The Finnish Transport Safety Agency, Trafi, will purchase information system services from Tieto via a framework agreement. Tieto's experts will develop and maintain Trafi's information systems for road traffic, maritime, boating and information services. The contract period is valid from 2017 to 2021, with a total contract value of approximately EUR 11 million.

Trafi's strategic goal is to be a pioneer in the area of digital government services. Trafi currently has approximately 100 information systems that are used to provide the services.

"We are satisfied with the outcome of the tendering competition. Tieto was selected as Trafi's partner on the basis of their service model in combination with their expertise and price level”, says Heidi Rantanen, CIO at Trafi.

"We are very proud to be able to join Trafi on its mission to enable efficient mobility and mobility services for Finland. Trafi is a major customer of ours, and the agreement is a proof point of our efforts and investments in smart traffic services," says Cristina Petrescu, Executive Vice President, Public, Healthcare and Welfare, Tieto.

Showpad -- the world’s most powerful sales enablement platform – announced today the launch of Showpad Experiences, the industry’s first immersive presentation platform that ensures sales and marketing teams will stay one step ahead of how enterprise customers buy today.

Showpad Experiences will help buyers the way Waze helps drivers, converting static marketing materials into an immersive, interactive, branded experience for clients and prospects. Today, buyers are more educated about products and services than ever before. The fundamentals of successful sales conversation have shifted away from product details, pricing, and even relationships to more value-driven conversations where the experience has the biggest impact on a successful outcome. More than half of buyers today buy based on the buying experience over any other factor. Showpad Experiences is driven by the acquisition of London-based start-up Hickup, which created mobile sales playbooks.

“Showpad Experiences is going to change how sales teams have conversations with clients and prospects,” said Pieterjan Bouten, CEO of Showpad. “The acquisition of Hickup furthers our dominant position in this exciting market.”

With Showpad Experiences, marketing can craft new interactive ways of presenting their existing materials without needing to coordinate or create new collateral. And prospects, in turn, have more valuable conversations that dynamically focus on what they need, and only on what they need.

“Showpad Experiences adds value to the way we engage with our customers, ultimately improving our ability to convert more business,” said Graham Leeson, head of communications at Fujifilm. “It increases sales productivity, more deeply engages our buyers and gives marketing the power to control content.”

The core Hickup team, including founder Julien Lescure, is joining Showpad as part of the completion of the company’s acquisition and will continue to focus on product design and development. Several large Showpad customers are already using Showpad Experiences, and today marks the wide availability for more than 1,000 Showpad clients.

Key Showpad Experiences benefits include:

●        Maximise marketing impact on the sales conversation by guiding salespeople to the most relevant content for each conversation. Increase sales relevance by giving the buyer a clear visual storytelling experience and focus on the right content using contextual and segmented navigations that make it easy to come out with the most relevant information.

●        Give salespeople the flexibility to choose the right flow for every conversation, while maintaining control over which documents they can use.

“Showpad Experiences takes marketing collateral and sales team's’ effectiveness to the next level,” said Lescure. “I’m thrilled to be able to develop products like this at Showpad.”

Showpad Experiences will launch with three templates marketing can immediately use to take advantage of the new platform, with the tools to customise and best meet the needs of their sales teams. More will be released soon after launch.

Linedata (NYSE Euronext: LIN), the global solutions provider dedicated to the investment management and credit industries, today announced that Trident Trust, the independent provider of corporate, trust and fund services to the financial services sector worldwide, has chosen and implemented its leading transfer agency and reporting solutions.

Trident Trust is utilising Linedata Mshare and Linedata Reporting initially in Guernsey, Malta and Luxembourg as part of an ongoing programme to further enhance its fund administration offering. With over 400 funds under its administration worldwide, these solutions are enhancing Trident Trust’s ability to seamlessly operate across multiple jurisdictions and a range of diverse asset classes. The platform provides comprehensive hedge fund, private equity and partnership accounting capabilities, together with an intuitive profit and loss allocations module accommodating complex master-feeder structures.

The enterprise-level Linedata Mshare and Linedata Reporting solutions offer a flexible, auditable and user-focused transfer agency and reporting platform, proven across the globe with 35 clients across 15 jurisdictions. Linedata Mshare caters for all investor accounting requirements, with comprehensive AML/KYC tracking and FATCA/CRS compliance and XML reporting capabilities. Linedata Reporting automates all internal and external reporting, delivering graphically rich management dashboards and web portal options for investment managers and investors.

Ciaran Whooley, Head of Client Services, EMEA, at Linedata Fund Services said: “We have collaborated with Trident Trust to implement a sophisticated, flexible transfer agency and reporting solution that reflects its growing geographical footprint and varied product mix. Meeting the needs of our clients is our core ethos at Linedata and our industry-experienced team is well placed to assist Trident Trust as it embarks on its next phase of growth towards becoming the pre-eminent independent service provider to the fund management industry.”

Thalius Hecksher, Global Director of Fund Services at Trident Trust, added: “Continued investment in technology is fundamental to supporting the long-term growth of our business, enabling us to meet the evolving needs of our global client base and ensuring we continue to deliver consistently excellent client service. We’re delighted to be working with the team at Linedata to roll out Mshare to help us better serve our clients.”

Mitchells & Butlers (M&B), one of the largest operators of restaurants, pubs and bars in the UK, has today announced a partnership with Flypay and its ground-breaking Flyt platform.

Responding to customer demand, M&B will be including frictionless payments across its estate of around 1,700 pubs, bars and restaurants, with the aim of revolutionising the customer journey. The partnership will enable M&B to access a range of different solutions, each offering an individual experience for customers and tailored to each brand's bespoke requirements.

The services include Flypay’s industry leading Pay at Table and Bar Tabs technologies. In several M&B brands, guests will be able to redeem Eagle Eye vouchers directly from their phones without going to the bar. These combinations of technology provide a frictionless and waiterless payment process, powered by the Flyt platform and fully integrated with the industry leading Zonal Aztec EPOS. 

Trends suggest more and more guests, especially millennials, would prefer to pay for food and drink using technology. As a response to this and in order to increase customer satisfaction, whilst enabling front-of-house teams to spend more time being attentive to customers,  the M&B estate will be able to take advantage of a range of experiences, beginning with Flypay’s Pay at Table and Bar Tab solutions.

Chris Hopkins, Commercial and Marketing Director, M&B, commented: “Digital innovation opens up many possibilities to enhance customer experience and improve the efficiency of our operations.  We’re delighted to have Flypay as a partner.  The Flyt platform offers a breadth of services and crucially provides real flexibility for each of our brands across our estate.”

Tom Weaver, CEO, Flypay, commented: “Our integrations through the Flyt platform will dramatically streamline M&B’s operations, increasing efficiencies, whilst most importantly, responding to customer needs. We are really excited to be playing such a crucial role in this journey with M&B, who will be the largest operator in the UK, (based on number of sites), to adopt next generation mobile payment technology.” 

Eurazeo, a leading global investment company listed in Paris, in partnership with West Street Capital Partners VII, a fund managed by the Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division (“GS MBD”), is pleased to announce the acquisition of Dominion Web Solutions (“DWS”), an integrated platform of branded marketplaces and digital marketing solutions for the powersport, RV, commercial truck and equipment industries, for $680M. This is the first investment for Eurazeo in the U.S. since opening its North America headquarters in September 2016. The transaction is expected to close in June 2017.

Dominion Web Solutions, owned by Landmark Media Enterprises, has achieved significant scale with over 6,700 dealers, ~4M unique listings and over 7M average unique monthly visitors across its platforms, which include RV Trader and Cycle Trader among other Trader properties. The company has a track record of double-digit revenue growth.

“DWS has already built a market leading platform and we see tremendous opportunity to continue to add new and improve existing services to dealers and consumers and to target new customers,” said Virginie Morgon, deputy CEO of Eurazeo and president and CEO of Eurazeo North America.

“Additionally, the company is well positioned to benefit from increased marketplace adoption and the continuing shift from traditional to digital advertising by dealers.”

“Dominion Web Solutions is excited to join the Eurazeo and GS MBD family,” said Lori Stacy, president of Dominion Web Solutions. “With their experience and long-term strategic vision, Eurazeo and GS MBD are ideal partners to help us enhance our platform and accelerate our growth.”

“We are excited to work with the management team and Eurazeo to further develop the DWS story and take advantage of both organic and transformational growth opportunities,” added Harsh Nanda, managing director of Goldman Sachs.

Eurazeo and GS MBD will each acquire a 50% equity stake in DWS. The partnership will provide the company with strategic, operational and financial support for growth, including for potential acquisitions in adjacent markets and internationally. The investors will take an active shareholder role and work closely with the management team on future initiatives.

“As Eurazeo’s first acquisition in the U.S., it provides a strong foothold for our firm’s future,” added Morgon. “This investment is an example of the companies we aim to invest in and partner with – high quality enterprises with strong management teams and long-term transformational growth opportunities.”

Cobalt, the FX post-trade processing network based on distributed ledger technology, today announced that Citadel Securities, a leading global market-maker across FX, fixed income, equities, ETFs and options, and XTX Markets, a leading quantitative-driven electronic market-maker, have signed up as Cobalt launch participants.

Cobalt’s FX solution is set to launch in 2017. There are currently 22 beta participants on Cobalt’s peer-to-peer network including Citi, which became a Cobalt investor in 2016, and Cobalt’s technology partners including SETL, First Derivatives and Tradepoint.

Cobalt also announces the expansion of its core team and the opening of a New York office. Devika Darbari joins Cobalt as COO from JDX Consulting where she was a Board member and CEO Americas. She will also head up operations in the US. Jon Light joins as its Head of Product and Steve Nelson as Head of Solution Delivery and Support. Prior to joining Cobalt, Jon Light was Director of FX Product Management at Markit. Steve Nelson was the Trading Support Team Lead at Fixnetix. These latest hires follow the appointment of Charlotte Crosswell, former Nasdaq NLX CEO, as Strategic Advisor for Cobalt in December 2016.

Adrian Patten, Co-Founder and Chairman of Cobalt, said: “We are delighted to welcome Devika Darbari, Jon Light and Steve Nelson to the Cobalt team. Their experience will be essential in driving our global expansion and growth ambitions, as we ready ourselves for the launch of our peer-to-peer network later this year.”

He added: “The expansion of our team, our global reach, and the addition of Citadel Securities and XTX as launch participants following extensive beta testing, combined with our best-in-class technology partners have set Cobalt on a strong growth trajectory. The expertise these new hires bring enables us to continue to scale our business and solution, unhindered by cumbersome legacy systems and remaining agile and responsive to the needs of our customers.”

Cobalt’s use of distributed ledger technology will aim to significantly reduce risk and cut post-trade costs by up to 80%. Current complex post-trade infrastructure sees FX market participants incur multiple unnecessary license fees, ticketing charges, IT overheads and staff costs.  By creating a single, shared view of a transaction, Cobalt frees up back and middle office resources that currently have to reconcile across multiple systems.

Zar Amrolia, co-CEO, XTX Markets, added: “We are keen advocates of using new technology to transform market infrastructure, increasing transparency and efficiency for all participants. We are delighted to be part of the Cobalt initiative to reduce risk and cost in post-trade FX and we look forward to working with them and other members of the network to transform the landscape.”

Kevin Kimmel, Global Head of eFX, Citadel Securities, said: “We support efficient, fair and transparent markets and believe that Cobalt’s platform is an important step in enhancing FX market efficiency, particularly around credit and clearing.”

Tata Consultancy Services, a leading IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, announced that Mercantile Bank Limited (MBL), South Africa, has successfully transformed its banking operations with TCS BaNCS Digital. 

Sopra Banking Software, a trusted partner for banks, and Axway, a catalyst for digital transformation, are preparing a digital platform that aims to create new customer experiences while enabling financial players to comply with PSD2.

Global payments technology company, Visa, has begun a six-week intensive awareness building and training program for more than 18,000 UAE merchants aimed at accelerating the adoption of contactless payments across the country.