UPDATED 11:00 EDT / JULY 23 2020

AI

AI and a 360-degree view of business helps Informatica customers manage enterprise complexity

The demands placed on enterprises today represent a juggling act. Among the many balls in the air are strengthening digital commerce, dealing with supply chain risk, retaining customers, nurturing a healthy balance sheet, and maintaining operational stability.

To avoid dropping the ball for any one of these requires a complete or 360-degree view of the enterprise, and that takes data. This is where Informatica LLC has positioned itself as a provider of 360-degree views of enterprise information by leveraging its artificial intelligence engine — CLAIRE — to help customers make key decisions necessary to running the business successfully.

“We are going to infer for you what you need to do with this data, and then we are going to bring sources in, connect it, load it into a 360 solution, and create those 360 profiles,” said Suresh Menon (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of master data management and 360 solutions at Informatica. “It’s about discovery and automation, as well as the ability to refine and suggest new rules in order to make your data better. That’s really the power of CLAIRE and AI.”

Menon spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, as part of the Informatica CLAIREview series. They discussed the importance of connecting key data between customers and suppliers, the need for AI tools to manage growing volumes of enterprise information, and how some organizations are leveraging Informatica to apply a 360 view of the employee base as well. (* Disclosure below.)

Dealing with supply-chain disruption

In June, Informatica showcased its Business 360 solution, which provides a single, holistic view of customers, products and suppliers. The latter group has become especially important as the global pandemic has disrupted supply chains in a variety of areas.

“It’s important to use the platform to start connecting data from customers all the way back to your suppliers,” Menon said. “You’re not providing the best customer experience if the goods, products and services that customers want to buy from you are not available. That’s when organizations started realizing they needed to connect the customer profile and preferences to products in inventory all the way back down to suppliers.”

That connection forms the basis for how Informatica’s customers use CLAIRE-powered 360 tools to answer complex questions and derive previously hidden insights. It’s also essential primarily because the sheer volume of data, even in just the supply chain, has expanded significantly.

“There were three sources of supplier data that used to come in to create a supplier 360, and today there are hundreds of sources,” Menon said. “We’re talking about an explosion of volume. Bringing in more automation with CLAIRE and AI/machine-learning techniques is really the only way to get ahead of this because it’s not humanly possible.”

Still, the human side of the data-management equation remains an important consideration. The 360 model can be applied beyond customer, product or supply data to capture the employee view as well, such as inside a healthcare organization that needed to know where critical personnel were located in the event of a sudden disaster or major emergency.

“There’s a large healthcare provider here in California who decided they wanted to create an employee 360,” Menon said. “It’s doctors, it’s nurses, it’s technicians who move from one hospital to another and different outpatient clinics. If we talk about customer 360s, we also have to talk about employee 360s.”

Watch the complete video interview as part of the Informatica CLAIREview Series below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Informatica CLAIREview Series. Neither Informatica LLC, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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