Day: May 23, 2023

Periscope by McKinsey recognized as a comprehensive pricing solution that includes strategy, analytics, technology, process optimization, and change management

NEW YORK and LONDON, May 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — McKinsey & Company today announced that Periscope by McKinsey has been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Price Optimization Solutions 2023 Vendor Assessment (doc #US49458922, March 2023). McKinsey was also named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape in 2021-2022 (doc #US48393721, December 2021).

The Periscope by McKinsey platform combines world-leading intellectual property, prescriptive analytics, and a suite of marketing and sales analytics solutions, including pricing and promotion. This unique combination helps companies drive revenue growth and fuels Growth, Marketing & Sales’ transformational client offerings.

Price is often the first consideration of consumers when making a purchase. For retailers, setting the right price at the right time is crucial to driving growth and profits, yet few are able to make informed decisions using real-time data and market analyses. Only 15 to 20 percent of retailers have some form of dynamic pricing capabilities.

According to the IDC MarketScape report, “Together with McKinsey’s professional services, Periscope’s customers benefit from a comprehensive pricing solution that includes strategy, analytics, technology, process optimization, and change management, which is highly tailored to the company and its goals while staying on a long-term upgrade road map. McKinsey’s solution focuses on the full impact potential with a full pricing life-cycle package.”

The IDC MarketScape report identifies some of McKinsey’s strengths:

• Sophisticated pricing, expert-focused solution: McKinsey brings together over 750 full-time employees dedicated to pricing science, with a complement of strategic consultative service. Our team’s proficiency in elasticity and the integration of rule-based capabilities create a strong user interface. And our strategic analytics tools mean long-term customer success and margin growth. We know how to push our customers to drive pricing excellence, bringing unique expertise to develop pricing capabilities.

• Customer responsiveness: McKinsey customers are highly confident that we understand their current and future needs, and are willing to invest in our platform to support future growth opportunities.

• Customer satisfaction: McKinsey customers are highly satisfied with Periscope and the sales and customer service processes. They are highly likely to recommend the company to other colleagues in the industry. Customer interviews highlight McKinsey’s ability to customize solutions to fit customer needs.

“Price optimization has become even more important as the economy emerges from the pandemic and inflationary pressure requires considered tactics that meet retailer and consumer needs. Retailers must evaluate and leverage price optimization solutions to reduce costs, maintain profitability, and continue to offer effective price points that consumers will be willing to purchase at,” said Ananda Chakravarty, vice president for Retail Insights at IDC, and author of the report. “Several factors play a part in price, and all of them lead back to driving the retail business. Retail is about selling merchandise, and price is a key driver.”

Zachary John, a partner and Periscope leader at McKinsey & Company
“As revenue growth experts, we focus on helping retailers build a data-driven operating model to make forward-looking decisions. Their ability to harness competitive intelligence and consumer insights to build, refine, and, in real-time, optimize their pricing strategy is of critical importance to protecting margins and driving growth. Our powerful combination of world-class consulting services and Periscope pricing solutions helps our clients drive analytics and insights into the economics of pricing and robust execution.”

Tobias Wachinger, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company
“As retailers and companies feel the pressure from all sides to rein in prices and adapt to inflation, the time is now to refine their pricing strategies. And what the outperformers are realizing is that they can do both – strengthen customer relationships and overall margins. To create long-term value, companies should take a nuanced approach to pricing, promotion, and assortment strategy that is grounded in rich analytics – one that can inform customer’s willingness to pay, the margin performance of a product, and service level expected from the price change. We are humbled by the IDC MarketScape’s recognition, and it’s a testament to the work we do in service of our clients and their customers.”

The 2023 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Retail Price Optimization Solutions 2023 Vendor Assessment excerpt can be accessed here.

About IDC MarketScape:
The IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

About Growth, Marketing & Sales, McKinsey & Company 
The mission of the McKinsey Growth, Marketing & Sales practice is to help leaders of both consumer and business-to-business clients create Growth that Matters through meaningful transformations and marketing-driven profit. The practice helps its clients set their strategic direction, develop their marketing and sales capabilities, and connect their organization to realize the full potential of today’s omnichannel opportunities. Clients benefit from McKinsey’s experience in core areas of marketing such as branding, customer insights, marketing ROI, digital marketing, CLM pricing, and sales and channel management.

About Periscope® by McKinsey
Founded in 2007, and now a part of the McKinsey Growth, Marketing & Sales practice, the Periscope® by McKinsey platform combines world-leading intellectual property, prescriptive analytics, and cloud-based tools with expert support and training. It’s a unique combination that drives revenue growth, both now and into the future. The platform offers a suite of Marketing & Sales solutions that accelerate and sustain commercial transformation for businesses. Periscope leverages its world-leading IP (largely from McKinsey but also other partners) and best-in-class technology to enable transparency into big data, create actionable insights and new ways of working that drive lasting performance improvement, and typically sustain a 2–7% increase in return on sales (ROS). With a truly global reach, the portfolio of solutions includes: Insight Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Customer Experience Solutions, Category Solutions, Pricing Solutions, Performance Solutions, and Sales Solutions. These are complemented by ongoing client service and custom capability-building programs.

To learn more about how Periscope’s solutions and experts are helping businesses continually drive better performance, visit www.mckinsey.com/periscope

For further information please contact:
Media Contacts
US : Digennaro Communications : MaryLiz Ghanem McKinsey-DiGennaro@digennaro-usa.com / 917-518-8422
UK : 3THINKRS : Ruth Jones / Becca Ross mckinsey@3thinkrs.com / 0208 0872843

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8844831

NEW YORK, May 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — With new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance, study sponsors are no longer viewing clinical trial diversity as “nice to have” but as a “must have.” Citeline’s new Sitetrove Diversity Module marries robust site and investigator intelligence with patient age, race and gender data, enabling data-driven decision making to support the diversification of clinical trials.

The Diversity Module includes patient racial demographics from medical claims along with investigator gender data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The patient data are broken down by Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic, White and unknown. Sponsors will now be able to identify expert clinical investigators with relevant trial experience and who have access to diverse patient populations in one continuous workflow.

Enacted in December 2022, the U.S. 2023 omnibus spending bill requires diversity action plans for Phase 3 or pivotal clinical trials used by the FDA to determine the safety and efficacy of drugs. It reflects a concerted effort to reverse a growing trend: lack of diversity in clinical trials. In fact, according to a recent study, U.S. clinical trial diversity has dropped to its lowest level of the decade.

Citeline’s Sitetrove Diversity Module is designed to support Sponsors’ activities surrounding these imminent requirements, including feasibility, planning and investigator/site selection — all of which drive recruitment strategy. Beyond regulatory requirements, sponsors can leverage this demographic data to demonstrate a broader commitment to clinical trial diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“Clinical trial sponsors now have specific U.S. legal obligations, in addition to ethical ones, for improving diversity in their research studies,” said Dave Laky, General Manager of Clinical & Regulatory at Citeline. “While sponsors may worry about the challenges of recruiting underserved communities, pinpointing where diverse patients are being treated is a great first step towards enrolling these individuals. Our new Diversity Module is one example of how Citeline is actively investing in the expansion of our patient and provider demographic data to enable data-driven decision making.”

Citeline is also developing a Diversity API, scheduled for release later this quarter, that will allow users to analyze ICD10-specific patient counts by age, race and gender, for U.S. clinical investigators and organizations. Additional developments are planned for the Diversity Module in the coming months, including enhanced visualizations, enriched datasets, organization-level diversity insights, and patient landscapes outside the U.S.

Learn more about Citeline’s Sitetrove.

About Citeline
Citeline, a Norstella company, powers a full suite of complementary business intelligence offerings to meet the evolving needs of life science professionals to accelerate the connection of treatments to patients and patients to treatments. These patient-focused solutions and services deliver and analyze data used to drive clinical, commercial, and regulatory-related decisions and create real-world opportunities for growth.

Citeline’s global teams of analysts, journalists and consultants keep their fingers on the pulse of the pharmaceutical, biomedical and medtech industries, covering it all with expert insights: key diseases, clinical trials, drug R&D and approvals, market forecasts and more. For more information on one of the world’s most trusted health science partners, visit Citeline.

Citeline PR contact:
Diffusion PR for Citeline
citeline@diffusionpr.com
(213) 318-4500

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8842677

Highlighting application of the Molecular Biology Workstation to accelerating vaccine and biologics discovery

SAN DIEGO, May 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Telesis Bio Inc. (NASDAQ: TBIO), a leader in automated multi-omic and synthetic biology solutions, today announced they will be showcasing their benchtop automation solutions for synthetic biology at SynBioBeta 2023 which is being held May 23-25 in Oakland, California.

Telesis Bio will present in two speaker sessions: Todd R. Nelson, Ph.D., CEO and Founder of Telesis Bio and David Brown, Ph.D., Director R&D, RNAimmune will present “Beyond COVID: Leveraging synthetic biology to advance the potential of mRNA-based vaccines” on Tuesday May 23^rd. RNAimmune will showcase the application of the BioXp platform for accelerating their vaccine discovery workflows. Daniel Gibson, Ph.D., CTO and Co-founder will present “Streamlining molecular biology workflows throughout biologics discovery” on Wednesday, May 24^th. His presentation will focus on the BioXp platform technology and updates on expanding capabilities in synthetic biology, library preparation for NGS and application of on-demand automated synthesis with SOLA EDS technology.

The award winning BioXp^® system and associated BioXp^® De novo and Select synthesis kits as well as NGS library prep kits provide a complete automated solution for accelerating many synthetic biology and genomics workflows throughout discovery. The system assists researchers in optimizing their discovery process by enabling sequence to screening in days, rather than weeks or months with alternative methods.

Telesis Bio will also present in two poster sessions at the conference: Qi Zhang, Ph.D. Scientist, R&D will present “Automated solutions for addressing mRNA synthesis bottlenecks in therapeutics discovery” and David Weiss, Director of Product Management will present “Construction & Sequence Verification of Custom Genomes: Using the BioXp to streamline design to test workflow” to showcase application of the NGS library preparation kits for plasmid sequencing on the BioXp platform.

For more information on Telesis Bio at SynBiobeta visit: https://telesisbio.com/synbiobeta-2023/

About Telesis Bio
Telesis Bio is empowering scientists with the ability to create novel, synthetic biology-enabled solutions for many of humanity’s greatest challenges. As inventors of the industry-standard Gibson Assembly^® method and the first commercial automated benchtop DNA and mRNA synthesis system, Telesis Bio is enabling rapid, accurate and reproducible writing of DNA and mRNA for numerous downstream markets. The award-winning BioXp^® system consolidates, automates, and optimizes the entire synthesis, cloning and amplification workflow. As a result, it delivers virtually error-free synthesis of DNA and RNA at scale within days and hours instead of weeks or months. Scientists around the world are using the technology in their own laboratories to accelerate the design-build-test paradigm for novel, high-value products for precision medicine, biologics drug discovery, vaccine and therapeutic development, genome editing, and cell and gene therapy. Telesis Bio is a public company based in San Diego. For more information, visit www.telesisbio.com.

Telesis Bio, the Telesis Bio logo, Gibson Assembly, and BioXp are trademarks of Telesis Bio Inc.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained herein are forward-looking statements reflecting the current beliefs and expectations of management made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include statements and guidance regarding Telesis Bio’s future financial performance as well as statements regarding the future release and success of new and existing products and services. Such statements are based on current assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, include risks described in the section entitled Risk Factors and elsewhere in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 12, 2023, as amended on May 1, 2023. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof and should not be unduly relied upon. Telesis Bio disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Contact:
Jen Carroll
Vice President of Investor Relations
jen.carroll@telesisbio.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8843577

Solution integrates controls capture directly into Financial Close and other processes, reducing complexity, costs, and compliance implementation and maintenance efforts

LOS ANGELES, May 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, FloQast, a provider of accounting workflow automation software created by accountants for accountants, announced the launch of FloQastCompliance Management, an advanced workflow solution that helps finance, accounting, and internal audit teams centrally manage and integrate compliance into business processes for continuous audit readiness and integrity. Offered as part of FloQast’s cloud-native Accounting Operations Platform, FloQast Compliance Management integrates with FloQastClose Management and FloQast Ops to deliver the ability to set up controls capture directly into the Financial Close and other business operations like payroll processing and financial reporting. Now, organizations can monitor controls in real-time and align around their compliance program, reducing risk and giving control owners clear visibility into ownership and accountability.

FloQast Compliance Management reduces the cost and effort of implementing and maintaining new compliance and controls programs. Organizations can streamline end-to-end compliance management, reducing manual effort and gaining the scalability and agility to meet changing business environments and compliance regulations. FloQast Compliance Management complements additional, existing compliance-related solutions and coexists seamlessly with the tools control managers rely on to manage their compliance program, including spreadsheets, cloud storage, email, and messaging platforms.

“Internal compliance teams are under huge amounts of pressure to deliver more detailed information to external auditors and organizational leadership, but too often rely on disconnected solutions and manual processes to manage compliance programs,” said Mike Whitmire, CEO and co-founder of FloQast, CPA. “FloQast Compliance Management automates these manual efforts for a more data-driven, collaborative audit that better empowers organizations to respond to changing regulatory and business environments and foster happier teams.”

The burden of compliance on organizations has never been greater. Between a complex and ever-evolving regulatory environment, staffing shortages, and rising compliance costs, many companies struggle with the visibility and coordination required to navigate the compliance landscape. In fact, recent research from FloQast indicated the average organization spends about $2.4 million annually on compliance and control processes, however only 26% of professionals feel their existing compliance and control management processes add significant value to the organization.

According to Michael Rasmussen, GRC 2020 Pundit and Analyst, “There will only be more regulatory requirements, complexity and costs to maintain GRC programs on the horizon. To more effectively manage this reality companies will need to adopt GRC 6.0 – Business Integrated GRC, which integrates risk, compliance and controls management into core business processes, that will deliver greater visibility, assurance, and efficiency across all their compliance efforts.”

FloQast Compliance Management optimizes organizations’ compliance and controls programs through:

• Continuous Controls Capture for Better Visibility and Accountability: With FloQast Compliance Management, teams capture financial controls while performing daily tasks like the Close or account reconciliation for clear visibility into control ownership, responsibilities, and execution. Teams can enforce control testing and shift accountability back to business task owners.
• Synchronized Risk Control Matrix (RCM), Process Narratives, and Flowcharts: FloQast Compliance Management automatically synchronizes teams’ Risk Control Matrix (RCM) to process narratives and flowcharts for real-time capture and storage of audit evidence that is always current and in sync, reducing the time and effort needed to prepare for audit by both accountants and auditors.
• PBC Automation for Simplified Collaboration: FloQast Compliance Management automates Prepared By Client (PBC) processes for easier collaboration between Finance, Accounting, and Audit by capturing audit evidence during financial control execution and synchronizing it to teams’ RCM. Internal and external auditors can now work in parallel off a single source of audit truth, eliminating duplicate audit activities and complexity by reducing the number of requests for information and clarifications. The Audit becomes more efficient with reduced audit cycle times and cleaner audit data that is easier to access and share
• Embedded Testing for Audit Efficiency: Internal auditors can now track control owners’ assignments while defining and executing their testing plans in the system, eliminating the need for a separate testing platform. With intuitive dashboards, auditors and financial control owners have real-time visibility into the progress of both controls and testing with easy drill-downs back to each business process. Finance, Accounting, and Audit can work as a unified team to find and address control design gaps for continuous optimization and total compliance assurance.

Brandon Peters, Director of SOX Compliance & Head of Internal Audit, a.k.a Brands said, “With FloQast Compliance Management, we have centralized our compliance program for one source of truth and linked controls to checklist items, capturing evidence during financial close task execution and increasing accountability and visibility among control owners.”

For more information on FloQast Compliance Management:

• Visit the website
• Read the blog post
• Watch a video overview

About FloQast
FloQast, a provider of accounting workflow automation software created by accountants for accountants, delivers an Accounting Operations Platform that enables organizations to operationalize accounting excellence. Trusted by more than 2,200 accounting teams – including Twilio, Los Angeles Lakers, Zoom, and Snowflake – FloQast was built by accountants, for accountants to enhance the way accounting teams work. FloQast enables customers to streamline and manage the Financial Close, Finance and Accounting Operations, and Compliance Programs. With FloQast, teams can manage every aspect of the month-end Close, reduce their compliance burden, stay audit-ready, and improve accuracy, visibility, and collaboration throughout the financial function. FloQast is consistently rated #1 across all user review sites. Learn more at FloQast.com.

Contact:
Kyle Cabodi
FloQast Director of Corporate Communications
kyle.cabodi@floqast.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8844177

Strong customer tailwinds continue to push Builder.ai’s vision of empowering everyone to build the software they need for their business or ideas and making it as easy as ordering pizza

LONDON and DOHA, Qatar, May 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Builder.ai®, the AI powered composable software platform, designed to be so simple and accessible that everyday businesses and individuals can turn their ideas into software, today announced an investment of over $250 million in Series D funding. The new investment, led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) takes the total amount raised by the company to over $450 million with an up to 1.8x increase in its valuation.

The latest round of capital will fuel the company’s continued industry leadership and innovation pipeline allowing further investments in talent, partnerships, and technology; with a bigger focus on using human conversation as the primary user interface for allowing people to build software rather than the expert-laden white-canvas systems we are used to seeing in the no-code/low-code space. With customer demand at an all-time high, and AI advancing every day, the company has almost doubled its headcount since January 2022, and extended its UK HQ footprint with four new offices opened since 2021 – including the USA, the UAE, Singapore, and France.

Continued investor support – combined with strategic partnerships, customer tailwinds and acclaimed industry innovation – helped drive the company’s momentum with 2.3x revenue growth and over 40,000 features deployed to customers within the last year.

The Series D round included participation from additional existing and new investors including Iconiq Capital, Jungle Ventures & Insight Partners.

“Builder.ai was founded on the promise that everyone should be empowered to unlock their human potential. Today this means being able to build software to be able to do more with less. We are entering an incredible time in history where the very notion of software is changing; from something that had a shelf life of years to what will eventually have a shelf life of a conversation and the volume of what is being created is only going to grow exponentially,” said Sachin Dev Duggal, Chief Wizard and Founder of Builder.ai.

Duggal added “With the support of our investors and the dedication and drive of our team, we are further empowered to unlock our own potential. Our growth strategy has always been driven by a DNA based on being able to do more with less and this has weaved into our shared vision with our customers around the world as everyone pushes the envelope to do more. It is what attracted our first-round investors in 2018, and what drives this Series D today. Our team is already investing this capital in our AI and automation capabilities, not only keeping pace with the fast-moving industry, but leading from the front so we can empower our customers more and at the same time use new frontier technology responsibly.”

“QIA is very excited to be partnering with the leader in this space. We are confident that Builder.ai’s innovative technology and proven approach positions the company for a future of substantial growth. This investment is aligned with QIA’s strategy of supporting innovative companies shaping the future of the global economy,” said Ahmed Ali Al-Hammadi, CIO for Europe, Türkiye and Russia at QIA.

“Sachin and the Builder.ai team have produced tremendous results since Insight invested one year ago. We are thrilled to be doubling down on our support of the company,” Jeff Horing, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Insight Partners.

Established in 2016, Builder.ai continues to lead the industry with its AI-powered composable software platform that allows anyone with an idea to build an app (web or mobile) – faster and 70% more affordably. Breaking software down into its reusable lego-like features, coupled with customization from its managed expert network of designers and developers atop its human assisted AI powered assembly line, has been the key to Builder.ai’s performance and that of its customers’ successful digital transformations worldwide.

The brand has also furthered its partnership with Microsoft for a holistic global GTM and inclusion in their reseller program, as well as entered into partnerships with JP Morgan & Chase, Etisalat UAE and other technology and financial enterprises. These partnerships, along with the company’s visionary application of AI, have landed Builder.ai on the 2023 Fast Company list of Most Innovative Companies, won them the 2022 Europas “Scale Up of the Year”  and placed them firmly in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Multi Experience Development Platforms (MXDP) and MarketGuide 2022 for MXDP, as well as inclusion in the final round of consideration for 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for low code application platforms (LCAP).

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

Goodwin acted as legal advisor to Builder.ai.

About Builder.ai

Builder.ai® is an AI powered composable software platform for every idea and company on the planet. The AI-powered assembly line fuses together Lego-like reusable features, using Building Blocks automation to reduce human effort, leveraging a verified network of experts to vastly extend development capabilities, and producing apps at almost zero failure rate that are multitudes cheaper and faster than traditional software development.

Led by British Indian serial entrepreneur Sachin Dev Duggal, Builder.ai is reshaping how software is built and operated with a suite of products and services, including BUILDER STUDIO, BUILDER CLOUD, BUILDER NOW, STUDIO STORE and STUDIO RAPID. In 2020, Builder.ai was awarded ‘Hottest AI Startup’ and 2022’s “Hottest Scale-Up” at the Europas for Europe’s successful tech start-ups and Best COVID-19 Innovation-Recovery at CogX and awarded ‘Visionary’ in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Multi-experience Development Platforms. Builder.ai is headquartered in London, supported by employees and hubs in Delhi NCR, Singapore, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Sophia Antipolis and Dubai. For more information, visit Builder.ai.

BUILDER.AI and BUILDER are trademarks of Engineer.ai Corp. All other marks are trademarks of their respective owners.

About Qatar Investment Authority
Qatar Investment Authority (“QIA”) is the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar. QIA was founded in 2005 to invest and manage the state reserve funds. QIA is among the largest and most active sovereign wealth funds globally. QIA invests across a wide range of asset classes and regions as well as in partnership with leading institutions around the world to build a global and diversified investment portfolio with a long-term perspective that can deliver sustainable returns and contribute to the prosperity of the State of Qatar.

Media Contact
Builder.ai
Stephanie Lowenthal
stephanie.lowenthal@builder.ai

Qatar Investment Authority
media@qia.qa

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 1000821323