News Briefs

WorkJam, a digital frontline workplace, announced at NRF: Retail’s Big Show in New York City the launch of three new products: Site Coach, a digital dashboard for frontline employees; Analytics Insights Reports, which builds on WorkJam’s core reporting capabilities; and Extensive Audit Capabilities that supercharge task management. All three new products are embedded into WorkJam’s core technology, making the WorkJam super app more robust and cementing the company’s leadership in frontline workplace technology.

“With these three new product launches, we’re enhancing our offering for our enterprise customers and embedding all the solutions they need into our single super app,” said Steven Kramer, CEO of WorkJam. “These new products will help businesses prepare for the increasingly complex compliance landscape they’ll face this year and tap real-time analytics insights that help them operate more effectively and empower their teams. By taking a multi-pronged approach to enhancing visibility, reporting and analytics and clearly delineating task and audit functions, WorkJam is helping businesses scale operationally in ways legacy and other point solutions simply cannot.”

Site Coach is a new module of WorkJam’s super app that offers a kiosk experience for location-level information, tasks and scheduling to drive operational excellence and better customer experiences. Frontline staff working in a particular location can use the module’s dashboard to view task lists, resources and schedules, clock in and out, and more. Site Coach can operate as a stand-alone module or in tandem with other modules in WorkJam’s app, allowing employees to view information on the Site Coach dashboard and then execute tasks via the mobile app or shared devices at their work location.

Analytics Insights Reports builds on WorkJam’s core reporting capabilities, offering more robust, real-time analytics and operational insights that empower administrators and frontline managers with the data visualizations they need to better understand their workflows and how the business, as well as their location and team, are performing relative to defined business goals. The product enables users to make more informed decisions about how they leverage their store associates or distribution center staffs to optimize operations and achieve better results.

The new product marks the next step in the evolution of WorkJam’s AI-powered analytics capabilities and builds on the partnership WorkJam launched with Qualtrics last year. That partnership provides the two companies’ joint customers with AI-driven insights into frontline sentiment and empowers store and logistics site managers to boost frontline engagement, productivity and retention.

WorkJam’s Extensive Audit Capabilities provide enhanced intelligent auditing power to help enterprises maintain safe, efficient workplaces and compliant operations for optimized customer experiences. The new product supports operational efficiencies that allow time-strapped district and field managers to focus on performance and results. This new release offers significant administrative capabilities that allow task gatekeepers to author, configure and publish complex and optimized audits to the field with ease.

The audit results and configurable scoring also trigger any needed follow-up steps and workflows. By enhancing its audit capabilities, WorkJam is helping companies strengthen their businesses so they are prepared to operate effectively in an increasingly complex compliance environment.

As the leading digital frontline workplace, WorkJam enables large enterprises to orchestrate their frontline workforces to improve productivity, engagement and retention. The solution is the only one on the market that offers modules that enable frontliners to manage their schedules and tasks, access training and career development opportunities, and communicate with peers and leaders throughout their organization in a single super app. It’s also the only solution that gives enterprises the flexibility to buy one module and then turn on others as their needs grow. In 2023, WorkJam was named to the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list, which highlights companies making an extraordinary impact around the world.

Cvent, an industry-leading meetings, events, and hospitality technology provider, announced that it has acquired Jifflenow, a B2B meeting scheduling platform and iCapture, a lead capture solution. As in-person events have returned as a critical channel for driving growth, hundreds of global organizations rely on Jifflenow to schedule and manage high-quality B2B meetings and iCapture for their trade show and conference lead capture needs.

With these acquisitions, Cvent further expands its Event Marketing and Management platform, offering enhanced solutions to help organizations:

• Maximize trade show impact by facilitating meetings with the highest-value customers and prospects: Trade shows are a large and growing category of marketing program spend, offering unique opportunities for sales and marketing teams to reach and engage new audiences and connect with their prospects and customers face-to-face. However, organizing, managing and tracking onsite appointments – through multiple systems and manual processes like email, calendar holds and spreadsheets – leads to wasted time and lost opportunities. With the addition of Jifflenow’s technology, Cvent gives organizations an easy way to ensure executives and sales teams are maximizing their time on the trade show floor by meeting with the most important customers and prospects. In addition, these new capabilities not only maximize the number of important meetings that are held, but also enable previously offline conversations to be tracked and actioned after the event ends. 
• Increase the number of event leads: Trade shows are a vital part of an organization’s awareness and lead generation strategy. By acquiring iCapture, Cvent now helps organizations get more out of every trade show with a consistent, customizable and easy-to-use universal lead capture solution. By eliminating fragmented, unreliable lead capture tools that have to be re-learned from show to show, organizations can boost lead volume with a standardized system that meets their unique lead capture needs.
• Better qualify and convert trade show leads: 74% of marketers⁽¹⁾ say events are their most important demand generation tactic, and with its highly configurable qualification questions and robust CRM integrations, iCapture facilitates more intelligent and efficient lead capture onsite. In addition, Jifflenow simplifies the process of booking qualified meetings at the event to convert these leads into business opportunities. This powerful combination streamlines post-event follow-up and enables sales and marketing professionals to easily capture, qualify and convert their leads with greater speed, consistency and visibility.

“The Jifflenow team is excited to continue its mission to transform meeting automation as an integral part of Cvent, a clear leader that continues to transform the meetings and events industry,” said Hari Shetty, CEO and Founder of Jifflenow. “Last year, we unveiled an expanded partnership and integration with Cvent, and today’s announcement is an exciting evolution of our relationship. It takes a highly committed team to reach the level of success that we have achieved, and we’re excited to leverage Cvent’s global scale, research and development resources and robust partner ecosystem to continue to innovate to help organizations capitalize on their trade shows and conferences.”

“Trade shows and conferences offer some of the highest quality engagements sales teams will encounter, and iCapture was founded nearly 12 years ago with a single goal in mind: helping organizations capture those engagements and turn them into revenue-generating opportunities,” said Brady Roberts, President and Co-Founder of iCapture. “With organizations investing more in trade shows to reconnect with customers and prospects, now’s a great time to join the Cvent team and add our best-in-class solutions to their platform.”

“Over the past nearly 25 years, we’ve helped power global meetings and events programs, and these acquisitions highlight our continued commitment to innovation and delivering the best-in-class solutions our customers need to drive their businesses forward,” said Reggie Aggarwal, CEO and Founder of Cvent. “We’ve known and respected Hari and Brady since the inception of both Jifflenow and iCapture, and we are extremely excited to welcome their teams to Cvent.”

Cvent’s enhanced trade show and conference solutions will be featured prominently at the Company’s user and industry conference, Cvent CONNECT 2024, to be held June 10-13 in San Antonio, Texas.

Restaurant Brands International Inc.  has struck a $1 billion deal to acquire 

Restaurant Brands International and Carrols Restaurant Group, Inc.  announced that they have reached an agreement for RBI to acquire all of Carrols issued and outstanding shares that are not already held by RBI or its affiliates in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.0 billion. RBI and its affiliates currently hold approximately 15% of Carrols outstanding equity.

Carrols is the largest Burger King  franchisee in the United States today, operating 1,022 Burger King restaurants in 23 states that generated approximately $1.8 billion of system sales during the 12-months ended September 30, 2023. Carrols also owns and operates 60 Popeyes  restaurants in six states.

Josh Kobza, CEO of RBI said, "This is a terrific example of our commitment to put our capital to work to accelerate growth and support (Carrols') team in their broader efforts to have a more competitive Burger King restaurant base. The strategic merits of this acquisition are very compelling and consistent with our objective to invest our capital in long-term, high-return opportunities."  

600-Store Remodel

The transaction is part of Burger King's Reclaim the Flame plan to accelerate sales growth and drive franchisee profitability. The transaction follows the brand's initial $400 million investment announced in September 2022 to drive high quality remodels, improve operations, enhance marketing and support ongoing technology and digital priorities.

Burger King expects to significantly accelerate Carrols' current rate of remodels to bring the acquired portfolio to modern image over the next five years. To accomplish this, the team plans to invest approximately $500 million of capital, funded by Carrols' operating cash flow, to remodel approximately 600 acquired restaurants that are not currently considered modern image.

In the next five to seven years, Burger King ultimately plans to refranchise the vast majority of the portfolio to new or existing smaller franchise operators who live in their local communities.   Burger King will maintain a company restaurant portfolio of a couple of hundred restaurants for strategic innovation, training, and operator development purposes.

Legion Technologies, an innovator in workforce management (WFM), announced the integration of its award-winning Legion WFM platform with SAP SuccessFactors solutions, allowing companies with hourly workers to simplify their employee lifecycle management. Now available on SAP Store, Legion WFM provides companies in labor-intensive industries such as retail and hospitality with the ability to maximize labor efficiency and employee engagement simultaneously with intelligent, automated, employee-centric workforce management.

• Strategic Insight: Get instant insights into employee engagement, manager productivity, labor optimization, and compliance trends.
• Automated Labor Budgeting: Combine accurate long-term demand forecasts with your detailed labor model and scheduling rules to create precise labor budgets.
• Demand Forecasting: Precisely predict demand across all customer touchpoints every 15 minutes.
• Labor Optimization: Empower managers with staffing guidance and labor insights to generate the optimal labor plan.
• Automated Scheduling: Create optimal schedules that match business needs with employee preferences and skills.
• Automated Time and Attendance: Automate timesheet approvals, corrections, and premium calculations.
• Frontline Communication: Unlock the power of digital communication to dramatically improve the experience of frontline hourly workers.
• Instant Wage Access: Support financial well-being and increase retention with access to earned wages in the same app employees use every day—without IT resources.
• Performance and Rewards: Engage and motivate hourly employees with instant feedback and recognition to help them grow and feel valued.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024 in Las Vegas, Vox AI's advanced machine learning technology  for  the drive-thru is making its debut. 

Hi Auto, a trailblazing company in drive-thru voice AI technology, has been named "Innovator of the Year" at the Checkers & Rally's annual convention. This prestigious accolade underscores Hi Auto's pivotal role in transforming the quick service restaurant (QSR) industry with its advanced voice AI solution.

Roy Baharav, CEO of Hi Auto, expressed his enthusiasm for the growing partnership with Checkers & Rally's, stating, "This recognition is a testament to our team’s relentless drive for innovation and excellence. Collaborating with Checkers & Rally's, we are setting a new standard for the QSR experience by deploying our voice AI technology across their extensive national footprint. Our shared vision is to redefine efficiency and customer engagement in the drive-thru landscape."

• The Trail Blazer Leading AI in the Drive-Thru at Checkers and Rally’s

Hi Auto stands at the forefront of the QSR technology sector, with its voice AI technology now a cornerstone in over 400 locations across more than 20 states in the U.S., including a significant presence in Checkers and Rally's franchises and corporate-owned restaurants.

Minh Le, Chief Information Officer at Checkers & Rally's Restaurants, praised Hi Auto's innovative streak: "Hi Auto's drive-thru voice AI technology is not just innovative; it's revolutionary. With advanced features such as bilingual English and Spanish capabilities to enhance inclusivity and cloned voices to enhance branding, Hi Auto is propelling our restaurants to new heights of customer interaction and service."

Checkers & Rally's, operating over 800 restaurants, celebrated a transformational year at their annual convention in Nashville. The event brought together more than 300 franchisees, vendors, and Restaurant Support Center employees to honor excellence and introduce new initiatives. Among dozens of vendors, Hi Auto stood out, securing its market-leading position with its proprietary natural language processing and high-accuracy voice recognition technologies, specifically tailored for QSRs