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.
This week’s Smart Selling Tools newsletter, recommends FirstRain as its “Tool of the Week” calling FirstRain “a personal sales assistant for each rep prompting customer engagement that’s personalized to how and what you sell”. Smart Selling Tools is a resource site and newsletter for B2B buyers to discover Sales and Marketing software that helps companies grow revenue.
You can read the newsletter to see why Nancy Nardin, a nationally recognized thought leader on sales and marketing productivity tools, chose FirstRain to be one of the year’s top 40 sales tools of 2014 as well as this week’s recommended tool and then head over to the Smart Selling Yahoo video channel to listen to Nancy explain why in her Tool Skool video.
Understanding customers and markets has become one of the most effective ways to empower business professionals to be more engaged and productive. Unfortunately, either building or integrating with noisy content solutions creates apps that users quickly disengage with. That is why we are pleased to announce our newest product, FirstRain API.
FirstRain Personal Business Analytics™ has become the most effective tool in the decision making process among business professionals. With FirstRain API, it is now easy to deliver just-in-time analytics, designed to increase customer engagement and grow revenue, within your own enterprise mobile, e-tablet and web applications.
FirstRain API now provides enterprise developers with real-time data-level and/or application access to our powerful proprietary business graph – generated using big data analytics across millions of sources, documents and social media from across the global web. The FirstRain business graph extracts the deep, interconnected relationships between companies, businesses and markets.
With FirstRain API, your users can see and engage with their own personal and predictive analytics profile across all channels and access points that you develop. With FirstRain, you can advise your users on key developments deep in their customers that can drive growth or identify risk, all through a very personal lens and information experience.
You can read the full Press Release Here.
Interested in setting up time with one of our Sales Engineers to learn more? Drop us a line !
We are happy to announce the beta launch of mobile calendar integration for FirstRain! To help our users be as prepared as possible for every meeting, our algorithms will prioritize the most important customer insights, delivering a different personal insight experience tailored to each user and their role prior to any calendar event.
We’re excited to empower our customers with the mobile calendar integration by helping them increase the quality and frequency of customer engagement, guide activities to drive more opportunities and reduce risk through real-time understanding of customer and market events.
In conjunction to the calendar integration, we’re also introducing the FirstRain Labs program to accelerate innovation between FirstRain and our users. We always want to make sure that the personal insights and the functionality of our solutions help and empower our users as much as possible—and what better way to understand that than from the users themselves?
FirstRain Labs will grant participants beta access to capabilities that are currently being researched and developed, as well as to focus groups where they can share ideas with the FirstRain R&D team and the larger user community. We’re actively recruiting lab participants—sign up here!
We are excited to announce that we’re continuing the momentum from the beginning of the year and are finishing Q2 on a high note by winning 2 awards this month!
FirstRain Customer Insights has just won the DataWeek + API World 2014 award for Most Innovative Customer Intelligence Solution.
Customer Insights was selected by crowd vote, where thousands of people voted on the top Data + API technologies of 2014.
As DataWeek + API World awards recipients, our team will be attending and participating in this year’s conference & expo. We’re offering 50 free OPEN passes (for the Expo, Keynotes, and Open Talks) to our community. Register here to get your pass!
https://dataweek14.eventbrite.com/?discount=dw14-award-guest
We were also named a finalist in the 2014 Stratus Awards. The Business Intelligence Group today announced the 2014 winners of the Stratus Awards. The inaugural industry awards competition recognizes those companies innovating in the Cloud and providing innovative offerings that are truly differentiated in the market.
We work hard to provide the most relevant, personal customer insights to our users to help them meet and exceed their own revenue and customer goals. These awards denote the importance of personal business analytics in today’s world and validate the hard work we put in every day for our customers!
When respected industry peers highlight our company and our products, it’s incredibly special for us. So, we are extremely happy that we have been selected by Matt Heinz, founder of Heinz Marketing, as “Matt’s App of the Week.”
Matt selected FirstRain because, as he said, “Even with the proliferation of information available online, getting it all together and keeping it updated has often been a hassle… That’s where FirstRain really shines. You tell them what companies you’re targeting, including the type of engagement or business relationship you’re interested in. They then filter the entire Web for information about the company and specifically related to your focus areas, and share it for you in one easy-to-use Web interface.”
Matt has been using FirstRain and says it is a “huge time saver—and I’ve found it a source of intelligence I’m sure I wouldn’t have found anywhere else.”
Thanks again to Matt for making FirstRain this week’s App of the Week!
Read Matt’s entire post here and follow Matt Heinz on twitter @heinzmarketing.
Salesforce is taking its Salesforce1 platform on tour—and FirstRain will be sponsoring their Dallas event! Attendees will be able to experience the power of the Customer Platform and see how to connect anything to everything: apps, devices and customer data. See how to deliver apps designed for the new hyper-connected world of customers that increase productivity and competitiveness, as well as learn firsthand from industry-leading customers how to sell, service and market like never before.
Will you be attending? Connect with @FirstRain on Twitter using the official event hashtag: #Salesforce1Tour
We would also love to meet you and show you how FirstRain is helping Salesforce customers like GE, Cisco and Flextronics grow revenue and drive better customer engagement. Stop by our booth to learn how market leaders leverage FirstRain’s mobile platform solutions to create sales organizations that consistently meet their revenue goals. Schedule a meeting with us!
FirstRain today released its third generation of mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, and a brand new app for Windows 8 phones. The apps now include social sharing, analytics and configuration integrated within the Personal Business Analytics mobile experience. These new upgrades mean that users can continue to see developments deep in their customer’s businesses and take the right actions to grow their revenue.
Mobile is now more important than ever to the executive agenda, but it’s important to do it right. Our app has already proven to be a hit with our customers; Todd Keiner, the managing director for strategic marketing at Pfizer, said, “FirstRain is my go-to mobile app, unlike many other general consumer apps, it provides a very personalized view of my markets and customers enabling my team to understand where opportunities exists that can provide mutual business value, even when I am out of the office.”
In order to continue to deliver an exceptional user experience and help our users see better productivity and more revenue, we have rolled out the following enhancements:
For more information, you can read the full press release here.
This article by Penny Herscher was posted this morning on the salesforce.com blog. See the original here.
A recent David Williams Forbes article, Why You Should Fill Your Company With Athletes, highlighted seven traits to look for when hiring. David didn’t mean that you should hire only real athletes, but rather, try to hire employees that have “athlete traits that make any individual an exceptional hire.” With the winter games off to an exciting start, and many of our own fiscal years starting up, sales teams are looking to be fast out of the gate. There are many lessons sales teams learn from the best winter athletes in the world.
What traits do athletes have that can translate to sales? Quite a few, actually. Athletes, especially Olympic-caliber ones, are very driven. They know that they have to put in the work at practice to see results in the games—and sometimes that means practices every day, or twice a day. Moreover, they have a never-say-die attitude, and they know how to work through adversity to see results. Managers should try to find salespeople who put in the time and work to prepare for client meetings. Chances are, they’ll be more successful.
The best athletes focus on the smallest aspects of their sport. They know, for instance, that anything that isn’t streamlined during the ski jump can subtract precious tenths of a meter. They have impeccable timing, whether it’s changing positions mid-air, or releasing the puck. And world-class curlers know exactly how much force to put behind the stone. Salespeople have to show the same attention to detail in their accounts. To be truly successful, they should strive to be intimately acquainted with every aspect of their accounts. The smallest event, or hint of an emerging trend, can be the key to making or losing the sale.
Lastly, the best athletes have the best equipment available. In fact, they need the top-of-the-line gear so they don’t fall behind their competition. Even if one person is an inherently better athlete than another, a slight edge in aerodynamics can mean the difference between the gold medal and 10th place.
Of course, the same is true in sales. How can you expect your salespeople to be the best and achieve world-class results if you don’t equip them with good tools—or any tools at all? In order to succeed, they need to be able to have a deep view of their clients’ business and markets. They need to be given the opportunity to react to a management change, or a market shift, and if they have to sift through all of the noise that’s on the Web, there’s a good chance they’ll miss it, or never get to it at all.
As a hiring manager, you need to look for salespeople who are driven and dedicated, but are also creative, detail-oriented, and have finesse. Once you’ve assembled your team, you have a responsibility as a manager to give them the tools they need to be successful. The right people will use the right tools wisely and move the needle for your business.
What can each of the winter sports teach your sales team? Check out the infographic below to find out!
