SDI, headquartered in California, serves more than 1,500 enterprise customers around the world, employing 330 people in 20 countries. It consists of three segments: Programmable Communications, Carrier Services, and Cloud Solutions for Enterprises. The combination of these segments with Sinch’s products and solutions will power nearly 70bn engagements per year.

“I’m excited to close this landmark transaction. Not only do we add to our scale and profitability; we are also bringing together some of the best talent in the industry,” said Oscar Werner, Sinch CEO.

With the deal officially completed, Russ Green, currently General Manager of Technology and Communications Products at SAP Digital Interconnect, has become Chief Service Officer at Sinch. Green will take ownership of Sinch’s end-to-end service delivery, supporting customers and enabling growth.

The post Sinch completes purchase of SAP Digital Interconnect appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

SAP adds Bendiek to Executive Board
Sabine Bendiek has been appointed to join the SAP Executive Board as Chief of People Officer and Labour Director. Starting in early 2021, she will lead the Human Resources organization and people strategy for SAP. This includes attracting the best talent in the industry, providing a growth and learning environment for employees, and ensuring a consistent leadership culture to enable inclusion, accountability and agility.

Bendiek is currently Microsoft Germany Management Board Chairwoman. At Microsoft, she oversaw an increase in cloud growth of 50 per cent in 2020. She also drove the move of the business to the cloud, which significantly contributed to Microsofts strong position in Germany. Prior to Microsoft, she held various roles at companies including Nixdorf, Siemens Nixdorf, McKinsey, Earlybird Venture Capital, Dell, and EMC. Bendiek is a member of the supervisory board at Schaeffler.

“SAP is recognized throughout the industry as a growth company and its people are crucial to its ongoing success,” said Bendiek. “In any successful organization, business growth and the people strategy must work hand in hand. I thank the SAP Supervisory Board and Executive Board for putting their full trust in me to lead the people and operations functions that are the heart of SAPs ongoing transformation.”

Tomlinson added to team at Three
Mobile network Three UK has hired Mike Tomlinson as its Managing Director of Business. In the newly created role, he will develop Three’s B2B presence in the UK, building on its SME offer announced in 2019 and its established private networks division.

Tomlinson has a wealth of experience in the telecoms industry, having previously held roles at EE, Virgin, and BT. Most recently, he advised tech and telecoms firms on the broader B2B market.

“I’m delighted to be joining Three and I’m excited by the opportunity to scale our growing business division,” said Tomlinson. “Businesses of all sizes need a resilient network partner and the major technology investments that the company is making make Three the perfect choice.”

Alongside Tomlinson’s arrival, John Dunican has taken on an expanded role of director of MVNO and Carrier Services for Three UK Ireland, having been Head of Wholesale at Three Ireland since January 2017.

MMA selects Griesser to direct Germany
Katja Griesser has been named as the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) Germany Country Director. She follows Daniel Rieber, who initiated the chapter together with Chairman Mark Wächter in 2016.

Griesser is a marketing and media expert with 16 years of industry experience. She started her professional career with Sky Deutschland being responsible for Marketing Partnerships along with international e-commerce projects. In 2009, Griesser joined Telefónica Germany as General Manager for netzclub.net. Later, she was promoted to Global Head of Sponsored Data, becoming responsible for developing all sponsored mobile products in Europe and Latin America.

“Mobile Marketing has become increasingly dynamic and complex and it’s hard to be on top of every digital discipline,” commented Griesser. “The MMA is the platform which unites the most influential and relevant brands, marketing professionals, and tech providers globally, who exchange their insights and know-how. This helps the members significantly to make fact-based and better decisions on important marketing questions.”

Green takes up senior marketing role at Teespring
Social commerce platform Teespring has chosen Les Green as its Vice President of Marketing. He will use his expertise to continue the company’s development as a leading platform which empowers and enables creators to develop their personal brands and engage with their fans.

Green moves to Teespring from his previous roles as Nike Africa’s Marketing Director, and Global Brand Director for Nike Sportswear. His time at Nike also saw him relaunch Nike’s customisation service, Nike By You (formerly NikeiD), as Senior Marketing Director.

“The future of commerce will be social,” said Green. “We already see that content and culture have moved to being primarily driven by social media so it’s inevitable that commerce will follow suit. I am excited to move to a company unrivalled in the space – where any relevant creator can scale their influence in almost any arena and reap more of the benefits by connecting directly to their fans.”

Criteo names Glickman as CFO
Sarah Glickman has joined internet advertising company Criteo as Chief Financial Officer. She will serve as both Criteos principal financial officer and principal accounting officer, and will replace Dave Anderson, who served as interim Chief Financial Officer for four months.

Glickman brings 30 years of global finance and transformation experience to Criteo. She most recently served as Acting Chief Financial Officer for 20 months at XPO Logistics. There, she oversaw the execution of a comprehensive restructuring program, expanded global shared services, and optimised finance processes and systems. Before that, she held operational Chief Financial Officer roles at Novartis and Honeywell International.

“Its an exciting time to join Criteo. I have immense respect for everything Criteo has been able to achieve as a global leader in advertising technology,” said Glickman. “I look forward to working alongside this talented leadership team to continue to grow and transform the business.”

Qian takes charge of Kwalee’s business dev in China
Mobile game publisher Kwalee has selected Penny Qian as the Head of Business Development in its new China-based office. Her experience includes roles at AppLift, Tencent, and Applovin.

Qian, and the Beijing office, will work alongside Kwalee’s existing team in the UK and India. The focus of Kwalee China will be on business development, marketing, and third-party publishing.

“Having worked in the games industry for over three years, primarily within mobile, I’ve long been an admirer of Kwalee and their amazing growth in the hypercasual space,” said Qian. “When the opportunity arose to be a part of this success story and to help the business really grow in China, I couldn’t turn it down. I’m looking forward to using what I know and my connections to really help grow Kwalee in China, and can’t wait to see the great games that come out of this as a result.”

iRobot opts for Smith as CMO
Kiran Smith has taken up the role of Chief Marketing Officer at iRobot, the robotics company behind the famous Roomba vacuum. She will help guide iRobot through an exciting period of growth and transformation as they look to evolve the brand to be synonymous with seamless, personalised digital experiences, and develop a more personal relationship with consumers.

Smith was most recently CEO of Arnold Worldwide. Before Arnold, she held several brand marketing leadership roles at Brookstone, Stride Rite, and two of the largest supermarket chains in the US. Earlier in her career, she held leadership positions at Accenture and Alliance Consulting Group.

West to lead development at Access
Access, an integrated marketing and digital agency, has hired Mark West as its Head of Development.

West leaves CTi Digital after seven years, where he held senior positions including Head of Drupal, Head of Support and Digital Consultant. Before this, he was a lead Drupal developer at TalkTalk and web executive at Carphone Warehouse.

“I am looking forward to this exciting new challenge and the opportunity to nurture the burgeoning development team here at Access,” said West. “Im keen to bring my experience of production practices and processes into the agency, to ensure we continue to offer agile, high quality delivery as we grow to meet ever-increasing client demands.”

Fingerpaint elevates Bartolomeo and O’Malley
Nick Bartolomeo has been promoted to Head of Media and Performance Marketing, and Bryan O’Malley lifted to Head of Technology and Performance Innovation, at Fingerpaint, a health and wellness-focused marketing agency.

The pair will co-lead the newly formed Shift Performance Center of Excellence, which will focus on driving brand performance through a proprietary mix of big data, best-in-class technologies, and highly skilled industry experts. Bartolomeo and O’Malley will be responsible for promoting and expanding the capabilities of Shift Performance, as well as continuing to cultivate the team and its expertise.

“I am looking forward to working alongside Bryan to drive the vision for Fingerpaint’s Shift Performance Center of Excellence and build upon the proven success we’ve demonstrated for nearly five years,” said Bartolomeo.

“We’re bringing together the best of human expertise and cutting-edge technologies to address our client’s toughest business challenges,” O’Malley added. “I’m excited to be co-leading Fingerpaint’s Shift Performance Center of Excellence with Nick.”

Mitra arrives to lead client servicing at Blink
Full-service digital agency Blink Digital has named Ratnapriya Mitra as its Vice President of Client Services. She will oversee fulfilment of client goals and over success of the client portfolio at the agency.

Mitra is a practiced marketing professional with over 15 years of experience at companies such as the McCann Worldwide group, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, J. Walter Thompson, and others.

“I’m enthused to join a team of such talented and hardworking people,” said Mitra. “Knowing that this is the team behind so many award-winning campaigns is a testimony to Blink’s dexterity that drives such meaningful work for our clients. I’m looking forward to driving more novel, creative solutions while ensuring we are at our efficient best.”

CHS welcomes four new faces
Communications and content agency CHS has recently appointed a flurry of new hires. It has enlisted Jessica Wicks as its Marketing Manager & Content Producer. Sophia Wareham, formerly of Beep! Digital, joins as a Senior Creative. Hannah Kent joins as a Junior Creative, and Kirsty Haville has joined as a Photographic Stylist, previously Creative Coup.

The post Movers and Shakers: SAP, Three, MMA, Teespring, Criteo, Kwalee, and more appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

• The biggest challenges facing developers in CPaaS platforms
• Key attributes of a CPaaS-enabled cloud contact center solution
• What criteria to consider when selecting a full-stack CPaaS provider
• The best practices of CPaaS

If your business is looking for a scalable, programmable contact center, this Q&A will give you insights into CPaaS solutions that take the complexity out of creating customized customer engagement applications.

The post Customize your customer engagement solutions seamlessly with the right CPaaS solutions appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

In this interview, Amber defines what omnichannel means, looking at it in terms of the way that consumers can communicate with a brand and explaining why it matters.

She discusses the issues that businesses can have when looking to achieve this omnichannel experience and how Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) solution can help to overcome these challenges.

Finally, she guides us through what we should be looking for selecting a CPaaS provider. You can catch the podcast here.

The post Podcast: How CPaaS enables real-time omnichannel customer communications appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

In the interview, Uffe discusses the transition from call centers to contact centers and how the emergence of different communication channels over the years has led to this.

He explains how important it is for enterprises to prepare for the future of digital customer interactions and addresses the impact of COVID-19 on contact centres, looking at how enterprises are coping and can continue to do so.

Finally, he presents a guide to how best to go about choosing a contact centre provider – and whether enterprises should choose a cloud or an on-premises solution. You can catch the podcast here.

The post Podcast: Bringing Contact Centers into the 21st Century with CPaaS appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Mohit Goel, senior product specialist at SAP Digital Interconnect, explains why Multimedia Messaging Service is so important to your multichannel engagement strategy

It has long been acknowledged that SMS (Short Message Service) messages can drive high open and response rates among connected customers. Faith in SMS has often seen Multimedia Messaging Service or MMS, overlooked, but this has begun to change.

The addition of multimedia messaging to an enterprise’s multichannel engagement strategy can help app developers and marketing, customer service and support, and other lines of business leaders ‘cut through the noise’ to reach more customers and achieve a new level of success.

Here’s why it’s so important to engage customers through MMS and to make it a key component of your digital marketing strategy.

MMS in an interconnected world

MMS was first introduced back in 2002, extending the capabilities of conventional SMS by adding the ability to send multimedia content. This has continued to evolve to where we are today, being able to now send videos, audio, GIFs, QR codes, slideshows and more.

MMS enables businesses of all types and sizes to create a unique, personalized experience for customers by making use of its versatility and support for a wide range of media formats. The audio and visual components can enhance simple text, leading to higher engagement and increased responsiveness from customers. Businesses can send ‘how to’ slideshows that help guide customers step-by-step through a product repair; deliver animated greetings or coupons during holidays or special events; or launch new products using customer review videos, to name just a few of the ways MMS can be provide more powerful customer experience.

These MMS messages have been found to deliver a 15 per cent higher clickthrough rate, while also being four times more likely to be shared on social media platforms. Furthermore, 78 per cent of customers say that they prefer images of products, 67 per cent feel images are important for buying decisions, and 63 per cent value images over product details.

MMS complements other digital channels

You can use MMS alongside other channels, including SMS, e-mail, and social, such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and Viber. Combining multimedia messaging with these channels provides another avenue to enrich customer experiences through audio and video.

MMS adds another critical channel to the existing mix. It complements these services with another layer in your multichannel engagement strategy and provides a rich, audio-visual experience that some of the other channels can’t offer.

As intelligent enterprises realize that they now must interact with customers on their preferred channels and on their terms, MMS is gaining more traction with business professionals seeking additional channels to increase their presence in front of connected customers. There has been a gradual increase in MMS traffic year-on-year, as people actively enjoy receiving and responding to personalized messages from their favorite brands.

Value of MMS

Reaching customers via multimedia messaging means increased success across the board. It’s all about creating awareness, and that audio-visual component is very attractive to the customer. The more captivated people are by the message, the more likely they are to engage with the message and respond to it. In turn, the stronger call-to-action improves clickthroughs, drives more interaction and engagement, and boosts revenues.

Quite simply, customers are more likely to open and consume a message when there’s an image or video compared to just plain text.

It’s said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” To learn more about MMS and how it can benefit your intelligent enterprise and multichannel engagement strategy, read Multimedia Messaging Service: Enriching Simple SMS, visit SAP.com and join the SAP Digital Interconnect community.

The post MMS: Transforming the customer experience through messaging appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

By now, social messaging apps are a fact of life – not just in our personal lives, but for businesses that want to communicate effectively with their customers. The top three messaging apps in the world – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat – have all exceeded the 1bn MAU mark, and people spend an average of two hours 16 minutes a day, or around a third of their total Internet time, on social media apps and sites.

Simply put, for intelligent enterprises, this is where their customers now devote their digital lives. And increasingly, social messaging channels are a great way of reaching and engaging with those customers.

When these messaging apps first came to market, they were mostly limited to personal communications and interactions between users, but over time these channels have started to expose their APIs to businesses for B2C engagement. There are now 20m businesses using Facebook Messenger, and 20bn messages sent between businesses and customers, each month.

Striking up a conversation

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of utilizing these social channels to reach customers. There are one-way transactional interactions – for example, a bank alerting the customer that their balance is low, or retailers sharing that the product they were interested in is back in stock. And then there are two-way messages, where customers with a question about the product or service can connect to the brand. Their questions can be answered by a live agent or automated using a chatbot, or some combination of both, but it’s a quick and personal way of supporting engagement on a channel that’s growing in popularity with customers.

Either way, it’s vital that this channel is one that the connected customer is expecting, even if they haven’t directly initiated it. Even with one-way communication, this isn’t your traditional marketing broadcast or outreach but part of a personalized, real-time experience between the brand and customer.

That’s a necessity of the channel: the social media and messaging app services and enterprises are invested in making sure users have a good experience in these apps, and not receive unwanted, random, or generic marketing messages. Brands need to follow best digital engagement practices such as understanding customer preferences for channel engagement and local regulations such as opt-in. That might sound like a challenge, but in the long term, it’s beneficial for all parties – especially because customers have chosen to communicate with brands via this channel, and that allows for richer and deeper engagement.

Changing channels

A more significant challenge with social channels is that, of course, they require data connectivity to use. So, what happens if the customer you’re engaging with doesn’t currently have access to mobile networks or wi-fi? In this case you can use failover which allows you to set rules so that if the user device does not receive the message you can automatically switch to SMS, and then return to social channels when they have full connectivity.

Similarly, if it’s an important alert or notification that you need to make sure the user has seen – such as one-time password, or an account breach, in this case too you can utilize failover rules so that, if the customer doesn’t receive or view the message, then you can automatically switch to another channel.

There’s also the question of how many messaging apps there are in the market, with usage varying greatly from country to country. Viber is the number-one choice in 10 markets across the world, Telegram is huge in the Middle East and some parts of Africa, while WeChat rules in China, and Line in Japan.

So, if your business is global, it’s not as simple as covering the apps you’re familiar with. You need to start understanding which messenger app your customers are likely to be using where they are.

Individually integrating with multiple social channels can be a lot of hard work, especially if you’re setting up failover protocols. But there is an alternative: working with a provider who offers a single API that connects social, SMS, push and other channels – turning a task that could potentially take months or longer to implement into something which can be done in a matter of days. Social channels are becoming essential in the experience economy, so why make digital engagement more difficult than necessary?

If you’re ready to learn more about reaching your customers through social channels, read ‘Making Sense Of A Multichannel, Social World’, ‘Using Multichannel Digital Channels to Improve Critical Enterprise Communications’ and ‘Understanding the Complexity Of Messaging Channels and Digital Engagement’ and join the SAP Digital Interconnect Community.

The post Social channels are essential to customer engagement and personalised experiences appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Communications-platform-as-a-Service, or CPaaS, is a relatively new concept, but for anyone trying to harness the ever-growing number of channels and meet the expectations of the modern experience economy and customer, it is increasingly becoming a necessity.

CPaaS refers to a cloud-based platform that lets app developers and technical professionals easily integrate consumable and configurable voice, SMS, e-mail, in-app push, social, and other digital engagement channels into apps and services. To find out more, you can read our full explainer here.

In our experience, the most common factor holding enterprises back from adopting CPaaS is the existence of legacy systems. It’s easy to become comfortable with what you have and fear leveraging cloud-based services but, in truth, it’s always better to have a single united system and, in the long-term, CPaaS will help reduce solution complexity while improving system resiliency by offloading your internally supported communication solutions.

Ensuring a smooth transition to CPaaS

The next step is settling on the right provider. The most important thing as you make that choice, is stability. You want a partner who can offer security and data protection. Ideally, they should have redundancy built into their system, meaning there’s more than one way of securing the exchange of information just in case something goes wrong.

To make the move easier, you’re going to need thorough documentation that allows developers to overcome any obstacles they encounter without having to call someone and ask questions. It sounds simple, but this is often a sore point – so you need a provider with accurate and up-to-date documentation, and ideally examples of code you can follow to familiarize yourself with the platform. Integrated analytics can also help simplify the transition and build stronger relationships and solutions by optimizing productivity, performance, and customer experiences that ultimately impact overall ROI.

CPaaS offers you the ability to benefit from data analytic solutions to better understand your business communications transactions by providing data endpoints and tools to easily interact, view, and digest your data.  Many cloud solutions being offered today are new to the market, developed quickly, and sometimes lack good process steps. It’s strongly recommended that your solution has successfully completed SOC2 Type II Audit and ISO 27001 certification or equivalent certifications. This will help ensure the reliability, security, and quality of the solution you choose.

Looking ahead

Once the move has been made, the factors which start to become most vital are scalability and flexibility. Even if your operations are currently limited to a single region, you should future-proof your solution by working with a provider who has a broad global footprint – and similarly, is ready to adapt to the next channel or the next solution.

Finding the right provider will make the move to CPaaS much smoother, and help you tap into all of its benefits. To learn more about how CPaaS providers and APIs are helping developers successfully launch new digital engagement services and improve experiences, read ‘Communications APIs: Mapping the Developer Lifecycle’ and ‘The Critical Role of CPaaS in Reaching Customers on their Channels of Choice’ and join the SAP Digital Interconnect Community.

This article originally appeared on UC Today

The post Characteristics developers should look for when selecting a CPaaS partner appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

For most intelligent enterprises, their journey into the Internet of Things (IoT) starts the same way it would for any other project: with a proof of concept. A small-scale deployment that allows an organization to gather real-world data, evaluate and identify any changes, and scale up from there. It’s just good sense.

Once a proof of concept has proved viable, that process of scaling is typically very rapid for IoT solutions. As the organization jumps from perhaps 100 to potentially thousands of devices or more, that puts them in a whole different world of complexity, with many extra considerations that can make or break a project.

For example, can the chosen provider support the number and types of SIMs and infrastructure at the required scale? And if the proof of concept process requires roaming, security, or connectivity changes that must be made, can the selected provider accommodate those requirements as well? These are conversations worth having up front, to avoid the potential for major problems down the line.

The geography problem

When scaling an IoT solution, it’s likely that not only will the number of devices increase, but the geographic scope expands as well – and this brings problems with coverage. Deploying internationally or even regionally, will likely require relationships with multiple mobile network operators, connections, and contracts, all things that cost time and money.

One solution is to produce multiple versions of a device, aligned with local carrier connectivity requirements in the region in which theyre deployed. That might be manageable in small-scale deployments, but as the device and carrier numbers multiply – it’s simply not a scalable solution.

Many leaders believe that the better answer is to build a single device that supports ubiquitous coverage, using SIMs that work globally with a multitude of carriers. This way, you can deploy the same device almost anywhere without being subject to local rate changes or roaming charges – factors that can significantly inflate the cost of an IoT project.

Are you ready to scale up?

The entire point of doing a proof of concept is that it allows you to learn in a relatively safe environment. But just because your IoT solution works in a test environment, that doesn’t mean it will scale up smoothly. And if you only realize this after the proof of concept period, often the only option is to rip-and-replace the entire troublesome layer of the solution.

The best solution is to choose the right partner from the outset. This can be a challenge in itself, but there are a few questions to help with this process. Does the provider have the elasticity to accommodate rapid scaling? And how does the cost scale along with that? Is it linear, or could you be facing an entirely different price structure once volumes increase?

As with most strategic decisions, making the wrong choice could be costly and create serious challenges down the line. However, the right partner with direct operator connections and relationships, a secure global digital communications network, and a simplified, scalable IoT solution can improve the chances of a successful launch.

To learn more about IoT scalability and other connectivity challenges, read “Connectivity: The Foundation for IoT Value Creation” and “Managing IoT Connectivity for Tomorrow: Growing your connected device business” and join the SAP Digital Interconnect Community.

The post Going from 100 to 100,000 devices: The challenges of IoT scaling appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

It’s a time of enormous change for mobile network operators (MNOs) as they make the move to IP and traditional voice, digital messaging services and technologies evolve, with new technologies like 5G, VoLTE and RCS. This change brings with it many opportunities, but also challenges for operators as they transition from legacy networks – chief among them complexity, investment and addressing subscriber needs.

To tackle these challenges, optimisation of services and infrastructure is vital. As with any kind of optimisation, this requires meaningful and actionable insights from data. Data is something operators generally have a surplus of – but accessing it easily is often a different matter entirely. Most operators use multiple service providers for services like data roaming, SMS and RCS . The data from these providers, which is necessary for this kind of optimisation, can be hard to access.

Accessing it almost always means going through the service provider’s in-house platform. Operators can view the data, but to produce required insights, it has to be exported and manually uploaded into their own business intelligence application for a centralised view. But this doesn’t have to be the case – we can use APIs to aggregate and centralise subscriber and network data to ensure it’s easy for operators to access and benefit from it.

The benefits of APIs and operator data

By using APIs, operators can choose how they access performance and usage data, what type of data they need and when they need it. They can also be easily integrated with an operator’s existing tools and processes, meaning they can produce meaningful and impactful outcomes using the methods that already work for them.

Ultimately, as a service provider, we dont want to tell operators what they need or offer a one-size-fits-all solution. Operators need the freedom to decide for themselves how they use the information and APIs provide much more flexibility in how they integrate, present and use data.

This means there are a lot of network operator use cases for APIs and the data they expose. It could be about looking at historical billing data to analyse trends and forecast future revenue and costs, or at subscriber-specific data for anything from average spend to fraud analysis. APIs could help speed up the troubleshooting process, meaning there’s no need to log into the service provider tool to find logs or open a new ticket.

For example, when transitioning to 5G, operators will strive to optimise the existing legacy network services to minimise operational cost while providing faultless service to subscribers. APIs will help make data intelligently and easily available to operators to achieve this and build towards the future.

Read more about how APIs empower developers and the Experience Economy in “Communications APIs: Mapping the Developer Lifecycle” and “The Critical Role of CPaaS in Reaching Customers on their Channels of Choice” and at the SAP Community.

The post How APIs and data-driven decisions can propel mobile operator and subscriber experiences appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.