One Step Toward Data-centric Nirvana
- By Winston Thomas
- August 13, 2018
Today’s firms need to explore new opportunities, pivot when necessary and drill down the performance in real time to succeed. But CDOs know that creating such a data-centric platform is a huge challenge.
There are several reasons: connecting the various data sources is not simple, preparing the data takes time, creating reports requires investment in talent, and the inability to query and collaborate efficiently on a mobile phone can hamper executives on the road.
Domo is looking to offer an alternative approach.
“We are a business operating system that allows you to run your business on your phone,” Paul Harapin, Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific Japan, Domo Inc. said.
Essentially, Domo is looking to re-engineer the entire business workflow for the mobile device. Its platform is attempting to remove the pain points, bottlenecks and guesswork in creating one through seven components that connect, prepare, store, query, collaborate and visualize data in near real-time on mobile devices. It also offers a developer kit to extend these capabilities and adds a machine learning engine, Mr. Roboto, to improve user capabilities.
A key feature in having such a platform is that CDOs do not have to worry about changes in APIs or connecting data sources, Harapin said.
“We manage the connector on behalf of the customer. So, if for example, Salesforce changes something in their API, we manage the change within the connector, and the customer does not have to worry about it,” he said.
Most customers are attracted to Domo’s promise of fast access to insights. “For example, if you have a marketing campaign, you need to wait two to three weeks for the report to be developed, and you cannot do anything about it till then. With Domo you can monitor the effectiveness of the campaign as it is happening and make changes on the fly,” he added.
Fuji Xerox knows this well. It bought into Domo’s promise to visualize their business performance in new real time.
Before Domo, the device manufacturer was unable to see precisely where its business was moving, while facing agility and speed issues. A simple business concern took months to identify and solve.
With Domo, Fuji Xerox was able to gain sales transparency it needed.
“There was a sudden improvement in the population of the CRM tool because with the visibility Domo gave us people were being held to account,” Richard Salmond, Leadership Team & Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, Fuji Xerox said.
Domo also helped Fuji Xerox to project profitability for the lifetime of a device based on the industry, including factoring in additional costs such as one-off installation fees; improve operational efficiency through better data visibility; eliminating human errors.
“Instead of having a 30-day visibility, immediately we had 30, 60, 90+ days, so we can see the funnel and aren’t just focused on delivering a month, falling over the line and then worrying about the next month. If it doesn’t look good we can do something about it,” Salmond said.
It was a similar situation that travel startup Traveloka faced. The unicorn was facing growth pains as a popular online portal for Southeast Asia travelers.
“Our business is real-time and very high volume, so if one of our metrics isn’t performing, we need to know straight away to get on top of it,” Ainun Najib, Head of Data, Traveloka said.
Domo helped the firm to be agile using data, stay on top of key data points using alerts, integrate with a dashboard for quick performance reviews, and enable self-service for all employees.
“Traveloka is a data-hungry organization. In just eight months of deployment, more than half our employees are using Domo," Najib said.
Domo is not the only player. Data orchestration and business intelligence are market sectors that are evolving fast. However, Harapin claimed that his firm's ability to drive data governance and collaboration sets it apart from the rest.
“Regardless of what system records you have in your organization, Domo is able to connect to those data sources very quickly. So, Domo becomes the central point of governance and distribution,” he said.
Winston Thomas
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends. He likes to piece together the weird and wondering tech puzzle for readers and identify groundbreaking business models led by tech while waiting for the singularity.