It’s shaping up to be another slow news week, Dear Reader. But before I resort to surveys, here is some investment news that’s still fresh enough to mention. Here’s a $25 million Series B for data integration platform Workato, which automates data flows between business processes. Previous investors included Salesforce, which now owns Workato competitor Mulesoft. Salesforce didn’t participate in the latest round.
Customer identity data vendor Infutor has purchased Ruf Strategic Solutions, which provides customer segment data and marketing automation. The deal caps two years of strong growth at Infutor, following a strategic investment by Norwest Venture Partners. Looks like third party data isn’t dead.
How popular is intent data? Well, 35% of companies use it when measuring audience coverage, according to a survey for B2B data vendor DealSignal by Demand Gen Report. That compares with 87% for contact information, 45% for account characteristics, and 40% for product usage. More worrisome: only 20% use third party data to improve their information even though 60% are less than “mostly confident” that their current data is adequate.
CX management platform Sprinklr is introducing “digital twins.” Not your average chatbot, a Sprinklr digital twin is more like an AI-powered employee, able to plan actions, create workflows and make decisions, but at speed and at scale. They are said to be more easily trained than chatbots and can operate within brand policies and guardrails.