Feb 21, 2015 | Breakthrough Marketing
In my last blog, I wrote about what I consider to be a bold and high return move by GoodData to lead a new segment that they call, “Insight as a Service” . Insight as A Service as GoodData describes it is a much better mousetrap than Business Intelligence in the Cloud. To lead a market, you need to define the context of the conversation, and GoodData is trying to do just that. I’ve known Roman Stanek the GoodData CEO for a number of years, so while writing the last blog, I sent him a few questions via email. The answers provide more insight into how and why GoodData is pursuing this strategy.
Ken: What led to need to change GoodData’s positioning to Insight as A Service ?
Roman: Our goal was to move the discussion away from technologies, especially vendor comparisons, so that we could talk about the real values thatwe are providing our customers. Talking to a CMO about becoming a leader in social analytics, or a technology CEO about building data products is a lot of fun.
Ken: How did you come up with the new positioning?
Roman: We looked at why we, and many of our current customers, were succeeding with GoodData. The common attributes became very obvious.The faster they went live with their first set of insights, the more frequently they renewed or grew their project. When we brought subject-matter experts into their projects, especially to talk about ecurity, or social media maturity, they succeeded even faster. About six months ago, we decided to build the collective intelligence we’d accumulated in all these projects into the product itself, so that our data discovery offering could actually teach or guide the user through recommendations we offer as they work in the product. We then said, “This is how we help our customers start at Insights…”
Ken: Why should customers care about Insight as a Service ?
Roman: We offer instant infrastructure, you can start tomorrow. We know nearly every data source they are likely to need, even when it changes. And we teach them how to perform good analysis both inside the Analytic Designer, and also through our experience. We give them a scalable yet agile platform that helps then succeed in their business very rapidly. In a world where nearly 80% of BI projects fail, mostly because the people, the data and the technology change too rapidly, we own two out of three of those problems, and then we coach the people.
Ken: Why wasn’t BI in the Cloud good enough description, or just BI as a Service?
Roman: It really didn’t characterize the value we bring. BI just sounds like tools and database drivers. We go far beyond BI.
Ken: Where do you see the messaging evolving to over time?
Roman: We see it becoming bigger and more encompassing. We think other vendors will copy it and help us build out this space in the market. But this collective intelligence we have amassed and keep growing is uniquely ours.
Ken: What’s the magical place you can take customers to who come with you on this journey?
Roman: Their magical place, is as the leader in their market. It’s already happening. Our customers benchmark their customers accentuating the best, and motivating the laggards. They build revenue generating data products. They know how to measure social data ROI. They do this because they have good data.
Feb 16, 2015 | Breakthrough Marketing
Business Intelligence is a established and growing market. BUT it is a changing and fluid one, being impacted by many many of the trendy words you might hear like Big Data, Hadoop, IOT, Cloud and well others I’m sure. It is also a crowded market, with established vendors ranging from IBM to SAP, new successes like 2013 IPO Tableau (DATA on NYSE, Mktg Cap 6B+!) and just acquired by Hitachi Data Systems Pentaho (for a reported $500-600M). Among the biggest trends in the space is “BI in the Cloud”. One of the innovators in moving BI into the Cloud has been San Francisco based GoodData. Founded in 2007, GoodData has been a darling of Sand Hill road, having raised a reported total of more than $100M in venture from stellar firms including Andreeeson Horowitz and Intel Capital. Life is “Good” when you are the leader of a big trend in a big market.
However, BI in the Cloud is a tenuous leadership positioning. Everyone is in or moving to the cloud. And while Salesforce.com could leverage their first to the cloud advantage to not only lead, but transform an entire market, competitors will not fall easily for that one anymore. More expectedly, customers, while wanting Cloud first, now expect it, and what to know why you matter to them more than everyone else does.
So, rather than rest on the strategy of being the “Leader In Cloud BI,”, or “BI as A Service” , GoodData recently transitioned their positioning to being the leader in “Insight as A Service”. To quote their website:
What does Insights As a Service mean? It’s when you have a tool powerful, flexible and efficient enough to move you beyond traditional BI and get to insights faster than anyone else.
In short, GoodData offers you a MUCH BETTER MOUSETRAP! It’s not just moving the cheese to the cloud, it’s about a new way to find and capture business value. As I describe in this blog, this is CLASSIC Parade Leadership positioning. Insight as a Service is a different approach, a different mindset, and driven by a set of innovative features. We are re-inventing BI, and calling it Insight as A Service, our new mousetrap. And with that, we will deliver you to the BRAVE NEW WORLD of guided analytics.
I have described in detail a process that helps companies create a unique and market leading Viewpoint like this one and I applaud both the courage and the strategy that GoodData is pursuing in declaring a new positioning; essentially, the end of BI and the delivery of Insight. Customers are driven today to find and take advantage of business insight faster than their competition. Traditional BI is a means but not an end to this insight. By positioning GoodData as an Insight provider, not only does GoodData stand out from competitors, but it aligns with exactly the value that customers are trying to get. This is a bold attempt to lead the market forward. If they are successful, then my belief is that the $100M venture investment will be a small small fraction of the value created. I wish the GoodData team well on their journey from having helped to create the BI in the Cloud market, to now leading the emergence of the Insight as a Service market and to eventually transforming the entire BI market to an Insight one.
Feb 2, 2015 | Breakthrough Marketing
I’ve been working on a new model to think about market leadership and how to message at different phases of leadership. I am doing a lot of work on this model, and would love your feedback.
Market leaders are created not born. In B2B markets, they will go through 3 phases of market leadership, which I call creation, leadership and transformation. My metaphor for these three phases are Flashmobs, Parades and Movements. I believe these ideas capture the “crowd dynamic” of each of these overlapping yet distinct market leadership phases. Let’s take a look at each of these phases and how they impact our messaging strategy.
Stage I – Market Creation
- Metaphor – Create a Flashmob
- Communication Objective – Insight
- Key Audience – Problem Owner/Solution Implementer
- Solution – Point product or tool
- Customers – hundreds
- Revenues – up to $10M
- Messaging Mix – 80% Value (Feature-Benefit) 20% Viewpoint (Business Context)
At this point of our market leadership journey, we are building our initial flashmob of customers. These customers care first and foremost on solving an immediate problem, and while they do live in a context, they are solution seekers first and foremost. We win the communication battle by articulating the value of our better mousetrap.
Stage II – Market Leadership
- Metaphor – Lead a Parade
- Communication Objective -Alignment
- Key Audience – Functional or key P and L owner
- Solution – Suite
- Customers – hundreds to a thousand
- Revenues – $2M to $100M +
- Messaging Mix – 60% Value (Feature-Benefit) 30% Viewpoint (Business Context) 10% Purpose (Destination)
In this phase our goal is to emerge as the leader of the new market segment. There are many new mouse traps for buyers to choose from. We must elevate our message to be almost half related to Viewpoint and Purpose, from pure value to the problem solver, to helping the P and L owner in their journey to success. This is perhaps the hardest transition to make, and many companies cling to hard to value, as discussed here. But the rewards are great, as those who succeed rise above the crowd and win more, grow faster and increase customer and shareholder value.
Stage III – Market Transformation
- Metaphor – Define a Movement
- Communication Objective -Inspiration
- Key Audience – Executive
- Solution – Platform
- Customers – Thousands +
- Revenues – $70M+
- Messaging Mix – 40% Value (Feature-Benefit) 20% Viewpoint (Business Context) 40% Purpose (Destination)
Those who create a flashmob and then transform themselves into a Market Parade leader, have the rare opportunity to Define A Movement. Movement definers go beyond value and current context to changing and transforming the market not just for their solution, but for other complimentary and related ones. They create business platforms for partnership and communications. Their messaging is not only about value and context, but about shared purpose with their customers.
This framework is summarized with this table (Click to view):
Zuora, an emerging leader in CRM solutions for subscription businesses, had skillfully executed this market leadership journey, and has started to Build a Movement of the Subscription Economy. To see more on Zuora, check out this post.
I’d love to hear what you think about this framework, please comment here or send me an email.
