A year of transformation and what’s next in 2021

A year of transformation and what’s next in 2021

Stepping into a new role is never easy. There’s always a big learning curve as you get up to speed on the company’s opportunities, culture and future goals. But for all of us who took on new roles immediately before or during COVID-19, it was an interesting transition to say the least.

 When I came on board with Informatica in March 2020, COVID was just starting to gain global attention. However no one could have pre-empted the massive shift it would cause to business operating models globally.

The urgency to transition to a cloud-first environment hit businesses that were only part way through (or hadn’t started) their digital transformations extra hard. As a global leader in cloud and enterprise data management, Informatica’s team worked overtime to help our customers get up to speed so they could keep delivering for their customers.

What moved me most was how people rallied to support one another. Strategic partnerships – such as our alliance with Microsoft – reached new levels of maturity as we collaborated to implement systems and tools that would best serve our customers’ immediate needs.

Partnerships overall played a big role in Informatica in 2020 as we deepened ties with market leaders such as Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, and local Australian partners such as Servian, RXP, Datacom and Empired. These partnerships ensured our customers have access to best-in-class technology and services, and this strategy will continue into 2021 as we recruit more local partners who can complement our go-to-market strategy and mutually help our customers solve their data challenges.

A year of transformation 

If I could sum up 2020 in a single word it would be transformational. Some companies accelerated their digital strategies by at least a decade. And while it was done under extreme conditions, it’s great to see these companies experiencing the untold benefits of their transformation and seeking to leverage all their new capabilities to drive a higher ROI. 

Our successes as a company over the past year have been entirely in line with our customers’ successes in transitioning their companies to meet the needs of this “new normal”. We experienced 90% YoY growth in Australia last year, including a 200% surge in our Master Data Management (MDM) solution, and an incredible 95% of our customers are now choosing to be on subscriptions and cloud.

One of our customers, Greater Bank, leveraged the cloud to deliver critical customer services. As their Head of Data Insights said, “Greater Bank set a goal to completely transition to the cloud in less than two years, putting data strategy at the centre of that transformation. With a cloud-native and AI-driven approach, we’re able to drive greater business value – with improved customer service, secure open banking, and data governance and privacy.” 

Settling into 2021… 

I agree whole-heartedly with this recent article on FutureCIO, which calls out that delivering intelligent digital customer experience is a top priority for companies as we say goodbye to the uncertainty and panic that was 2020. 

Now equipped with the systems and tools to enable remote working and drive productivity, the next phase for enterprise is leveraging AI so they can meet and exceed customer expectations in a rapidly evolving marketplace. 

As we settle into 2021, it brings me great joy to be working at the leading edge of customer experience (CX) with the industry’s first enterprise-scale cloud-native Customer 360 SaaS solution. It’s a game changer designed to help enterprises rethink and reimagine how they deliver CX in a post-pandemic, digital-first, cloud world.

We’ve also introduced a new consumption based pricing model to further support our customers’ move to the cloud – allowing them to start small and grow across our IPaaS and MDM solutions. 

As Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, said: “Change is the only constant in life.” We don’t know what tomorrow brings. But if we are equipped to focus on what matters most – surprising and delighting our customers – we really can’t go wrong. 

#datamanagement #masterdata #dataanalytics #customer360 #informatica #mdm #cx