Articles by Richard Adhikari

At least 145 million Americans -- half the population of the United States -- were impacted by the recent data breach at Equifax that netted thieves personal information such as names, addresses, birthdates, Social Security Numbers, and driver's license numbers That pales in comparison to the earlier Yahoo breaches, which affected more than 1 billi...

Black Friday falls on Nov. 23 this year, but retailers already have begun to promote the huge discounts they plan to offer in its name. Some deals already are available to shoppers Although Cyber Monday has grown in significance, Black Friday "is still significant as the kickoff to the holiday season," said Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellat...

Optimove this week released a new version of its relationship marketing hub Optimove 6.0 lets users automate targeted marketing campaigns for new visitors as precisely as they can for current customers, the company said. It combines Web analytics with look-alike data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence from its retention ecosystem to mak...

Sony on Wednesday revived its robot dog, Aibo, which it put down, so to speak, in 2006 The autonomous entertainment robot brings fun and joy to the entire family, Sony claimed....

Keeping customers satisfied is the No. 1 priority of any retail business. Technological advances such as interactive voice response systems, chatbots, omnichannel accessibility and robotics have helped many large e-commerce companies improve customer satisfaction rates However, these options require financial and manpower resources that small and m...

Advances in technology -- including speech analytics, metrics, a wider array of scrabble data, and perhaps even big data -- are making gamification a must-have tool in customer relationship management, call centers, collections, sales and other business areas Technological advances have enabled the design of games that offer employees incentives to...

New companyNoon Home officially launched on Thursday and simultaneously unveiled its Noon Smart Lighting System, after two years of raising funds and developing products in stealth mode The Noon Smart Lighting System blends ambient, task and accent lights to layer lighting, improve the way a room looks, according to the company....

Apple has reduced the accuracy of the iPhone X Face ID feature to speed up production, Bloomberg reported Monday It's not clear how much the new specs will reduce Face ID's efficacy, but if the reporting is accurate, there could be problems recognizing changes in facial hair, glasses and other ancillary features, suggested Gerrit Schneemann, senior...

Clari, which develops software focusing on the opportunity-to-close, or OTC, process, on Wednesday announced integrations with DocuSign, Clearslide and Xactly Clari's artificial-intelligence-powered OTC platform already integrates Google and Microsoft email and calendar activity, which gives sales teams immediate knowledge of sales reps' and prospe...

Early reviews of the Harman Kardon Invoke with Cortana -- the smart speaker that features Microsoft's personal assistant -- have been lukewarm at best The speaker will be available for US$199.95 at Best Buy, Microsoft Stores and other retail outlets in the U.S. starting Sunday....

ShippingEasy on Thursday launched Automated Email Marketing as an addition to its customer management module This new tool has a powerful rules engine that helps users increase sales, the company said. It can carry out the following actions:...

Accenture Interactive and SAP Hybris on Wednesday announced a partnership to create a new platform that will let users build and curate end-to-end contextual, personalized customer experiences -- from marketing, e-commerce, and offline shopping to customer service and loyalty management The joint platform will target B2C and B2B firms in retail, te...

Microsoft on Tuesday launched the Surface Book 2, positioning it as the laptop of the future The device is powerful enough for the next wave of computing, characterized by mixed reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning and immersive gaming, said Microsoft Devices Corporate Vice President Panos Panay....

Bpm'online on Thursday introduced software update 7.11 for its intelligent customer relationship management and business process management platform, with more than 200 improvements designed to accelerate strategy execution Among the key new features:...

Cloudflare on Wednesday released the beta version of Cloudflare Stream, a new, inexpensive streaming video service Designed for app developers who want to build businesses hosting and streaming videos, Cloudflare Stream bundles encoding, global delivery and video player software into one package. These functionalities can be separated upon request...

AppDirect on Tuesday announced new products and functionality for its Cloud Commerce Platform The new tools, AppReseller and Cloud Management Suite, enable software vendors to launch reseller partner programs quickly. Software as a Service providers can use the new capabilities to help their small and mid-sized business users manage and leverage th...

Microsoft on Friday announced completion of the Marea undersea cable, which stretches 4,400 miles between Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Bilbao, Spain A joint project of Microsoft, Facebook and global telecommunication infrastructure company Telxius, the cable lies more than 17,000 feet below the ocean's surface....

Brightpearl, which offers a cloud-based retail management system for mid-sized retailers and wholesalers, on Wednesday launched a new Enterprise Partner Program The company aims to build out its partner ecosystem to deploy an end-to-end management service for omnichannel retailers as an alternative to traditional enterprise resource planning system...

Social sales and marketing software provider Nimble and cloud services consultant NeoCloud on Thursday announced a partnership to deliver a simple, affordable contact management and CRM package for Microsoft Office 365 and GSuite users NeoCloud has agreed to bundle Nimble CRM into all of its Office 365 deployments beginning this month. Small and mi...

Insite Software on Tuesday released the InsiteCommerce Mobile App, describing it as the first fully configurable white label mobile app built for leading manufacturers and distributors The app supports everyone involved in the B2B e-commerce experience, Insite said -- from customers to channel partners, to field sales and support teams....