As businesses turn to cloud operations and become data-driven, they risk narrowing their focus, analyzing data solely to drive the bottom line. This misses the big-picture value that data can provide: Insights are not just for the good of the company, they must benefit the customer as well.

“The thing that stands in the way of delivering value for customers is almost always not technology, not product, and not even quality of data,” said Sudheesh Nair (pictured), chief executive officer of ThoughtSpot Inc. “It is lack of courage, lack of vision, lack of ability to empathize with your customers and truly see what can we do to make their lives better where data-driven insights might be a part of it. “

Nair spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, about the intersection of cloud, data, search and analytics, as well as the upcoming ThoughtSpot Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference, set to begin on Dec. 9. (* Disclosure below.)

Outside-in thinking is critical

Instead of stopping inside the company, the ability to get insights from the data must be pushed all the way to “the front line where business users interact with their customers,” according to Nair. “If you don’t do that properly, there is no way to keep up with the velocity of change that the world is throwing at your business,” he said.

Don’t forget the contract with the customer who provides valuable data in the expectation that they will receive a bespoke experience in return, Nair pointed out. “When I think of this continuum of data to insight to knowledge to action, action is where the users benefit,” he said.

Financial institutions that recently discovered their loan approval process was inherently biased against minorities is a good example of analysis not being taken to the next level, according to Nair.

“These sort of things are not an artificial intelligence problem or a business intelligence problem. These are human problems,” he said. “By breaking the barrier between business users and their consumers, where data becomes an inherent part of decision making, you can make a tangible difference in the world.”

Data access for everyone

Bridging the chasm between those who analyze the data and those who ask the questions is the purpose behind ThoughtSpot. “Let’s move those silos and then unify so that people with questions can get answers,” Nair said.

By enabling democratic data access through AI-driven search, the company’s product provides data insights directly to those who are asking the questions.

“The core idea is about scale, but more importantly rate of change,” Nair said. “When the data is changing much faster than ever before, you have to have a new way to deliver insight to the people who can act on it.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the ThoughtSpot Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference. Neither ThoughtSpot Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE