Data is plentiful and insights are not.

That’s the basic premise behind ThoughtSpot Inc., provider of big-data analytics that brings a different dynamic to business intelligence. Now in its eighth year and well capitalized, the company’s application of artificial intelligence and machine learning has given it a tailwind that has become even more significant over the past several weeks in the maelstrom of the coronavirus pandemic.

One popular use case in these uncertain times involves working capital management. If a supply chain in Bangladesh has been impacted because of COVID-19, what would the picture look like if procurement was shifted to Ecuador instead?

“You need to be able to make lightning-fast decisions, and something like COVID is exposing all of that because day by day, the situation on the ground is changing,” said Sudheesh Nair (pictured), chief executive officer of ThoughtSpot. “How does data turn into bespoke action inside a business? That is why ThoughtSpot is finding a tailwind even with all the global headwinds.”

Nair spoke with Dave Vellante, chief analyst at SiliconANGLE Media’s sister market research firm Wikibon and co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. They discussed how ThoughtSpot found its niche in the business intelligence market, the importance of data personalization, partnerships with cloud database providers, and the firm’s IPO plans.

Action through insight

ThoughtSpot operates in a market with a long legacy and plenty of competition. The field of business intelligence received a turboboost in 1985 when Microsoft Corp. released Excel as a spreadsheet application for organizing and performing mathematical functions on data.

“People still want to use Excel, and that is the No. 1 BI tool ever,” Nair said.

But Excel challenges helped inspire the introduction of Tableau in 2003, the brainchild of three Stanford University students who were interested in developing a user-friendly visual tool for creating attractive charts and graphs with integrated analytics. That led Microsoft to counter with Power BI, which lets users create interactive data visualizations and apply BI in a simple interface.

Tableau was ultimately sold to Salesforce Inc. in 2019 for $15.7 billion, and Microsoft’s two tools have become powerful players in the BI world, but data visualization was not where ThoughtSpot wanted to go. Instead, the company built an engine that used search to instantly analyze billions of data rows, applied AI, and then told an action story through relevant insight.

“We are not trying to play there, because if you chase the idea of visualization it’s going to be a long, hard journey,” Nair explained. “We have decided that our ability is best spent on making AI work with interactive storytelling for business use. That’s it.”

Personalized data gets results

ThoughtSpot, founded in 2012, believed it found the right market niche because the past four years were a “renaissance of enterprise data analytics,” according to Nair. The hyper-connected world has raised the bar of expectations among consumers who increasingly look for personalized experiences, and businesses are responding accordingly.

Why? Because it gets results. A recent survey by Forbes found that 40% of executives testified that personalized marketing based on data had a direct impact on maximizing sales and profits.

“Every consumer is expecting you to get to know them,” Nair said. “’Understand me, personalize the services you are delivering, and make sure that everything you send me is relevant.’ In return for that, customers are willing to give you all sorts of data, and it means that analyzing this data and then delivering relevant actions to consumers is no longer a ‘nice to have.’”

Analyzing all of the data to deliver actionable insight to business has placed more demand on cloud-based data warehouses. ThoughtSpot has formed partnerships with Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft and Snowflake Inc. to deliver results on those platforms. In March, the company deepened its relationship with Google Cloud by launching a service for enterprises to run AI-driven analytics directly on BigQuery, Google’s fully managed data warehousing service.

“With cloud, the amount of data that you can collect and preprocess in data warehouses like Snowflake and Redshift has been fundamentally shifted,” Nair said. “Amazon and Snowflake are really pushing in terms of what customers want to see, and it completely aligns with our value proposition. Cloud-based data warehouses have become huge tailwinds for us.”

IPO still possible

Before the coronavirus closed down much of the world, ThoughtSpot appeared to be headed for an initial public offering. It could be an attractive proposition for investors given the history of the market.

Last June, Salesforce announced that Tableau had contributed $400 million to its fiscal 2020 revenues, and ThoughtSpot is believed to be growing faster than Tableau. Asked about the firm’s IPO plans, Nair indicated that the current situation would delay future moves, but the company was open to potential acquisitions.

“It would be foolish to say this hasn’t pushed our plans back a little bit,” Nair said. “We have a pretty good cash position of $300 million, which means it is absolutely an opportunity to seriously consider mergers and acquisitions.”

Despite ThoughtSpot’s strong financial position, Nair sounded a note of caution given the current impact of the global pandemic on the technology world.

“When you have a massive event like this, it is a poor idea to go after new markets,” Nair said. “One of the things I’ve always believed about Silicon Valley is that companies die of indigestion, not starvation. If you try to do everything, that’s how you end up dying.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE