Strategic account management is not a new sales strategy and it is known that effective SAM programs create customer loyalty, stimulate growth, enhance profitability, and lead to innovative service delivery. Since 1964, the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) has been focused solely on helping to establish strategic, key and global account management as a separate profession, career path and proven corporate strategy for growth.
This year’s 51st annual Strategic Account Management Association conference is taking place in San Diego next week from May 4-7th. Attendance is expected to be over 700 SAM professionals and sales executives from all over the country. With over 40 sessions, this year’s conference focuses on ‘transforming strategic account management from a sales strategy to a corporate strategy’ should lead to great discussions and learnings from attendees and speakers!
FirstRain is a proud sponsor of this year’s conference and FirstRain’s VP of Marketing & Alliances, Daniela Barbosa and FirstRain Executive Fellow, Nima Niakan will be in attendance to learn about best practices in competing for the future!
Attending? If you want to schedule a meeting with Daniela or Nima at the conference, drop us a line.
We look forward to seeing everyone next week!
FirstRain, is proud to announce that it is has launched FirstRain sharing for IBM Connections. FirstRain will empower businesses on the IBM Connections social network platform to meaningfully engage with customers, partners and employees through deep, real-time insights that are scored and ranked based on sophisticated, business-aware algorithms that drive personalization down to the user’s role.
Why Connections? IBM Connections is an enterprise social networking platform that allows organizations to engage the right people, accelerate innovation and is currently used across major FirstRain customers. With our new FirstRain share to IBM Connections feature, users can now quickly and efficiently share insights about their customer and markets straight from their FirstRain Apps to help improve decision-making and increase productivity.
FirstRain’s information modeling technology captures the global universe of unstructured data and applies layered algorithms to extract meaning across key structure and semantic characteristics to build a sophisticated business graph that delivers understanding of the business universe and relationships within customers and markets. By allowing users to post directly to their IBM Connections streams, FirstRain’s powerful analytics are extended right into the users streams and workflows.
Our FirstRain team is currently at the IBM ConnectED conference in Orlando and will be conducting a Chalk Talk session tonight at 6:15pm @ Walt Disney World Swan Room 5-6 titled:
They don’t just want streams, they want deep insights
Session Description: Collaboration inside and outside your enterprise is built on the notion that knowledge should be shared and streams and social sharing of information are an ideal way of collaborating. But the reality is that for some organizations streams of information quickly get noisy and users disengage. Come learn how personalizing insights at the user and group level can enhance collaboration across products like Connections, Websphere and other community platforms. In this session we will provide examples of how Fortune 1000 companies are utilizing targeted views of customer and market insights to enhance collaboration and community aspects booth internally within their enterprises as well as in customer applications. We will also ‘chalk out’ your own user scenarios in an interactive exercise.
Need to enable IBM Connections share on your FirstRain account, please contact us!
Not familiar with FirstRain? FirstRain is an enterprise scale, SaaS analytics platform that provides individuals with personalized, high-precision analysis on critical developments for their customers and end markets, as they are happening. FirstRain’s information-modeling technology enables millions of users to have an unmatched view of the global business world through their own very personal lens in order to make better decisions, get closer to customers, drive revenue growth and outwit the competition. FirstRain’s patented, advanced analytics identify relevant, business-focused Web and social media insights and then seamlessly delivers them into the world’s premier CRM and social enterprise platforms, including Salesforce.com, Chatter, Microsoft SharePoint, Dynamics, Yammer, Jive, Oracle and now IBM. FirstRain analytics are used by Fortune 1000 enterprises around the world and also integrated into leading platforms like Fidelity.com and Dun & Bradstreet.
FirstRain is proud to sponsor SIIA’s Buying & Selling Content 2015 conference taking place on Thursday January 22th in New York City. The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries. No stranger to SIIA events, FirstRain was the winner of the SIIA Lighting Round Competition at its Strategic & Financial Investment Conference last summer.
With a packed full day agenda,the Buying & Selling Content conference will address how big data, social media, highly globalized markets, and other fast-moving developments are impacting the ways in which companies buy, sell and market digital content. The conference will feature a range of business leaders with perspectives from different industries – including finance, health care, and publishing. Through presentations and discussions, the event will address digital content issues involving data licensing, copyright, international licensing, mobile apps, SaaS platforms, marketing, and more.
Combining content with deep data science, FirstRain’s patented information-modeling analytics platform integrates into almost any third-party environment. Our analytics are used by Fortune 1000 enterprises around the world and also integrated into leading platforms like Fidelity.com, Mergent and Dun & Bradstreet where we deliver deep, actionable insights across millions of users. The FirstRain API provides enterprise developers with real-time, data-level access to the powerful proprietary FirstRain business graph – generated using real-time big data analytics of millions of sources, documents and social media from across the global web. Unlike many other general business data services, FirstRain analytics run on a sophisticated, infinitely scalable big data platform that enables millions of users to have an unmatched view of their global business world.
If you would like to learn more about how you can leverage FirstRain analytics in your platforms and applications, please find us at the conference or contact us directly.
Author:
Ritu Parihar (with inputs from Neha Dahiya)
This year I had the opportunity to attend one of the tech world’s most prestigious conference celebrating women in computing, the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC), organized by Anita Borg Institute (ABI). FirstRain has a deep connection with ABI and I am glad I got an opportunity to attend GHC this year in Bangalore, India.
Our FirstRain CEO, Penny Herscher recently stepped down from the ABI board but continues to be actively engaged- in the spring she was the Master of Ceremonies at the annual Women of Vision awards and also moderated a panel on Male Allies at the 2014 GHC conference in Phoenix, US. Our Managing Director of our India operations, Aparna Gupta is also very involved in ABI as part of the India Council and has been a part of the Advisory committee and panels over the years. With our leadership team, committed to diversity and ABI’s primary aim to recruit, retain, and advance women in technology, participating in the conference is a great opportunity to further this important cause.
During my two days at conference, I had the opportunity to meet many women professionals and exchange views on various topics like technical acumen, team work, work life balance etc. The beauty of the conference is the fact that it creates a platform for collaborative proposals, wherein women connect and share knowledge and expertise for the benefit of others, which is truly inspiring.
I would like to segregate my overall experience of conference in two parts:
i) Technical Learning
ii) Motivational Boost
Technical Learning
The most impressive talk that I attended was:
1) Analytic Footprint’s- The session was around Big Data analytics and the key take away are:
a) How to manage data
b) selecting right kind of data
c) know when your sample size is sufficient
d) good data science
e) good technology
f) social media data can also be used for critical analysis
2) Another great session was on “Machines that learn to make difference”
Some live projects like Electronic Toll collection that aims to eliminate the delay on toll roads by collecting tolls electronically, Parking fee collection based on number plate recognition, parking space management were discussed.
3) A Poster session where engineers represented their creative innovation in their company:
• Generic server failure analysis Tool that gives frequent reason of server failure by filtering, gathering and analysis of logs
• Framework that provides visual help for installing/configuring new software
• Sentiment analysis –to analyze problem like downfall in Credit card users
Motivational Boost
1) We attended some sessions around career development topics like Discover and Build your strengths, The Career Guidance and Think Different – See Abilities where Deepa Narasimhan (President EMC) and Sushmeetha B.Bubna (Director of ASCENT Networks Pvt Ltd) shared their real life stories about how they conquered obstacles and battled social stigma due to their physical disabilities but they explored technology, tweaked them as per their requirements and made themselves to be at par with their non-disabled counterpart.
2) “Idea to Execution”- This was my favorite session. The key points I learnt are: Believe in your ideas, feedback from critics, how to influence-be simple and memorable, use right engineering approach, do not over-engineer, do personal branding, networking, collect enough data for your work etc.
Attending the conference allowed me to connect with prominent leaders in the technology field and get a better understanding of their research while sharing ideas with them. The conference really instilled a sense of togetherness among attendees, as we were able to connect with one another and share similar struggles that we go through on a regular basis.
I feel that the Grace Hopper Conference is THE platform for women in tech as it aims to empower everyone with equal opportunities and unending inspiration, by bringing together a community that is life-changing. I hope to volunteer and be a more active part of planning this conference next year!
Brief Bios:
Ritu: is a Software Engineers in Tools Engineering. In a very short span, she has proved to be a key member of the Tools Development team and was awarded the “Rising star” award recently. An enthusiast engineer, she works to develop Highly Available applications. She is an expert in developing the middleware systems used in the global enterprises…
Neha: is a Software Engineer in Content Engineering and works with the Data Science group. She works on cutting edge problems and new Analytics ideas and is responsible for building a framework to rapidly prototype them. She also works on providing quick solutions to content operation to increase their work efficiency.
This week FirstRain’s COO YY Lee gave an advanced-level class to Big Data TechCon conference attendees on how to develop and drive personalization of information experience in a Big Data world. Personalization is quickly becoming an assumed part of technology UX. These rapid advances, also affected by increased expectations set by flagship consumer apps create a need and an opportunity for enterprise software to deliver personalized experiences inside traditional applications and workflows. YY’s class covered data and analytics techniques for building user profiles, leveraging explicit and implicit factors into the process, and addressing the challenges of user behavior and expectations in order to create a highly adaptive, individualized information experience.
As part of her class, YY spoke to the fact that the application of information science techniques is core to creating a very personal mobile era user experience. She shared some of the lessons learned by the FirstRain R&D team, who are pioneers in developing and introducing our customers to an adaptive and pragmatic semantic information space model – a model that allows for the marriage of deep data science and personal business analytics. FirstRain technology understands human perspective, awareness and preferences to deliver analytics with each user in mind. YY advised what factors can be leveraged to build profiles and nuanced understanding of users including: building rationally-derived/real life characteristics; isolating real–time, structural, transient, in the moment user preferences; leveraging common personal tendencies; etc. “We are successful when a person looks at the application and thinks: Wow, this is me! This is exactly what I need to do my job today’, said YY.
She also talked about the importance of developing and applying skepticism filters to discover, for example, whether any given case ‘in-doubt’ is an opportunity for a non-linear development or if the system really got it wrong and needs to be re-educated. She also mentioned the importance of human analyst inputs in the process of building precise personalization models to further refine information and adopt it to deliver better results each time. Other methodologies in developing personalization were discussed such as correlations, pattern recognitions, network relationships, leveraging external data, etc.
During this class, YY highlighted that the best opportunity to create the user experience that says “this is about me, my job, and what I need to know at this moment” is to develop a fine balance of information space modeling and user data modeling in your apps. She wrapped up an engaging discussion by sharing her team’s advice for some simple ways to get started personalizing your data delivery:
1. Find easy ways to customize – learn and refine your work. Users often have little appetite to providing input, therefore the developer needs to carefully select their points of engagement.
2. Start with easy tricks to customize by making the UX feel personal, such as simply adding a profile picture.
3. Start with the personalization characteristics that are easy and obvious to your user and how they use your apps: what role the person is in, what place they live, etc.
4. You don’t have to start by solving really big problems
5. Moderation and balance are important in providing suggestions. Change is sometimes difficult for a user. Too many choices may be annoying. Learn the art of notification by selecting things with the right information density.
5. Minimize the mysteries to minimize risks. Explain where the content is coming from: ‘I am showing you this because of X”
6. Inject small reminders for personalizations through the whole user so that the user can be in charge.
If you are interested in having YY come to your next event to talk about driving truly personal information experiences, please contact us!
This post was written by YY Lee, FirstRain COO.
I am proud of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (@ghc) community this week for raising important issues and grappling with uncomfortable, difficult-to-solve questions.
I appreciate FirstRain’s own Penny Herscher(@pennyherscher) for putting herself out there to moderate the Male Allies Panel, despite the concerns going-in about how to constructively include that perspective. The fiery reaction to that session raised the level of engagement around deep-seated systemic equity issues in our industry in a way that would not have been achieved otherwise. And in Penny’s usual way — she engaged those issues head-on, in direct personal and online exchanges with the men & women, leadership & grassroots members of the community.
Satya Nadella’s wrong-headed comment the next morning (as he has acknowledged), underscored the complacency and problems around gender-equity issues, even among the thoughtful and well-intentioned. This forced the realization that this is not an simply an issue of perception, interpretation or over-reaction. But will require a real introspection and major change — even from colleagues and leaders who are confident they are already totally on-board and acting as allies for equity.
This was the near-perfect opportunity, timing and forum to examine the truth. It is remarkable that even given the charged emotions around this, the discussion started relatively politely, and besides excessive piling on, it remained safe — this in stark contrast to the ugly violent targeting has been simultaneously unfolding around GamerGate. Which only further highlights the reality of the technology industry’s toxic differences in how men and women are treated.
It is too bad that before Nadella’s KarmaGate comment, he stated one of my favorite quotes of the whole conference —summing up why I’ve loved doing this work, nearly every day for over two decades:
“[We work with] the most malleable of our resources, software… That’s the rich canvas that we get to shape… paint…” -Satya Nadella
He nailed it. He put his finger on that the one thing that probably links all the men and women in that event. This is a deep-thinker who understands the heart of matters, which is what made his later comment so doubly surprising and disheartening.
I am encouraged to see the after-effects like Alan Eustace trying to do things differently. And honest conversations with ABI executives about their awareness and struggle with the impossible balance of growing their reach and impact while containing the inevitable, unintended side effect of corporate co-opting.
To all of you “good guys who do care” — Satya, Alan, Mike Schroepfer, Blake Irving, Tayloe Stansbury — less patronizing talk is nice, listening is refreshing, but which of you and your companies is going to commit to results?
==> Here my question to all the “good guys” out there as well as my fellow female leaders: Who is going to set and deliver specific targets for ratios of women and minorities that reflect the real population — in technical leadership by a specific date… 2016? 2017? Who is going to hack their orgs & companies to solve this problem, rather than running feel-good, look-good “programs”?
The Grace Hopper Celebration is an inspiring, important and high-quality gathering in an industry that is littered with mediocre PR-flogging events.
“The Asian community owes a lot to the black community. They opened a lot of doors for us [in the fight for equality].” -Barb Gee
I’m not going to end this post with some rah-rah “just go get ’em girls!” trope. Because the women technologists are already out there — delivering effort, innovation and results at 120% while receiving 70%… 80%… (to be wildly optimistic) of the recognition and reward.
I will share just one final favorite conference quote, which is how this gathering makes me feel every time I attend:
“… at #GHC14… Just not enough space to desc. Wow. Much women. So much brain” -@michelesliger
It is our industry and companies that need to be fixed, not the women in it. I have to believe it is becoming increasingly obvious to our leaders, managers and co-workers that under-valuing this incredibly intellectual resource is idiotic, bad business, and just plain wrong.
- YY Lee (@thisisyy), COO of FirstRain
Dreamforce is less than a month away, so if you’re going we can only assume you’ve been busy planning your trip to San Francisco. With all the preparation necessary just for the conference itself, having to find time to plan for all the little details of traveling into a foreign city can be overwhelming.
We want to make sure you have the best possible experience at Dreamforce and that the inconveniences of travel don’t spoil your time there, so we’ve put together an infographic with tips and tricks to make your Dreamforce not only survivable, but the best it can be! From the little things you may forget to bring to tips on where to grab some food and drinks, we’ve got you covered.
If you are going to Dreamforce this year, you may already know, the Dreamforce Agenda builder will be going live tomorrow, so it’s time to start getting ready to make your session selections!
Learn More about FirstRain Dreamforce 2014 Activities here Still not registered? Use our promo code EC14FRSTRN for a $100 discount!
Tips: Getting Into the Sessions I Want
Plan. Plan. Plan.
This year registering for sessions at Dreamforce will be a bit different, as only 50% of the available seats will be open for pre-registration. The others will be on a first come first serve basis. So if there are sessions that you must get into:
1. Make a list of the sessions you are interested in so you can quickly find them when the agenda builder opens up.
2. Create a calendar with all your personal travel, scheduled meetings and networking events. Have an overview of this and all other main events and conference timelines available for when you start selecting your sessions. Use this handy guide that we have put together to get started!
3. Do not stress out if a session fills up! Check back every day or so- attendees switch sessions all the time. Push comes to shove, you can go wait in line right before the session starts!
Schedule Time for Expo Hall
The Cloud Expos are the best way to get the most out of Salesforce products and solutions. Make sure you schedule some time to make your way to the Salesforce Campground to get your hands on all the Salesforce products and solutions.
FirstRain is a Silver Partner again this year and we look forward to meeting you. We will be in Moscone North Booth 2128 and have a lot of fun activities planned, so come on by to get a demo, visit our Drink Serving Robot and meet the FirstRain Team!
Attend our FirstRain Sessions!
There are over 1,100 sessions currently available to pick from! Join our sessions and learn why FirstRain salesforce.com solutions are used by some of the world’s largest Salesforce customers.
GE Capital: Driving More Sales Opportunities with Personal Business Analytics
Date & Location: Monday October 13th 12:00pm-12:40pm, Club Room, Marriott Marquis
JDSU: Drive Salesforce Adoption and Custom Engagement with Just In Time Analytics
Date & Location: Wednesday October 15th – 3-3:40pm, Yerba Buena, Salon 10-11-12
Flextronics: Increasing Customer Value and Sales Productivity
Date & Location: Wednesday October 15th 4:30pm-5:10pm, Century Theater 7
Want to learn more about FirstRain? Meet with us at Dreamforce!
Overloaded 2014 has come and gone, and our presentation about role-based information overload was a great success!
Nima Niakan, Executive Fellow and Faith Chiang, Director of UX at FirstRain spoke about how context affects information architecture. People process information differently—we process it given the situation we are in and the task we are trying to accomplish. It’s not the amount of information that’s the problem, then, but the form in which it’s presented to the user. It’s critical to personalize what sort of information to deliver, and how to deliver it, to each business role—because role, device, origin and situation are the difference between information overload and information paradise.
For most sales and marketing professionals, there is too much content on the Web to be able to efficiently find useful, relevant business intelligence. Being able to find what you need to know, and knowing why you need it, are essential to do your job better. But in today’s world, it’s a problem of noise. And we at FirstRain are solving information overload every day with our personal business analytics solutions.
Watch the video below to see the whole talk!
The FirstRain team had a very successful and productive day at the Salesforce1 Tour’s Dallas Stop. Besides announcing Personal Business Analytics for Salesforce1, the expo floor was lively and the FirstRain staff was busy all day giving demos and talking to attendees—not to mention that we got lots of compliments on our booth! Even SaaSy stopped by.
It wasn’t all work for our team, though. They were able to get a real taste of Texas at a pit-style BBQ joint, complete with live country music. Then, after the Salesforce1 event, they had great appetizers, drinks and conversation at the FirstRain happy hour. All in all, it was a great trip for FirstRain. We loved mingling with other ISV partners & looks forward to seeing them at other events… and at Dreamforce in October.
