Michael Smart

Great Place To Work® and Fortune magazine have honored Five9 as one of this year's Best Workplaces in the Bay Area. 🌟 This is Five9's second time being named to this prestigious list, coming in at No. 17. Earning a spot means that Five9 has surpassed rigorous benchmarks, establishing itself as one of the best workplaces among companies headquartered in the San Francisco Bay region. Learn more: #Five9 #BestPlacesToWork #CustomerExperience

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Excited to be representing OutSystems with Sergio A. at the upcoming Evanta, a Gartner Company, SoCal CIO Executive Summit tomorrow in Long Beach, CA. We look forward to seeing many SoCal Tech Leaders there! The marriage between AI and High Performance Low Code software is truly transforming organizations. Do NOT sleep on this evolution. #OutSystems #EvantaaGartnerCompany #CIOExecSummit #SoCal #AI #HighPerformanceLowCodePlatform #Software #DigitalTransformation #DevelopmentEvolution #EmergingTechnologies

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I'm excited to attend the Tungsten Automation Summit at The Novo in Los Angeles on May 7th! This gathering is poised to be a fabulous experience, showcasing the latest in AI and automation technology. 🤖 Here's a peek at what's on the agenda: ▶ Key insights from industry leaders like Tim Battis, Adam Field, David Sentongo, CPA, Emily Nash-Walker, Bill Mariani, and Jimar Garcia. ▶ Deep dives into intelligent workflow automation and the transformative power of Generative AI. ▶ Practical applications and customer case studies showing real-world success. And my favorite: networking with professionals who are at the forefront of technological innovation. If you'll be at the Summit, let's connect and chat about the Copilot for Insights we developed in partnership with Tungsten Automation. If you aren't planning to attend the Summit but would like to learn about how leading partners in insurance, financial services, logistics, supply chain, and other industries are leveraging generative AI to extract insights from documents, please reach out. #GenerativeAI #GenAI #AI #ML #Insights #DocumentAutomation #Automation #Networking #TechEvent #LosAngeles #CPG #Insurance #FinancialServices #Logistics #SupplyChain #Manufacturing

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AI-native companies need to embrace new pricing paradigms (price based on work done, on outcome vs hours, etc). Inevitably, new pricing models are accompanied by new workflows, new ways of invoicing, and new challenges around billing. This makes Sequence's modern billing platform particularly relevant: Sequence helps finance and commercial teams automate manual billing and stop revenue leakage. Sequence has just launched their CPQ Product for B2B software businesses with hybrid pricing, designed specifically for AI, B2B SaaS and Fintech startups. This release empowers B2B teams to create flexible pricing proposals or contracts, including teams selling custom deals with usage tiers, minimum commitments, or ramped pricing, Sequence CPQ works for any pricing model or deal term. As a customer says: "Sequence is like a notion page supercharged with pricing tools." Excited for Sequence to build the critical infrastructure needed to enable new, flexible paradigms that are critical for the AI revolution.

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I recently sat down with the CIO from one of our customers to ask him what he looks for when he engages a vendor. His advice boiled down to six items: 1) Establish proven expertise 2) Present technical solutions tied to clear business initiatives. 3) Have a template / recipe on how to proceed. 4) Show how that recipe is tied to the business and technical objectives. 5) Have a path to show value quickly. 6) Identify opportunities for him to self-fund the initiative - take out other costs. Most of these may be obvious, but it was helpful to get a clear read on his thinking, and I could see how he made the case internally for our work. He was looking for a means of getting to a consistent "one truth" from his data teams. He wanted that for granular data which feeds other systems and for the detailed analysis that is fed to senior executives. However, he tied "single truth" to the CFO's objective of consistent reporting on recurring revenue. And he was able to use the retirement of an existing application to self fund the program. The retirement became a "long thin spike" for the data strategy. I also asked him about the importance of AI in his strategy. He suggested, AI is on his mind and that of all his peers. However, the number of organizations who are doing real business initiatives is still small. Mostly it is either in pilot or POC stage. And there is still a large number of his peers who are still just "thinking about it." He falls into the "thinking about it" category. And even though it has not risen to a clear project, he wants anything he does to be consistent for helping him lay the groundwork. I always think customer advice is helpful. I hope you find it interesting as well.

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Power delivery is crucial for data centers as it impacts their operational efficiency, reliability, and ability to scale. Now, any enterprise can reduce the number of failure-prone AC power supplies, enhancing overall data center performance. Why rent when you can get your own scale-ready Cloud Computer from Oxide Computer Company.

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I had the amazing opportunity to host David Maples, CEO at Catapult Creative Media Inc. & Kalre Technologies, on the Muddy Waters Clear Vision Podcast. We explored the world of AI, entrepreneurship, and the impact of tech on businesses.    Key takeaways from this episode:    1. When facing unexpected challenges, such as during a disaster, it's crucial to adapt, innovate, and focus on helping both employees and the community.    2. True leadership means quietly guiding and empowering your team. Challenge them to set and achieve their goals.    3. Embracing technological advancements, like AI, is vital for business survival, but it's equally important to demystify it and support smaller companies in utilizing it to compete with larger corporations.    Tune in to the episode to gain valuable insights from David's diverse career background, leadership experiences, and the lessons learned from navigating through challenging times.    #MuddyWatersClearVision #PodcastHost #AI #Entrepreneurship #LeadershipInsights #Catapult #KalreTechnologies    Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g9EcvYDX   Apple: https://lnkd.in/gQwdwzQj  

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If you aren't regularly checking out these trends, follow Affinitiv to keep an eye on what's happening broadly across the market. Right now, we're continuing to see a softening of New Luxury sales, with Used growing in demand. Definitely still some overall impact slowing the new car sales. Dealers should continue looking for strategies to attract the shrinking share of luxury new car shoppers with targeted strategies. #automotive #insights #VariableOps #AutomotiveTrends #MarketingStrategy

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Interesting take on video conferencing and technology on the horizon.

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At Marvel DC, we empower Service Providers to navigate complex large deal pursuits effectively, ensuring they stand out, compete, and craft a compelling narrative. It's crucial to recognize that not all providers are equally suited for every Enterprise engagement, especially if it's procurement-driven. Remember, Enterprise clients do not cover pursuit costs, making it essential to assess your capabilities and chances of success. Save your pursuit resources for opportunities where you have a competitive edge. Recently, we collaborated with an Outsourcing Provider, guiding them to realize that a 'no bid' decision could save their company a significant $250,000 in revenue. Sometimes, walking away can be a strategic win too. As you reflect over the weekend, consider the value of making informed decisions in pursuit strategies. #BusinessInsights #StrategicDecisions #EnterpriseEngagements

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Whose building a modern expert network leveraging the latest technology? Who is building the equivalent of what Tegus built years ago? Something that will disrupt the current expert network providers? There is so much to be done with AI that I imagine their are many unique expert networks being built.

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Modern leadership is about zone of influenceversus zone of control. People follow people and not titles. Leadership is a role and not a job title. https://lnkd.in/gzrRffn6

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Here’s a simple way to approach modern CX Data and AI through the lens of history: Phase 1 (1998-2010), Cisco, Avaya, Aspect/Alvaria, Inc.- Pay the vendor a bunch of $$ to enable ODBC access to the database sitting on a server in your data center (or I.T. closet). Then ETL it all into your own SQL Server data warehouse with a BI tool on top. Phase 2 (starting 2010), NICE, Five9, Talkdesk, etc. - Here’s some APIs, go build out integrations, polling and cronjobs to work around rate limits and latency + ETL into your data warehouse and post transcribe your calls. Phase 3 (Zoom, Cisco WebEx) - APIs, plus subscribe to any of our event streams (webhooks or web sockets) with inline transcripts to integrate and deliver real-time AI applications and enterprise workflows. It’s really only by moving into Phase 3 that organizations are able to deliver on the “real” promise of AI in customer experience and employee orchestration. #contactcenter #ai4real

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A fundamental misunderstanding of ‘partnership’ when Direct Sales and Partnering culture clashes– What most Tech CEOs get wrong when starting in partnering #3 http://surl.li/owqze #SalesChannels #PartneringStrategy

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