>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco. It's The Cube! Covering Informatica World 2017. Brought to you by Informatica. (electronic music) >> Welcome back to The Cube at Imformatica World 2017. I'm Peter Burris, and having a great series of sessions today and tomorrow. And in this one particular, we got another great conversation with the user. Really looking forward to it. I'd like to introduce Tom Gottweis, head of data strategy at Winsupply to The Cube. >> Thank you very much. Nice to be here. >> So, Tom we've had a full day of conversations with Informatica people, partners, as well as a number of different users. The brands are joggling, what's Winsupply? >> Winsupply probably is one of the more common companies you've never heard of. We are a national distributor of plumbing, heating, and electrical supplies, so we provide everything that makes your home comfortable. Toilets, water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners, all of the wiring that makes it go. >> Well thank you for being you then Tom. >> We like to make sure that everybody's leading comfortable life here. >> So, that's, I mean, so Winsupply, obviously as distributor, a lot of dumb products that overtime will get smarter, but you want to intelligently improve how you move them around and get them where they need to be, so tell us a little bit about the role that you see data playing in Winsupply. >> Well, Winsupply really traditionally has been an organization that relies an awful lot on the expertise and the gut instinct of the people who manage our individual locations. We've got almost 600 of them across the United States right now. And that's served us very well over the years but right now conditions are changing in the market place and are forcing us to really add a more data related, evidence-based component to the decision making paradigm that we've been used to over the years. And so for us, data first of all means making sure that we have the kind of data that we can extract useful information from in a business sense to be actionable, decisionable information, and also it means that we've got the information necessary in order to really add value to the supply chain because we sit firmly right in the middle of the supply chain between the manufacturers and the end-users of that. And so, we want to be able to be the single source of information about the products that we sell throughout the entire life-cycle of those products right from deciding which ones to purchase for any given application to how to install that to how to maintain that over time and ultimately to, how to dispose of it at end of life. And in that way we add value both to the consumers of the goods that we distribute, but also, we serve a purpose to the manufacturers of the goods that we distribute. >> And you operations people to make sure you're optimizing inventories, and movement of things and all those other things. So, that suggests that it's an industry and a company that's in transition from a relatively stable way of doing things with a main focus on just getting parts out sometimes months in advance so that you don't run out, to now becoming much more time-sensitive, customer-sensitive, and operation-sensitive. What does a data strategist do in that context? As head of data strategy? >> Well, in that context, a data strategist has a look at what the existing state of the data and organization is, looks at the desired end state, how we would like to be functioning as an organization in the future and puts in place the projects and programs necessary in order to bridge that gap and charts the path to get to where we want to be as an organization from a data standpoint. >> So, here's where we are, here's where we want to be, here's the road map. That suggests, and we talked a bit about this beforehand, but that suggests that there's a design element to how you think about data. Designing the way forward, both from an end user, from a user design standpoint, as well as other standpoints as well. >> There is, and it's certainly again. We need to design not only the structures of the data to support the functions that we'd like to accomplish, but also design the systems that are going to accomplish those functions for us and quite importantly have that interface smoothly with all of the existing legacy systems that are currently in place, because you can't change out everything all at once, so you need to pick where you want to start. For us it was product 360. That was our initial area of attack to gain the most value from that and subsequent products that we're looking at implementing are-- >> From Informatica? >> From Informatica of course. Our Entity 360 to do our customer and other mastered entity sets that we're doing to kind of help get us along that path. >> Do you work within the IT organization? >> I actually work within the marketing organization. >> Oh, really? >> I report to the CMO. >> Oh, cool. >> I'm one of the two percent. >> Well, but that's good. But tell us a little bit about how as an advocate for the use of data, now working with the IT organization. So, you're the data strategist, here's where we want to go, you have to work with the IT organization and help them turn that into investments and plans for actually building out the capabilities, right? >> Absolutely. Part of that is to assess what products out there, what tools are going to help us get along that path to where we want to get to. Part of that is building a business case to really convince executive management to make the investments that they need to, to get us along that path. And a lot of it is also advocacy right. Working with the IT organization and other different business functions as well to really garner support for the new systems that are going to be put in place. Because ultimately, you can create the best system. If people are unwilling to use that it's still going to create no value for the organization. >> So evidence-based management's been around for quite some time in a number of disciplines, health-care, for example, being perhaps one of the first places where it was devised and practiced. As you work with, in marketing, work with the IT organization to put in place these strategic data capabilities that the business is going to need, what are you doing with the executive team to get them to really buy into evidence-based management, especially in a company that has a history of thinking based on their experience? >> Well, I'm very fortunate in that respect. The executive management team of Winsupply recognized very early on that that paradigm shift was needed and in fact created my position and hired me on as one of the first steps in that transformation that they were seeking to undergo. >> Peter: So, what's your background? How did you get to the point of being a data strategist in that crucial role? >> Well, I come from a highly technical background. I started off as a programmer, system administrator, database administrator, moved into really the software development management arena. Then into architecture and so, it's been kind of a long, strange trip that began as a highly technical function, but over a number of years I've been drawn to the business side of things as well and have been fortunate to gain a fair bit of experience in that side, working with business people to define the results that they were looking to accomplish, and so this data strategist role really fit very well. It really lives with one foot in the technical world and one foot in the business world and serves to sort of unite those two functions in a business. >> Peter: Well, data is in both worlds. >> Indeed. >> And increasingly in many respects what we need to do is liberate it out of the technical world and have it be applied through evidence-based management, through thinking about road maps, the role that data's going to play as an asset it the business more in the business world as well. So, when you came here again, as one of the perhaps a minority of individuals from the business side, when you came here to Imformatica World, what has been resonating with you here? >> Well, integration is been resonating quite well. Scalability and the investments that Informatica is making into cloud-based computing. I see that facilitating a lot of the kind of analytics that we're going to need as we move further along that digital transformation to help us turn the vast quantities of data that we have into actual actionable intelligence for the business. Moving further along, I'm pleased to see that there is some talk of artificial intelligence and deep learning and machine learning that they're sort of moving into that space. I can see there being a huge value for that in a business sense to really enable targeted identification of different results that the business is trying to achieve, whether it be optimizing the product mix at a particular location to maximize the business potential or trying to look for the right people to manage a location, or just determining which customers, you know, are going to go from, you know, your service drain or low level into your core customers that become one of the key customers driving your business. And so, all of that I think is possible to identify via machine learning techniques once we can get the basic source data for all that sorted out and at a particularly quality level that we need it to be to sort of feed those systems. And so, that's kind of where we are as an organization right now. At a fairly basic level trying to get our customer data, trying to get our product data in a sufficiently decent quality that we can begin to distill that actionable business intelligence from it. >> So are you here with an IT peer? >> Yeah, both an engineer and a business analyst. I wanted to make sure that they were exposed to the different products that Informatica has to offer so that, you know, I could get some different points of view on things that we might be able to leverage in our IT infrastructure, our environment, in order to get the most value out of what we're trying to do. >> So as head of data strategy within Winsupply, but report to the CMO, are you looking at it from the customer data perspective or are you looking at it more broadly from data anywhere? >> I'm really trying to look at it more broadly. Certainly, you know, one of the primary areas of focus is marketing and making sure that our marketing organization has the information they need. >> Or customer at least. >> You know, our customer at least. But, that can't be the only focus of data in the organization just because it's so pervasive. It drives everything that a business does and it needs to be used optimally across the business. >> So, you have, Winsupply has a special set of complexities in that you've got, you know, what you do within your role and proximity to you like the IT organization. You have an management team that's moving to an evidence-based management approach, which serves what you're doing. But as you said, you also have those 700 locations that, probably all of them have some degree of autonomy because they're responsible for making those locations sing. How are you working with them to start pushing some of these concepts out into the field? >> Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, that really highlights sort of the advocacy part of the role of data strategists, at least within Winsupply. Once again, you can create the best systems, the best tools in the world and if your users are unable to understand or to use what you've created, it really adds no value. And so, part of it of course is having systems in place that create the kind of data that you need. The other part of that is very much an educational role where you're teaching the people out in the business to make use of those tools that have been created and how they apply particularly to their corner of the business. >> Last question. When you think about, let's say we had a couple people here that want to be data strategists. What would you advise them to do next to move down that career path? >> It's one of those that would be really useful to have an engineering degree and computer science discipline and an NBA. >> So, you've got to have data and understand what data is and the disciplines of it, but you also have to understand how it's going to be applied in business over time. >> Tom: Precisely. >> Excellent. All right, Tom Gottweis, head of data strategy at Winsupply. Thank you very much for coming on The Cube and talking about what you're doing at Winsupply and the role of data strategy and how Informatica's helping you along your path to evolve and make Winsupply better. >> Well, thank you very much for having me. >> Peter Burris, once again, this is The Cube at Informatica World 2017 and we'll be back shortly with a wrap up for today and anticipating tomorrow. (electronic music)