Enterprises are increasingly seeking out technologies that help them create unique experiences for customers with speed and at scale. At the same time, customers want flexibility when deciding where to manage their enterprise data, particularly when it comes to business-critical applications.

That’s why I’m thrilled that Sprinklr, the unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform for modern enterprises, has partnered with Google Cloud to accelerate its go-to-market strategy and grow awareness among our joint customers. Sprinklr will work closely with our global salesforce, benefitting from our deep relationships with enterprises that have chosen to build on Google Cloud. 

Akin to Google Cloud’s mission to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform their business through data-powered innovation, Sprinklr’s primary objective is to empower the world’s largest and most loved brands to make their customers happier by listening, learning, and taking action through insights. With this strategic partnership now in place, Sprinklr and Google Cloud will go-to-market together with the end-customer as our sole focus.

Traditionally, brands have adopted point solutions to manage segments of the customer journey. In isolation, these may work — but they rarely work collaboratively, even when vendors build “Frankenstacks” of disconnected products. These solutions can’t deliver a 360° view of the customer, and often reinforce departmental silos. All of which creates point-solution chaos.

Sprinklr’s approach is fundamentally different and is the way out of the aforementioned point-solution chaos. As the first platform purpose-built for unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) and trusted by the enterprise, Sprinklr’s industry-leading AI and powerful Care, Marketing, Research, and Engagement solutions enable the world’s top brands to learn about their customers, understand the marketplace, and reach, engage, and serve customers on all channels to drive business growth. 

Sprinklr was built from the ground up as a platform-first solution, designed to evolve and grow with the rapid expansion of digital channels and applications. The results? Faster innovation. Stronger performance. And a future-proof strategy for customer engagement on an enterprise scale.

“Sprinklr works with large, global companies that want flexibility when deciding where to manage their enterprise data and consider our platform a business-critical application,” said Doug Balut, Senior Vice President of Global Alliances, Sprinklr. “Giving our customers the opportunity to manage Sprinklr on Google Cloud empowers them to create engaging customer experiences while maintaining the high security, scalability, and performance they need to run their business.”

To learn more about this exciting partnership and the challenges we jointly solve for customers, check out the recent conversation between Google Cloud’s VP of Marketing, Sarah Kennedy, and Sprinklr’s Chief Experience Officer, Grad Conn. Or read the press release on the partnership.

One of the key trends that emerged from the lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak was the significant rise in people seeking entertainment online.

According to data released by Carat India, smartphone usage increased by 1.5 hours a week and social media consumption nearly doubled to 280 minutes a day. Of India’s 670 million internet users, a significant percentage live in rural areas, which saw a surge in demand for local language content.

As India’s premier social media platform, ShareChat saw significant engagement from its 60 million monthly active users (MAU) during the lockdown. The platform now has surpassed 120 million MAU post the government banning 59 Chinese apps in the last week of June.

ShareChat was founded by Ankush Sachdeva (co-founder and Chief Executive Officer), Farid Ahsan (co-founder and Chief Operating Officer), and Bhanu Pratap Singh (co-founder and Chief Technical Officer), in 2015.

In a recent conversation with YourStory, Bhanu spoke about content consumption during COVID-19, how they are reaching out to the country’s vernacular audience and their recent transition to Google Cloud.

Read the Full Story on YourStory

Quanta Services is the leading specialty contractor with the largest and highly-skilled trained workforce in North America. It provides fully-integrated solutions for the electric power

pipeline industrial and telecommunications industries the company’s geographic footprint which includes North America Latin America and Australia.

It’s network of companies ensures world-class execution with local delivery and has over 40,000 employees.

“The exciting thing about Backstory is it allows us to land massive amounts of data from all of our different security tools and then Chronicle worries about how to correlate and aggregate this information for us. We can then focus on the highest priority threats.”

Richard Breaux, Manager Security Operations Quanta Services

Because Quanta Services’ customers provide energy and telecommunications to their customers, they have world-class cybersecurity requirements.

“We must ensure that Quanta leads the industry given the fact that our business is building the core infrastructure that powers people’s lives. It’s crucial that we meet their cybersecurity requirements,” says James Stinson, VP-IT, Quanta Services.

To support this goal Quanta implemented a number of security tools that generate terabytes of security telemetry. Over time, however, these systems generated an information overload for the company’s limited pool of qualified security resources.

“Our logging tools also couldn’t keep up with the rapidly growing information. With limited resources we need to focus our security analysts time on high quality work instead of digging through mountains of data,” says Stinson.

They achieve this by implementing Backstory and Chronicle, which is on Google Cloud.

“The exciting thing about Backstory is it allows us to land massive amounts of data from all of our different security tools and then Chronicle worries about how to correlate and aggregate this information for us. We can then focus on the highest priority threats,” says Richard Breaux, Manager Security Operations Quanta Services.

As a result, the company’s security  team spends less time getting to the core information they need to address these incidents.

“What used to take us 15 minutes or more, we can now accomplish in seconds,” says Breaux.

Why Higher Ed Needs to Go All-in on Digital

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of students within the 18-24-year-old demographic now expect hybrid learning environments–even once we are beyond the pandemic. And a vast number of adult learners are seeking options that accommodate their work and family lives now that it’s clear that effective learning can indeed occur virtually. Implementing cloud technologies and achieving digital maturity within higher education will enable institutions to be innovative and responsive to evolving student preferences, while being prepared for future disruptions.

The state of digital maturity

In February and March 2021, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), in partnership with Google, surveyed U.S. higher education leaders on their views of the state of digital maturity in the higher education sector. This survey found that institutional and technology leaders strongly agreed that moving legacy IT systems to the cloud, centralizing and integrating data, and increasing the use of advanced analytics is necessary to make a successful digital transformation, and ultimately achieve digital maturity.

But what is digital maturity? Digital maturity—a measure of an organization’s ability to create value through digital delivery—focuses on three areas of technological advancement that drive large-scale innovation:

1. Using cloud infrastructure
2. Expanding access to data
3. Using that data to improve processes through advanced analytics, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)

Although university leaders agree on prioritizing digital maturity, more than 55% said they considered their schools to be “digital performers” or “digital leaders.” However, only 25% of tech leaders at these universities stated that their schools regularly use data analytics. As with corporations and governments, higher education institutions face barriers to technological innovation, such as:

• Competing priorities to meet step-change goals and decentralized decision making
• Budget constraints
• Cultural resistance to change
• Tech staff skillset gaps

Still, leaders understand that the way to overcome institutional inertia is with a strong, goal-oriented vision of what is best for the institution overall. Although only a handful of schools have reached digital maturity as we define it, others can learn a great deal from their examples. Here are the top takeaways from higher education leaders who successfully transformed their institutions:

Digital solutions can improve the student journey in many ways

As digital capabilities hold the key to dealing effectively with declining enrollment and rising costs, higher ed leaders identified four goals that are critical to improving performance:

1. Improve the student journey
2. Increase operational efficiency
3. Scale computing power in advanced research
4. Innovate education delivery

The research found that technology investments can help enhance the student journey in the recruiting and retention of students, improving digital education delivery, government funding, and donations from alumni. Digital maturity can make institutions more agile and efficient in delivering education that aligns with the changing societal norms, evolving student preferences, and future disruptions. Survey participants shared that they plan to increase the use of the cloud by more than 50% over the next three years. By shifting legacy IT systems to the cloud, institutions can increase scalability, lower the cost of ownership, and improve operational agility, while offering a more secure, long-term data storage solution.

Cloud-native software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions provide an excellent platform for centralizing data. However, institutions that attempt to “lift and shift” their legacy systems to the cloud may encounter challenges to achieving measurable improvements in data integration and cost reduction. Higher ed leaders must realize that centralizing data and transitioning to the cloud do not happen simultaneously.

Leaders who are able to articulate a strong vision and commitment will experience a more successful technology transformation. By linking their vision to specific needs, such as more effective recruiting, leaders will find their technology investments will have a more substantial return. University presidents should base their decisions about which systems to move, when, and how on desired performance outcomes.

Big visions become a reality with small steps. Small pilot projects are an excellent way to start the journey toward digital maturity. Small steps toward a significant transformation can reduce resistance to change, build positive momentum, and produce better student outcomes. Read the full report here. If you’d like to talk to a Google Cloud expert, get in touch.