Executive Webinar Series Episode 3: Quotient Technology
In Episode 3 of The Executive Webinar Series, MicroStrategy President and CFO Phong Le speaks with Lenin Gali, CIO/ CISO at Quotient Technology about the importance of building key technological partnerships to optimizing self-service BI, and how Quotient Technology drives significant value for the business and their customers with embedded analytics. The following write-up summarizes several key points. (Note: the full webinar is available to view here).
The Importance of Data Democratization & Breaking Down Silos
Quotient Technology is transforming shopping to make life better. Started as Coupons.com, Quotient has developed into an omnichannel digital marketing company with 121MM targetable verified shoppers in its network, 89B retail transactions tracked for exclusive partnerships, and 5.5B annual coupon activations to target based on purchase intent.
At Quotient, data is their largest asset, and the analytics on that data is how they have grown their business so successfully. In this webinar, you will learn how Quotient Technology drives significant value for the business, and their customers alike, using embedded analytics with MicroStrategy.
“Looking at the innovative ideas and products that the teams want to build to offer to the market, it’s very interesting and I enjoy this every day in really going into making sure we are democratizing the data, so we don’t say no to use of data. We are also working internally to figure out all the use cases across the board. What is the data used, what is the purpose, and do we have what it takes to deliver that data set to provide the services we need.”
With an extensive background in data, security and product management, Lenin Gali is currently responsible for data, data engineering, data information products and technology and security for Quotient Technology where they have identified key technology partners to aid in their digital transformation in order to continue providing data to end users in an efficient and productive manner through their partnership ecosystem.
How to Optimize Self-Service BI
The decision to build versus buy is always a question when creating a data ecosystem within a company. Data needs to be fluid across business units and the lack of a self-service portal within Quotient Technology became apparent.
“The business intelligence team used to drive most of the decisions and then basically give the users what they want. We just flipped it. We have the data, and you tell us what it is you need, and we service it for you. So now the responsibility is on them rather than this one team becoming the bottleneck.”
Once the team at Quotient truly started to view data as an asset, they started to see efficiencies in how they operate, in addition to embedding people into those teams by empowering cross collaboration and ownership of the data. Data is power and democratizing that data delivers success.
Executive Recommendations
Gali shares his two key pieces of advice to other business leaders in order to continuously drive value for customers and business alike — manage expectations and build a strong team.
“It’s not about just building something just for a year then figuring things out another year and another year. I set a roadmap for three to four years and said we need to be able to look back and say there we were and here we are and here’s the transformation we went through.”
Creating a strong foundation with a laser sharp focus on the future will not only drive value, but will take the business further.
To hear the complete conversation, as well as advice Gali has for fellow executives working to digitally transform their organizations, watch Episode 3 of The Executive Series.
