On November 14, CXOTalk’s Michael Krigsman and Vala Afshar interviewed Vivek Ranadivé, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of TIBCO. Here are some highlights from their conversation:
Fast Data
In Vivek’s book, The Two-Second Advantage, he discusses a simple premise: “A little bit of the right information, at the time right time and in the right context is more valuable than all of the information in the world six months after.”
It’s all about “getting the right information beforehand and combining it with historical insights to take advantage of opportunities or prevent disasters.”
Fast Data is real-time data combined with historical context. This real-time data with context is more valuable. “If it’s not contextual, then it just ends up being spam,” says Vivek.
Fast Data can help any industry. It helps marry your perishable inventory to your customer base in the most optimal fashion.
A Real-World Fast Data Example
Vivek gave this real-world scenario of Fast Data:
Imagine taking your family to a basketball game. You get your food and realize that your pizza is cold. You pick up your phone and tweet that you are at the game and you have cold pizza.
At this point, you are on the verge of becoming an unhappy customer, and something needs to be done. For starters, they can now bring you a fresh, hot slice of pizza. Since you are a season ticket holder and you come to every game, they can offer you an upgrade of free VIP parking (perishable inventory) since they have excess for the next game.
Since it is late in the third quarter and they have too many hot dogs (another perishable inventory), they offer hot dogs for your kids.
In the end, they have taken a potentially bad situation and turned you into a happy customer.
This type of extreme service can turn customers into engaged fans. That is what every business strives to do, and it is being used by businesses today.
Fire in the Eyes
Vivek finished the interview with an insightful story of how he won a bidding process for a software sale early in his career. In the end, it wasn’t his superior software that closed the deal, but the fact that his team had fire in the eyes.
He told the decision maker, “Go look at my band of engineers and you’re never going to find people who are more passionate, who are going to work harder, and who are more committed to your success than we are. That’s fire in the eyes.”
“If you are going to start a business, have the fire, keep the fire, and you will be successful.”
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