Tech Talks Daily

Companies are investing millions of dollars to digitally transform their entire operations. This involves deploying hundreds or thousands of applications. So if there's a business problem like in sales or HR, there's an app for it. Enterprises will spend half a trillion dollars on software this year alone— and they'll spend nearly three-quarters of a trillion in 3 years (by 2024).

While software vendors are constantly delivering new features and improvements that enterprises continue to deploy, nobody focuses on software adoption. These actual people need to use the software for the digital transformation to be successful. That is why 90% of all digital transformation projects fail.

Dan Adika is the co-founder and CEO of WalkMe, a software company that recently went public on NASDAQ, explains that's where WalkMe comes in. The company's Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) enables organizations to measure, drive and act to maximize the impact of their digital transformation to improve productivity, humanize technology and drive more effective use of all of the software.

We discuss how WalkMe drives users to action as they use software or websites, providing step-by-step guidance without requiring the user to leave the screen, watch video tutorials, or read tedious manuals or FAQ pages.

DXC Technology and Qualtrics recently announced a new collaboration to make the Qualtrics' EmployeeXM™ experience management platform a part of DXC's Modern Workplace service solution. Blended with DXC's Modern Workplace operational data, DXC will capture and integrate experience data from Qualtrics–how employees feel about their technology experience at work–to provide valuable, real-time employee sentiment to drive greater engagement and collaboration, and productivity. Qualtrics research also found that employees' technology experience plays a larger role in the overall employee experience, particularly as the digital workplace continues to evolve. Over 90% of CIOs believe the IT experience is essential when it comes to attracting and retaining talent and building corporate culture.

I invited Mike McDaniel back on to the podcast to talk about all this and also learn more about how DXC will be the first to use the Modern Workplace solution internally to transform the digital experiences for its more than 130,000 employees.

In today's episode of Tech Talks Daily, I want to explore three of the most common questions that I am asked on this show. How do I launch a podcast without the hassle of editing audio files and submitting them to all the podcast platforms? How do I get high-quality guests on my new podcast? And if you are a business leader, how can I get invited onto more podcasts as a thought leader in 2022?

Ryan Estes from Kitcaster joins me on the podcast to talk about all this and much more. He also discusses how to leverage podcast interviews to generate leads, validate new products, create new opportunities, and build brand awareness through personal connections.

About Kitcaster

Kitcaster books podcast interviews for funded start-up founders, entrepreneurs with exits, and C-suit execs. Get on-demand podcast placements scheduled for you by professionals.

All growing businesses run into the same fundamental marketing problems. Automated bots, fake news, rampant amateurism. The good news? kitcaster™ solves them. Podcasts cut through the gobbledygook and make fundamentally authentic connections.

Podcasts make business better. Where are you in your entrepreneur journey? Validation? Launch? Traction? Scale? Wherever you are, podcasts will take you further. They book you on top podcasts that speak directly to your ideal audience. These are your peeps – this is your influence. Podcasts are good for business and good for people.

Precisely is the global leader in data integrity software, providing accuracy, consistency, and the context in data for 12,000 customers in more than 100 countries, including 97 percent of the Fortune 100. Precisely's data integration, data quality, data governance, location intelligence, and data enrichment products power better business decisions to create better outcomes

A Survey of 300 chief data officers revealed that worldwide adoption of digital initiatives continues to accelerate despite significant data quality, integration, and enrichment challenges. Precisely and Corinium Global Intelligence ran the independent study of more than 300 C-level data executives in the U.S., Europe, and the Asia Pacific. One of the biggest takeaways was 82% of Chief Data Officers have data quality concerns.

Dan Adams, SVP Data and Operations at Precisely joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast and shares why businesses must rethink the path to trusted data as a foundation for digital transformation and business growth.

Useful Links

https://www.precisely.com/resource-center/analystreports/data-integrity-trends

https://www.linkedin.com/company/preciselydata/

Dan Wallace-Brewster, Senior Vice President Marketing at Scalefast, joins me in a conversation on the state of the retail industry as we continue to navigate more waves of COVID and face the upcoming holiday season.

Dan leads the content and lead generation engines for Scalefast as it accelerates an already-exponential growth curve. He has mechanized custom content throughput by enabling internal and external creative teams and focused messaging on defined ICPs and products in collaboration with sales leaders. Under his leadership, a new marketing technology stack has been deployed to ensure multi-touch attribution, maximum funnel velocity, and accountability for every B2B marketing investment.

About Scalefast Scalefast is on a mission to change the way brands do direct-to-consumer eCommerce by empowering them to regain the control and simplicity they need to create an exceptional shopping experience directly from their online storefront.

By joining forces through the Scalefast Commerce Cloud, brands can deliver localized and personalized direct-to-consumer shopping experiences while leveraging the volume and data of an entire brand ecosystem.

Scalefast's modern approach to eCommerce has generated award-winning success for their clients and has allowed them to become the fastest-growing eCommerce platform in the U.S. Its full-stack enterprise solution brings together a cloud-based eCommerce platform, global business services and an international footprint of logistics, payment, tax and business partners

The Smart Cube is a global provider of research and analytics solutions focused on CPG, retail, and life sciences. Nitin Aggarwal, Vice President of Data Analytics, discusses how to use data analytics to drive growth, including featured case studies/examples in retail and CPG.

About The Smart Cube

The company researches, analyses and addresses the needs of businesses in today's intelligence age with tailored sector-specific solutions and Amplifi – their organisational platform, rich with knowledge, cutting edge tools, and advanced analytics – delivered by talented minds. Primarily serving the CPG, Energy & Chemicals, Financial Services, Industrials, Life Sciences, and Retail sectors, they work with a third of companies in the Fortune 100, helping them make smarter decisions, accelerate value and gain a competitive edge.

Gridware was founded by Tim Barat, a former lineman, who developed the company out of frustration with the immense shortage of information available to the people responsible for providing reliable electricity to our society.

Tim believes that this data shortage leaves grid operators forced to operate a fragile electricity grid to fail to identify problems. While the symptoms of this problem present themselves in many different ways across the globe, he believes the most chronic symptom is the increased risk of wildfire ignition occurring throughout the west.

The company specializes in feeding real-time utility line tracking information to commercial and public utility companies to prevent wildfires and environmental damages due to powerline abnormalities.

Gridware combines a cloud-based system with several different sensors connected to utility poles to provide consistent updates of environmental, mechanical, and temperature-related statuses. The device runs on solar power and uses patented wireless and satellite technology to provide a detailed account of the powerline's health 24/7 to the grid operator in milliseconds.

Tim shares his inspirational story of going from an actual lineman to entrepreneur, trying to prevent issues and wildfires caused by utilities, and looking out for the safety of linemen with technology.

Free TON is a community-driven blockchain cultivating an open and free internet. I invited Alexander Filatov, Co-Founder, and Chief Executive Officer at TON Labs on Tech Talks Daily, to share how he oversees the development of Free TON, a community-driven blockchain underpinning an open and free internet.

In this role, he leverages his extensive corporate and VC experience towards fostering meaningful partnerships and communities to build a decentralized 'WebFree' platform.

Prior to co-founding TON Labs in 2018, Alexander held several Executive positions, heading three multibillion-dollar manufacturing corporations in the automotive, construction equipment, and oil & gas equipment industries.

After more than 20 years in the corporate industry, Alexander turned to the world of private equity and venture capital, in 2018 co-founding Industry 4.0, a diversified venture fund focused on exponential technologies, including blockchain.

At Moderne, they automatically identify and patch security holes in your code, freeing you to create, build, and make exciting new things. Olga Kundzich and Jonathan Schneider join me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to discuss the downsides of cloud-native application development and maintaining modern applications.

It has become clear that modern cloud-native applications require a tremendous amount of maintenance to keep up with the constant changes to all of the components used to build them. This includes managing thousands of APIs and open source components. It is an enormous challenge for any size company, taking up to 30% of the development team's time, which acts as a tremendous drag on innovation and software quality.

I learn how Moderne was founded to tackle this enormous problem. Moderne's technology is based on OpenRewrite, a large-scale tool for code maintenance that Moderne co-founder Jonathan Schneider developed while working at Netflix. Moderne has picked up OpenRewrite and expanded its scope.

Jed Corenthal, the CMO of Phenix (real-time streaming technology platform) returns to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discuss their unique OTT technology infrastructure. I learn how it allows for streaming video as close to real-time as possible without sacrificing broadcast quality and scale.

We discuss their Syncwatch™ technology and how it ensures every user consumes the content simultaneously, regardless of location or connection. Trusted by Verizon, Racecourse Media Group, and many more, this technology helps avoid the 'Spoiler Alert' moment from a game lagging behind other streams/broadcasts.

We also talk about how this technology allows for the 21st-century sports viewing experience through gamification and interactivity, such as offering 'Watch Together' features, in-game trivia, etc. Finally, Jed shares examples of interactive fan experiences and accurate game-day streams.