If you hear the words “business software” and “reporting,” binders full of charts, spreadsheets, and footnotes might spring to thoughts. Perhaps conference rooms are stuffed with executives working through slide presentations. What’s missing from these photos is the potential for business value creation.
That’s changing, due to a variety of digital technologies that are coming together to revolutionize the future of reporting. Machine learning and cognitive technology will take over the heavy lifting of gathering information, creating reports and then distributing them. Human workers are free to do more interesting tasks.
Utilization-based pricing is another method to make it easier for teams to benefit from the benefits of maximizing business productivity through data insights current data faster and more effectively. By reducing the cost of accessing data the model allows companies to correlate value with spend making it easier for them to increase usage and scale their efforts.
Software companies must reconsider their principles for building, distributing, and charging for their products if they wish to succeed in the Age of Connected Work. Winners in this new era will evolve what is meant by being product-driven in the most literal sense of the term and will use their products as engines for customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. This will require a renewed tactical focus and a willingness to expand “as-a service” offerings beyond membership fees. It will also require incorporating PLG into the way they design and deliver their services. To remain competitive, companies will need to create an entire technology ecosystem that provides the strategy, stewardship, architecture, and governance needed to make data an asset.