A combination of bricks and mortar expansion, eCommerce improvements and investment in marketing are priorities this year for UK retailers. New research from American Express suggests retailers are increasing their efforts to boost sales. Amex’s surveyed 500 senior UK decisionmakers in retail and hospitality businesses of all sizes, with at least one physical store. The research explored their current challenges, investment priorities, and customer attraction strategies. The findings reveal making improvements to their online operations are front of mind. 32% of the retailers surveyed plan to ..read more

Certinia has announced the appointment of Rob Harrison as VP of Sales, International. His appointment comes a few months after Stewart Monk, who previously held the role, left the company to become Senior Vice President & GM International at PowerSchool. Monk re-joined Tony Kender, who was previously Chief Revenue Officer at FinancialForce (now Certinia) and is now CRO at PowerSchool. Harrison joined the firm following the acquisition by Haveli Investments last year, the appointment of DJ Paoni as CEO and several other significant changes in the leadership team. It seems likely that Monk l ..read more

Workday has announced that it plans to invest £550 million in its UK Operations over the next three years. The announcement signals a significant increase in investment from the global ERP firm. Effectively increasing spending by 40% from the previous three years. The investment will include an expansion of its London office and an increase in the number of employees. It will also see more investments by Workday Ventures in the UK. As well and investment in skills training and infrastructure for the UK market. The announcement comes a few weeks after its announcement to shelve plans for a new ..read more

Interprefy has announced Interprefy Now, a new product that leverages its automatic translation platform to smaller ad hoc meetings. The Interprefy platform is used for larger conferences looking to provide automatic translation to the native languages of attendees. Interprefy Now does that on a smaller scale using mobile phones. Users can download the Interprefy Application from both the Google and Apple app stores, though to initiate a call, they must have an account. Oddmund Braaten, CEO at Interprefy Oddmund Braaten, CEO at Interprefy, commented, “If you’ve ever needed to communicate with ..read more

Logicalis has launched Intelligent Security. The company calls it “a blueprint approach to its global security portfolio designed to deliver proactive advanced security for customers worldwide.” It includes identifying security needs, choosing the right solutions and then securing the enterprise. Toby Alcock, CTO, Logicalis Logicalis CTO Toby Alcock said: “Many organisations focus on one area of the security fabric; we recognise in today’s cyber security landscape there are no silos; organisations must look across the entire footprint, from secure connectivity, securing the cloud, securing the ..read more

Freshworks has appointed Ashwin Ballal as its new Chief Information Officer. He joins after Prasad Ramakrishnan, the current CIO announced that he would retire at the end of the quarter. Ramakrishnan has served as SVP of IT and CIO of Freshworks since he joined in October 2018. He will work closely with Ballal during the transition. Ramakrishnan said, “Ashwin has a proven track record of implementing strategic IT initiatives, setting vision and strategy, driving large business transformations, and executing for hyper-scale growth. “I’m confident that his leadership and vision will be instrumen ..read more

At Engage London, Smartsheet announced the availability of several new AI-powered and resource management features. The features are integrated into the Smartsheet platform and available to customers based on their various plans. Engage London is being held over two days and is a smaller version of the Engage event that Smartsheet holds every year in Seattle. It will be held later in the year October 7-10. Smartsheet has not held back on its announcements as many US vendors seem to do for European conferences. The features announced are available globally. The intent of introducing these new f ..read more

I caught up with Grant Halloran, CEO of Planful, a few days before the annual Perform conference. The last time Halloran and I spoke was in 2021. I started by asking him why Planful is important today. “Well, regardless of the business conditions you’re operating in, you need to be faster in how you course correct your business. You can’t control all those external factors, regardless of the industry you’re in or the size of the company. “You need to increase your decision velocity, your financial IQ, and that requires resilient financial performance management systems. Every company in the wo ..read more

BigCommerce has launched the B2B Edition Open Source Buyer Portal. The platform gives enterprise manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, developers and agency partners creative control to build and customise the optimal B2B buyer experience. Having full access to the Buyer Portal’s open-source code equips B2B brands with the robust foundation to create tailored buyer experiences designed to meet their unique industry demands and workflows. Sellers can deliver a bespoke customer experience throughout the entire buyer lifecycle from product discovery to the sale. They can now extend into servi ..read more

Research by BT has unveiled that the current pace of technology change is giving “bytemares” to 9 in 10 business leaders. The impact is so great that many are losing sleep over the issue. Top of the list are cybersecurity and AI. 58% are worried by the pace of change. Without UK businesses evolving to the new tech landscape, BT estimates that growth could be hindered by as much as £11.79 billion by 2030. It appears as though they are a double-edged sword. With leaders worried they are not doing enough about these and other technologies within their business. Also by the impact they may have. H ..read more