeot 9X8 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) program team with advanced digital tools and analytics to enhance the performance of the team and the Peugeot 9X8 Hypercar.

About Capgemini

Capgemini is a global business and technology transformation partner, helping organizations to accelerate their dual transition to a digital and sustainable world, while creating tangible impact for enterprises and society. It is a responsible and diverse group of 340,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its strong over 55-year heritage, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to unlock the value of technology to address the entire breadth of their business needs. It delivers end-to-end services and solutions leveraging strengths from strategy and design to engineering, all fueled by its market leading capabilities in AI, cloud and data, combined with its deep industry expertise and partner ecosystem. The Group reported 2023 global revenues of €22.5 billion.

Get The Future You Want | www.capgemini.com

About The America’s Cup

The America’s Cup is the oldest international sporting trophy −dating back to 1851– and stands as one of the hardest sporting endeavours. The New York Yacht Club held the trophy for 132 years before losing it in 1983 to Australia. Since then, the Cup has only been won by teams from the United States, Switzerland and New Zealand. The current Defender of the America's Cup is Emirates Team New Zealand, representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.

The Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup will take place between 22^nd August and 22^nd October 2024 in the beating heart of Barcelona, one of the most visited cities on planet earth. Situated around Port Vell and out along the beach to Port Olympic, the sailing world has made Barcelona their home for what promises to be one of the most intense America’s Cups in the event’s 174-year history.

Backbase delivers industry leading digital banking platform to support MyState’s future growth ambitions

2024-08-26T10:44:51+10:00

ANNOUNCEMENT: Backbase, the global leader in engagement banking, has successfully delivered a new digital banking platform for MyState Bank (MyState) to support future growth. The platform represents a significant leap forward in delivering seamless, customer-centric digital experiences to MyState customers.

MyState has partnered with Backbase to modernise its digital banking offering, aiming to simplify money management with an easier, more user-friendly, and secure platform for customers.

Backbase has developed a proven engagement banking suite, combined with a robust delivery methodology. Backbase's powerful, flexible, and modular platform enables seamless integration with other leading technologies that the bank has invested in.

Brett Morgan, Managing Director and CEO, MyState Bank.

“To support our growth ambitions, we have chosen to invest in best-of-suite technology to provide the best possible digital and people backed experience for our customers,” said Brett Morgan, Managing Director and CEO, MyState Bank.

“The implementation has been smooth and customers have reacted positively to the new highly rated app and digital experience,” Mr Morgan said.

The Backbase Engagement Banking Platform now supports MyState’s range of personal digital banking capabilities, including advanced personal finance management (PFM), payments (including Pay ID and digital wallets), deeply embedded threat/fraud protection and a sophisticated limits/notifications capability across all channels.

Iman Ghodosi, Managing Director - Australia and New Zealand at Backbase Australia

Iman Ghodosi, Managing Director - Australia and New Zealand at Backbase Australia, said, “We are excited to support MyState’s growth ambitions, with the Backbase platform as a key enabler. MyState is now well positioned to respond to the rapidly evolving needs of banking customers in Tasmania and as well as targeting growth on the east coast of Australia as a challenger brand.”

Anand Venkatachalam, Director for Customer Success at Backbase Australia

Anand Venkatachalam, Director for Customer Success at Backbase Australia, said, "We are thrilled to see MyState’s implementation go live and deliver a truly world-class tailored customer experience. To date, over 250 production releases have taken place in the lead up to launch. Ultimately, MyState Bank now has the machinery in place to continue innovation plans.

"Since our partnership began, we've fostered a collaborate-to-win, success driven mindset and Backbase is eager to see this continue to flourish in the years to come."

About Backbase

Backbase is on a mission to re-architect banking around the customer.

We are the creators of the Engagement Banking Platform – a composable platform that empowers banks to accelerate their digital transformation through progressively modernizing their main customer journeys. From onboarding, to servicing, lending and investing, our platform streamlines every aspect of the customer and employee journey. Pre-integrated with leading core systems and cutting-edge fintechs, it enables institutions to unlock innovation at scale, driving instant value creation.

Industry analysts Forrester, Gartner, Celent, Omdia and IDC continuously recognize Backbase’s category leadership. Over 150 financials around the world have embraced the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform — including AIB, Banorte, BIAT, Bank of the Philippine Islands, BDO, Banque Saudi Fransi, Everbank, BRD, Discovery Bank, Banco Bineo, First National Bank, HDFC, Ila Bank, National Bank of Canada, KeyBank, Judo Bank, OCB, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, I&M Bank Kenya, Navy Federal Credit Union, OTP Group, Raiffeisen, Techcombank, Standard Bank, Saudi National Bank, Société Générale, and TPBank. Backbase is a private fintech company, founded in 2003 in Amsterdam (Global HQ), with regional offices in Atlanta (Americas HQ), Cardiff, Dubai, Hyderabad, Kraków, London, Mexico City, Singapore (Asia HQ), Sydney, and Toronto. Discover more here.

About MyState Bank

MyState Limited is the ASX-listed (MYS) non-operating holding company of the diversified financial services Group consisting of MyState Bank and TPT Wealth, a trustee and wealth management company. MyState Bank is regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority. MyState Bank and TPT Wealth hold Australian Financial Services Licences issued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

LogicMonitor EdwinAI brings immediate signal-to-noise benefits and helps observability teams deal with what matters

2024-08-25T23:18:08+10:00

As modern applications become more complex, observability becomes increasingly important. LogicMonitor has already been using AI in its hybrid observability tools to help separate signal from noise, and has taken it even further with GenAI infusion.

It can be convenient to think of software as a black box - inputs go on one side, outputs on the other - but what happens when something goes wrong? Where did it fail, why did it fail, and what else happened? Observability is the name given to special tools that help you see inside the black box to figure it all out.

However, not all observability tools are suited for all purposes. With DevOps, DevSecOps, AIOps, all kind of ops, you really need something to cover it all - "x"Ops, say. Well, according to LogicMonitor GM AI Karthik Sj, LogicMonitor is that very tool. It's an xOps hybrid observability platform powered by AI.

Sj is still in his first six months at LogicMonitor, but is no stranger to the inudstry or to AI. He spent 15 years at SAP and most recently came from a GenAI startup in Palo Alto. He saw an exciting opportunity at LogicMonitor, and made time in his busy schedule to tell iTWire about it.

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"AI has been here for a long time," he said, "but it didn't catch popular imagination until ChatGPT. It democratised the tech with millions of people."

"Enterprises have been using statistical AI, the evolution of rule-baed heuristics, over the last 10 years. There's been natural language processing for some time. Nobody was excited to talk to those. They'll do some of the job but most people say 'let me talk to a real person'," Sj said.

When it came to generative AI, "it's the 'T' in GPT - the transformer architecture - that really exploded innovation. It's opened a gigantic model and ChatGPT has given an interface to play with that model. It's really opened up a whole rennaissance of companies trying to take advantage of it."

"LogicMonitor has been doing AI for a long time, but our new EdwinAI has infused GenAI into the platform. We've also added new workflows," Sj said.

"There's a complexitiy in tools out there. It's complex and what's best-of-breed depends on which part of the stack you are looking from," he said. "There's application monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and all kinds of issues happening that need a common context."

"If I have to troubleshoot, don't make log into 20 different tools," Sj said. "It's where engineers get hamstrung. They need a single unified pane, and this is where LogicMonitor EdwinAI and GenAI come in."

"EdwinAI can take an alert and decipher it. It might be a super-technical alert that only an L3 network engineer could normally read. Now GenAI can determine maybe it's an SD-WAN issue at a specific location. Everyone can read it, because GenAI helps package it up as a human readable summary."

"The feature helps get a lot of teams on the same page without needing an expert degree in network operations," he said. Ultimately, what LogicMonitor has achieved valuably lowers the barrier of entry to faultfinding through observability. It can make arcane messages human readable, suggest root causes, and draw together information from numerous places. "It saves a bunch of time," Sj said.

"With hundreds of thousands of alerts, there's high value, solving high pain points."

The EdwinAI that LogicMonitor has introduced was the inspiration of creative people within the business. "They looked at how to define modern-day observability. It was named after Edwin Hubble, because the Hubble telescope redefined modern cosmology."

LogicMonitor's goal with EdwinAI is to arm every enterprise with modern observability, and act like your "10x teammate," Sj said. "AI won't replace people, but it will sit side-by-side."

One example of a customer using EdwinAI in production is Syngenta. "The value was instant," Sj said. "They saw a bunch of alerts come in. Which ones are noise vs. signal? EdwinAI correlated the signals and out of thousands of messages said, 'look at these, here's the context'. They saw a 95% reduction in alert noise."

Syngenta also reported a 30% reduction in IT Service Management (ITSM) incidents, 60% reduction in Mean time to repair (MTTR), and 20% improvement in operational efficiency.

"Within an hour in production it did its work," Sj said. With other products taking six months to get operational, EdwinAI offers a huge uptick in return on investment.

Two years since ChatGPT hit the web, a lot of innovation has happened. "We're in the early stages of GenAI 2.0," Sj said. "Version 1.0 was LLMs, but 2.0 is all about AI agents. You don't want to rely on specific LLMs, instead agents take it even further. It not only answers messages, but can take action. Not only can the agent tell you the problem on your router, it can fix it."

"Our Edwin architecture is on the forefront of this."

LogicMonitor has been experimenting on its own models, and its vast stores of metrics, traces, and event data. "We're ahead of companies starting two years back but only relying on GPT output and GPT wrappers," Sj said. "They're nice for Shakespeare, but not for analysing logs. We wanted something more purpose-built."

It's here that LogicMonitor had its appeal to Sj. "What attracted me to LogicMonitor is solving these pain points and its relevance," he said. "This is hard stuff, making it a good use case. People don't want to read alerts. If you can solve this problem you get high stickiness, and a high reward. It's something people want to pay for."

"It was important for me to find strong return on investment," Sj said. "LogicMonitor has high confidence and trust. People expect LogicMonitor to solve issues. I wanted a company doing this and I'm excited by it."

In addition, Sj says the future will hold GenAI native apps - "like search was a new way and people embraced it, I believe GenAI will create new workflows."

"Think about documents, logs, or calls that people sit on for hours. Someone asks, 'do you remember this issue from two years ago?'," Sj asks. "The answer is no, but imagine if you could harvest all the insight from boardroom calls. This is the opportunity here. There's hidden data, and unstructured data locked away that you couldn't touch and now suddenly it's available. It widens the view of the data you can see."

"That's what I'm excited about."

Get out of the enterprise software upgrade trap and free the time, money, and people to innovate says Rimini Street CEO

2024-08-14T23:56:54+10:00

Today's business world is one of tension; consumer spending is down, but costs are rising. Innovation and automation is essential to advance, but capital is tied up in major upgrades and migrations dictated by large software vendors. Rimini Street says you don't have to get sucked up into the vendor's sale cycle. Free up time, people, and money by focusing on what really matters instead.

As well as tech, this iTWire writer loves air travel. It's a fascinating thing to sit in a plane and marvel at how humanity combated the competing tensions of lift and gravity, thrust and drag. It turns out business isn't too dissimilar; replace lift and gravity with sales and costs; replace thrust and drag with maintenance and innovation. These forces compete against each other and a successful business manages to balance the mix to keep itself soaring.

It's easy to say, but hard to do. Rimini Street co-founder, CEO, and chairman of the board Seth Ravin spoke with iTWire while visiting Australia to share some experience and advice.

Ravin founded the company 19 years ago with a focus on aiding companies to free up people, time, and money to invest in innovation. "Companies need to grow and create competitive advantage," Ravin said, explaining his business achieves this by coming in and working with companies to reduce costs in certain parts of their portfolio, thus freeing up those items for better, smarter use.

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There's a lot to unpack here. In today's world, "real innovation is data, and how to figure out how to use it to make the business better," Ravin said. "How to convert it into decision support, to determine what customers want a year from now. Let's say I'm a retailer - what do I need on the shelf a year from now? Or, I'm a manufacturer - what parts do I need two to three years from now?"

"Everyone needs a crystal ball," he said. But yet "Everyone has the data to give these insight. That's what they're hungry for, and it's worth gold."

It's Ravin's clear and unequivocal position that this is what you need to focus on right now to help your business navigate the difficult economic times we are in, and to come out more successful than ever on the other said.

Yet, "so many pieces of the business are going on around what to about the ridiculous ERP cycle of migrations and upgrades when the truth is for most of these businesses and government agencies is it's just costly work that distracts and offers nothing."

"These projects take people from real innovation."

You don't have to be an economist to recognise costs are out of control, and companies of all sizes face the squeeze of tighter margins than ever. Their margins are pressed; they suffer from hyper competition and can't raise their prices. Yet the costs keep going up. Instead of expending so much time, money, and resources on upgrading ERPs or suffering the brunt of complex subscription pricing changes, "IT can become a leveragable tool," Ravin said.

Ultimately, you need to save money. It sounds obvious, but how? If you can't change the topline in growth and get more sales right away, the conventional wisdom is you must reduce your costs. The increasing costs of goods and labour costs must be offset somehow. And sure, "we can all cut costs, lay off people, and deliver more to the bottom line," Ravin said. "But nobody has ever cut their way to innovation."

It's for this reason, Ravin says, you see companies like ServiceNow, Automation Now, and UIPath all rising. "It's all about productivity." To counter rising costs your organisation needs to automate, and become more productive.

"When we work with customers it's not all about cutting costs, but smart allocation of costs."

For example, "why do an ERP upgrade that you don't need, and has no return on investment?" Ravin asks. "Why not instead take the people, time, and money to put in new data analytics? Put in AI to help the company."

That's the Rimini Street formula and key to success: "Let's make investments. Save money on one side, and re-invest in the right projects, becoming a funding source for the new projects the business didn't think it could fund. Get the savings to the bottom line and get new investments in innovation," Ravin said.

As a sample, Rimini Street explores whether upgrading to Oracle Database 23ai is really worth it, and if you're simply smarter staying with Oracle Database 19c or older.

"That's the expertise Rimini Street brings. We can stablise systems and bring the maximum return on investment. It's how we move business forwards - helping you take all that money, time, and people to help you work on these other, innovative projects."

These costly systems and potentially pointless ERP projects that Ravin refers to come in the form of enterprise software companies pressing their customers to migrate from on-premises software to cloud-based subscription models, or changing license costs, or saying you must upgrade to new releases or you can't have support anymore.

In fact, you might think of vendors like SAP, Oracle, and VMware, for some examples. "I've been in the software business a long time," Ravin said. "Moving customers to new releases is a money-making proposition."

"Accenture, CapGemini - everyone is in on it because it creates work and makes money."

Ravin jokes that it's akin to a cartel - the hardware guys, the software guys, the implementers - "if you're not buying something new, they're not making money. The cycle is built-in."

This is where Rimini Street comes in. "We offer optionality. We say you don't have to do those things," Ravin said. Using an analogy, "You don't have to change your car every three years - you could drive it for 20 years until the wheels fall off, but that's your choice."

So too, "vendors say you have to upgrade or migrate or you get no support," but "we're giving cusotmers choice."

In fact, Rimini Street guarantees to support your existing platforms and products for a minimum of 15 years after customers come to them.

"We say we don't care if your car is 15 years old already; we guarantee another 15 years of smooth running."

And whether you stick with Rimini Street for 15 years or only one year it buys your business the time, money, and people to run your ERP as-is for longer. There's no need to upgrade it; instead you can use these items you release to focus on analytics, focus on data, and roll out new features and tech to change the business.

After all, "you don't need to replace your ERP because you're still invoicing and cutting paycheques and running the business," Ravin said.

"An ERP is a key part of the business backbone," make no mistake. "But it's not strategic. You don't compete based on your general ledger or how pretty your payroll is."

Thus, the Rimini Street message is clear: don't get sucked into your enterprise vendor's whirlpool and vortex of pricing changes, subscription models, and endless cycles of upgrades. Instead, let Rimini Street support it and embrace the optionality they offer to fund innovation instead of upgrades and changes that aren't useful.

A clear example is VMware and the aggressive pricing and licensing changes that came from its new owner, Broadcom. Earlier this year Rimini Street announced new support services for VMware customers with perpetual subscriptions.

"We've had an overwhelming level of response," Ravin said.

"These guys [Broadcom] tried to come in and say they're no longer going to support perpetual licenses and you now must have a subscription. Imagine being told you have to now pay rent on a vhicle you already own?"

And, "not only do you have to pay, but they say they're going to bundle extra software you don't want or need and charge you for it. The new bill may be 10x, 12x what you're paying today."

"Imagine paying $1m a year for VMware then told your new price is $10m to $12m?" Ravin asked. "That's crushing."

Instead, the Rimini Street VMware services allow a company to have the confidence of full support services for their existing VMware products and not pay any more than what they were already paying. "Even if you stick with us for only one year, five years, 10 years, we give you optionality and time."

"You don't have to be pushed to the wall with VMware," Ravin said. "You can take your time. We will run your systems and you can negotiate with VMware. You don't need to be pressured to re-contract. Or you could explore other software options like Nutanix."

Of course, if you ultimately decide to migrate away from VMware "being critical infrastructure, you'll want to test and prove it, and that might take several years," Ravin said. Again, Rimini Street "buys you time to do it right."

Sure, some customers might sign with VMware, and some may leave VMware. However, you don't have to make that decision under pressure. "You need time and don't have to be jammed against a wall," Ravin said. "It's not viable for key infrastructure to be in a position where you are up against a wall."

It's all a strong, and compelling message. With cost of living issues, rising mortgages, and other factors affecting consumers and spending, businesses are feeling the crunch and striving to manage increasing costs against the pressure to avoid raising prices.

If you're a business leader, Ravin's advice is to "take action now."

"Revenues are down, and cash is down. Cash is gold - if you don't have cash your business is gone," he said. "When sales go down, it can take months before companies respond to cut their own costs. Companies can act too late. When you see the economics for consumers will cause a drop in spending, when you see mortgages go up, it ripples out."

"Businesses must react to economic changes, and you must get ahead of revenue falls. Companies should heed those warnings and take actions," Ravin said.

"When we come in we don't talk about this system or that, but the bigger picture. How to achieve objectives of growth, profits, and competitive advantage, and how IT plays a role. We talk about how to reduce costs and get a return on investment, and do the right things with the right systems instead of doing things that don't add value," he said.

"It's all about running businesses with a return on investment mentality," Ravin said. "Companies need to react or they'll be in financial trouble."

That's the absolute no-nonsense message Rimini Street wants you to know. You can have options, you can have time, and you can change unlock the resources you'd be expending on maintenance projects that you neither need or receive value from, focusing instead on innovative projects that truly turn the dial for you.

Ravin has been in Australia for "Street Smart" - thought leadership events his company holds around the world. This week, two Street Smart events have run in Melbourne and in Sydney. These events bring Rimini Street customers and select prospects together to talk about new technologies and the challenges that customers face. "Customers present to customers about projects and what worked," Ravin said.

"It's like the movie Fight Club - our first rule is we maintain confidentality in the room. It's a fantastic environment and different from anything else executives have been to. They come to Street Smart to share insights with each other about what they've done and what's worked."

The formula is clearly working; 200 executives attended Street Smart in Japan, seeing it as a "must attend". In Brazil over 100 executives joined together, and more than 80 in Kajarta. "People are hungry for forums where executives can exchange information and learn."

Meanwhile, with 19 years under the Rimini Street belt, 2025 is shaping up to be a big year as it celebrates it's 20th anniversary.

Over that time Ravin jokes he's "a lot older" and that he "used to have a lot more hair", but the reality is a company he started one night in his living room now has thousands of employees across 22 countries, serving more than 5,000 customers in 150 countries, and with revenues over $USD 400 million. Rimini Street also has a charitable foundation to contribute back to society.

However, numbers aside, Ravin says a key factor is the people. "What a ride. People make it all happen," he said.

"When you're a people company, having thousands of people passionate about supporting customers, supporting billions of transactions every week, supporting thousands upon thousands of pay cheques, being passionate about the urgency of what they do - it's so humbling to have those responsibilities that our customers trust us with to make the world go around."

As a parting note, Ravin says as business leaders start planning their 2025 technology investment plans and budgets he urges to keep in mind the need to "use data to find what it means to take your company further. Everyone needs to predict the future."

And the key to achieving your data and AI goals is to flip the dial from expending all your effort on pointless upgrades and licensing changes. Free the time, people, and money and focus on innovation. This is what Rimini Street gives you.

Epicor announces visionary AI drive during Insights ANZ 2024 conference

2024-08-14T13:40:35+10:00

Epicor, a global leading provider of industry-specific ERP software solutions for over half a century, hosted its Insights ANZ 2024 conference on the Gold Cost from August 12-14. This premier event offered a deep dive into Epicor’s offerings, emphasising how emerging trends like AI and automation are catalysing industry transformation.

With a robust revenue of $1.25 billion, spanning operations in 150 countries and serving 23,000 customers, Epicor’s influence is significant. Their 4,800-strong workforce is the backbone of their 95% customer retention rate and the 13+ year average customer tenure. Epicor regional vice president Graeme Evans set the tone for the event with his opening remarks, urging attendees to “make data your superpower” as Epicor continues to lead the evolution of ERP systems.

The three-day event was packed with sessions aimed at helping businesses optimise operations, drive growth and enhance profitability. Attendees connected with industry peers and Epicor experts, gaining valuable insights into how data integration, automation, and AI can unlock substantial value across various sectors. A standout was the spotlight on Epicor Kinetic, a platform that supercharges workflow automation and intelligent data integration, significantly aimed at boosting business performance and customer satisfaction.

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Global vision and strategic ownership changes

During the event, iTWire interviewed Epicor executive vice president Andy Coussins. With a distinguished career in international sales, including a pivotal role at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Coussins has been instrumental in shaping Epicor’s global sales strategy. He shared insights into the importance of the event and the future of Epicor’s solutions in the increasingly cloud-base, AI-driven world.

“Epicor has worked closely with customers across Australia and New Zealand for more than 25 years helping them optimise and grow their businesses with our industry-focused ERP solutions and capabilities. Our customers’ success is our success, and we are deeply committed to serving supply chain companies across a variety of sectors as well as organisations providing aged care services,” stated Andy.

Andy lauded Insights ANZ 2024 as an exceptional platform for the collaboration with customers and partners. He emphasised how the event fosters an invaluable feedback loop that directly influences Epicor’s product roadmap. According to Andy, the conference not only provides significant networking opportunities but also offers participants the chance to engage in educational sessions—a part of the event he sees expanding in future years.

A significant growth announcement was made during the event that Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (“CD&R”) and CVC had agreed to acquire a significant ownership position in Epicor, with both parties receiving equal board representation.

“Our customers and their ambitions are the focus of what we do as we work to provide the most innovative solution sets possible,” said Steve Murphy, Epicor CEO. “CD&R’s support and partnership has been invaluable as we have accelerated the growth of our business, invested significantly in our portfolio and released a number of next-generation, cloud-ready products. We look forward to working with CVC as we continue to grow our platform capabilities, with a keen focus on better serving our dynamic customer base.”

Client and partner success stories

Insights ANZ 2024 provided attendees with the opportunity to learn from the real-world experiences of Epicor users. iTWire spoke with several clients and partners and received examples to help understand the tangible benefits derived from Epicor’s suite of products.

Shirley Chow of Jackson Allison Medical (JAM) and Europlan, long-time users of Epicor Kinetic, shared how networking at events like Insights ANZ has driven benefits for her organisation. According to Shirley, Epicor Kinetic’s seamless out-of-the-box experiences has significant boosted productivity and efficiency through automated processes. Despite a post COVID-19 revenue surge of 150%, JAM and Europlan were able to maintain their headcount, a feat she attributed to the scalability of the Kinetic platform. Shirley also highlights a remarkable improvement in their month-end close process, which was reduced from a full month to just one week. She attributed this to the intuitive design and data extraction capabilities of the system. Shirley praised Epicor’s proactive approach to working closely with her team to maximise product value from their existing solution.

Matt Elliot, Chief Growth Officer of BISCIT, a global leader and partner with Epicor ERP, shared insights into how their warehouse solution is helping organisations worldwide optimise inventory and automate shop floor operations. With the continued support of Epicor’s ecosystem, Biscit has become one of Newcastle NSW’s most surprising success stories, with over 1,300 customers in 40 countries and a team continuing to push innovation, with exciting product launches just around the corner.

Another success story came from the Royal Australian Mint, which selected Epicor for its flexibility and simplicity. The Mint chose Epicor because “met our organisational goals of flexibility and simplicity. There user interface – which was delivered out of the box – fit perfectly with the Mint’s strategy of not having to customise significantly.”

To showcase the entire lifecycle possibility Steel Blue, a Western Australian footwear company reduced its time to prepare orders by 10-15%. “Epicor is the whole foundation of the operations part of our business from finance, customer service, supply chain functions, and manufacturing to support the business globally.”

The future of AI at Epicor and Epicor Prism announcement

IDC vice president and industry analyst Linus Lai addressed the conference on the evolving AI landscape. He noted a significant shift: while 25% of businesses had no plans to adopt AI in 2023, by early 2024, the average business was exploring over 24 AI proof-of-concept projects. Epicor, known for its forward-thinking approach it at the forefront of this shift.

iTWire had the opportunity to speak with Arturo Buzzalino, Vice President of Product and Innovation at Epicor, about the latest innovations and how AI is reshaping the ERP landscape. Arturo emphasised that AI is set to revolutionise ERP and software as a whole. He proudly announced Epicor Prism, a groundbreaking AI foundation product currently in incubation. Epicor Prism, designed as a network of AI agents, will be embeddable across all product lines, offering a fluid, people-centric approach to managing tasks, workflows and productivity.

Arturo outlined Epicor’s AI philosophy; it must have ERP at its core, deliver 10x value to be counted as a success, and prioritise a people-centric approach. With Epicor Prism, the company is posited to deliver, unparalleled value, further solidifying its position as a leader in the ERP space. Prism is based on Arturo’s acknowledgement that Epicor has one of the best existing expert systems in the industry and a data ontology built over decades, all of which will allow AI to act swiftly and provide fantastic results for its customers

Epicor Prism whilst in incubation is expected to have further announcements towards the end of the year.

Western Australia Police ‘improves response to family violence’ with Motorola Solutions’ technology

2024-08-13T13:02:19+10:00

Western Australia Police Force (WA Police Force) is helping its front-line police officers provide better support for victims of family violence through a smart mobile application from Motorola Solutions., which streamlines reporting and collaboration with partner agencies.

The application, PSCore, has been expanded to enable officers to record a wider variety of incidents from the field and automatically alerts partner agencies and support services when family violence reports are submitted.

“When police officers respond to an incident, they need accurate and relevant information to inform their decisions while keeping themselves and community members safe,” said Superintendent Dean Snashall, Technology Portfolio, WA Police Force. “The addition of a new family violence reporting capability is another way this mobile application helps our officers to respond to different kinds of incidents.”

By supporting WA Police Force officers with a risk assessment framework and a summary of the family violence history of offences, Motorola Solutions’ PSCore application has enabled noteworthy improvements in compliance levels and workflows for all family violence reports.

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The application integrates critical operational information from multiple systems, presenting it through a single, intuitive interface. Deployed across WA Police Force's entire fleet of 6,500 mobile devices, the solution represents a key part of its digital policing strategy to leverage technology to improve productivity, incident awareness and safety for officers and the public alike.

“By providing access to critical back-end databases including computer aided dispatch and records systems, our smart mobile applications help front-line personnel to complete key operational tasks from wherever they are, allowing them to work with greater focus, accuracy and speed,” said Con Balaskas, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Motorola Solutions.

PSCore recently won a WA Police Force Recognition of Excellence Award for the agency’s Family Violence Division.

About Motorola Solutions

Motorola Solutions is solving for safer. We build and connect technologies to help protect people, property and places. Our solutions enable the collaboration between public safety agencies and enterprises that’s critical for a proactive approach to safety and security. Learn more about how we’re solving for safer communities, safer schools, safer hospitals, safer businesses – safer everywhere – at www.motorolasolutions.com.

monday.com releases a new enterprise offering with ready-to-use, standardised Portfolio management solution

2024-08-05T12:20:07+10:00

New capabilities empower customers to manage strategic initiatives at scale and make informed decisions confidently across teams and departments, streamlining operations and enhancing productivity.

COMPANY NEWS: monday.com the multi-product platform that runs all core aspects of work, has announced the full release of its Portfolio management solution, a new enterprise offering within the monday work management product.

Developed for enterprise customers, monday.com says this ready-to-go solution provides portfolio managers and executives with a holistic view of all relevant projects - and “its user-friendly interface allows them to gain visual clarity without sifting through a myriad of complex reports”.

With Portfolio, customers can navigate between high-level portfolios and low-level projects. The capability also seamlessly integrates with their entire workflow, connecting to a project request monday board for work intake. Once a project is approved, and with monday.com’s automation features, it will seamlessly populate into a template based on the project's requirements. Templates can then be governed by monday.com’s new standardisation capability, which is currently in beta.

“We constantly strive to provide our customers with the best solutions for their business needs, and this latest release of Portfolio demonstrates that commitment,” says Daniel Lereya, Chief Product and Technology Officer at monday.com. “We are democratising project portfolio management methods by making them easy to master, which is a major differentiator to others in the market. With our Portfolio management solution, our enterprise customers will now have a strong connection between everyday work and high-level insights, providing a top-down view that drives efficiency and effectiveness.”

monday.com’s Portfolio management solution redefines managers’ workflows with key benefits, including:

Zero setup, instant connection: The solution is ready-to-go and does not require a complicated setup process. The instant connection feature ensures customers can start managing projects immediately, boosting productivity from the moment of implementation.
Streamlined workflows: Customers can integrate their workflows by adding automations, customising project intake, and utilising templates to standardise processes.
Peak Personalisation: The solution is designed to be flexible and customisable, allowing managers to tailor it to their specific needs. With the ability to add fields, connect dashboards, and more, it offers a truly personalised experience.

“We’re thrilled to bring the full Portfolio management solution to the Asia Pacific and Japan region,” says Dean Swan, Vice President and GM of APJ at monday.com. “The solution empowers our enterprise customers to gain a complete view of their projects, streamline operations, and make informed decisions with confidence – all within the familiar monday.com interface. It brings visibility and allows teams to get started quickly to maximise collaboration and we look forward to seeing how our enterprise customers leverage it to achieve new levels of success.”

The release of monday.com’s day-to-day workflows with more extensive strategies and scale projects to achieve company goals.

Learn more about the new Portfolio management solution and its capabilities here.