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ThoughtSpot looks for channel growth

Self-service data analytics player believes the market is there and that the channel growth opportunities are attractive

Simon Quicke
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Published: 21 Jan 2022 15:00

Analytics specialist ThoughtSpot is looking at growing its channel base as a means of getting its offering in front of more customers.

The firm believes that self-service analytics tools are growing in popularity and deserve to be on the radar of more partners looking to arm their customers with tools that increase business insights.

The vendor recently worked with Harvard Business Review to produce an analytic services report, which found that 86% of those business executives quizzed felt that workers in their organisation needed better technology to make data-driven decisions. Self-service analytics came out as the top technology they would adopt during this year.

Sudheesh Nair, CEO of ThoughtSpot, said there were a couple of reasons why self-service analytics was taking-off. “The first one is consumer demand,” he said. “Consumers have become extremely demanding with respect to how they expect the business to treat them – hyper-personalised services.”

“The second is that today it is possible to take the data the consumer is giving and process it fast. It wasn’t possible a few years ago because data used to be inside the data centres,” he added.

Nair said the rise in interest from users should attract interest from more channel partners, and that there were opportunities for those that added value around the proposition.

“We are working with partners to personalise the last mile of the journey,” he said. “We build horizontal platform, horizontal AI algorithms, and then we are depending on partners to customise these solutions, so that it becomes a perfect fit for these businesses.”

Real-time insights

One of the myths around data analytics is that it is a solution aimed largely at an enterprise audience, and small and medium-sized enterprises are put off by cost and complexity, but Nair said the desire to get real-time insights was not confined to one end of the market.

“Whether you’re small or big, the opportunities that you can extract based on data analytics is now universally available,” he said.

“Some businesses will change no matter their size, because they understand the world is changing. I think that’s the context in which I also think about partners, because I believe you can’t sell any product without understanding the business.”

One of the challenges the channel might encounter is the resistance from some of those that have dominated the data analytics process as they fear wider access will impact their position and job security.

Nair said resistance to change was an obvious reaction from some, but again, the channel partner was in an ideal position to recognise that problem and seek out a solution.

“Partners can help because they usually know which one of these people in this large organisation is a change agent, who is unafraid, who is courageous enough to move the needle in the right direction,” he said.

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