Download our scorecard to quickly compare the below vendors. To read the interview transcripts for each solution, reserve your Yardstiq subscription here.

• Outreach
• Salesloft
• Groove
• Gong
• Chorus
• Clari

Other vendors in this space mentioned by buyers include:

• Apollo.io
• InsightSquared
• PersistIQ
• Salesforce

Scorecard produced in partnership with Pavilion — a global community for GTM leaders, CEOs, and their teams.

The post Top sales engagement & revenue intelligence companies — and why customers chose them appeared first on CB Insights Research.

In our state of generative AI in 7 charts, we break down the generative AI landscape across funding trends, top-valued startups, most active VCs, and more.

Companies in text generation have taken the lead in funding, while companies in visual media generation lead generative AI deal volume.

The AI arms race: Differentiated info/data that can feed generative AI models will be key

As the Sourcegraph customer above highlights, having special access to content (like code) will be hugely valuable in improving AI agents.

We’ve already seen this with Replit’s recent deal with Google Cloud. The pair have teamed up to build coding tools to take on Microsoft’s GitHub and its popular Copilot product.

The large language models (LLMs) content licensing battles are going to intensify. We map out 21 of those targets here.

Potential for disruption: Keeping up with the rapidly advancing tech will separate winners from losers

OpenAI, the company behind massively popular generative AI tools like ChatGPT, notched a multi-billion-dollar investment from Microsoft at a rumored valuation of up to $29B earlier this year. 

Now, it’s ratcheting up its own venture investing to put itself at the center of a sweeping AI ecosystem. 

Check out OpenAI’s investment strategy map here. We also look at Microsoft’s generative AI strategy here.

Competitive edge: Generative AI as a product differentiator

For CB Insights customers, we also dig into generative AI applications in financial services, retail, and industrials.

Who are the players? The 250 companies driving generative AI forward

We mined the CB Insights database to map 250 startups across 45 different categories, from protein design to patent generation.

See the market map here.

We also analyze the 59 generative AI startups in YC’s latest cohort here.

The post How software buyers are responding to generative AI appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The $9.3B company is a leader in the go-to-market (GTM) intelligence space and grew revenue 47% YoY in 2022.

And it’s aggressively expanding into new GTM categories via acquisitions, including:

• Comparably (talent acquisition) 
• Ringlead (data orchestration)
• Chorus.ai (conversation intelligence)
• Insent (conversational marketing)

Here’s a snapshot of its M&A activity from ZoomInfo’s profile on CB Insights.

But as it expands from its data roots to a full-blown sales workflow management solution, it appears customers have mixed feelings — citing challenges ranging from pricing to product innovation.

Add in a growing cohort of challengers like Apollo.io, Lusha, and Cognism and the situation looks a bit dicey. 

To get under the hood a bit, we recently partnered with Pavilion, a community of GTM leaders and their teams, and spoke to their members about their views on sales intelligence and data enrichment vendors.

Those are summarized in this Vendor Scorecard. 

As you can see in this excerpt from the scorecard, ZoomInfo scored the lowest on CSAT (customer satisfaction).

So what are buyers saying about ZoomInfo and the competition?

Pricing is high

ZOOMINFO

The biggest challenge ZoomInfo faces each and every year when it comes to renewal is the price tag; especially for the additional intent services, which are in the five-digit range. Pricing is definitely the biggest challenge. — VP at Fortune Global 500 subsidiary

Read the full transcript here.

ZoomInfo’s core product at a standstill? 

ZOOMINFO

We would love to see the product evolving more; as I mentioned, our perception is that ZoomInfo has stood still for the last year. We haven’t seen a huge amount more value compared to the competitors in the market who are moving forward. We know ZoomInfo has been busy on big acquisitions and integrations, offering different capabilities. However, the core product we bought from them has stood still. — C-level executive at $10M+ funded training platform

Read the full transcript here.

Buyer that churned off of ZoomInfo has similar concerns

ZOOMINFO

I think ZoomInfo’s kind of dug their own grave to the extent that, again, trying to integrate more features and functionality into the platform for them has meant buying and trying to integrate other businesses. And ultimately, what has happened is the functionality, utility, and usability of the platform itself has degraded significantly. They’re also trying to play in categories that, historically, they have not lived in. This is an instance where I think that ZoomInfo would be better suited to focus on their core offering and strongest value proposition, which is quality and accuracy in contact data for selling teams. — VP at $10M+ funded marketing platform

Read the full transcript here.

Clearbit has an edge with its startup coverage

CLEARBIT

What’s really important for any of these data enrichment tools is the hit rate. Our customer base skews earlier-stage…So, you go to DiscoverOrg, ZoomInfo, and the hit rate for a brand new startup is just exceedingly low. Companies that were recently incorporated in Delaware — those databases that work so well for big enterprise sales, they just don’t tend to work. Clearbit is probably the best in the market for enrichment when you’re talking about early- and growth-stage startups. — CEO at $100M+ funded compliance platform

Read the full transcript here.

UK-based Cognism wins out for its European data & GDPR compliance

COGNISM

ZoomInfo was most probably the strongest competitor that we considered…The big strength that Cognism has is that European data that we weren’t seeing from some of the other vendors, which are quite limited in terms of European footprints…The key point that we need to make sure of is compliance for Europe. We have some strict legal issues with regards to GDPR and Cognism was able to give us the certainty that we would be compliant if we were using their data, whereas other vendors weren’t in that position. — Marketing Director at $1B+ market cap manufacturer

Read the full transcript here.

Fresh off the press

Our Vendor Scorecard, produced in partnership with Pavilion, compares companies like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo.io, Lusha, and more on:

• Customer satisfaction
• Win reasons
• Pricing

Download the free 1-pager here.

The post ZoomInfo in trouble? Increased competition is putting pressure on pricing and customer choice appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Download the scorecard to quickly compare the below vendors. To read the interview transcripts for each solution, reserve your Yardstiq subscription here.

• Apollo.io
• Clearbit
• Cognism
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Lusha
• Seamless.AI
• ZoomInfo

Other sales intelligence platforms mentioned by buyers include:

• Outreach
• RevenueBase
• RocketReach
• SalesIntel
• UserGems

Scorecard produced in partnership with Pavilion — a global community for GTM leaders, CEOs, and their teams.

The post Top data enrichment companies — and why customers chose them appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Clients can download our scorecard to quickly compare the below vendors. To read the interview transcripts for each solution, reserve your Yardstiq subscription here.

• Feedzai
• Forter
• SEON Technologies
• Sift
• Signifyd

Want the full post? Become a CB Insights customer.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post Top fraud prevention companies — and why customers chose them appeared first on CB Insights Research.

1. Digital health — Remote patient monitoring

Opportunity: Solving the “too much data” challenge

CADENCE

I think one of the drawbacks with all remote patient monitoring (RPM), and this is any vendor, is putting too much data back onto our providers to act on…I think what we need to do is really begin to take some of that data and make better interpretations of it so that our providers are getting just what they need. This all goes back to the alerts that are going to our provider. Yes, we’re going to give them a lot of data…What are we doing with it to make sure that it’s accurate and it’s something that we can respond to vs. our providers might want to tune it out because they get too much? There’s a real fine line there that I think all us organizations are working through. — CMIO, Healthcare network

Read the full transcript here.

Interest in RPM — which captures and analyzes patient data in real time to enable virtual care and ongoing disease management — surged alongside Covid.

Investment in the telehealth space also jumped with it (though now a pullback is happening): 

As providers move past the “honeymoon phase” of RPM, and add even more measurements, managing all of that data is a huge challenge. 

How RPM solutions harvest and analyze this data will continue to be a key differentiator.

In our 2023 Tech Trends Report, we explore how RPM tech will evolve into “ambient health monitoring” — no wearables needed. Read it here. 

2. Supply chain & logistics — On-demand warehousing

Opportunity: Getting into the nitty-gritty of data analytics

FLEXE

I always have the feeling that these companies could do a lot more with data analytics…You’d expect a tech company to come to you and tell you, “Hey, look, that profile of products actually is better stored here and there because X, Y, Z, because the labor cost is lower…” And the reality is it’s not there. They might have very high-level network data, but it is not sophisticated in any way where you would be like, “Oh wow, this actually really helps me to make a decision on the best location, best type of players, best warehouse, best racking type of solutions, and so on.” I think there is still definitely an opportunity there. — SVP, Fortune Global 500 company

Read the full transcript here.

Fluctuating demand for e-commerce has strained the warehousing capacity of retailers, brands, and logistics providers

Enter: on-demand warehousing. 

Providers like Flexe and its competitors — highlighted in the CB Insights on-demand warehousing scorecard below — provide temporary access to warehousing space, typically accompanied by e-commerce fulfillment support. 

As the software buyer above describes, providing more sophisticated data analytics (a common theme we hear from buyers across industries) into where overflow is best directed remains an opportunity.

3. Monitoring & security — Bot protection

Opportunity: Anticipating next-level bot threats 

Perimeterx

A lot of these bot management solutions are susceptible to false positives, even though it’s fairly low with PerimeterX. I mean the advancement in bot threats is only increasing and getting more and more sophisticated. So, identifying how you would be able to identify those next levels of bot threats, and how you would be able to mitigate them before they can turn out to be a nuisance, would be an interesting challenge that needs to be tackled by these solutions. — CISO, Engineering firm

Read the full transcript here.

Bot protection providers like PerimeterX (now HUMAN following its July 2022 acquisition) secure websites, apps, and more from malicious bot attacks and fraud.

As these attacks become more sophisticated, protecting vulnerable entry points is critical — and getting ahead of the attacks is a needed evolution for vendors in this space, per the above buyer. 

Clients can understand more about these solutions in financial services in this market map. 

Rapyd wins on price vs. NIUM, according to this buyer

RAPYD

The problem was that NIUM expanded out of Asia and Rapyd scaled out of Europe. NIUM had a very strong portfolio also and had stronger coverage. But they did not have a big presence, big product and support team based out of Europe or our time zone…But one real shortcoming beyond being not present in our time zone was the pricing. Rapyd is very aggressive when it comes to pricing. They even gave us a very sweet deal. And eventually in the final phase of RFP, NIUM ended up being almost two times more expensive than Rapyd, and that’s why we chose Rapyd.

Read the full transcript here.

A crop of players have emerged to rethink how money moves across borders.

To understand the competition, we talked to buyers who’ve recently evaluated solutions like NIUM, Rapyd, and more.

Download our 1-pager to compare top cross-border payments vendors at a glance.

The post Where software buyers see opportunities for vendors in healthcare, logistics, and security appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The company, which provides commerce solutions for millions of businesses, was founded in 2009 and went public in 2015.

In December 2021, Square changed its corporate name to Block to reflect its growing number of business lines — or “building blocks” as it calls them (including Square, Cash App, and Tidal). 

We dig into what Square customers are saying about its strategy but first, some context.

While the $40B company is expanding into new spaces (see our Block strategy map below), one of its primary goals remains clear: making Square the go-to platform for payments and business software. 

The restaurant industry has been a key focus area for Square’s expansion. 

In May 2022, Square acquired GoParrot (its 26th acquisition), a restaurant ordering and marketing platform that offers a white-label app and loyalty tracking. 

It’s also teamed up with a number of companies to better serve its restaurant partners — from SoundHound (conversational AI ordering automation) to Craftable (profit management and analytics) — as highlighted on its CB Insights profile below. 

What are actual customers saying about Square and its competition? Read on for insights from Yardstiq’s software buyer interviews.

Square’s acquisition of GoParrot keeps customer on board for another year

Square

We’d really outgrown Square’s system. It was very restrictive. It did not give us a lot of functionality from an enterprise standpoint…We were about to install a test for NorthStar in one of our locations and we just happened to get an email from Square saying, hey, we just bought this new company called GoParrot. We’re doing this “Square for Restaurants” now, and it was something that fulfilled a lot of the needs that we had that started the whole evaluation process. It’s a better enterprise solution for us and that’s what we ended up committing to testing for the next year. — Senior Director of Marketing, Restaurant chain

Read the full transcript here.

Integrations are a plus, though customer would prefer something built in

Square

Another integration that we had with Square was with Craftable, which was our inventory system and it works well. It is a big lift in terms of labor of keeping that up to date and managing that so that we can take a look at costs on a week-by-week basis…I don’t think Toast was set up really to handle complicated recipes. Lightspeed actually has their own kind of built-in programming for that…I think a [built-in program] was something that we were really interested in [when we reevaluated], in figuring out if that was something that we could either get through another POS system or another integration. — General Manager, Brewing company

Read the full transcript here.

While Square’s product breadth impressed this buyer, Toast won on simplicity

Toast

Overall, Square was Toast’s biggest competitor. Because at the same time we were also introducing our e-commerce business and Square had a very good product which would feed not only this food and beverage or restaurant business but also our retail business where we were introducing the e-commerce part. So we were thinking whether or not to go for Square because they would be able to cover two additional areas. But then at the end of the day, we knew the implementation time was going to be crucial for us. That’s why we thought that we should go for a simpler version which was Toast. — Operations Director, Supermarket chain

Read the full transcript here.

Shift4 Payments pricing beats out Square’s for this customer

Shift4 payments

Ultimately, we found that Square was not as flexible as Shift4. Their rates were not as competitive — they were significantly higher, at least in the offer that we were shown. PayPal and Venmo, again, likewise higher rates, not as much flexibility in the hospitality space. Toast was a good potential solution if you were a smaller restaurant or hospitality operator. We had concerns about their ability to handle the transaction volume and the development of their point-of-sale system over an environment like a sports and entertainment venue like we are. — Director of Food & Beverage, Large venue

Read the full transcript here.

What’s next? Buyer thinks Square will make a 360 view into live sales possible

Square

I think, personally, that within the next year, year and a half, that Square is going to be able to figure out what Avero Slingshot does and they’re going to bring the whole entire thing in-house, just because of the fact that in the economy we’re going into 2023, labor the way it is — everybody is going to want to see live inventory. Everybody is going to want to see live labor and everybody wants to see it now. I don’t want to have to scroll through three platforms to find the information that I want. Time is money and I don’t have the time to waste. — Director of Food & Beverage, Restaurant chain

Read the full transcript here.

Clients can learn more about Square’s moves into banking and mobile payments here.

The post Where Square is expanding — and what customers are saying about the fintech’s strategy appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Download our scorecard to quickly compare the below vendors. To read the interview transcripts for each solution, reserve your Yardstiq subscription here.

• Adyen
• dLocal
• Ebanx
• MFS Africa
• Nium
• Rapyd

Other cross-border payments vendors mentioned by buyers include:

• Airwallex
• Currencycloud
• HomeSend
• Railsr
• Stripe
• Thunes
• Wise

The post Top cross-border payments companies — and why customers chose them appeared first on CB Insights Research.

In 2021, mergers and acquisitions surged 60% year-over-year.

Deals remained elevated in 2022.

But M&A often results in the acquired asset atrophying over time. 

Here are 4 “merger trouble” insights about companies like PayPal, Salesforce, and Okta from our conversations with software buyers.

For more on SaaS consolidation, check out last week’s newsletter. 

PayPal’s product breadth undermined by “disjointed feel,” per this buyer

Paypal

PayPal has acquired so many different companies to kind of get this product breadth, which is great. They have everything you want pretty much in the payment processing world. The part where I think PayPal struggles is they’ve done a lot of that through acquisition, and so there is definitely a disjointed feel on some of those products. They don’t necessarily work as well, and the teams aren’t as educated on it, and integrations are harder, customer service is harder, and kind of getting 100% of what you pay for is a little bit harder. — Head of Operations, $1B+ valuation technology startup

Read the full transcript here.

Automation platform Workato’s flexibility stands out vs. MuleSoft (Salesforce)

Workato

The MuleSoft pricing process, I don’t know, I think it’s Salesforce. They just took forever. I mean, my goodness, it was really difficult negotiations. Workato, on the other hand, their process was much easier from terms and conditions, pricing — very transparent, very flexible. MuleSoft, their flexibility, I wouldn’t say that’s part of their core competency. I think that just goes back to Salesforce and the way they do business. — CIO, $1B+ market cap consumer products company

Read the full transcript here.

Salesforce acquired MuleSoft for over $6B in 2018. We previously looked at the companies winning deals against Salesforce here.

Plaid’s shift in strategy post-failed acquisition with Visa lost this customer

Yodlee

We had been using Plaid for some time. Actually, I thought the technology was very good. After their failed acquisition by Visa, they really changed strategy. The sense we got was that their heart just wasn’t in the account aggregation business. They were much more interested in coming up with a way of doing transactions and building up their transaction capabilities. We were just thinking strategically about where should we go. We evaluated and said, you know what, let’s take a look at others and take a look at a few different options and came away with Yodlee as being the best one for us. — Head of Technology, Fortune 500 company

Read the full transcript here.

Messaging around Okta’s Auth0 acquisition remains unclear, according to this buyer

Okta

The Okta/Auth0 comparison is really confusing for teams because, for the workforce piece, the workforce identity nexus management, that’s really clear what Okta is offering… I think when you look at customer authentication, it’s very difficult to see what Okta is offering. And I kind of expected those two products to be integrated into a single product by now, and they’re still running separately. That I find very strange and actually I think that undermines some of the messaging that Okta has with their customers. — CISO, Global marketing company

Read the full transcript here.

Payments without borders

Which cross-border payment vendors should you invite to your RFP?

If you’re evaluating cross-border payments providers, this RFP Vendor Shortlist will tell you who to invite to based on who your peers are inviting.  

Download the free 1-pager here.

The post Post-merger trouble: Where PayPal, Salesforce, and Okta face integration challenges appeared first on CB Insights Research.

We mined Yardstiq’s interviews with software buyers as well as vendors’ submitted Analyst Briefings and used these proprietary insights to map the cross-border payments landscape and help you quickly build your RFP vendor shortlist.

The Cross-Border Payments RFP Vendor Shortlist features RFP insights on 8 vendors including:

• Adyen
• Stripe
• Rapyd
• Nium
• Thunes
• And 3 others

The post Cross-Border Payments RFP Vendor Shortlist: Which vendors should you invite to your RFPs and vendor evaluations? appeared first on CB Insights Research.

As execs look to cut costs, consolidating vendors offering similar functionality is high on the priority list. 

In today’s edition of The Transcript, we’re taking a deeper look at SaaS consolidation trends with Yardstiq’s software buyer interviews.

Read on for: 

• How sales tech vendors are converging
• Brex & consolidation in spend management 
• Where Okta’s expansion play falls flat for one corporate user
• Why BetterCloud customer won’t renew

Salesloft customer intends to renew (for now). But ZoomInfo looms.

Salesloft

I am seeing companies that are having more and more convergence in their sales operations and sales enablement tools. For example, ZoomInfo has recently introduced their RevOS featured tool. It’s an end-to-end platform that has similar capabilities that Salesloft has. It has similar capabilities that Gong or Chorus may have. It has similar capabilities to a chat. It’s an all-inclusive platform, and I’m hearing more and more that that’s the direction that companies want to be moving towards where they are converging all these different systems into a platform and not having these stand-alone tools that are disparate from one another. That’s top of my mind in terms of long-term, but short-term, we’ll definitely be renewing with Salesloft. — VP of Growth Marketing, $1B+ market cap software company

Read the full transcript here.

The reality is companies have too many sales tools.

Many of them are now overlapping and competing with each other, which means the sales tech stack is going to get smaller as companies aim to consolidate.

We looked at some of the vendors converging on each other in this competitive end market here as well as in this Vendor Scorecard.

Similar consolidation is occurring in spend management, as this Brex customer echos

Brex

I want to start consolidating my payables, all my AP. And I want to start bringing that in and unifying that with things like my corporate credit cards and out-of-pocket reimbursements. In this way, my employees only have to go to one place for all that stuff and I have one set of approvals to manage. And that’s actually the power of a product like Airbase, one of Brex’s up-and-coming competitors, that really is trying to do all three of those things well. There’s consolidation in the space is what I’m saying to you. — CFO at $100M+ funded fintech

Read the full transcript here.

Airbase highlights in its CB Insights Analyst Briefing that its primary advantage vs. Brex is its “feature set,” including advanced approvals. 

Compare the vendors attacking corporate cards & spend management with our free 1-pager.

Product breadth, however, does not equal depth, as this Okta buyer highlights

OKTA

Okta started as an identity and access company, not focusing on governance or privileged access management. But now, it feels like they are trying to go into every aspect of IAM, including governance. And so, they are not only competing with Ping and Microsoft, they’re also looking at competing against SailPoint and Saviynt, and many other vendors. I feel like Okta is diluting their value by going all over the place versus staying in one area, becoming stronger. And yes, they get the business, but they are not the leader in those spaces. So, if I am a corporate user, I still need to purchase other products, and they are trying to avoid that, which is a challenge right now. — Director, Identity at Fortune 500 company

Read the full transcript here.

Even SaaS management platforms are not immune: BetterCloud customer will churn off 

BETTercloud

I would say for the majority of the time we were customers of BetterCloud, I would say an 8, I was very satisfied with what they can do. The customer support is really good. It’s just that a lot of applications that we use have functionality that could replace BetterCloud. So BetterCloud has become just more of a nice to have. And the value is not worth the spend. — IT Engineering Manager at Marketing technology company

Read the full transcript here.

Extend your reach

We spoke with software buyers who recently purchased marketing automation & customer engagement solutions to understand product quality, competition, and pricing.

Quickly compare:

• Bluecore
• Braze
• Iterable
• Klaviyo
• And more

Get the report here.

The post Where software buyers are looking to consolidate their vendors appeared first on CB Insights Research.

If you missed last week’s, check it out here — we looked at the CSAT scores of Insight Partners’ portfolio. 

Today, we’ve got one question: where are software vendors leaving money on the table? 

See below what we found in Yardstiq’s interviews with software buyers, including: 

• How Seeq is underpriced compared to competitors
• SecurityScorecard’s missed sales opportunity
• Where MediSafe is underselling its capabilities
• LinkSquares’ quick ROI

Dig in.

Process data analytics solution Seeq’s cost is “nothing” for this buyer

Read the full transcript here.

Drilling down, this same customer thinks Seeq’s pricing is one-third that of the competition:

For more on Seeq and vendors like it, check out our Advanced Manufacturing 50, where Seeq was featured in the Factory Analytics & AI category earlier this year.

Third-party risk management vendor SecurityScorecard could have sold this buyer more

Read the full transcript here.

Medication engagement platform MediSafe is underselling its true competitive advantage, per this customer

Read the full transcript here.

Value imbalance? Contract management software LinkSquares pays for itself in one go

Read the full transcript here.

Dear startups

Revenue > rounds.

Now is the time to go and sell some isht and get that revenue.

We compiled 140 requests for technology (RFT) from our enterprise customers to help B2B startups find some revenue.

These are big cos on the hunt for real technology solutions to help them solve problems, open up new markets, etc

Check out all the RFTs here.

The post Where Seeq, SecurityScorecard, Medisafe, and LinkSquares are leaving money on the table appeared first on CB Insights Research.

But first…

Do you ever wish you knew what people were saying about you?

Companies do too. And so do their investors. 

Understanding the voice of the customer, VoC, is key.

VoC illuminates customer preferences, expectations, and satisfaction. It helps drive product innovation, helps sales teams win more deals, illuminates competitive dynamics, uncovers new opportunities, and more.

So today, we’re digging into the VoC on the portfolio of a big shot of software investing: Insight Partners.

Founded in 1995, Insight has backed over 600 companies. You can see which investments landed it on our list of the best VC bets of all time here.

In February 2022, Insight raised a mega $20B fund to bring its total assets under management to $90B. 

Here’s a snapshot of the firm’s recent activity on its CB Insights profile:

We mined Yardstiq’s interviews with software buyers and analyzed transcripts on over 50 of its portfolio companies.

Below, we highlight the top 5 and bottom 5 from a customer satisfaction (CSAT) perspective. After that, we share customer quotes for select companies. 

For customers with access to Yardstiq, you can click the links and they’ll take you directly to the transcripts in the platform.

Top 5 CSAT companies in the Insight portfolio are:

• OwnBackup (10/10)
• SafetyCulture (10/10)
• Tulip (10/10)
• Viz.ai (9.5/10)
• nfinite (9.5/10)

Bottom 5 CSAT scores in the Insight portfolio are:

• Project44 (7/10)
• Papaya Global (7/10)
• Honeycomb (7.5/10)
• Jellyfish (7.5/10)
• LaunchDarkly (7.5/10)

First, let’s take a look at a couple of the high CSAT score winners.

500% increase in spend (woah) 

Here’s what customers are saying about OwnBackup (CSAT: 10/10 | valuation: $3.35B as of August ‘21) which offers a SaaS data protection platform.

Ownbackup

I’m very satisfied…I think when I first started as a customer with them, they were like 100 people. Now they’re close to 1,000, and they have continued to evolve their product, and they’ve acquired other organizations that bring complementary tools that I fully intend on adopting in the long term, like 5-year plan…I would expect our annual spend with them to increase at least 500% over the next 5 years. — Senior IT Technologist, Fortune Global 500 company

Access OwnBackup’s customer interview transcripts here.

Putting in those Sunday hours

SafetyCulture (CSAT: 10/10 | valuation: $1.6B as of May ‘21), which offers worker safety software, has happy customers.

Safteyculture

So far, I’ll give the SafetyCulture solution a 10, and the reason that I say that is because any time that we’ve had an issue…they’re very attentive, meaning that I had to work on a Sunday troubleshooting some stuff. They were there all day working with us. I feel that the product itself is supported by a great team that we work with over there. — Senior Analyst, North American airline

Access SafetyCulture’s customer interview transcripts here.

To read the other high CSAT company transcripts, here are Tulip’s, Viz.ai’s, and nfinite’s.

And here’s what customers are saying about the lower CSAT companies.

Kinda good, kinda not so good

Here’s what customers are saying about Project44 (CSAT: 7/10 | valuation: $2.7B as of September ‘22), which offers a supply chain visibility platform.

Project44

I would say satisfied, not extremely satisfied, but I would say I’m satisfied. It does what we expect it to. I just wish — if more of our shipments could be tracked that can’t be seen today just for various reasons, like that’s the biggest piece of it. There’s some rating that doesn’t always work with some of the providers. I don’t necessarily know that it’s a Project44 issue, but it’s not perfect. — Senior Manager, Transportation at Global manufacturing group

Access Project44’s customer interview transcripts here.

Renewing with a touch of doubt?

Here’s what customers are saying about Papaya Global (CSAT: 7/10 | valuation: $3.7B as of September ‘21), which offers a global people & payroll platform.

Papaya global

So currently, at this minute, I would say that we would probably not renew. If I were to take the emotion out a bit and think about what we need from Papaya and what we are getting from Papaya, it would be that we would likely renew. But we would have to continue to do some due diligence on what else is out there, how other providers handle the scale, the complexity of the locations that we are trying to enter into and knowing a bit more around the questions that we need to get resolved from the tactical implementation. We would sort of do the second or third round evaluation or due diligence. So I would lean towards renewing, but with a bit of skepticism. — Director, Talent Intelligence, $1B+ market cap software company

To see how Papaya Global stacks up against Velocity Global, Deel, and Remote, check out our Global Employment Vendor Scorecard.

Access Papaya Global’s customer interview transcripts here.

To read the other low CSAT company transcripts, here are Honeycomb’s, Jellyfish’s, and LaunchDarkly’s.

RSVP a la RFP

Which vendors should you invite to your requests for proposal (RFP)?

If you’re evaluating cloud security providers, this RFP Vendor Shortlist will tell you who to invite to your RFPs and vendor evaluations based on who your peers are inviting.  

Download the free 1-pager here.

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: Elite investor CSAT scores appeared first on CB Insights Research.

We mined Yardstiq’s interviews with software buyers as well as vendors’ submitted Analyst Briefings and used these proprietary insights to map the cloud security landscape and help you quickly build your RFP vendor shortlist.

The Cloud Security RFP Vendor Shortlist features RFP insights on 11 vendors including:

• • Aqua Security 
  • Check Point
  • Lacework
  • Netskope 
  • Orca Security
  • Prisma Cloud (by Palo Alto Networks)
  • Wiz
  • And 4 others

Dig deeper into these players with our Cloud Security Vendor Scorecard.

The post Cloud Security RFP Vendor Shortlist: Which vendors should you invite to your RFPs and vendor evaluations? appeared first on CB Insights Research.

In this edition of The Transcript, we’re covering some of the must-haves in a B2B sales toolkit based on our interviews with software buyers.

For example, one customer of revenue intelligence platform Gong says:

“There’s no other way to sell in 2022, right? With virtual selling, you need some sort of tool like this to manage people.”

As of June 2021, Gong has seen its valuation nearly 10x in less than 2 years.

From making sales coaching more effective to forecasting revenue accurately, vendors in this space are finding customers eager to streamline their sales efforts. 

But competition is intensifying as can be seen on Gong’s company profile on CB Insights.

Now sales engagement vendors like Outreach and Salesloft are building products to win a slice of the market. And of course, public company ZoomInfo is going for Gong via its acquisition of Chorus. 

Where’s the market headed? We highlight insights from Yardstiq transcripts below.

New here? Each Monday, we dig into Yardstiq’s analyst-led interviews with software buyers, a new product from CB Insights. Send us the names of companies or markets you’d like to see featured.

Outreach drives 70% of this company’s pipeline

OUTREACH

I’m like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t be happier. And I can show the results of my team, all 200+ SDRs using Outreach every single day. It’s literally impacting the pipeline we’re building for the company I work for. We’re driving 70% of our global demand gen, 70% of the company’s pipeline comes from the SDR team that is leveraging Outreach every day. So this changes the trajectory of companies if done correctly. — VP, Sales Development at $10B+ market cap software company

Read the full transcript here.

Renewal is a “yes,” but an all-in-one ZoomInfo platform is attractive

Salesloft

We’re definitely going to renew with Salesloft for now. I think from a future state perspective, I am seeing companies that are having more and more convergence in their sales operations and sales enablement tools. For example, ZoomInfo has recently introduced their RevOS featured tool. It’s an end-to-end platform that has similar capabilities that Salesloft has. It has similar capabilities that Gong or Chorus may have…It’s an all-inclusive platform, and I’m hearing more and more that that’s the direction that companies want to be moving towards. — VP, Growth Marketing at $1B+ market cap software company

Read the full transcript here.

Outreach is coming for Gong, as this buyer looks to consolidate tools

GONG

I’d say we probably have a 60%, 70% chance of renewing with Gong. The reason why I’m saying that is like the product is great and we set up a lot of our workflow around it, so it’s a pretty difficult software to rip off. However, there’s a choir of new players entering the market. For example, Outreach has a new tool called Kaia, which pretty much does what Gong does, but that will enable us to consolidate vendors so we can use Outreach for sales automation and conversation intelligence, whereas Gong only does conversation intelligence that means we have to have multiple vendors. — Revenue Operations Manager at $100M+ funded technology startup

Read the full transcript here.

But this buyer argues vendors should “stick to their knitting”

Clari

I’m a very satisfied user. I think in this whole space, a lot of our tech vendors are kind of encroaching on one another’s place. So I talked earlier about Gong, how Clari is reaching out into their space…I’m not personally convinced that there is a “one system to rule them all” sort of approach. And so I think my recommendation to Clari would be actually stick to your knitting and do what you do well, continue to do it really well and try not to reach out into all of those other places that are, in my mind, distinct from what you do, and you’re probably not going to do as well as a Gong does or a HubSpot does or something else. — Chief Revenue Officer at HR tech platform

Read the full transcript here.

Your move

Our Sales Enablement & Engagement Vendor Scorecard compares companies like Salesloft and Outreach as well as Highspot and Seismic on:

• Customer satisfaction
• Win reasons
• Pricing

Download the free 1-pager here.

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: The Gong show appeared first on CB Insights Research.

How are software buyers responding? 

Here are 5 learnings from Yardstiq interviews on what it takes to improve retention.

But first…

Come and talk to me

We’re experimenting with conversational AI to help software buyers make decisions.

Basically you ask the question and it’ll answer you. It’s all done by training the AI with Yardstiq transcripts.

Here is an example where someone is asking the AI about Retool, a low-code software tool. 

Turn your sound on to hear the conversation.  

The future is going to be a crazy place.

And now on to the renewals.

1. Customer success is crucial to renewals

JellyFish

This is a very different scenario, today, with the market downturn and all of that, right? So everybody wants to spend money only in absolutely important areas, which means you don’t want to buy a product that is not delivering extremely high value. That is where Jellyfish has to do more work in terms of reaching out to people, asking them if there is use, trying to get more adoption and all of that.They’re not doing that work…So that’s somewhere they’re losing it basically, at least for us. And so it’s a tough decision for us if we would renew, I don’t know. — VP of Engineering, $10B+ market cap software company

Read the full transcript here.

2. Contract flexibility is increasingly key

Five9

Five9 is one of the best vendors I’ve worked with from a buying perspective…Mid-contract, our company had a little bit of a downturn, and I was looking for some cost savings. And I was 18 months into a 2-year agreement. I said, look, I know we’re not up for renewal for another 6 months, but I have to cut costs. I said, can we renew our contract now? Because I pay them on a monthly basis and was paying them double what I really needed. I said, please allow me to rightsize my agreement now and resign for another 2 years. And they let me…I’ve called other vendors up in the last 6 months trying to renegotiate. And some of them are just inflexible. Five9 is not one of those. — CIO, Finance firm

Read the full transcript here.

3. Competitive pricing is a recurrent theme

Honeycomb

Price sensitivity is a big thing. If Honeycomb were to increase the price, it basically now becomes at our scale we’re talking about over a million in spending, observability tooling. So increasing the price now becomes a question of, is it really worth it? And we’re constantly debating against Datadog. We’ll take the hit from an engineering culture or environment standpoint. Given the tough economy, landscape and market that we’re in right now, that’s probably — as I’m thinking, we’re blessed to be in a great position to continue to grow at the same pace…but that has perhaps a short life cycle and we might have to make a decision. So price is probably right now contextually extremely important. — SVP of Engineering, $1B+ valuation technology startup 

Read the full transcript here.

4. For some buyers, the vendor’s risk profile is an important consideration

EBANX

So EBANX was more risky from the perspective of the economic downturn and how they were structured compared to dLocal, which is already on a stock exchange and building their corporate presence the way that they want to be public, while EBANX was more of a privately owned company that was still being steered by some internal turmoil of Brazil…Their relationship with the Brazilian government has been always a big disadvantage and advantage. — Head of Growth, $1B+ valuation fintech

Read the full transcript here.

5. Rock-solid renewals feature a sticky experience and continued product innovation

Sendbird

After the first year, we signed a 3-year contract. And soon we are going to renew it again. We are very happy working with them. We are still working on adding new features. We have a lot of stuff on our road map. So they are like the extension of our engineering team, to be honest. We are really happy working with them. — Senior Product Manager, Telecom services company

Read the full transcript here.

Take on me

Looking for the right vendor to manage a global workforce? 

We spoke with current customers of Deel, Papaya Global, Remote, and more to determine the key questions you should be asking during your evaluation.

Download the buyer’s guide here. 

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: Feel the churn appeared first on CB Insights Research.

This CISO we spoke with has been offered AirPods just to get on a call with vendors: 

While this CSO and customer of Orca Security says competitor Wiz is “trying to bribe me with gifts” to switch:

Sales tactics aside, startups in the cloud security space have seen growing traction amid accelerated cloud adoption and rising cybersecurity challenges.

In today’s edition of The Transcript, we’ll be diving into who the players are and how they’re competing (and winning) against incumbents.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room

Last week, cybersecurity behemoth Palo Alto Networks ($47B market cap) acquired Cider Security.

The application security provider will complement Palo Alto’s cloud security platform Prisma Cloud.

Palo Alto has built its sprawling cybersecurity offerings via numerous acquisitions over the years.

Against incumbents like Palo Alto, cloud security startups like Aqua Security, Ermetic, and Sysdig are differentiating themselves as unified platforms.

For example, Aqua Security highlights in its CB Insights Analyst Briefing that it is an “integrated platform, not a portfolio of acquired vendor solutions.”

Request a free Analyst Briefing to make sure you’re on our radar.

What do customers actually purchasing these solutions have to say? 

Here are 4 win/loss reasons from Yardstiq’s interview transcripts. 

Aqua Security won on value vs. Palo Alto’s Prisma Cloud

Lacework beats out Prisma Cloud on price and integration

Orca Security “changed the game” vs. incumbent Check Point

But for this customer, Netskope is facing pressure from Microsoft

As the buyer above highlights, enterprise software companies like Microsoft are also looking to capitalize on the cloud opportunity. 

VMware, for example, has turned to partnerships and acquisitions to compete in cloud computing & cybersecurity (clients can learn more in our VMware strategy map here.)

Map the landscape

Our Cloud Security Vendor Scorecard compares Lacework, Aqua Security, Netskope, and more across areas including:

• Customer satisfaction
• Win reasons
• Pricing

Download the free 1-pager here.

The post Palo Alto Networks’ competition is intensifying and for CISOs, that will mean better pricing appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Download the buyer’s guide to see our overview of this software category, including the key considerations, buyer thought processes, and the questions you should be asking. Questions like:

• What is the vendor’s global reach?
• What level of customization does the vendor support?
• What is the vendor’s global reach?

“The critical thing is to find a partner that has the global reach that matches not just your global reach, but your ambition for future global reach.” — SVP of People & Culture, global apparel & footwear group

Buyers interviewed for this report include:

• Head of FP&A, technology company with $1B+ valuation
• Director of Talent Intelligence, software company with $1B+ market cap
• COO, fintech with $100M+ funding

The post 7 questions to help you choose the right vendor for managing a global workforce appeared first on CB Insights Research.

One key to getting somewhere? 

Having a clear & compelling product roadmap. 

When we talk to software buyers about how they evaluate (and eventually decide on vendors), the question comes up again and again: 

What’s your roadmap for growth and how can we grow with it? 

In today’s edition of The Transcript, we’re taking a deeper look at this question with Yardstiq’s interview transcripts.

Here are 5 things we learned.

1) Sell the customer on the vision

2) Product roadmap flexibility is key for some buyers

3) For buyers: get it in writing

4) Startups: deliver on the roadmap

5) You grow, we grow with you

For dummies

From product roadmap to pricing, our buyer’s guides provide insight into the key questions buyers ask when evaluating software vendors. 

Check them out for: 

• Payment infrastructure
• Cloud security
• Marketing automation
• Omnichannel communications
• Spend management & corporate cards

Below is an excerpt of a Brex transcript from its company profile that’s got some juicy nuggets which also highlights 3 killer capabilities we just released on Yardstiq.

1. Now when you look at a company’s transcript, you’ll see all related transcripts on competitors as well as companies mentioned in this transcript.  So in this case, when on Brex’s profile, you can quickly navigate to and read transcripts for Airbase, Payhawk and Ramp among others. 
2. You can click to the part of a transcript you care about.  So want to look at competitors this buyer evaluated, simply click Competitors and it’ll take you to that section of the conversation. No need to Control+F / Cmd+F blindly looking for keywords in a 30-45 chunky transcript document.
3. We now identify and link to entities (aka companies) from within the transcript so you can quickly navigate to their profiles.

If you want to get access to Yardstiq, our early access pricing ends soon. Get in touch with the Yardtiq team here.

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: Tug of oar appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The amount of money piling into companies that help businesses hire and pay employees around the world is staggering. 

Papaya Global and 4 of its competitors highlighted below have raised more than $2B in equity funding combined since the start of 2021.

To dive deeper into the market, we mined Yardstiq’s analyst-led interviews with customers of Papaya Global, Velocity Global, Deel, Oyster, and Remote. 

Keep reading for their thoughts on: 

• Product differentiators — where Oyster could catch up to Deel
• White space — what Velocity Global and Papaya are missing in sales convos
• Disrupting incumbents — why Papaya beat out ADP 
• Market outlook — hiring freezes and the impact on Remote

Let’s go.

Deel’s market depth outpaces Oyster

As distributed workforces become the norm, global employment players have looked to offer their services in as many countries as possible.

But these footprints are not all created equal, as the buyer above highlights.

Papaya and Velocity “under-index” on the experience they provide to employees 

Global reach is a key evaluation criteria for buyers. 

But this SVP notes that the employee experience — and how vendors create a consistent one across a global workforce — is missing from the conversation.

Papaya is quicker to market than ADP Streamline

These companies are competing fiercely not only with each other but also legacy players, like ADP. Their speed is proving to be a potent weapon against incumbents.

In March, Papaya Global acquired UK-based money transfer company Azimo for reportedly around $200M to expand into new markets and to keep the product innovation velocity high.

Customer of Remote freezes opening new contracts

Startup hiring is slowing in the US and Europe, according to this customer.

Should we anticipate additional M&A in the market? Given so much money has flown to this space, expect consolidation.

As a buyer of these employment platforms, it’s particularly important to know who is well-positioned to win over the long term as M&A often results in the acquired asset atrophying over time. 

There’s more

Our Global Employment Vendor Scorecard compares Deel, Papaya Global, Remote, and more across areas including:

• Customer satisfaction
• Win reasons
• Pricing

Download the free 1-pager here.

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: See ya, ADP appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Download our scorecard to quickly compare the below vendors. To read the interview transcripts for each solution, reserve your Yardstiq subscription here.

• Deel
• Oyster
• Papaya Global
• Remote
• Velocity Global

Other platforms for distributed teams mentioned by buyers include:

• ADP Streamline
• Atlas (fka Elements Global Services)
• Globalization Partners
• Gusto

The post Top global employment & payroll companies — and why customers chose them appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Read on for: 

• Why a Chief ADAS Engineer doesn’t guarantee a renewal with Mobileye
• Snyk’s winning set of features
• Where Canva needs to work harder for this $250K customer
• How communications platforms MessageBird, Sendbird, Infobip, etc. compare

New here? Each Monday, we highlight insights from Yardstiq’s analyst-led interviews with software buyers, a new product from CB Insights. Send us the names of companies or markets you’d like to see featured.

Mobileye just IPO’d and is currently ahead of the competition, but no renewal guaranteed

Mobileye is a leading developer of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) — tech that assists drivers with features like collision warnings and lane-keeping.

In 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye for just over $15B. On Wednesday, Intel took the company public at a valuation of about $17B.

Mobileye has partnered with automakers like Ford, Volkswagen, and BMW to implement its tech in their vehicles, as the business relationships data from its CB Insights profile highlights.

As fully autonomous vehicles at scale remain elusive, automakers like Ford have been refining their go-to-market strategy in the autonomous driving space (see Ford’s strategy map here).

Last week, Ford and VW announced Argo AI — the autonomous vehicle startup they backed with billions — would be shutting down. Ford intends to focus on developing ADAS.

Learn more about Mobileye and the ADAS landscape with Yardstiq.

Satisfied Snyk customer has extended contract  

This buyer of Snyk is clearly very happy, which may be one reason the developer security platform has seen its valuation 8x since joining the unicorn club in early 2020.

But in the current climate, even high-flier Synk has had to tighten things up. Last week, the unicorn cut 14% of its workforce. 

Tech companies have been tightening their belts as 2021’s well of cash dries up amid the public market downturn.

You can get more insights from Snyk customers on pricing, satisfaction, and product quality with Yardstiq. 

Canva’s customer success is lacking for this buyer

Talk about it

A growing crop of startups are making it easier for companies to communicate with their customers.

These companies offer APIs that allow businesses to power conversations across channels like email, messaging, and voice as well as integrate customer engagement features directly into their websites or mobile apps.

To understand the competition, we talked to buyers who recently evaluated solutions including: 

• MessageBird 
• Sendbird
• Infobip
• Gupshup 
• Twilio
• And more

Download our 1-pager to compare top omnichannel communications vendors at a glance.

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: Buyers not renewing appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Download the buyer’s guide to see our overview of this software category, including the key considerations, buyer thought processes, and the questions you should be asking. Questions like:

• What communication channels does the vendor support?
• What are the key drivers of pricing?
• Can the solution scale with your business growth?

“We needed a platform to send messages, WhatsApps, so SMS, voice calls because we run a company with approximately 200,000 clients and we need to communicate with them. And obviously you need a provider like that to be scalable.” — CRO, retail tech startup with $100M+ funding

Buyers interviewed for this report include:

• • Global Head of Service Excellence, marketplace network
  • Senior Product Manager, virtual cellular network
  • CRO, retail tech startup with $100M+ funding

The post Omnichannel communication buyer’s guide: 8 questions to help choose the right vendor to effectively reach your customers appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Download our scorecard to quickly compare the below vendors. To read the interview transcripts for each solution, reserve your Yardstiq subscription here.

• Gupshup
• Infobip
• MessageBird
• Sendbird

Other CPaaS vendors mentioned by buyers include:

• Twilio
• CleverTap
• PubNub
• Zendesk

The post Top omnichannel communications companies — and why customers chose them appeared first on CB Insights Research.

• Why Bluecore edged out Salesforce
• Dremio and why one customer may leave its data lake platform
• Samsara vs. Omnitracs in fleet management 
• Questions to ask Brex, Ramp, Airbase and other spend management cos before you purchase one of them

Dig in. 

Bluecore email delivery offer wins vs. Salesforce

Bluecore’s bread-and-butter is helping retailers develop personalized email campaigns to engage their customers. 

In August 2021, the company entered the unicorn club with a $1B valuation.

Salesforce ($150B+ market cap) has also looked to capitalize on the growing opportunity in online sales.

In addition to internally building out solutions, the CRM giant has ramped up its acquisitions and investments in the e-commerce & digital marketing space.

We previously highlighted e-commerce & digital marketing as one of Salesforce’s strategic priorities in this strategy map based on its investment, partnership, vendor, and M&A activity. 

Who’s winning (and why) against Salesforce? Find out with Yardstiq’s analyst-led transcripts.

And for more on the marketing automation landscape, check out our free Buyer’s Guide here and Vendor Scorecard here.

Cloud push could lose Dremio this customer 

Fleet management: Samsara comes out cheaper than veteran Omnitracs 

Manage that bread

How do software buyers evaluate spend management companies?

We spoke to buyers of several providers including:

• Brex
• Ramp
• Spendesk

Our goal was to learn about their evaluation criteria and questions.

Some of the buyers interviewed in this report include: 

• CFO at $100M+ funded fintech
• VP of Finance at $1B+ valuation technology startup
• Co-founder at $100M+ funded e-commerce company

Get the Spend Management & Corporate Cards Buyer’s Guide here. 

Why did we build Yardstiq? We broke it down here. 

The post The Transcript from Yardstiq: Toppling Salesforce appeared first on CB Insights Research.