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.
IDC’s Private Vendor Watchlist Profiles provide detailed data and analysis on emerging technology vendors, markets, and deals. If you are not familiar with IDC’s Private Vendor Watch Service it is “designed by financial and strategic investors to address a gap in the marketplace for accurate information and expert guidance on smaller, private tech vendors before they hit the public radar”.
FirstRain is proud to have been selected to be profiled and highlighted as being at the forefront of a rapidly emerging and evolving market that IDC calls “value-added content”. The report, highlights FirstRain in the business analytics and value-added content markets, and reviews key success factors: market potential, products and services, competitive edge, corporate strategy, and customers.
You can download a complimentary copy and if you are interested in learning more please get in touch with us.
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.
FirstRain is proud to have been recommended as an Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Vendor to Watch. EMA “Vendors to Watch” are companies that deliver unique customer value by solving problems that had previously gone unaddressed or that provide value in innovative ways. The designation rewards vendors that “dare to go off the beaten path” [one of our favorite things to do!] and have defined their own market niches.
FirstRain was recognized based on our advanced data science, smart content acquisition, and information space modeling that drives personalization for every business professional at hundreds of global Fortune 1000 companies. As part of this endorsement, FirstRain was evaluated on our ability to provide accurate and meaningful insights to customer facing teams in real-time, reducing risks through instant understanding of customer and market events. FirstRain was proven to advance both the quality and frequency of customer engagement as well as guide activity that drives growth and opportunity.
Download the copy of this EMA report here
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’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.
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
Our headquarters has an open floor layout with no executive offices, so you will often see our CEO Penny Herscher sitting at a different desk depending on who and what she is working on. However this weekend the New York Times ‘Corner Office’ was reserved for her!
Each week, New York Times journalist Adam Bryant talks with top executives about the challenges of leading and managing in his Sunday column “The Corner Office”. This week his column highlighted some of Penny’s core leadership principles. The interview covers the reality of being a first time CEO, what good mentors bring to the table, how to hire, and even how parenting skills are transferrable to being a CEO. And yes, in case you were wondering, Penny’s drive is an unmatched source of energy for all of us at FirstRain!
Click to read the full New York Time Corner Office column Penny Herscher of FirstRain: What Parents Can Teach a CEO.
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.
