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Finalists named for 2025 BayAreaCIO ORBIE Awards

Finalists named for 2025 BayAreaCIO ORBIE Awards

BayAreaCIO has announced the finalists for its 2025 BayAreaCIO ORBIE Awards. The 2025 BayAreaCIO ORBIE Awards honors chief information security officers who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership. With support from the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal, BayAreaCIO will honor the CIOs who are driving innovation and transforming San Francisco's leading organizations.
The 2025 BayAreaCIO ORBIE Awards event is scheduled for Sept. 26 at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel San Jose.
The finalists were named in the following categories:

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Using AI in Customer Service? Don't Make These 4 Mistakes
Using AI in Customer Service? Don't Make These 4 Mistakes

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Using AI in Customer Service? Don't Make These 4 Mistakes

AI is revolutionizing customer service in 2025, offering speed, personalization and efficiency. But to avoid frustrating users, businesses must ensure the following things. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. AI is omnipresent in 2025 in all areas of the business sphere, including customer service. And for good reason. Used right, AI can provide invaluable insights into your customers' behaviors and preferences, boost the efficiency of your customer service team and increase overall satisfaction. Between dynamic personalization, streamlined purchase processes and predictive customer support, many small businesses are leveraging AI to level the playing field and provide enterprise-grade customer service. However, despite AI's massive potential, there are several potential pitfalls when using AI in customer service. At worst, AI can scare off customers or generate frustration, rather than helping to streamline processes. Here are the four most common mistakes — and how to avoid them. Related: How Small Businesses Can Leverage AI Without Breaking the Bank 1. Frustrating generic chatbots To start with, chatbots can be a great asset to your team members and customers alike. They can speedily handle routine queries, free up your agents' capacities, respond to customers even outside regular business hours and reduce wait times. However, to be effective, chatbots need to be well-trained and personalized. Unfortunately, many companies — in a rush to stay ahead in the AI race — deployed chatbots that ask too many questions, give generic answers and fail to solve queries. In one hilarious example, NYC's MyCity chatbot kept giving wrong answers even six months post-deployment and after $600,000 in investments, misinforming users about legal requirements for business owners and even basic facts such as the minimum wage. Overall, 80% of people reported that interactions with chatbots have increased their frustration rather than leading to quicker solutions to the issues they were facing. To avoid this, it's crucial that chatbots are trained well on company-internal data. Ideally, they should be able to leverage customer-specific data across a number of different channels in order to provide personalized, efficient support to every person who reaches out. 2. Unaccessible siloed data On that note, another common pitfall to avoid when implementing AI in customer service is data siloing. One of AI's greatest strengths is its capacity to process huge amounts of data and unearth patterns and trends, condensed into actionable insights. These insights can then be leveraged for personalization and targeted strategy adjustments. However, that's only possible if AI actually has access to all the necessary data elements — and that is a challenge many small businesses are currently facing. In fact, a recent study by Nextiva, a market leader in customer experience software solutions, found that among company leadership, data siloing was identified as one of the most common barriers to AI implementation. In the study, 39% of respondents agreed that they "struggled with accessibility, aggregation, integration and structure of real-time and historical data." To avoid this limitation, it's essential to audit data storage and integration as soon as you start planning your AI implementation strategy. Making sure from the start that the systems you are considering integrate well — or that bridge solutions are at least available — will avoid unnecessary siloing and frustration down the line. Related: AI Can Give You New Insights About Your Customers for Cheap. Here's How to Make It Work for You. 3. Going overboard on hyper-personalization and automation On the other end of the spectrum are businesses that go overboard in their enthusiasm for AI, to a degree that can appear off-putting to many customers. This includes hyper-personalization and automation processes. While personalization is a key advantage of AI and can boost the efficiency of customer service agents and the satisfaction of the people they interact with, you don't want to appear omniscient either. Having the impression that a company knows everything about them before they even talk to you is seen as acutely creepy by many customers. Salesbots, in particular, often trigger the uncanny valley effect, or scare off potential customers by leveraging information they don't feel they ought to have access to. 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If I Could Buy Only 1 "Magnificent 7" Stock Over the Next Year, Alphabet Would Be It, but Here's the Key Reason
If I Could Buy Only 1 "Magnificent 7" Stock Over the Next Year, Alphabet Would Be It, but Here's the Key Reason

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If I Could Buy Only 1 "Magnificent 7" Stock Over the Next Year, Alphabet Would Be It, but Here's the Key Reason

Alphabet shares have dipped 2% over the past year, while most "Magnificent Seven" stocks posted double-digit percentage gains. Market leaders like Nvidia and Microsoft may look flashier, but Alphabet could offer better value. A tasty combination of affordable shares and artificial intelligence (AI) expertise sets this stock apart from the rest. 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet › The "Magnificent Seven" moniker was originally intended as a warning to long-term investors. Remember, the movie by the same name doesn't have the happiest of endings, and the tragedy made sense as a metaphor for potential market bubbles. Still, the Magnificent Seven group keeps setting the tone for the overall stock market, and most of these stocks are market darlings in 2025, with double-digit price gains over the last 52 weeks. But Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is lagging behind with a 2% price dip over the last year, and the stock looks downright undervalued in many ways. It's the only Magnificent Seven stock I have bought this year, for one simple reason: It's the best combination of affordable shares and unbeatable artificial intelligence (AI) expertise in this elite group. The other Magnificent Seven companies may have a leg up on Alphabet in the AI market so far. Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA) profitable sales growth is unbeatable. Revenue-based market shares suggest that the cloud computing solutions from Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are running circles around Google Cloud. But those proven and promised results are firmly baked into the stock prices. Nvidia stock trades at 47 times earnings and 49 times free cash flows today. Microsoft and Amazon have P/E ratios in the mid-30s and cash flow multiples well above Nvidia's. At the same time, Alphabet stock looks affordable at 19 times earnings and 28 times free cash flows. The numbers never tell the whole story, and there's more to say about Alphabet's long-term growth opportunities. From AI services to quantum computing systems, the company was built to thrive amid ever-changing markets and unexpected economy jolts. But the modest stock valuation is a great starting point for further research. Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $891,722!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anders Bylund has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. If I Could Buy Only 1 "Magnificent 7" Stock Over the Next Year, Alphabet Would Be It, but Here's the Key Reason was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

Could Bitcoin Actually Hit $200,000 Before 2026?
Could Bitcoin Actually Hit $200,000 Before 2026?

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Could Bitcoin Actually Hit $200,000 Before 2026?

Bitcoin could nearly double $200,000 before the end of this year. It will still be a good investment if it misses that mark. Institutional investors are the ones driving its pricing for the moment. 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin › Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) trades for about $105,000 (as of June 19), yet credible analysts are mapping a route to its price surpassing $200,000 by the end of 2025. For reference, a 90% price gain to $200,000 would raise Bitcoin's market cap to about $3.9 trillion. That target looks unduly aggressive only if you ignore two simple forces: a sharply lower trickle of new coins, and a sharply higher amount of institutional demand. Both are already affecting the coin's price right now. Let's see what the numbers actually say and take a moment to understand why the forecast for $200,000 isn't unreasonable at all. 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Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have hauled in more than $46 billion cumulatively, including a six-day streak of $1.8 billion in mid-June. Those funds, institutional investors, and publicly traded companies together now command about 6% of the coin's total circulating supply. At today's price, that capital removes roughly 360,000 coins from the public float, which is equivalent to more than two years of issuance at the current block reward. If the inflows simply persist at half their recent pace, the available supply could tighten by another 2% to 3% before 2026. And a shrinking float usually forces prices significantly higher because the number of willing sellers dries up faster than the number of willing buyers. In other words, crypto market euphoria is not a precondition to Bitcoin soaring. The only needed ingredient is buyers who are willing to convert fiat currencies into ETF shares just a bit faster than miners are capable of creating fresh coins. And right now, that speed differential is widening, so the conditions are ripe for the price to squeeze upward. While supply dynamics explain why the crypto's price can rise, macro tailwinds explain why demand might keep accelerating. On that front, U.S. core inflation cooled in May to its lowest reading since 2023. The Federal Reserve has held its benchmark interest rate steady since March; many investors are expecting that the Fed will cut rates a bit before next year. It's possible that lower real yields will make a scarce, non-yielding asset like Bitcoin more attractive. Separately, regulatory clarity is also improving abroad, which will create more institutional buyers. The European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework began licensing major exchanges in mid-June, opening a harmonized 27-nation market. 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