In today's Wall Street Journal, the Logistics Report highlights "Same-day delivery service USPack Logistics acquired two delivery companies to expand its reach to 27 states."

  Most companies that operate contact centers acknowledge the importance of enabling customers to contact them via multiple channels. Yet, a large number of these same companies use separate contact center and UC platforms and providers, which leads to communication silos among their channels. In a recent study conducted by Nemertes Research, for example, only 16% of those surveyed indicated they were currently integrating their communication channels. And, while 24% said they had plans to unify communications in the future, 60% had no plans. Not surprisingly, the minority of companies that already had a unified communications (UC) strategy in place enjoyed several benefits, including:

 USPack Logistics (www.gouspack.com), a NewSpring Holdings portfolio company and leading same-day courier and transportation company, today announced that it has completed the strategic acquisitions of Best Courier and Delivery Services and JS Logistics. Best Courier and JS Logistics are the seventh and eighth acquisitions for USPack, the third and fourth under NewSpring Capital, after most recently acquiring Parsippany, NJ-based Flash Courier, and Alexandria, VA-based Washington Courier in March 2016 and September 2015, respectively. The St. Louis Post Dispatch covers the news...

 New forms of marketing are seldom accepted with arms wide open. When online advertising first became a thing, marketers looked askance, wondering how this badly fractured media almost specifically geared toward basement-dwellers under 30 could ever possibly replace broadcast and print. Fast forward about 20 years, and we've seen how well it works. Now, we're having a similar moment about social media marketing, and new studies are showing how shaping influence can be a big gain for marketers.  Travel brands, for example, routinely turn to shaping influence as a means to connect with users on social media, going after...

In Banking Strategies, published by the Bank Administration Institute, Breakthrough Technology Group CEO, Jeff Kaplan, details the business case for small and mid-size banks to move to managed private cloud environments. Managed private clouds offer dedicated and isolated environments for each customer, even as they provide complete visibility and remote control over the environment. They deliver the benefits of the public cloud with the security and flexibility of a private data center. For example: If a bank has a customized security requirement, such as a dedicated virtual firewall, a private cloud provider can accommodate this request. Compare that to a public cloud environment, where customized services and accommodations are limited because the provider must keep in mind the other tenants on its platform.

What’s more, banks face increased scrutiny and auditing requirements and must ensure they can be met in a cloud environment, too. With a private cloud, specific reports and visibility can be built in to satisfy compliance requirements—which may not be the case in a public cloud environment. In addition...