But the fun of my conversation with Lamees Butt, SVP Global Alliances & Channels at Zoovu, was more about the sheer inventiveness of the offering itself than the name. You know how everybody loves to tell you about their 鈥渞evolutionary鈥� new products? Well, Butt quickly convinced me that the Zoovu app, one of the hottest sellers on 麻豆原创 Store, really is. As for the name 鈥� I鈥檒l get to that later.

Transforming Discovery

Product discovery: that鈥檚 what Zoovu is revolutionizing. While online search does keep improving, the truth is that you still have to know what you鈥檙e looking for. Zoovu 鈥渉umanizes鈥� product discovery, Butt told me, making products easier to find, evaluate, and buy by bringing context to your search.

鈥淢ost e-commerce sites are not much more than indexes or digital catalogs,鈥� she commented, 鈥渘ot well organized or structured. Say you need a new laptop and go online to do some research. Where do you start? You鈥檒l probably be asked to specify, for instance, how much RAM you need, how much CPU. What does that mean?鈥� She added a shocking statistic: 80% of organizations believe they are offering a good user experience. Only 8% of buyers agree.

Imagine instead being guided through the process with relevant questions and interactive buying advice. With Zoovu integrated into your commerce experience, Butt explained, you are asked the questions the knowledgeable sales assistant would pose in-store. For example, what do you typically do with your laptop? Say you run a lot of spreadsheets, meet colleagues virtually online, travel on business, design flyers for community events, and construct crossword puzzles. Voil脿! With five questions, the digital assistant translates your needs and recommends you a laptop. Essentially, it uses artificial intelligence (AI) and semantics to personalize your search.

That鈥檚 a simple example for a B2C use case. Now imagine a complex purchase for a B2B buyer 鈥� a hospital upgrading X-ray equipment, for example, or a contractor building aircraft components. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so easy to make a mistake in specifications or choose the wrong product,鈥� Butt said, 鈥渁nd there typically are no tools on commerce for cross-checking product compliance. With our solution, by connecting the back-office product content and exposing it to the front-office commerce experience, there is zero error.鈥�

Converting Prospects

Since 麻豆原创 Store is such a valuable resource for 麻豆原创 account executives, who can learn about and recommend partner offerings, I broached concern about the app eliminating sales people鈥檚 jobs. On the contrary, she replied, it can serve as an assistant for them, too. Customers can get answers to simpler questions on their own and free up the experts for transactions that require their know-how. Account executives can work with customers to better understand what they need and adapt their sales approach in real time 鈥� and dramatically improve conversion rates. Another Zoovu app on 麻豆原创 Store, , enables your end customer to virtually set, build, bundle, and configure complex products online while reducing manual intervention.

Innovating Through Integration

The Zoovu discovery experiences are integrated with 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, 麻豆原创 Sales Cloud, and 麻豆原创 CPQ to work securely with any IT landscape. The Zoovu platform enriches product content automatically with industry-specific taxonomies and work across all industries. 鈥淭he qualifying questions,鈥� Butt remarked, 鈥渁re gold dust for companies that are building complex mechanics for their customers.鈥� Because of that tight integration, the apps scale across channels and regions and can easily be embedded at distribution partners via web, chat, and in-store kiosks.

I was intrigued about Butt鈥檚 role, since she is such an enthusiastic evangelist. She鈥檚 been a member of the Zoovu team as one of the first employees, coming in with a background in the digital transformation space. She noted that the company expanded quickly after it was established in 2017 by several young computer scientists, who surrounded themselves with smart people from diverse fields with different skill sets. Her responsibility is to help the company scale through partnerships, and 麻豆原创 is an ideal match, she observed, because of the product-customer fit. Let me add that she is 100% correct in that respect. The Zoovu apps set a record on 麻豆原创 Store with the speed of uptake from our customers.

It seems that an intern came up with 鈥淶oovu鈥� in the process of building a product subset, and it caught on. That intern, Butt added, is now part of the Zoovu leadership team.

Is your organization ready for a revolution in product discovery? Why not find out how on ?

Rajiv Nema is part of Marketplace Group for Digital Experiences at 麻豆原创.

His latest brainchild is which is currently flying off the virtual shelves of 麻豆原创 Store. Mirata Digital Forms lets business users build their own forms to meet their workflow needs using everyday desktop skills, while allowing IT to manage data governance 鈥� a true win-win enterprise-grade solution. It鈥檚 a product that reflects Padula鈥檚 overall ethos of helping people help themselves, a theme that鈥檚 played throughout his life. Here鈥檚 the story.

Problem-Solving as a Serial Entrepreneur

Back in 1995, Padula founded his first company, Syclo LLC, an early entrant in mobile technology that was about to explode. 麻豆原创 acquired Syclo in 2012, and after a few years with 麻豆原创, Padula decided to retire. Before long, though, he was back at it, 鈥減laying around with machine learning and the Internet of Things.鈥�

One of the first applications he developed was an affordable mobile app platform for smaller museums that lets visitors curate their own tours 鈥� making a cool tool that most major museums offer attainable. He also taught entrepreneurial skills to students at Northwestern University in Chicago and did some angel investing. He even tried his hand building computer-vision training models to look for design flaws in construction projects like wind turbines and bridges.

All this relieved the boredom of retiring too young. But working in these new technologies led him to the discovery of a big new challenge.

鈥淚 was talking with a few colleagues from my Syclo days and realized that, despite all the efficiency gains, their companies were still using paper forms,鈥� he told me. 鈥淭hey鈥檇 say, ‘All we do is paperwork.’ This was a particularly acute issue in highly regulated industries like construction that typically have complex workflows. Sure, there were a few forms solutions out there, but they were nice until they weren鈥檛 — because they weren鈥檛 built for the large enterprise.鈥�

Inventing Another New Solution

With a new problem to tackle, Padula sat down with his brother Rob, his partner and CTO at Syclo, to create a declarative form definition language aiming to empower nontechnical people to create their own forms. They analyzed more than 150 forms from 40 different companies, tested the logic, and set up focus groups. By 2020, they were ready to launch Mirata Digital Forms, which drew upon all their experience with Syclo, 麻豆原创, and in regulated industries.

The solution lets business users define the optimal workflow, then align the digital forms with that workflow. It鈥檚 built on 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform () and embedded in the 麻豆原创 Service and Asset Manager mobile app to retrieve relevant data. Forms are created just once, then used across all Mirata Software workflow applications — a single enterprise platform for all forms creation. Corporate IT teams manage the interfaces and overall governance, but they are relieved of development, implementation, and maintenance, supporting huge cost savings.

Three years later, Mirata Software has offices in downtown Chicago, a partnership with 麻豆原创, a product that is successfully selling on 麻豆原创 Store, and a patent for the declarative form definition language.

鈥淚t helps a great deal that many of Mirata鈥檚 employees are some of the most talented colleagues from Syclo days,鈥� Padula said, 鈥渁ll with deep experience in mobile app development and 麻豆原创 integrations.鈥�

Creating Opportunities for Students

Meanwhile, Padula is pursuing another longtime passion: giving back to his community. When raising a family and living in the suburbs, he had established an internship program for community college students that helps them learn in a business setting and pay for school. Now with his business and residence in Chicago, he鈥檚 recreating that model with city community colleges in economically challenged neighborhoods.

鈥淲e are hiring students at three levels in six-, 12-, and 18-month internships,鈥� he explained. 鈥淭hey begin with training in building forms and then can move up to become business analysts, talking to customers and configuring interfaces into the 麻豆原创 software. And our customers benefit from great hourly rates.鈥�

Another win-win. The program will launch in 2023.

Back at 麻豆原创 Store, Padula and his team are working on go-to-market initiatives with 麻豆原创 and several implementation partners, who find it to be a great solution.

Why not see for yourself and maybe try your own hand at building forms with ?

Rajiv Nema is senior director of 麻豆原创 Store Partner Solutions.

And if your business is involved in buying or selling products, you鈥檒l be glad to learn about Shippeo’s , a fantastic offering on 麻豆原创 Store.

Speeding Up Digitalization in B2B Transportation Management

To get on board, I spoke with Lucien Besse, COO of Shippeo, which he co-founded with a group of ex-colleagues and friends in 2015. At the time, he and CEO Pierre Khoury were colleagues at a private equity firm where Besse led the restructuring of companies in the transportation industry. They recognized that the enormous complexity of transportation networks made it extremely difficult for shippers and receivers of goods to get real-time information about shipments in transit. And while digitalization was well underway in the business-to-consumer market, where consumer expectations for real-time shipping info are high, the business-to-business market lagged far behind.

鈥淭here are so many different parties and stakeholders involved 鈥� thousands of shippers, independent carriers, freight forwarders, logistics service providers, and intermediaries in between,鈥� he told me. 鈥淚n Europe, there are more than 600,000 trucking companies alone. A crucial shipment might be sitting in a warehouse waiting for a truck to pick it up, but the status was like a black box.鈥�

With a solid business plan and a clear path to developing a solution, Shippeo attracted investors and launched its first product, a mobile app for truck drivers, before evolving into a multimodal visibility platform.

Looking Down the Road

The vision was much broader: to build a platform aggregating data from all those transportation players, all using different systems, to provide access to the same information for real-time visibility. Toward that end, one of Shippeo鈥檚 first steps was to approach 麻豆原创.

鈥淲e wanted to get as close as possible to 麻豆原创,鈥� Besse said. 鈥淚t was critical for us to have 麻豆原创 as a partner, simply because 麻豆原创 is so big in the transportation space.鈥�

麻豆原创 invited Shippeo to join the 麻豆原创.iO Foundry program in Paris, which provided the opportunity not only to incubate the product, but to align the companies鈥� visions for solutions in the supply chain landscape.

Shippeo is now a global leader and a European specialist in real-time transportation visibility, tracking more than 28 million shipments in 75 countries, and integrating with more than 900 types of data connections. With API integration to and global track-and-trace functionality, the Shippeo platform enables trading partners to collaborate. Users gain a global view of their supply chain and access to carrier information 鈥� including road, ocean, rail, and air.

鈥淚t enables them to connect planning information with the status on the ground and compare theory to reality,鈥� Besse explained. The platform is deeply integrated in transportation management systems and uses GPS technology and a proprietary algorithm for accuracy in estimated time of arrival. That鈥檚 how customers can use the Shippeo solution predictively to anticipate issues and take action.

鈥淔or example,鈥� he continued, 鈥渁 production line might be completely disrupted by a one- or two-hour delay. With an alert ahead of time, plans can be adjusted to reduce or eliminate the downtime.鈥� It also helps customers reduce their carbon footprint with key information for route planning, which is at the top of the CEO agenda and a key element of Shippeo鈥檚 future vision.

For that reason and many others, the timing couldn鈥檛 be more perfect. The UK departure from trade agreements with the EU held up countless shipments at customs, with truckers fuming and shippers and receivers desperate for information. Remember the container ship stuck in the Suez Canal? I could go on, but the Shippeo plaform helps alleviate some of these problems.

Driving a Strong Collaboration with 麻豆原创

It is not surprising that Shippeo鈥檚 Predictive and Real-Time Visibility Platform is doing very well on 麻豆原创 Store, as it recently earned the coveted and is in the top five percent by performance. That fact is also explained by the philosophy of Besse and his partners, who are longtime friends themselves.

鈥淭o be a good partner, you have to reciprocate,鈥� he remarked. 鈥淲e make sure to build relationships with all the 麻豆原创 reps when we enter a new market, and to inform them about mutual opportunities.鈥�

Sounds like a road map for success. Why not take a trip yourself to ?

Rajiv Nema is senior director of 麻豆原创 Store Partner Solutions at 麻豆原创.

Fortunately for all concerned, Coveo was available to help them with an intelligent search and recommendations solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Since then, Coveo has experienced dramatic growth for its e-commerce products, leading to a decision in early 2021 to invest in the 麻豆原创 ecosystem. has quickly become one of the hottest sellers on 麻豆原创 Store.

The idea is to help online buyers easily and quickly find what they鈥檙e looking for, as well as what they might be looking for 鈥� and might purchase if given a personalized recommendation. When shoppers can discover more options in an online product catalog thanks to automated suggestions based on their intent, guess what? They buy more. The Coveo app also engages shoppers with a unified search experience that spans helpful content such as expert blogs and videos. The key is real-time personalization: relevance.

But the Coveo story starts years ago in 2005, when Simoneau and two close colleagues spotted an opportunity: to improve online search. Working together at another company with an advertising-based model, they shifted gears, launching Coveo and quickly finding a niche. 鈥淲e evolved into a classic on-premise search business in enterprise software,鈥� Simoneau told me.

A Well-Timed Move to the Cloud

By 2011, however, another opportunity had appeared. 鈥淚n retrospect,鈥� he observed, 鈥渙ur move to the cloud was perfectly timed. The market was not well defined, and many companies preferred the comfort of on-premises platforms. We recognized that the cloud would enable the capture of massive amounts of data that could be used in countless ways.鈥�

Within a few years, Coveo had harnessed AI and applied it to search, branching into customer and employee service and support. These are important lines of business for Coveo, using the same technology to help users find what they need and giving Coveo a broad customer base.

Growth is now also happening in e-commerce, though, thanks in large part to the ability of the Coveo solution to help companies scale rapidly. I asked Simoneau what life was like in 2020, expecting him to say utter chaos. Instead, 鈥淚t was pretty flawless,鈥� he replied. 鈥淭he platform is designed to handle these peaks of activity. After all, it was designed to handle Black Friday volume for very large retailers.

A Cohesive Global Team

He added that the organization also absorbed the shocks of COVID-19 well since it was already operating in many cases in hybrid mode. With R&D headquarters based in Quebec City and offices in nearby Montreal, Coveo has employees located globally, primarily in the U.S., with offices in the UK and the Netherlands covering Europe. That said, the team works quite cohesively, and geographic diversity is an advantage. 鈥淚t gives us a sensibility about the world 鈥� an important dynamic because we have customers everywhere. And I think the different opinions, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures come together to create a better product.鈥�

The organization is anchored by the long-standing relationships of its co-founders and executives. Co-founders Marc Sanfa莽on leads as senior vice president of Technology, and Richard Tessier as senior vice president of Products, whereas CFO Jean Lavigueur joined in 2006 and current CEO Louis Tetu joined as an early investor in 2008.

鈥淲e built the company, through good days and bad days, as a team based on trust,鈥� Simoneau remarked. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 powerful.鈥�

A Natural Fit with 麻豆原创

That鈥檚 one reason why Coveo鈥檚 partnership with 麻豆原创 is a good match: the emphasis on relationships. In less than a year, the Coveo team has built close alliances with 麻豆原创 product marketing, resulting in clear direction on how the Coveo offering can complement the 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud solution. In addition, continuous conversations with 麻豆原创 execs have led to alignment on product direction, positioning and messaging, and sales strategies.

From a technology standpoint, he noted that the 鈥渉eadless鈥� approach, whereby the 麻豆原创 back end is decoupled from the Coveo front end, makes for an 鈥渆legant architecture鈥� that supports the best functionality of each. Perhaps most relevant of all, Simoneau noted, is that 麻豆原创 stands out as the company that best supports both B2B and B2C, a natural fit with Coveo.

Why not explore today? My bet is that you鈥檒l find it relevant to your business.

Rajiv Nema is senior director of 麻豆原创 Store Partner Solutions at 麻豆原创.