REA Group's executive manager of customer platforms, Shane Williams,​ has a busy few years ahead of him. Having just implemented a sales and service CRM across the business, he is now turning his attention to optimising marketing automation, migrating legacy data, and managing a system to create a single view of customer, no matter what business line that customer traverses.

​An aggressive four-month transformation program has delivered Sydney Olympic Park Authority (SOPA) the streamlined systems, customer journey roadmap and data foundations vital to fulfilling its 2030 masterplan for a revitalised residential and events destination.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Quizjam, Salesforce, Crayon, Yellowfin, Samanage, indaHash, Sojern, Zoho, Brandwatch, and more.

RedBalloon parent company, Big Red Group (BRG), says its acquisition of extreme and adventure experiences aggregator, Adrenaline.com.au, will make it the third-largest experiences provider globally. And according to its co-founder and spokesperson, Naomi Simson, the acquisition is just the start of its plans to ensure Australian businesses successfully get a piece of the experiences pie against global competitors.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Roy Morgan, Taboola, VoiceFoundry, Amazon, Soul Machines, Genesys, Salesforce, LiveChat, Smaato, and more.

For Open Colleges, personalisation has made a big difference. In fact, the online education organisation has seen a 42 per cent increase in conversion rates after A/B testing and optimising its normal welcome journey.

Leading brands are personalising well, but most organisations have a way to go before their personalisation is at the level the modern consumer now expects.

Rachael Powell’s job title tells us all we need to know about marketing right now. As chief customer, people and marketing officer at Xero, she is the embodiment of the evolution of marketing and how, in order to achieve true connection with the customer, trust must occur from the inside before it can go out to the customers.

AI is only as good as the training data it is fed, and we must be aware of in-built bias as we move into a future where AI becomes increasingly relied on, said experts at the Dreamforce conference last week.

Far from it being a retail apocalypse, the proliferation of data and technology has pushed us into a retail renaissance, said Salesforce at Dreamforce this week.

Harnessing digital platforms and AI for customer experience, breaking down situational thinking and embracing journey-based thinking, and finding a north star for engagement are just some of the ways Mercer and Gartner see organisations building better customer experiences.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Salesforce, AT&T, Oracle, Insightly, Engagio, Infor, Vonage and Talend.

Australia is quick to embrace new technology and brave in its application, Salesforce APAC senior vice-president, Lee Hawksley, claims.​

In today’s experience economy, Australian company, Intrepid Travel, has found data and personalisation have made all the difference. In fact, using data has been so successful, the group recently sold out a tour in 16 hours, the fastest in its 30-year history.

Doing good is just part of doing business today for Unilever and Marriott, which featured in the Dreamforce keynote as examples of putting customers at the centre of business.

​The fourth industrial revolution was front and centre at the official Dreamforce keynote today, with Salesforce launching a number of new applications to better enable what they consider to be at the heart of this new revolution: connection.

​Apple iOS and Salesforce’s CRM will be brought together to facilitate new mobile apps for business, thanks to a new strategic partnership between Apple and ​Salesforce​, announced today at Dreamforce.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Salesforce, Twilio, Radius, Pitney Bowes, Hyp3r, Qlik, Ooyala, and Talend.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Lithium Technologies, Thunder Experience Cloud, LogMeIn, Slack, Seven Stars, and Aircall.

CMO joined forces with Capgemini and Salesforce in August on a new leaders roundtable discussion in Sydney looking at how CMOs better realise the benefits of their customer technology investments. here are some pictorial highlights of the event

US data and technology agency giant, Merkle, has followed up its launch into Australia earlier this year by acquiring Salesforce Marketing Cloud specialist, consultancy, Amicus Digital.