Zendesk. announced the launch of Gather, a powerful new product that enables companies to provide trusted and transparent support to customers through online community forums. Gather creates a space where customers can engage with each other and company experts to offer guidance and insight beyond what a single customer support agent might be able to handle.

VR and AR have the potential to shake up the customer experience by individualizing retailers’ offers and enabling customers to visualize products in different settings. By 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in AR online and in-store, according to Gartner.

The Visible Light Communication (VLC) industry is growing at a rapid rate and is set to exceed ten billion devices by 2023, according to HomeGrid Forum President Dr Len Dauphinee, who laid out a roadmap of the future of VLC and its role alongside G.hn in promoting a secure wireless environment.

Measuring and optimization are the nuts and bolts in digital marketing since precision and deep understanding of how to compare and synchronize different data sources are key to the quality of the results and the success of campaigns. If marketers work consistently on a data-driven basis and align all measurements with the needs of the customers, more turnover with the same budget or budget savings can be most certainly achieved while maintaining the same turnover.  Considering the following prerequisites definitely helps:

‘Digital challengers’ are looking to extend their reach at the expense of traditional high street banks, according to leading banking industry experts.

GlobalData’s Retail Banker International asked leading industry figures for their views on the coming year, and digital banking was high on the agenda.

The new IDC 2019 Future SMB Pulse survey shows that 84% of SMBs in Asia Pacific (excl. Japan) recognize the need to use digital technologies to make significant changes in their companies' processes and operations to become more competitive. While 39% of those have already started their journey and are at different stages of digital maturity, 42% are just planning to start. The survey reveals further that the top priorities of SMBs in the next 18 months include improving revenue growth, increasing efficiency/productivity, and reducing costs/expenses.

Criteo just released findings showing that brand loyalty is up for grabs when it comes to Singaporean consumers. The company’s ‘Why We Buy’ survey revealed that 78% are willing to consider shopping from a new brand across all product categories. ‘Groceries’ (95.8%) and ‘Apparel’ (93.4%) are the top two categories where consumers are willing to do so.

Vue.ai is an inference engine for the retail industry that gives, with its AI retail teams across the globe, access to a central brain that extracts critical data from products and customer behavior.

Retail teams can automate key functions and deliver personalized experiences to each shopper, increasing ROI on every function in the organization, by pulling the power of AI in the hands of every team member across merchandising, buying, styling, cataloging, marketing and more.

According to Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA) President Martha Suárez, competitive access to spectrum resources will result in a thriving fixed and mobile marketplace that can deliver new, innovative services. During a TV White Space (TVWS) workshop in Buenos Aires, she highlighted that harnessing spectrum sharing technologies like TVWS is key to enabling rural broadband.

Qlik, a leader in data analytics, announced that it has secured its latest patent for Qlik Data Catalyst that’s focused on the product’s innovative capabilities in data management using a metadata repository.

While most traders are still busy with multichannel, others are steps ahead, testing and experimenting with Mixed, Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Mixed Reality (MR) ) isn’t clearly defined till now but mostly used as a generic term for the merging of reality and virtuality - with countless gradual differences of which the augmented reality covers a spectrum.

Namics, a leading full-service digital agency from Switzerland, developed new services for SMBs that combine both the Adobe products of the Experience Cloud and their own services.

The leading Japanese network provider Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) has launched an eSIM service for the mobile Internet. The AirOn+ platform from G+D Mobile Security is enabling eSIM management.

G+D Mobile Security is a global mobile security technology company headquartered in Munich, Germany and part of the Giesecke+Devrient group. G+D Mobile Security manages and secures billions of digital identities throughout their entire life cycle. To no surprise their products and solutions are used by commercial banks, mobile network operators, car and mobile device manufacturers, business enterprises, transit authorities and health insurances every day to secure payment, communication and device-to-device interaction.

The proportion of digital contact points, significant for the success of your own business model, is growing. As a result, the online customer journey has become an integral part of the customer intelligence strategy today. In addition to the online advertising contacts that take place along the entire digital customer journey, one's own website plays a central role here, too. Whether in traditional eCommerce or lead generation, the focus is always on the user. With the help of digital analytics, the behavior and needs of users can be better understood so that in-depth recommendations for action can be derived, thus, leading to improved service, a better product, and an optimized customer experience.