When you hear «business software» or «reporting», you might imagine binders stuffed with charts, spreadsheets, and footnotes. Or perhaps conference rooms crammed with executives slogging through slide presentations. What’s missing from these photos is the potential for business value creation.
It’s changing, due to a variety of digital technologies that are collaborating to transform the future of reporting. Machine learning and cognitive tools will take over much of the grunt work of gathering data, constructing reports, and disseminating the results. This allows human workers to perform more interesting tasks.
Usage-based pricing is yet another way to assist teams to reap the benefits of the current data quicker and more effectively. By reducing the cost of data access the model helps companies to correlate value with spend making it easier for them to increase usage and scale their efforts.
To compete in the Age of Connected Work, software companies must reconsider the fundamentals that guide the way they create, distribute and charge for their products. In the new age, the winners will redefine what is meant by a company that is product-driven in the fullest sense of the word. They’ll leverage their products to help drive customer acquisition, retention and expansion. This will require a renewed strategy-driven focus and the desire to expand their «as-a-service» offerings beyond membership rates. It will also require M&A transactions the incorporation of PLG principles into the way they develop, design and deliver their products. To keep ahead of the pack businesses will need to create a robust ecosystem that includes strategy, stewardship and architecture, along with governance, which will make use of data.