OPTIMIZE YOUR ENTERPRISE: FUEL YOUR GROWTH WITH DATA IN THE CLOUD

Transcription

1 EXECUTIVE BRIEF OPTIMIZE YOUR ENTERPRISE: FUEL YOUR GROWTH WITH DATA IN THE CLOUD by Tom Carlock, VP of Product and Data Strategy, D&B

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Customer intelligence is one of the most important strategic assets any company possesses. I ve experienced that myself firsthand, having managed enterprise data programs for more than 20 years. The good news is there s more customer information and so, more opportunity than ever before. Information is everywhere in your enterprise systems, in external data sources, in emerging channels like social media. That s also the bad news. There s so much information out there that it can be really hard to harness and make sense of this data. But now it s easier. I m most excited about Data-as-a-Service, which is changing the game of how information is accessed and managed. Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) is a dynamic, Web services-based method that makes it easy to aggregate many disparate types of data to create an interconnected, consistent, and up-to-date source of knowledge. This dynamic repository can be accessed from any device, and delivers the kind of high-quality, accurate, and affordable data that is absolutely necessary to realize the full benefits of enterprise applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Master Data Management (MDM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and others. I was fortunate enough to sit down recently with two industry experts and colleagues to get their views on DaaS and the opportunities it presents. The interviews that follow shed new light on how data can really improve enterprise productivity. Here s who I spoke with: R. Ray Wang the dizzying array of disruptive business models and technologies from hardware to middleware to software to services. Mr. Wang explores how the delivery of timely customer intelligence through DaaS addresses the four emerging priorities of the successful CIO: Reducing costs Linking internal and external data Delivering actionable information to the business Identifying new technologies to pilot He also discusses how DaaS has the potential to produce solutions for improving data governance, data quality, and bottom-line business results. Juan Carlos Soto Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Cloud Data Integration and B-to-B Data Exchange Business Units at Informatica, a leading independent provider of data integration software. Informatica works with more than 4,200 enterprises worldwide, including D&B. Mr. Soto discusses how applications are increasingly becoming commodities, while the information that powers them is becoming more valuable. According to Mr. Soto, the most sophisticated applications, infrastructures, and platforms are meaningless without high-quality data. He also discusses cloud computing, social media, and the need for mobile access the three highly interdependent megatrends that are influencing data management and integration. Principal Analyst and CEO of Constellation Research, an advisory that helps technology buyers and users deal with Page 2

3 What we know D&B company profiles D&B financial information D&B validated contacts D&B corporate family trees What the rest of the world knows Relevant social media sources News feeds What you know In the applications you use every day: Customer Relationship Management Salesforce Automation Marketing Automation Enterprise Resource Planning Data is kept updated and synchronized automatically DAAS DEFINED Data-as-a-Service is essentially an on-demand information pipeline. It is designed to plug data directly into any application, giving users instant access to the essential business insight they need, when and where they need it. DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS AND EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES With DaaS, businesses have on-demand access to up-tothe-moment, automatically refreshed, and consistent data on companies and contracts. Moreover, DaaS makes that data accessible across the entire enterprise right inside the applications employees already use. And the breadth and depth of information DaaS makes available is unparalleled; it combines traditional company and contact information with research, risk information, news, and social media to provide the most complete view available of any business. Companies can use this instant, real-time insight on customers, prospects, and suppliers to drive business strategy and processes at every decision point. Data-as-a-Service is essentially an on-demand information pipeline. It is designed to plug data directly into any application. For application providers, DaaS offers new opportunities to retain and expand their customer base, drive higher margins, and differentiate themselves from the competition all by offering integrated access to the data, and data quality, their users want and need. Page 3

4 DAAS: PERSPECTIVES FROM INDUSTRY EXPERTS INTERVIEW 1 Ray Wang Principal Analyst and CEO of Constellation Research Enterprise Strategist and Disruptive Technologies Expert Carlock: How do you see the role of the CIO changing with the rise of cloud computing? Wang: My company, Constellation Research, just completed a study, The Four Personas of the Next- Generation CIO. Interestingly enough, the capabilities DaaS offers to deliver up-to-the-moment customer intelligence across an organization is relevant to all four of those emerging personas. We call the first persona of the next-generation CIO the Chief Infrastructure Officer. It s his or her job to reduce the cost of computing. The second persona is the Chief Integration Officer. He or she drives connections between internal and external systems. The third persona is the Chief Intelligence Officer, who empowers the business with insights that are easy to understand and act on and gets that information to the right person at the right time. Finally, the fourth persona is the Chief Innovation Officer, the one who identifies disruptive technologies to pilot. DaaS has the potential to address the needs of all these personas, along with many of the current priorities identified by the CIOs in our study. I am talking about challenges such as improving data quality, optimizing the data center, maintaining process integrity, ensuring master data management, addressing metadata issues, establishing common business KPIs (Key Productivity Indicators), investing in information governance, addressing social and new data types, dealing with unstructured data, and last, but not least, exploring Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Carlock: So, what do you see as the top data quality and management issues that DaaS has a role in solving? Wang: I think the number one data issue is really a structural issue. It s about information governance. Companies are trying hard to put policies and procedures in place as to what data goes into a record, who gets access to a record, and how data from a record can be used. You can have the greatest plans, but human nature is human nature. I believe these policies and procedures need to be an organic part of the software people use; that s much easier than forcing excessive rules on people with massive data steward organizations. I believe data governance needs to respect the input of professionals who have context and enable them to account for it. And yes, companies need a third-party data quality reference point like this to start with and build upon. It gives organizations a place to begin. That s part of making it intuitive, right? Overall data quality is another issue. Keeping data clean is an ongoing pressure. If your data is stale and your data cleansing approach is stale, your business decisions will be stale. Data decay rates are very high these days, in the range of 30% 40% every six months. At the same time, there s more and more user-generated and communitybased information coming in, which can further compromise data quality. Page 4

5 Data-as-a-Service provides a data quality supply chain to cleanse data, augment it, establish a hierarchy, tag it, and push it back out into the system for people to use. The same record will come back again through the cycle as people add different data points and contacts. Carlock: What role do you see for software companies in terms of providing data to fuel their applications? Wang: The data and the streams of data available in an application are the really important things. With the adoption of cloud computing and SaaS applications, it s now possible for software companies to provide instant access to real-time information right within their applications. It s about giving people the information they need to make decisions and being able to leverage the same, trustworthy data across the multiple applications that an organization relies on, like MDM, BI, ERP, SCM, etc. With the adoption of cloud computing and SaaS applications, it s now possible for software companies to provide instant access to real-time information right within their applications. In addition, companies might also have internal, homegrown applications, and may need a real-time data source to support those applications. DaaS can connect with their API (Application Programming Interface), allowing them to integrate the data source right into their applications. However you apply it, DaaS is all about embedding quality data into high-value, transactional business processes. Carlock: I couldn t agree with you more. That is the vision behind D&B360 and what we re trying to accomplish. What benefits do you see for DaaS across an organization? Wang: There are lots of benefits. If you think about sales force effectiveness, it s about how quickly people can find information internally. If quality information is more readily available, the number of days it takes to close a deal should start dropping. Suddenly, you re able to close more deals, more often. From a financial point of view, having fresh, accurate information helps reduce the number of AR (Accounts Receivable) days outstanding. And then, on the marketing side of the business, starting with better information increases the percentage of lead responders. And that s just to name a few of the potential benefits. DaaS accelerates the sales cycle, driving increased profits Start with qualified leads; close more deals, faster SALES Instant access to real-time, quality customer and prospect insight MARKETING Know how much credit to extend; reduce days outstanding FINANCES Target marketing more effectively; increase response rate Page 5

6 INTERVIEW 2 Juan Carlos Soto Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Cloud Data Integration and B-to-B Data Exchange Business Units, Informatica Data and Application Integration Expert NOTE: Mr. Soto s interview covers Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) in theory and in practice, as applied through D&B360, D&B s DaaS product. Currently available for Salesforce, D&B360 will be available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as of July It is expected to appear soon in other enterprise applications. Carlock: Describe Informatica s partnership with D&B and role with D&B360. Soto: Like many organizations, D&B deals with many different types of data, from a tremendous number of sources. The challenge is to gather all that disparate data and integrate it into, in D&B s case, the largest source of commercial business information available. D&B is an information broker; Informatica helps to make D&B s data meaningful and accessible, and helps deliver it through the cloud. It is particularly gratifying to be working in partnership with D&B in a time of great innovation brought about by the growing demand for DaaS and the introduction of D&B360. Putting high-quality, relevant, timely information at the fingertips of a customer for instance, through Salesforce has never been so seamlessly and simply achieved. This advance makes it possible for customers to augment what they know about their customers with the stockpile of intelligence available only from the D&B databases D-U-N-S Numbers, contact information, risk data, demographic insights, and more right inside their CRM. Carlock: Why is cloud adoption accelerating at such a rapid pace? Soto: Simply put, cloud computing is here to stay, and use of the cloud is growing exponentially. Just recently, Goldman Sachs reported that Software-as-a-Service is outpacing on-premises growth four to one. Informatica measures how much activity is taking place on our cloud service. Today, we are doing over 65,000 integration jobs per night. Our customers move over 13 billion rows of information using our service every month. This has been growing steadily, month to month, for the last few years and continues to grow with increasing demand for DaaS. The benefits of cloud computing are unmistakably clear. Companies now have ubiquitous access to the information and applications they need to run their businesses. These resources come without the steep upfront costs required to establish, maintain, and manage a new application. The cloud also provides elasticity the ability to pay for only the data consumed and to scale that usage up and down very quickly as a company s needs change. Increased agility is another important benefit. Companies are able to get their solution up and running much faster than if they had developed it in-house. They also gain from the rapid innovation of large Web-services providers, such as Amazon, which offers very low cost-computing infrastructure for companies to use, or Salesforce.com, whose data and application prices are perceived as very affordable. Every time these suppliers update their service, customers have immediate access to that innovation. In the next five years, we will see enterprise adoption of the cloud become the norm, rather than the exception, for Page 6

7 all the reasons I just mentioned. Recently, the U.S. Government announced its Cloud-First Policy, issuing federal guidelines that require new projects to first consider cloud-based solutions to realize the related cost savings and other potential positive outcomes. Carlock: How has the emergence of cloud computing influenced Master Data Management (MDM) integration? Soto: The adoption of the cloud has introduced a new set of challenges around Master Data Management that makes data integration necessarily more complex. The idea behind MDM is to develop an authoritative, 360-degree profile of a company it could be a customer, a prospect, a supplier, or any company you re doing business with. To do that, you have to rationalize many different data sources with a referential data set. In the past, this mainly involved managing data that sat inside your own firewall, in on-premises applications. With the right solutions and tools, it was pretty straightforward. With the migration to the cloud, more of that data is off-premises. This creates challenges when it comes to defining data ownership and moving data securely in and out of enterprise systems and across firewalls. Enabling MDM in spite of these challenges that s where the partnership between Informatica and D&B360 really pays off for customers. Carlock: In your opinion, what is the biggest advantage Data-as-a-Service offers? Soto: The ability to get high-quality data, on demand, and to be able to quickly and easily integrate it with data in other systems so business people can make sound, data-driven decisions that s very compelling to any company. And that s exactly what DaaS delivers. It is the information that matters. I believe that applications are becoming commodities. A company that has always used an on-premises CRM system may decide to switch to Salesforce, because its features are more compelling, or its cost is lower, or it offers more flexible and efficient access for the field sales and service teams. But in either system, the sales data is still the most important thing. Without the data, the application is irrelevant. It is the information that matters. I believe that applications are becoming commodities. The information DaaS provides fuels the engine of enterprise systems, and integration pulls all of the available data together. Together, these two elements help ensure that companies have high-quality data at the right time and in the right form, so they can make better decisions. Together with D&B, Informatica has raised the quality bar in CRM data, but the same principles apply to automation for any enterprise application that relies on rock-solid and trustworthy data. Carlock: What other major trends are influencing Master Data Management? Soto: In addition to the shift to cloud computing, our CEO cites social media, and the need for mobile access as the three highly interdependent megatrends that are influencing data management and integration. Page 7

8 DaaS integrates quickly and easily with any software solution that uses commercial data Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Sales Force & Marketing Automation Master Data Management (MDM) The proliferation of applications is also an outcome of the demand for mobile access. The ipad did not exist a year and a half ago. But if you visit the itunes App Store today, you ll see an astonishing number and variety of enterprise applications now available for the ipad. Why? Because more and more customers are using the ipad as a primary and legitimate interface with their enterprise systems. Mobile Apps Data-as-a-Service Enterprise Data Management Platforms Carlock: How has this shift to cloud computing changed the traditional role of IT? Supply Chain Management (SCM) Business Intelligence (BI) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Social media data can play a very significant role in areas such as customer sentiment, trend analysis, and market insight, and can be valuable supplements to the data that companies have within their own structured data sources. The volume of data produced by the various social media sites is positively mind-boggling. But you need to find ways to extract meaning from it, and to incorporate that unstructured data into your enterprise solutions without compromising the integrity of your own, structured data. D&B360 is the first DaaS solution I have seen that is capable of linking that kind of crowd-sourced, unstructured data with structured enterprise data. It allows you to preserve the structure of your file, while accessing the latest social media insights. More and more social networking is being done on mobile devices as is more and more business. But mobile devices do not have the capacity to hold an enterprise-worthy amount of data. They need access to data typically held in the cloud. So, we need to be able to move data to and from mobile devices and platforms. This trend will only grow as more companies become comfortable within the cloud and want their services delivered through SaaS and DaaS. Soto: The overall function of IT has been elevated. Its responsibility is no longer limited to just on-premises data, but now includes the multitude of information sources available through the cloud. IT professionals now add value as technical consultants to the line organizations within their companies. They are viewed as important business partners in identifying and recommending the most appropriate data and integration services to bring together data from on-premises sources, cloud-to-cloud sources, or, more commonly, cloud-to-onpremises sources. They look for innovative ways to manage that data to connect to it, to move it back and forth securely, and to keep it synchronized. The kind of great referential data and seamless integration that DaaS provides helps IT professionals increase agility and flexibility while lowering cost in some cases transforming the function from a cost center into a profit center. Carlock: What size of company is right for cloud computing? Soto: The cloud is right for any size of company but differently sized companies should adopt cloud computing for different reasons, and to different degrees. Page 8

9 For example, a small start-up company should be focused on where its products or services innovate and add value not on building a lot of infrastructure and IT overhead. In fact, every start-up I talk to now houses its IT infrastructure in the cloud, from day one. I would challenge anyone to find a venture capitalist that would fund a company and encourage it to build a lot of IT infrastructure. Instead, the venture capitalist sends start-ups to cloud providers for cost-effective data and data services that can scale with the company s growth without a big, up-front investment. On the other hand, a larger organization with a costly legacy system can t afford to completely turn its back on its investments by replacing its entire existing infrastructure with cloud-based solutions. It will also typically have greater concerns around security and compliance that make a hybrid approach more sensible. I think that blending cloud-based and on-premises applications is a trend that will continue for many years at the enterprise level. Soto: So Tom, let me ask you a question. What does the future hold for DaaS? Carlock: D&B is delivering its DaaS offering through D&B360, which is available today for Salesforce, and will be available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as of July You can expect it to appear soon in other enterprise applications, as well. Looking ahead, we see a tremendous opportunity as more and more applications offer D&B360 s data and integration capabilities. DAAS: LOOKING AHEAD I would like to thank Ray Wang, of Constellation Research, and Juan Carlos Soto, of Informatica, for sharing their insights. I believe the following quote (from Informatica in the January 2011 issue of CRM Magazine) sums up the opportunity that Data-as-a-Service presents us: For cloud applications and platforms to offer maximum value, they need to provide a simple mechanism to import or load external data, export or replicate their data for reporting or analysis purposes, and they must be able to keep their data synchronized with both cloud-based and on-premises applications, databases and files. Companies ranging from small start-ups to major corporations can leverage DaaS to access deeper market data, reduce the cost of IT, and focus their complete energy and attention on serving their customers and driving their business success. ABOUT D&B360 To learn more about how you can put D&B360 s Data-as-a-Service solution into action in your CRM today, visit SCHEDULE A TEST DRIVE To schedule a free test drive of D&B360, contact your D&B relationship manager, or call Page 9

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