It was 2008 when Airbnb caused an industry-wide double take. Suddenly, technology was disrupting how and where people were booking hotels. Hotel companies navigated the change – by targeting business travelers, redesigning loyalty programs, and, for some, partnering with Airbnb. In a true “if you can’t beat them, join them” move, small hotels list their rooms on Airbnb for a lower reservation fee than traditional hotel listing services. In return, some hotels provide check-in services and amenities for certain Airbnb properties. Now, hospitality companies aren’t taking any chances that technology could disrupt practices beyond bookings. To avoid being surprised again, hospitality companies are incorporating technology on their own and in response to “nearly two-thirds of U.S. guests stating it was “very or extremely important” for hotels to continue investing in technology to enhance the guest experience.” These hospitality technologies range through the top tech trends of the moment.
Not unlike Airbnb, hotel companies are discovering the advantages of a new, mobile-first society, as depicted in StayNTouch’s ebook, How Mobile Technology Will Generate More Revenue for Your Hotel. Many hotel companies apply a hospitality technology, cloud Property Management Systems (PMS) solutions, to automatically offer room upgrades, promote amenities, and provide greater services like early and late check in and out options. This same solution can gather customer knowledge in real-time on arrival time and guest preferences to best manage housekeeping and customer service. The interconnected processes ultimately improve room turnover along with brand loyalty.
Hospitality Technology image from Cruise CriticLet’s look at three transformative technologies that the hospitality industry is jumping on: wearables, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
Following top tech trends, hospitality companies are introducing wearable technology into their offerings. Most commonly, these high technology hospitality companies turn to smart watches that can deliver dynamic guest details in real-time including dining preferences, food allergies, and spending histories. Royal Caribbean Cruises offers smartbands on certain high-end ships that act as room keys, wireless payment methods, and tickets. In response, Carnival Cruises introduced a credit card-connected Ocean Medallion, able to be worn in multiple ways including like a watch as pictured above, that will offer similar capabilities to Royal’s watches but will also power a future, ship-wide gambling platform. The hospitality technology that is the Ocean Medallion utilizes an IoT network of sensors and computing devices along with NFC and Bluetooth communication capabilities throughout the ships and ports. The Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management stated that, “wearable devices will transform consumers from tourists to explorers.” From the company side, wearable devices provide data and access to customers that enhance offerings to stay competitive in new ways.
“Leading hotel companies are … leveraging advances in data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to increase online reservations, improve the return on advertising spend (ROAS), better understand guest preferences, and build stronger customer relationships,” according to global analyst firm EY
In terms of artificial intelligence, Ivy from Go Moment is an IBM Watson-driven system designed to handle guest requests. The cognitive technology can interpret questions to fulfill requests and converse with you by phone. Other AIs take a more dramatic, tangible form in robots. Also powered by IBM Watson, Hilton introduced Connie the concierge in one of their Virginia hotels last year. Connie informs guests on local attractions, hotel features, amenities, and can make recommendations for dining and activities.
77% of U.S. consumers are interested in virtual reality (VR) equipment right now, as reported by the Consumer Technology Association. The hotel industry is quickly taking this into account and working to incorporate VR as a hospitality technology. Marriot Hotels & Resorts collaborated with Samsung in 2015 for a virtual reality hotel room experience offering titled VRoom Service that received a headset and headphones. Best Western Hotels & Resorts leveraged a VR experience that allows guests to immerse themselves in the hotels before their stay.
Ultimately, these heightened experiences through technology enable hospitality companies to charge higher prices, create up-sell opportunities at each point of the customers’ journey, and stay ahead of the next potential disruption, all the while delighting their customers.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
Few things indicate an industrial revolution better than a controversial topic that ironically becomes a unifying factor. The biggest, boldest, headlines shout that 3 in 4 Americans are afraid to drive in an autonomous car, Uber and the DMV are head to head, and the autonomous car industry has the potential to eliminate jobs in up to 128 industries. However, other headlines have written a different story. From companies to technology to cars themselves, the Autonomous Car market is driving us all into a new, collaborative future.
Considered an initial stretch on the roadway to fully autonomous cars, V2V technology, vehicle-to-vehicle, is a wireless network enabling cars to converse with each other. At the next level, the technology would extend to V2I, vehicle-to-infrastructure, enabling cars and say, stoplights, to communicate as well. Consider a future city that is completely connected, from autonomous cars to smart buildings.
Collaboration is not just in the future. Even now, auto manufacturers and car service companies are establishing surprising relationships in order to win this grounded version of the “race to space”. Industry giant General Motors has reached out to carpool service application, Lyft, to test self-driving taxis. Alphabet, Google parent and Autonomous Car technology leader, may now be an Autonomous Car social leader as well in its car project, Waymo. The company already paired with Chrysler Pacifica minivans and is now in talks with Honda on accommodating Waymo’s self-driving technology in an upcoming model – a significant change from Google’s small, bubble cars I pass on our Bay Area roads. In a recent development, Audi and Nvidia have united over autonomous cars.
Those large companies seeking committed relationships, are resulting in start-up acquisitions at every turn:
Why do Autonomous Cars drive such cooperation? Maybe it is the cars’ origin – a unique world of technological cooperation. Founder of Comma.ai and iPhone unlocking, 26-year old George Hotz, has published open-source software and hardware driving agents in an effort to “become the Android of self-driving cars”. Consistent with this approach, Linux has devoted a foundation project to the mission of “creating open source software solutions for automotive applications.” The project, Automotive Grade Linux, or simply AGL, recently released the most advanced version of its platform yet. The AGL community is made up of nearly 90 companies with an impressive roster of Ford, Honda, Toyota, and more.
“This unprecedented level of collaboration is a clear indication that the automotive industry is adopting an open source development methodology that is resulting in faster innovation with more frequent software releases and new features.”
Dan Cauchy
Executive Director, Automotive Grade Linux
Maybe you’re not a fan of jumping on bandwagons. But with expectations of 21 million autonomous vehicles sold globally by 2035, it might be time for all of us to take a seat in any wagon pulled by the Autonomous Car.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
Each social network has its own persona. We have the style icon, all looks, in Instagram and the hotheaded, no-filter urbanite that is Twitter. Then, there’s the socialite, Facebook, and the professional, LinkedIn – both who seem to be undergoing respective identity crises.
Traditionally a sharing point for family and friends, Facebook is crossing into professional realms. TechCrunch recently shared Facebook’s announcement that it is testing out job features. The idea is to give businesses the ability to promote job listings from their company Facebook pages. These recruitment features include job post creation, posting, and even the ability to receive applications. Similar to applying directly through LinkedIn, Facebook is considering a prepopulated format when applying through the network.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has tested LinkedIn-esque features. Last year, Facebook tested out “Profile Tags” that showcased a user’s interests, skills, and personality. Sound familiar? Take a peek at your LinkedIn endorsements.
LinkedIn users seem to be favoring the social aspect of the professional social network. My colleague finds about every third LinkedIn update on her feed to be more personal than professional. However, it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s driving this behavior.
A confusion of what is “work related” is possibly to blame for the increasing clutter on our LinkedIn feeds. For example, the included quote was pulled from a lengthy LinkedIn post.
The quote was accompanied by a big, smiling, “selfie.” Though work and career are essential themes to the post, the emotional description and personal image reflect Facebook’s intimate reputation more than that of the professional networking psyche originally associated with LinkedIn.
The pseudo-work related post formula has spread like wildfire across LinkedIn. Always, a personal photograph follows the assertion. Another “selfie” shot I came across this morning was captioned, “Ready for my first interview!” I can’t image any interviewer not checking the LinkedIn profile of candidates before meeting.
Alongside the emotional, personal posts popping up throughout your updates are the political statements. Statements an employee wouldn’t dare utter in the office are suddenly posted for every co-worker to see in dark gray Source Sans font.
Rather than these posts being overlooked, LinkedIn users can’t resist the bait. Each political post is accompanied by Tweet-worthy replies from every part of the political spectrum. Even posts without political themes are subject to these users.
There’s no confusion of these being unrelated to work (unless one’s industry is, in fact, politics) so what’s driving users to share these on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn may be, accidentally or not, encouraging unprofessional behavior. Just as Facebook has begun to mimic LinkedIn, LinkedIn is mimicking other social networks, especially those heavy on the social. Earlier this year, LinkedIn began developing its own version of Facebook’s “Instant Articles”.
Nowadays anyone can “publish an article” to LinkedIn’s “news” in the same style used by any unprofessional blogging platform including the micro-blogging network Tumblr, with its neo-new wave, post-punk persona. After publishing a blog an article, it will be conveniently placed into the view of their connections via LinkedIn’s “Recommended Reads” emails’ “Published by your network” section. If you play the game right, as outlined here by this highly-shared author, LinkedIn Editors will push your news to the featured #dailyrundowns. Though curated by the human hand, the Daily Rundown sometimes consolidates trends across all interests, creating one noisy summary. Take a look at the below headline on death.
In a world of information overload, the last thing we need is a noisy, one-stop shop. From retail to news to TV channels, our society is demanding filtered, specific access points to what we consume. If LinkedIn loses its sense of self, we lose a productive, professional networking tool and the relevant-information sharing possibilities it offers. On the flip side, if Facebook loses its carefree persona, I may have to limit the number of cat photos I post.
Still not sure the lines are being blurred? Check out this comment made on LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s recent update:
Across the globe, big data and IoT are revolutionizing Conservation efforts.
A concept first named in 1985, the Internet of Things (IoT) is undergoing a modern revival thanks to advances in big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. As consumers rush towards the benefits of wearable technology and smart house applications, a handful of revolutionary thinkers are applying the technology to benefitting our earth.
Smart Cities
30% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 came from electricity and heat production. In reaction, cities are incorporating climate change, resilience, and sustainability goals into their smart city aspirations. By 2020, half of all smart city objectives will include these concerns, as reported by @Gartner. Part of the smart city movement, Atlanta, Georgia has already begun incorporating sustainability into its city grid.
A smart cities innovator, Ingenu recently announced an Atlanta project. The Atlanta Machine Network intends, as stated by Peter Murray of @Dense Networks, to connect and monitor “everything from street lighting, traffic signals and parking” in an effort to reduce energy and water usage city-wide.
Conservation of Marine Mammals
Marine residents of the Indo-West Pacific waters, dugongs are threatened by “local fishing, destruction of habitat and illegal hunting” rendering them vulnerable for extinction. To help, IoT cloud provider, @Kii, has been supporting @Smart Earth Networks (SEN) and @Community Centered Conservation (C3) in a “citizen science” conservation project in the Busuanga region of the Philippines. The project equipped fishermen with basic smartphones, provided by local company @Cherry Mobile, enabling them to take photos when they spot the vulnerable marine mammals. Photos are uploaded via SEN’s app to Kii’s cloud, indicating dugong location through GPS. This allows C3 to map and evaluate the local dugong population for future, actionable, protection recommendations.
Close relatives of the dugong, manatees are also at risk. A project started in November, applies AI technology to manatee conservation efforts. Owned by @Google, AI protocol @TensorFlow is being taught with the aid of machine learning to spot manatees in aerial drone-produced photos. The ability would save hours of researchers’ time and lead to quicker, more frequent conservation efforts.
Anti-Poaching Efforts
Most threatened species, including the manatees and dugongs, lose a large number to poaching. AI platform, @Avata, is being applied to anti-poaching efforts in Uganda. AI learns poacher behavior and how to arrange effective security patrols so wildlife rangers can stay a step ahead of poachers.
Self-Awareness
Though IoT, AI, and big data are becoming extraordinary tools for environmental efforts, they are innately part of the problem. In the U.S. alone, data center electricity consumption is expected to reach an annual 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020, equivalent to an annual 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution. Fortunately, many of these companies are working towards self-improvement.
For example, with data centers accounting for 6.9% of all energy consumption in Singapore, active data companies are applying environmentally friendly practices:
In America, @GE and @Intel combined their respective offerings, Predix and gateway technologies, to create intelligent lighting – a networked lighting system that aims to improve efficiency. Each have applied the system to their own infrastructures including GE’s factory, Intel’s Arizona plant, and, soon, at Intel HQ in Santa Clara.
The Market
Through IoT, it is thought that information technologies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions globally by 20%. With major companies entering the IoT market, the percentage may be even greater. From telecommunications companies like Verizon to platform providers like Salesforce to IBM, companies across the board are making moves into IoT.*
*Entry moves provided by FirstRain market analytics
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
You’ve heard about the recent cyber attacks. Everyone has. Now, everyone is questioning his or her own cyber security status. Take a look at today’s trending business Cyber Security terms, provided by FirstRain.
As we think over what we can do to make ourselves more secure, vendors in the space are thinking about market opportunities. Playing on current consumer awareness, Aerohive Networks announced their new solution that they claim could have prevented the recent events. Even start-ups are getting noticed by addressing the trend. Circle, a mobile payment application, was quick to reassure consumers on the safety of mobile commerce.
More than just an awareness opportunity, top companies are tackling major business opportunities in the industry, as indicated by FirstRain’s exploration map below. IBM’s recent news release announced that their security division is releasing a cyber security offering to protect banking customers. With finance being the main concern, Visa and Intel announced a collaboration agreement to create better payment security for connected devices, ranging from personal computers to wearable technologies. The companies assign the rising Cyber Security opportunities to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Echoing this, Microsoft plans to release a security program for its own IoT service, Azure.
Other signs that the Cyber Security Industry is the hot market of the moment include the spike in acquisitions made by major corporations of cyber security companies. Recently, Samsung Electronics announced it will be acquiring start-up enterprise software company, Tachyon Mobility to “build up their cyber security businesses with acquisitions.”
With Cyber Security heating up, this might lead to the security breakthrough, so to speak, that we need. Author and CIO, Tim Elkins states that “security isn’t an IT problem; it’s a business problem.” If so, IT might just start to receive the attention, budget, and opportunity to transform the industry. However, regardless if you are a vendor or a buyer, in tech or retail, following movements in Cyber Security is essential to business success. In other words, always be prepared because it just makes good sense.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
Digital business has made a once linear marketplace, fast-paced and in constant change, making it difficult for stagnant leadership mindsets to remain competitive. Successful business tactics that worked in the past, will leave you in the dust today. To optimize a business strategy, one must be able to adapt quickly to change, and be aware of risks, opportunities, market changes and trends. Enterprises must demonstrate agility to strive in the current marketplace by balancing essential leadership roles throughout the C-Suite.
Letting go of past behaviors is difficult, but with digital business dictating the customer market, enterprise leaders have to “let it go.” Gartner’s recent research report “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business” forms the argument that C-Suite level executives must learn to adapt to new digital business, as new technologies are constantly disrupting industries and more and more companies become marginalized. The article warns leaders that using “mature” business practices will cause enterprises to miss out breakthrough opportunities.
Adapting to change is not easy, and rather than changing your leadership team, teams should instead self-assess, find strong traits, acknowledge weaknesses and promote to fill in the voids to create a rock-star, digitally-ready, executive team. As Gartner points out in this research, management behaviors should be complementary of one another, and these six personas will help fill in the gaps:
In this research, Gartner makes a strong argument that by re-mastering leadership styles, with these six personas, your enterprise will be fit for the modern day challenges of digital business. Business competition and practices, specifically within the C-suite, have changed in the past five years forcing leaders, executives and VPs to readjust. People need to adapt to digital business no matter how successful previous tactics were. Fill in leadership gaps with a digital-business-ready executive team!
To read the full Gartner report you can register for free here: “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business”
To read additional posts on FirstRain buyer Personas:
It’s a new year and everyone is looking for digital trends that will optimize business strategy this year. We trust that things are already in full swing your business initiatives and we want to recap on our favorites brought to you from our friends at Altimeter.
CEO, Charlene Li, thinks, “Agile customization of experiences becomes a priority” in 2016, and we could not agree more.
Industry Analyst, Ed Terpening, acknowledges a rising complexity in the digital ecosystem.
Today’s business world is not static and your digital strategies must address not only volume of data but recency based on the specific role and need of the ‘consumer’ of that data. That is why our FirstRain Business Web Graph continually scans the structure of the living Web and the topics, triggers and business lines continually change over time, evolving and expanding based on system input and customer feedback.
FirstRain is an enterprise leader in providing a competitive analysis of target market analysis that will help optimize your business strategy this year.
Feel free to contact us for a free demo, and show you how actionable insights can empower your digital strategy this year.
You saw Lightning. You heard Thunder. Did you discover FirstRain?
For our fifth year running, the FirstRain team was a force to be reckoned with at Dreamforce, with the mission of sharing FirstRain’s brand new product release, a powerful analytics platform called Orion.
Marching through the crowd, our astronaut met and took pictures with many conference attendees and was even featured on KPIX Channel 5 news.
As a part of our Discover FirstRain initiatives, we held Exploration Sessions where executives toured our platform and learned how to use FirstRain to tap into their customer’s world through real-time analytics of their markets, competitors, critical events and developments in key sectors and product lines.
The attendees had a chance to preview our newest families of analytics that create even richer business insights, a newly designed user interface that allows to both get a bird-eye view of the industries and markets that the sales rep sells into, and do a deep-dives into topics and markets that help them make smarter decisions.
In good Dreamforce spirit, of course we had to raffle off something. Sorry, it wasn’t a Tesla Model X—maybe next year. But Jessie, who attended one of our Exploration Sessions, won a GoPro, courtesy of the FirstRain marketing team. Congratulations Jessie! We are looking forward to collaborating with you in the future. Send us some videos of your adventures with it!
FirstRain is proud to be on the forefront of today’s business analytics technology platform and enrich the Salesforce experience right inside CRM workflows. While Salesforce helps you manage leads, pipeline and forecasts, FirstRain provides personalized high precision insights on your accounts, end markets and competitors. The custom analytics are flexible, manageable, extensible and easy to understand and act upon. Our technology brings together dynamic categorization of the global enterprise data sources including web and social that are highly relevant to each user and augmented with real-time scoring and ranking across all sales rep’s accounts.
Interested?
Visit us on the Salesforce AppExchange or Contact Us for a demo.
Today, we have Big Data and dynamic, sophisticated visualizations to help our businesses bloom with insight into predictive analytics that identify risks, specific market trends, and relationships. How did the business world unfold and understand information before the use of big data? The remarkable tools used before big data evolved may not be receiving enough credit. These tools incorporated logic, intuition and most of all great minds. Of course, where we are today propels far beyond the expectations of the scientist before our time.
Before the evolution of big data, scientists relied on data visualization in order to present data and information. Data visualizations ranged from wood blocks, to images, to tables and charts. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers gained tremendous insight and changed the world simply by organizing and deciphering basic data sets in new ways.
Edward Tufte, a statistician and artist, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University, wrote, designed, and self-published 4 classic books on data visualization. The New York Times described ET as the “Leonardo da Vinci of data,” and Business Week as the “Galileo of graphics.” ET teaches a one-day course on Fundamental design strategies for all information displays: sentences, tables, diagrams, maps, charts, images, video, data visualizations, and randomized displays for making graphical statistical inferences. Gaining knowledge of the past critically influences the future.
Read More here.
FirstRain is proud to be named a finalist for “New Product of the Year – Business Intelligence Solution” as part of the Annual American Business Awards for our recently released Personal Business Analytics for CRM solution!
Our submission highlighted the “unique way that FirstRain ranks top accounts by the quality of triggers that are dynamically discovered based on a user’s role, and the products and services they sell. And how using an adaptive business graph that delivers unmatched categorization and precision, and in-the-moment, context-aware personalization, FirstRain can coach sales teams by alerting them of “Deal Breakers” and ”Accelerators” – which include real-time triggered events on potential risks in active Salesforce.com sales opportunities, or real-world events that will help accelerate sales discussions.”
As a result of our nomination, we are included in voting for the People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products.
Voting is open, and the winners will be honored at The American Business Awards’ new product & tech awards banquet in San Francisco in September 2015.
TO VOTE, PLEASE GO TO:
Short Code: W496Y
