Reltio Connect

Manish Sood founded Reltio in 2011 when he realized that no software on the market could effectively manage data across silos so organizations can create a 360-degree view of their business.

He wanted to make data available at multiple touchpoints at speed and at scale, a concept that underlies today's omnichannel strategies. But he went one step further — Reltio can help users connect the dots. By capturing transactions and interactions in each customer relationship, companies can augment the 360-degree views.

This brings us to 2021, where accessing data at speed and at scale is, indeed, the key to success for organizations of any size. So, we wonder, what else can we learn from Manish's experience and what's in stock for us?

What the video on the AMA with @Manish Sood below:

Ask Me Anything With Manish Sood: Where We Came From and Where We're Heading 

What are you passionate about? What inspired you to start Reltio back in 2011?

Data, data, and data!

When I founded Reltio, there were three key emerging trends in data management. First, the number of applications used by enterprises was rapidly growing. When I started in Master Data Management (MDM) in the early 2000s, the most complex infrastructure used about half a dozen systems. Now the same customers have 300 plus systems. Even a business like Reltio runs on 80+ different applications.

Secondly, it was the rapid acceleration in digital transformation and digital adoption — a trend that we predicted in 2011 and really picked up steam during the last 24 months. Today, leveraging data to support decision-making in a digital economy is no longer an option.

Lastly, there's cloud transformation. The number of cloud providers will grow significantly, along with the number of applications and data sources. We saw the need to scale across multiple environments and ensure seamless integration. The public cloud can provide an efficient backbone for this purpose. Not only did we use it, but we also saw our customers adopt public cloud infrastructure across their enterprises in a rapid, transformational manner. 

What are some new features and functionalities on Reltio's product roadmap?

To see where we're heading, let's start with where we came from. Entity resolution is the core capability on which Reltio is built. The process takes data from multiple sources and creates a unified ID based on the information.

The data can be personal information, organization information, product information, location information, or any combinations or variants. The core concept is to establish a universal ID as a skeletal structure, into which you can add more attribution.

Once we match the data with a unified ID, the question is: How can we provide the best value to downstream consumers?  So we layer on MDM capabilities where operational values, cleansing, and enrichment capabilities come into play.

Next, we extend the envelope to include functionalities for building richer views of information. MDM is a discipline that focuses on resolving overlapping sets of information from different systems, creating a unified view, and deciding on survivorship — verifying information in each contact record field to identify the “single source of truth.”

Based on that notion, we created augmented 360-degree view capabilities so our customers can incorporate data that they gathered before they built their MDM platforms (e.g., from enrichment providers, like Dun & Bradstreet, Axesor, Acxiom, or other industry providers) to co-reside within our services. Meanwhile, they can layer on transactional and interaction types of data to enhance their records.

Lastly, we have to drive the consumption of this information — after all, data is only as good as our ability to derive actionable insights from it. We do so through APIs, data warehouses, and data science standard formats. Additionally, we provide an intuitive interface to enhance the user experience.

In short, our product roadmap is driven by these four themes: entity resolution, MDM capabilities, augmented 360-degree view, and consumption of the information.

Moving forward, we'll continue on this trajectory: Expand the capabilities on entity resolution while developing robust features to support MDM, the creation of 360-degree view, and the consumption of such data through innovative user interfaces. 

We will strengthen the capabilities in each one of these areas and make our offering more streamlined. As many of our customers with experience in MDM deployments know, simplification is the name of the game when it comes to improving cost-efficiency. Ultimately, our goal is to empower companies of any size to bring together data from siloed systems and use it as a strategic asset across the entire organization.

We want to give our customers the ability to own and use their strategic assets in every business application and business process — become independent of application strongholds to support digital transformation and the adoption of cloud platforms for data management.

Reltio offers many native integrations with external data and service providers such as Dun & Bradstreet. What's the roadmap for extending such capabilities, and in what direction?

For our product roadmap, we plan to bring more of such integrations into the mix. Our goal is to enable our customers to easily import data from various sources using built-in capabilities or our robust APIs.

As I mentioned, simplification is the name of the game. We'll streamline the process of both bringing data into Reltio and broadcasting data out of the platform.

We'll also develop an expansive roster of enrichment services, partner with other enrichment providers, and create pre-built connectivities and self-service capabilities to reduce deployment time and deliver an even more seamless user experience for our customers.

What's progressing stitching of data? Where is Reltio heading with this in terms of connectors, data governance, and data quality?

Progressive stitching is our fundamental approach to handling different types of entities managed inside Reltio.

When we start a Reltio implementation, you don't need to define (and get locked into) a data model that has to hold true for the next two, three, or five-years. Why? Because we offer the capabilities to add attribution whenever you need to, without having to redefine or redesign the entire logical model you have created inside Reltio.

In essence, it's a canonical representation — a logical representation that you can keep extending as you move forward.

Progressive stitching allows our customers to start with a small attribution list. They can achieve quick wins by establishing universal IDs with matching attributes. Over time, you can add more attributes as you expand your footprint, grow your deployment scope, pull in data from enrichment providers, develop new relationships, or bring in new transactional information.

Progressive stitching is the key to scaling up your data operation cost-effectively. As you onboard different data sources, you can keep expanding the scope of the information and stitch new attributes together for any entity profile without overhauling your foundation. You have the flexibility to address the 360-degree view concept without boiling the ocean on day one.

Coming Up Next...

In the next installment of this series, we'll ask Manish about customer data platform (CDP) vs. MDM, where he sees the MDM market is going, and what top corporate executives are talking about when it comes to data. Stay tuned for more insights from Manish!

Learn More with the Reltio Community

The Reltio Community is a great place to learn more about how to use the Reltio products and connect with Master Data Management peers. Rely on the expertise of Reltio partners, customers, and technical experts.

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