What’s on CEO Minds
We have the privileged position to be of the industry we serve and have a daily dialog with leaders throughout the data, information, and analytics economy. We get up each morning to help them compete, be stronger and fit for purpose, to analyze their markets and ensure functional operating practices are solid. We routinely meet with CEOs in confidential settings, poll them in order to ensure we are researching what is top of mind, advising into their most pressing hot button issues. Of late, the following continues to be top of mind. If these items are familiar give us a call. We are here to serve.
- Solution Selling: Transitioning to solution selling/challenger selling still remains top of mind. The playing field for how we sell has permanently changed and leaders continue to wrestle with what is the right mix especially between hunters and farmers (new logos and cross-sell/upsell) and how to find people who can migrate up the value chain in selling. They ask us about solutions architects or ‘sales engineers’ recognizing the need for them increases as solutions become more important and complex.
- Client Training as Oxymoron: The notion of training is becoming oxymoronic for customers. If it needs training the solution isn’t ready for prime time. The importance of UI/UX and user-centered design is critical. Further, what does it look like to be truly market-led?
- Customer Success: This function is now the new hot button issue. What is the remit, where does it report, how is it compensated? It comes up all the time. Some of this is due to concerns about the economy. When things slow down (and they will) retention is even more critical. Also, now that product management is de rigeur (70% in our industry now have this function operating) the products are built, they are sold through that solution selling engine, and it’s now time to focus on this function on the continuum of our industry’s evolution. It’s just time.
- Security & Privacy: Procurement departments are raising ever heightened demands for understanding practices on security and privacy. Leaders of information companies are citing 20-page checklists and ever-more-detailed queries about policies and practices. This is becoming another hot button issue as more CEOs look to how to deal with this new level of complexity in the buying and selling process.
- Product Management: As we mentioned above, this function is now firmly embedded in our industry as software has become a part of so much of what we deliver. It now forms the three-legged stool permanently embedded in our industry’s dev cycle — product management, data management/governance, and engineering. Think CPO, CDO, CTO. The distinctions are now clear and known and organizations are recognizing that they need all three. We are seeing product management in some cases with engineering reporting to it and also the importance of data roadmaps alongside product roadmaps. They are separate and distinct and mutually interdependent and have to be ‘zipped together’ in any roadmap that matters.
- Culture culture culture: Now like the adage location location location in real estate — leaders continue to recognize culture and talent trumps all in being able to grow and execute. (LINK TO MY LAST BLOG ON this topic) Talent is the lifeblood along with capital and leadership that powers the organization. Having the best is critical.
- Innovation: How companies innovate is an important topic of discussion. And the importance of saying no is as critical a component of a leader’s job that green-lighting initiatives. Increasingly what we choose not to do can be more important than what we focus on. CEOs we speak with are also keenly interested in innovation models that are working and how companies are measuring ROI from their innovation efforts.
- Machine Learning/AI — It’s really about next-generation technology and what’s around the corner. Making sure we can seize new use cases without letting the world pass us by. Sometimes it comes in the form of new disruptors, sometimes in wondering how to best use blockchain or augmented reality. The persistent march of technology evolution is a watch-dog issue and one that never goes too far out of our minds when leaders tell us what’s on their mind.
Day in and day out staying abreast of the competition, new entrants, are all part of the job. We have to please investors, understand what it’s like to operate in a PE environment, or a public one, or raise capital as a start-up. The day to day involves hiring and training and keeping the P&L happy and the cash coffers full. The hot button issues above are the grist for making it all happen and the current recurring themes we are tracking. What’s on your mind? Let us know and we’ll solve it with you.