Imagine the prestige of being recognized on a global stage as a truly customer-obsessed leader of an enterprise that exemplifies customer obsession — a business that not only excels in creating exceptional customer experiences but also inspires others through its remarkable achievements. Forrester’s 2025 Customer Obsession Awards are your opportunity to showcase your organization’s relentless dedication to putting customers at the heart of every business decision and action. Winning this award isn’t just about the honor of being recognized; it’s about the doors it opens. Past winners have seen heightened motivation within their teams, inspiring them to become even more customer-obsessed, along with greater visibility and recognition in their industries. This year, winners and finalists will have the chance to be featured in Forrester reports, video content, social media campaigns, and beyond — maximizing brand recognition and creating moments that endure well past the award ceremony. Exclusive Perks Of Being A Winner Winners will not only bask in the spotlight but also gain unique benefits designed to reward their efforts: Complimentary access to the CX Summit of your respective region, including the opportunity to network with industry leaders Hotel accommodations in the heart of downtown Phoenix, sponsored by Forrester A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your leaders to be interviewed live on stage during a keynote session — sharing your story of success, innovation, and impact with the industry’s brightest minds The Ripple Effect Of Winning Winning signals to the world that your organization is forward-thinking, innovative, and truly committed to every stakeholder: your customers, your employees, and your broader community. The award validates your efforts as a leader in achieving tangible results, including higher revenue, customer retention, employee engagement, and brand momentum. Customer obsession isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a difference-maker. Businesses that prioritize customers don’t just stand out; they outperform, achieving increased growth in revenue, profitability, and enrichment. For winners, being acknowledged as customer-obsessed isn’t just an honor — it helps attract top talent, partners, and loyal customers. Your Path To Recognition Starts Now Entering your organization or leader for the Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award or the Customer-Obsessed Leadership Award is simple but highly impactful. Don’t miss the chance to share your story, elevate your brand, and inspire countless others in your industry. The deadline for award submissions is fast approaching. Download your nomination packet to get started on your journey to the CX winner’s circle. Make 2025 the year your organization gets the spotlight it deserves. We can’t wait to celebrate your success at this year’s CX Summits in Nashville, London, and Sydney! Learn more about Forrester’s Customer Obsession Awards program and previous award winners here. Register to attend Forrester’s 2025 North America, EMEA, and APAC CX Summits. source

Teams occasionally generate a certain amount of internal friction, and development staffs are no exception. Yet, when managed properly, team friction can actually be turned into a motivating force.  Developer team friction can become a positive driving force when it encourages diverse perspectives, promotes critical thinking, fosters innovation, and improves communication skills, observes JB McGinnis, a principal with Deloitte Consulting. “Constructive disagreements can lead to more robust solutions, continuous improvement, and stronger team cohesion,” he explains in an email interview. “By tapping into and exploring this friction positively, teams can enhance performance and drive innovation.”  Friction can be a fantastic driver for positive change, states Andy Miears, a director with technology research and advisory firm ISG. “When members of a development team are at odds with each other, it often indicates some degree of inefficiency, lack of work product quality, a poor working environment, or unclear roles and responsibilities,” he says via email. “Using friction as a compelling way to identify, prioritize, and address pain points is a healthy behavior for any high-performing team.”  Multiple Benefits  Developer team friction, while often seen as a negative trait, can actually become a positive force under certain conditions, McGinnis says. “Friction can enhance problem-solving abilities by highlighting weaknesses in current processes or solutions,” he explains. “It prompts the team to address these issues, thereby improving their overall problem-solving skills.”  Related:3 Tech Deep Dives That CIOs Must Absolutely Make Team friction often occurs when a developer passionately advocates a new approach or solution. That’s generally a good thing, notes Stew Beck, director of engineering at work product management solutions provider iManage. “When team members have conflicting ideas, you naturally end up with some friction — it’s something you want to have on every team,” he says via email. If team members aren’t advocating their own ideas, there’s a risk they’re not fully engaged in the problem. “Without friction, teams could be missing out on a way to make the product better.”  Allowing team friction in a controlled and safe way helps everyone. “Team members can challenge ideas, ways of accomplishing a task, encourage better results, and hold each other accountable to shared objectives, standards and processes,” Miears says.  Team seniority and status shouldn’t matter. “The best ideas don’t always come from the most senior person in the room,” Beck observes. Yet failing to encourage open discussions, regardless of rank, risks overlooking something important that could cost the team, and the entire enterprise, later.  Related:AI’s Next Frontier Is Applications: How to Stay Ahead Channeling Friction  To channel friction into positive results, the team leader should encourage balanced and constructive productive feedback. “Additionally, the leader should commit to creating an environment that’s open to a wide set of opinions, where teammates are encouraged to share their thoughts,” McGinnis advises.  The team leader should schedule regular meetings with their development team to identify what’s currently working and, more importantly, what may be failing. “In a mature Agile development framework, retrospectives should take part at the end of every sprint,” Miears recommends. Larger retrospectives, meanwhile, should be scheduled at the end of releases or program increments. “These sessions should be used to create new, better, or more efficient value for users, stakeholders and the overall team.”  Maintaining Control  Team leaders should set clear expectations and goals for all members. “These objectives should be defined for both the team as a whole and for individual members,” McGinnis says. Leading by example is also critical. “As a leader, you are a reflection of your team, so demonstrating the handling of conflicts with a professional demeanor, while showing empathy, goes a long way.”  Related:What VC Investments Look Like in 2025 Friction can easily spiral out of control when retrospectives and feedback focus on individuals instead of addressing issues and problems jointly as a team. “Staying solution-oriented and helping each other achieve collective success for the sake of the team, should always be the No. 1 priority,” Miears says. “Make it a safe space.”  As a leader it’s important to empower every team member to speak up, Beck advises. Each team member has a different and unique perspective. “For instance, you could have one brilliant engineer who rarely speaks up, but when they do it’s important that people listen,” he says. “At other times, you may have an outspoken member on your team who will speak on every issue and argue for their point, regardless of the situation.” Staying in tune with these differences and quirks helps to foster a healthy discussion environment.  Parting Thought  Team building is a great way to ensure a safe team when friction arises, Miears says. “Celebrate successes and individual accomplishments together,” he recommends. “Do the work to build a safe and inclusive culture in which the team can thrive.”  source

To capitalize on the enormous potential of artificial intelligence (AI) enterprises need systems purpose-built for industry-specific workflows. Strong domain expertise, solid data foundations and innovative AI capabilities will help organizations accelerate business outcomes and outperform their competitors. Enterprise technology leaders discussed these issues and more while sharing real-world examples during EXL’s recent virtual event, “AI in Action: Driving the Shift to Scalable AI.” “The key to driving real impact lies in seamlessly integrating data and AI into the way businesses work,” said Rohit Kapoor, chairman and CEO, EXL. “It’s not just about implementing technology. It’s about orchestrating data, digital solutions and human intelligence to optimize decision-making and unlock new opportunities.” The year of agentic AI Agentic AI holds the key to unlocking these opportunities. With autonomous, self-regulating AI agents, enterprises can create automated workflows that adapt to real-world business complexity and augment their human experts to boost efficiency, accuracy and innovation. Kevin Ichhpurani, president of global partner ecosystem with Google Cloud, shared an example of a mutual client and how EXL and Google have helped them with customer service agents. The agents understand the consumer’s intent when they call, make      educated decisions through complex reasoning and then take action, such as initiating a product exchange or ordering a replacement unit. “We see [2025] as the year of delivering agentic experiences for clients, where we automate complete end-to-end business processes,” Ichhpurani said. To achieve this goal, EXL last month launched its agentic AI platform, EXLerate.AI. It orchestrates AI models alongside human expertise and analytics “to help businesses harness AI without getting slowed down by technical complexities,” Kapoor said. The virtual event also featured demos of EXL Code Harbor, a generative AI-powered code migration tool, and EXL’s Insurance Large Language Model (LLM), a purpose-built solution to the industry’s challenges around claims adjudication and underwriting. The Insurance LLM is trained on 12 years’ worth of casualty insurance claims and medical records and is powered by EXL’s domain expertise. Built on NVIDIA’s AI stack, the LLM delivers 30% greater accuracy and 30% lower costs than general-purpose models. “Insurance LLM assists claim adjusters to be more productive and accurate in a shorter time period,” said John Fanelli, vice president, enterprise software, NVIDIA. “It also delivers the best outcomes for both the insurers and the insured. Insurance LLM is a fantastic example of what we call an agentic AI system.” AI in the wild In two event panels, enterprise AI practitioners shared the trends they’re seeing this year and how they’re adapting. The first conversation focused on the evolving symbiosis between data and AI. “There used to be a discussion about how much data you have,” said Sidd Kuckreja, CTO with TruStage. “Now it’s about the quality of data as you think of the regulatory landscape, bias mitigation, privacy and ethical considerations.” Randy Huang, vice president and chief data scientist for U.S. business with Prudential, emphasized the importance of security and governance, because more people are using AI platforms to access and use sensitive data. “The focus on data is really changing based on how the data is generated and how the data is used,” Huang said. And Preetha Sekharan, vice president of Unum’s digital incubator, noted that while data can fuel AI innovation, the inverse is also true. “What is really interesting with genAI and newer technologies is how AI can accelerate how you generate, how you transform, how you understand data,” Sekharan said. “That is really a fascinating twist in how we think about data.” The second panel focused on how AI helps enterprises maintain a competitive advantage. NRG Energy uses AI to conduct ongoing scenario modeling, analyzing weather and forecasting its effects on customer demand and energy prices. “There’s a lot of data points, and … there’s a really good opportunity to use that to do better prediction,” said Dak Liyanearachchi, chief data and technology officer. Sarthak Pattanaik, head of the artificial intelligence hub at BNY, discussed the bank’s internal platform, which enables employees to build AI-powered systems while ensuring security, privacy, fairness, ethical usage, accountability, and transparency. “It democratizes access to AI in a responsible fashion, so it helps innovation at scale,” Pattanaik said. And Dr. Ashish Atreja, professor of medicine at University of California – Davis Health, spoke about AI improving patient access to care. “The biggest value for patients that’s going to happen is moving healthcare fundamentally from one-to-one care, where you have to be with a physician and a patient in the same space and time, to one-to-many care — how you can automate digital care pathways through digital avatars, through digital apps, through digital therapeutics,” Atreja said. A fundamental transformation Simply adopting AI is no longer enough. As industry leaders emphasized during EXL’s event, success requires integrating AI with high-quality data and deep domain expertise — while rethinking and optimizing business processes. “AI is not just a technological shift,” Kapoor said. “It’s a fundamental business transformation.” To learn more about what agentic AI and EXL can do for your business, visit here. source

Several CRM providers offer free versions with access to enough features to provide the value of a paid tier in managing customer relations. Even the best free CRM software is typically capped at a certain number of users, so they’re ideal for small business teams, individuals, and freelancers. Some of the most popular providers offering a free tier of their CRM tools include HubSpot, Zoho CRM, EngageBay, and more. These free versions can be sufficient for some organizations since they generally provide the core CRM features users need to organize and track client engagement. In addition to those core features, each provider has unique capabilities, such as advanced marketing tools or niche industry specializations. I evaluated dozens of providers based on pricing and features and narrowed down the list to the seven best free CRM software. Top free CRM software comparison The top free CRM software offers access to sales pipelines, document management, and native or third-party integrations. Businesses can sync their free CRM tool to their existing tech stack and integrate it with their sales processes. My rating (out of 5) Starting paid price* Pipeline management Document management Integrations HubSpot CRM 4.74 $15/user/month Yes Yes Yes Zoho CRM 4.67 $14/user/month Yes Yes Limited monday.com 4.59 $9/user/month (3-user minimum) Yes Limited Higher tiers EngageBay 4.58 $11.95/user/month Yes Yes Limited ClickUp 4.56 $7/user/month Yes Yes Yes Bitrix24 4.55 $49/month for 5 users Yes Yes Limited Odoo CRM 4.40 $7.25/user/month Yes Yes Yes Capsule CRM 4.33 $18/user/month Yes Via integration Yes *Price when billed annually. HubSpot CRM: Best overall free CRM Image: HubSpot Overall rating: 4.74/5 Pricing: 4.38/5 General features: 4.98/5 Ease of use: 5/5 Support: 4.88/5 Expert score: 4.69/5 HubSpot’s free CRM system provides access to various sales, marketing, customer service, commerce, content management, and operations management tools. At no cost, two users can complete sales tasks directly within a customer’s profile and monitor incoming deals in the free pipeline feature. HubSpot’s paid tiers offer more advanced features, such as sales and marketing automation, forecasting, voice calling, and sales analytics. Why I chose HubSpot CRM HubSpot CRM offers the most robust and diverse tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, commerce, content, and operations processes. Each product offered by HubSpot is connected to the same underlying CRM database, giving businesses insight into every contact at each stage in the customer journey. And Breeze Copilot smart recommendations and automation make it one of the best AI-powered CRMs. While HubSpot’s free CRM is the most robust of those listed here, your business might eventually need to scale to a premium plan. If that’s the case, HubSpot’s paid tiers can be pretty costly compared to others. If you want a tool with more affordable premium plans, check out Zoho CRM or ClickUp. Head over to the HubSpot review for more information. Hubspot Sales Hub Pricing Free tools: $0 for two users with basic sales, marketing, service, content, operations, and commerce tools. Sales Hub Starter: $20/user/month, billed monthly, or $15 when billed monthly. This includes free tools, simple automation, e-signature, and conversation routing. Starter Customer Platform*: $20/user/month, billed monthly, or $15 when billed annually. This includes Starter-level tools for sales, marketing, service, content, and operations. Sales Hub Professional: $90/seat/month, billed annually, or $100 when billed monthly (plus a $1,500 one-time onboarding fee). This includes everything in the Sales Hub Starter, plus a prospecting workspace, playbooks, and forecasting capabilities. Sales Hub Enterprise: $150/seat/month, billed annually (plus a $3,500 one-time onboarding fee). This includes everything in the Sales Hub Professional, plus predictive lead scoring, conversation intelligence, and lead form routing. *Starter Customer Platform includes sales, marketing, service, content, operations, and commerce tools in one package. Individual modules can be purchased separately. Key freemium features Breeze Copilot: HubSpot’s AI-powered assistant can generate content, automate routine tasks, and provide personalized recommendations and insights about leads, customers, and interactions. Meeting scheduler: Schedule client meetings quickly with little hassle by syncing them to Google Calendar or Office 365 Calendar. Live chat software: Connect website visitors to sales reps in real time to convert new prospects, improve customer relations, and close more deals. HubSpot CRM’s Breeze Copilot generates an AI-powered data summarization for contacts. Image: HubSpot Pros and cons Pros Cons AI-powered CRM with robust sales, marketing, and service tools Intuitive interface Offers operations, commerce, and content management features Paid plans and add-ons can be pricey Lack of reporting tools No live support for free users Key freemium features Lead tracking: View lead profiles and activity history from one dashboard to see where leads are in the buying process and when it’s best to start engaging. Document management: Organize and control all shared documents between sales reps and even content shared outside the business with clients. Campaign management: Plan and monitor any promotional campaign, including Google Ads, referral programs, or offline events like trade shows and TV commercials. Zoho CRM contact data encryption. Image: Zoho CRM Pros and cons Pros Cons 24/7/365 data security Free plan includes lead, account, contact, and deal management Has email templates, campaign management, and workflows Free plan has no social integration and forecasting Some users report poor UI and UX AI tools are locked in higher tiers Key freemium features Customizable visual pipelines: Create pipelines for easy planning, tracking, and launching of fundraising and donor campaigns. Project and operations management: Use private boards to map food deliveries, track donated supplies, and manage tasks and projects. Build custom workflows and automate repetitive operational processes. Customizable forms: Use no-code forms to collect, organize, and analyze volunteer and supporter information. Plug the data directly into your visual database for easy data collection and analysis. monday.com fundraising and donor campaign management. Image: monday.com Pros and cons Pros Cons Custom templates for fundraising and donor management No-code automations for operational workflows Multiple data viewing options Free plan does not include automations and integrations Learning curve for users not accustomed to non-traditional CRMs Work performance insights are locked in the Enterprise tier Key freemium features Multichannel campaigns: Create branded marketing campaigns and

Having a strong, capable leader is essential for project success. Unfortunately, decisions about candidates are often based on weak or inaccurate information. As a result, many organizations don’t have the correct procedures in place to produce a complete and accurate picture of their leading prospects.  Before selecting an IT team leader, it’s crucial to establish what the role requires beyond just technical expertise, advises Thierry Louis, infrastructure operations director at IT training services provider Yellow Tail Tech. In an email interview, he stresses understanding the importance of clearly outlining expected business needs, leadership capabilities, team dynamics, and performance metrics. “Setting clear expectations upfront ensures you’ll select a leader who fits both the technical and cultural needs of your organization.”  Selection Process  The best way to select a new IT team leader is to follow a structured approach, says Akash Tayal, cloud engineering offering leader with Deloitte Consulting. “The process begins by choosing a candidate with technical expertise in relevant areas, a successful technology delivery track record, and a strong followership,” he explains in an online interview.  Look within the team first, recommends Nikita Sherbina, CEO at digital signage provider AIScreen.io. “Internal candidates often understand the company culture and technical landscape better than external hires,” he explains via email. “Pair this with structured interviews, scenario-based problem-solving tasks, and leadership aptitude tests to gauge their ability to lead under pressure.”  Related:AI’s Next Frontier Is Applications: How to Stay Ahead Essential Attributes  A successful IT team leader should have a proven track record of earning team members’ trust and respect, Tayal says. “Strong followership is built through effective communication, recognizing and valuing team members’ contributions, and providing support and mentorship.”  An effective IT leader must demonstrate technical proficiency, emotional intelligence, and strong communication skills, Sherbina advises. “They should excel at aligning technical decisions with business goals, fostering collaboration, and resolving conflicts,” he says. “I’ve found that adaptability is critical — especially in fast-moving industries.”  The candidate should be a technology thought leader and innovator who challenges the status quo, Tayal says. “Bringing new ideas to the table is critical for growth in a leadership position, and if they’re unable to innovate outside of the usual practice, growth cannot occur.” He adds that a strong leader is agile, hands-on, and capable of getting into the gritty details when needed.  Related:What VC Investments Look Like in 2025 Warning Signs  A leader must integrate well with the existing team culture, values, and working style. “Overlooking this can lead to friction, disengagement, and a lack of trust,” Louis says. Even the most technically-skilled leader will struggle if they clash with the team’s communication style, problem-solving approach, or work ethic. “The best leaders enhance their team’s strengths and bring people together, rather than disrupt the existing synergy.”  Beware of “brilliant jerks,” Sherbina warns. “While technical expertise is important, leaders who lack people skills can harm team morale and productivity,” he says. “Also avoid assuming that the best developer will make the best leader — leadership is a distinct skill set.”  Seeking Input  Identify potential IT team leader candidates early and provide them with opportunities to hone their leadership capabilities, Tayal recommends. “By doing so, these individuals can gain relevant experience and develop the skills necessary to be successful in a leadership role.” He believes that taking this proactive approach ensures that when the need for a new IT team leader arises, there will already be a collection of well-prepared candidates who have been through a succession process and ready to immediately step into the role.  Related:Top IT Insights 2025: Navigating the Future of Tech Before making a formal appointment, Sherbina advises seeking feedback from the team the new leader will manage. “They can provide unique insights into how the candidate interacts with others and handles challenges,” he explains. “Mentorship programs and leadership coaches are also valuable resources for identifying leadership potential.”  Getting It Right  One of the biggest mistakes made when selecting an IT team leader is under-emphasizing technical skills, Tayal says. While leadership and management abilities are crucial, it’s equally important for the IT team leader to have a strong technical background and expertise in relevant areas, he adds. “Deep technical capabilities ensures a leader who can effectively understand and address challenges, provide guidance to their team, earn their respect, and make informed decisions.”  Invest in leadership development early, Sherbina advises. “Providing training and mentorship to potential leaders within your team can create a talent pipeline, reducing the risk of a poor hire when a leadership role opens up.” source

By Courtney Bublé ( March 11, 2025, 7:27 PM EDT) — The Senate voted 78-19 on Tuesday to confirm Gail Slater to be assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division at the U.S. Department of Justice…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

For organizations with multiple online accounts, tightening company security should be a top priority to prevent data breaches or theft. The first step to avoiding a data breach is creating unique passwords for your accounts. But suppose you’re like many people who resort to reusing their old passwords to create new accounts. In that case, it’s safe to say that it’s only a matter of time before your data and online accounts are compromised. And by extension, once your overused passwords are discovered, all the accounts associated with them are at risk. One way to solve this problem is through password managers — tools that help you generate unique, secure, complex passwords and store them in a vault for easy access. Password managers secure account credentials, making them difficult to hack. Here is a guide to how password managers work and how you can choose the best one to tighten your company’s online security. NordPass Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Micro (0-49 Employees), Small (50-249 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Micro, Small, Medium, Large, Enterprise Features Activity Log, Business Admin Panel for user management, Company-wide settings, and more Dashlane Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Micro (0-49 Employees), Small (50-249 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Micro, Small, Medium, Large, Enterprise Features Automated Provisioning ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Access Management, Compliance Management, Credential Management, and more What is a password manager? Keeper password manager desktop interface. Image: Keeper A password manager is a tool that helps you generate, store, and manage passwords or credentials online. It uses encryption to protect the stored credentials and allows you to retrieve them using a master password. The idea behind this technology is to enhance security by promoting the use of unique, strong passwords for different services. This helps reduce the risk associated with password reuse and simplifies the process of managing multiple login credentials. How do password managers work? While many browsers feature a basic password manager, only a top-tier third-party password management application can offer you robust security and convenience through features like password generation, VPN, dark web monitoring, encryption, and two-factor authentication. While you can simply add password managers to your browsers as an extension, the first step to using many password managers is installing the client on your computer or mobile device. To install a password manager on your mobile or desktop, follow these simple steps: Download the password manager program. Open the app and create a master password for your vault. Add the password manager extension to your browser. Log into your accounts. Change your existing passwords. When your password manager is active, instead of manually entering the password on websites, the password manager, through the extension, prompts you to input your master password to access your unique passwords. This master password serves as the key to unlocking the encrypted vault containing all stored passwords. If you have already logged into the password manager, it seamlessly auto-fills the required login information on the website, sparing you the need to recall individual details. If you want an in-depth video explanation on password managers, we’ve got you covered. Check out our Password Managers 101 video feature on the official TechRepublic YouTube channel that’s available to view right now. In this video, we look into the features and benefits of password managers, how safe password managers are to use and who should invest in password manager solutions in the first place. More about Cloud Security Types of password managers While different password management solutions serve similar functions, their key features and modes of operation distinguish them. Below are three popular categories that can be valuable for your organization. Locally installed or offline password managers These are desktop-based password management solutions that store your passwords directly on your device, such as a laptop. These passwords are typically secured within an encrypted vault, enhancing the security of your sensitive information. Unlike cloud-based alternatives, locally installed password managers do not rely on external servers to store or manage your passwords. The advantage here is that your passwords are not accessible from any other device unless they have been synchronized with the device. This local storage approach provides you with a high level of control and privacy if you prefer to keep your data away from public networks. Popular examples of offline password managers are KeePass and Enpass. Both password managers allow users to store their credentials directly on their machine, without having them synced or stored on the cloud. Saved logins in KeePass. Image: KeePass However, it comes with a trade-off: If you were to lose the device where the password manager is installed, you would also lose access to all the stored passwords. Some password managers, like 1Password, Keeper, and Dashlane attempt to strike a balance between privacy and convenience by offering features that allow you to create multiple password vaults across your devices. These vaults can be synchronized when you connect to the internet. This enables a certain degree of flexibility while still maintaining a primarily offline storage approach. This way, you can benefit from the convenience of syncing your passwords across devices without entirely relying on external servers for data storage. Web-based or online password manager services These password managers operate on a cloud-based model, where encrypted passwords are stored on the service provider’s network. In this context, the service provider assumes direct responsibility for the security of your passwords. Programs like 1Password and NordPass exemplify cloud-based password managers. The key advantage of these services lies in their accessibility — you can reach your password vaults from any device with an internet connection. NordPass vault synced to the cloud. Image: NordPass Web-based password managers typically come in various forms, commonly as browser extensions, desktop applications,

By Ryan Davis ( March 11, 2025, 10:10 PM EDT) — A recent Federal Circuit decision discarding the U.S. International Trade Commission’s limits on what types of domestic expenses qualify a company to bring a patent suit at the agency marks a pronounced shift that will likely spur considerably more ITC cases, attorneys say…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

By Christopher Cole ( March 11, 2025, 8:55 PM EDT) — Power utilities asked the Federal Communications Commission to clarify that federal law allows companies to contact customers about participating in company demand management programs, particularly by calling and texting customers during peak load periods encouraging them to shift energy consumption to nonpeak times…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Well-funded French AI startup Mistral is content to go its own way. In a sea of competing reasoning models, the company has introduced Mistral OCR, a new optical character recognition (OCR) API designed to provide advanced document understanding capabilities. The API extracts content — including handwritten notes, typed text, images, tables and equations — from unstructured PDFs and images with high accuracy, presenting in a structured format. Structured data is information that is organized in a predefined manner, typically using rows and columns, making it easy to search and analyze. Common examples include names, addresses and financial transactions stored in databases or spreadsheets.  By contrast, unstructured data lacks a specific format or structure, making it more challenging to process and analyze. This category encompasses a wide range of data types, such as emails, social media posts, videos, images and audio files. Since unstructured data doesn’t fit neatly into traditional databases, specialized tools and techniques, like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), are often employed to extract meaningful insights.  Understanding the distinction between these data types is crucial for businesses looking to effectively manage and leverage their information assets. With multilingual support, fast processing speeds and integration with large language models (LLMs) for document understanding, Mistral OCR is positioned to assist organizations in making their documentation AI-ready. Given that — according to Mistral’s blog post announcing the new API — 90% of all business information is unstructured, the new API should be a huge boon to organizations seeking to digitize and catalog their data for use in AI applications or internal/external knowledge bases. Mistral sets a new gold standard for OCR Mistral OCR aims to improve how organizations process and analyze complex documents. Unlike traditional OCR solutions that primarily focus on text extraction, Mistral OCR is designed to interpret various document typographical elements and characters, including tables, mathematical expressions and interleaved images, while maintaining structured outputs. According to Mistral’s chief science officer Guillaume Lample, this technology represents a significant step toward wider AI adoption in enterprises, particularly for companies seeking to simplify access to their internal documentation. The API is already integrated into Le Chat, which millions of users rely on for document processing. Now, developers and businesses can access the model via la Plateforme, Mistral’s developer suite. The API is also expected to become available through cloud and inference partners and will offer on-premises deployment for organizations with high-security requirements. Advancing an early (70-year-old) computing technology OCR technology has played a significant role in automating data extraction and document digitization for decades. The first commercial OCR machine was developed in the 1950s by David Shepard and his colleagues Harvey and William Lawless Jr., who founded Intelligent Machines Research Co. (IMR) to bring the technology to market. The system gained traction when Reader’s Digest became its first major customer, followed by banks, telecom companies like AT&T and major oil firms. In 1959, IBM licensed IMR’s patents and introduced its own OCR machine, formalizing the term as the industry standard. Since then, OCR technology has continued to evolve, incorporating AI and ML to improve accuracy, expand language support and handle increasingly complex document formats, and can be found in such leading enterprise software as PDF reader Adobe Acrobat. Mistral OCR represents the next step in this evolution, as it leverages AI to enhance document comprehension beyond simple text recognition. Benchmarks show the power of Mistral OCR Mistral highlights its OCR’s competitive edge over existing tools, citing benchmark tests where it outperformed major alternatives including Google Document AI, Azure OCR and OpenAI’s GPT-4o. The model achieved the highest accuracy scores in math recognition, scanned documents and multilingual text processing. Mistral OCR is also designed to operate faster than competing models and is capable of processing up to 2,000 pages per minute on a single node. This speed advantage makes it suitable for high-volume document processing in industries such as research, customer service and historical preservation. Sophia Yang, head of developer relations at Mistral, has been actively showcasing the OCR capabilities on her X account. Notably, she highlighted its top-tier performance benchmarks, multilingual support and ability to accurately extract mathematical equations from PDFs. In a recent post, she shared an example of Mistral OCR successfully recognizing and formatting complex mathematical expressions, reinforcing its effectiveness for scientific and academic applications. Key features and use cases Mistral OCR introduces several features that make it a versatile tool for businesses and institutions handling large document repositories: Multilingual and multimodal processing: The model supports a wide range of languages, scripts and document layouts, making it useful for global organizations. Yang emphasized this capability, calling it a game-changer for multilingual document processing. Structured output and document hierarchy preservation: Unlike basic OCR models, Mistral OCR retains formatting elements such as headers, paragraphs, lists and tables, ensuring extracted text is more useful for downstream applications. Document-as-prompt and structured outputs: Users can extract specific content and format it in structured outputs, such as JSON or Markdown, enabling integration with other AI-driven workflows. Self-hosting option: Organizations with stringent data security and compliance requirements can deploy Mistral OCR within their own infrastructure. The Mistral AI developer documentation online also highlights document understanding capabilities that go beyond OCR. After extracting text and structure, Mistral OCR integrates with LLMs, allowing users to interact with document content using natural language queries. This feature enables: Question answering about specific document content; Automated information extraction and summarization; Comparative analysis across multiple documents; Context-aware responses that consider the full document. What enterprise decision makers should know about Mistral OCR For CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, IT managers and team leaders, Mistral OCR presents significant opportunities for efficiency, security and scalability in document-driven workflows. 1. Increased efficiency and cost savings By automating document processing and reducing manual data entry, Mistral OCR cuts down on administrative overhead and streamlines operations. Organizations can process large volumes of documents faster and with higher accuracy,