MarTech News: Round-Up 28/04/22

This Week in Martech: 💰 Observe.AI Raises $125M ✍️ ON24 Acquires VIBBIO ✍️ Elon Musk Acquires Twitter 💰 Strivr Lands $35M for VR Training ⚙️ ActionIQ Releases B2B Customer Experience Scorecard ⚙️ Device42 Reveals Insights+ Platform 👥 FORM Announces Partnership with Customer Impact ✍️ Assembly Acquires PipeCandy 👥 Five9 and Deloitte Canada Team Up

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Observe.AI Raises $125M

Observe.ai, a company which provides natural language tools to track voice and text conversations, has raised a $125M series C in order to build out its tech and move into new markets. 

The company said in March that ARR was up 150%, with customer interactions analysed by its AI up 3x, and a 426% increase in AI-powered agent evaluations, with a 201% increase in AI-powered agent coaching sessions. 

This brings the total money raised to date to $213M.

ON24 Acquires VIBBIO

Digital experience platform ON24, has acquired VIBBIO, a cloud video software company. 

"With the VIBBIO technology integrated across the ON24 Platform, every salesperson and marketer will be able to produce video content that creates more engagement, generates first-party data, and drives personalisation," said the company in a press release. 

“We’re excited to welcome the talented VIBBIO team to ON24,” said Sharat Sharan, founder and CEO at ON24.

“We continue to invest in building the most powerful sales and marketing platform to engage audiences in new ways and deliver greater insights across the buyer journey. VIBBIO will put video content creation in the hands of every salesperson and marketer to extend the life of their ON24 digital experiences and connect with audiences in multiple digital channels.”

Elon Musk Acquires Twitter

Elon Musk has struck a deal to acquire Twitter for $44bn (£34.5bn), with the aim of unlocking its 'enormous potential'. 

As we reported at the beginning of April, Musk initially acquired a 9% stake in Twitter, which has turned out to have been the opening move in the billionaire's plan to acquire the social platform. Since then, events have moved at a remarkable pace.

"The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty and financing,” said Bret Taylor, Twitter's independent board chair, in a statement.

“The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders."

Device42 Reveals Insights+ Platform

Device42 has announced its new Insights+ Platform, which has been designed to help companies gain the IT visibility needed to manage complex IT environments. 

The platform's features include Artificial Intelligence, data normalisation, business building blocks, and Application Dependency Mapping. 

Strivr Lands $35M for VR Training

Virtual Reality training solutions provider Strivr has announced a funding round totalling $35M. This increases last month's Series B funding round valued at $30M. 

The CEO of Strivr, Derek Belch, said in a statement that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had “confined many workers to their homes” and forced companies to lay off or furlough their workforces.

Explaining further, he said, “This served as the catalyst for people to re-evaluate their goals and careers, which combined with burnout, a desire for more pay, and a lack of advancement opportunities resulted in a record number of workers quitting voluntarily. The needs of employees have changed, and companies must adapt”

ActionIQ Releases B2B Customer Experience Scorecard

ActionIQ, a Customer Data Platform, has made its CX IQ Scorecard for the B2B industry available. This is a self-service tool solution that allows B2B brands to benchmark their customer experience performance against their industry peers and customer preferences. 

"While companies today realise the importance of CX to their growth and bottom line, we find they're often at a loss as to which CX characteristics they should prioritize and invest in," said Tamara Gruzbarg, Vice President of Strategic Services, ActionIQ.

"The CX IQ Scorecard answers that question - it gives a B2B Technology company a roadmap on how to increase their CX maturity, and how to do that based on what's most important to their customers."

FORM Announces Partnership with Customer Impact

A field execution platform for teams, FORM, has announced its partnership with Customer Impact. This partnership is being led by Matt Holland, VP and Head of Partnerships at FORM. 

Customer Impact deploys retail specialists to complete market execution tasks for brands and retailers on a project basis. Customer Impact will use FORM MarketX to assign and complete custom merchandising and fulfilment projects

Assembly Acquires PipeCandy

DaaS (data-as-a-service) startup PipeCandy has been acquired by Assembly, an ecommerce software company, for an undisclosed amount. 

This acquisition aims to help assembly offer data sets on DTC eCommerce brands. 

Five9 and Deloitte Canada Team Up

Five9, a provider of an intelligent cloud contact centre, has announced an enhanced strategic agreement with Deloitte Canada, an independent firm under the Deloitte brand which provides a range of integrated services to public and private clients. 

“Contact centres have become a vital channel for organisations to strengthen their customer relationships and accelerate business transformation,” said Bruce Derraugh, Canadian Practice Leader, Deloitte.

“We are expanding our Canadian Future of Service Consulting team that is dedicated to helping our clients leverage modern CCaaS solutions, and we look forward to working closely with Five9 to help our clients maximise the value of their CX solutions and drive successful transformation outcomes to meet their business objectives.”

 

MarTech News Round-up – over and out.

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