Serial Entrepreneur Zack Rinat on Model N (Part 11)

SM: Listening to what you have said so far, you are going after businesses or segments which have a multi-channel dynamic. Not every industry has that.

ZR: You are right about this, but a multi-channel is just one dimension. In areas where there are complexities of business, it can happen by multi-channel, complex pricing, globalization of business, and competitive forces that force you to hone in on your business. You are right. With our solution on revenue management aligned with our goals of starting the company, we went after industries which were facing the challenge of revenue management across channels, even if they posed a significant challenge to us. Now we see this can cut across different industries. I can look at financial services or telecommunications and see applicability and big challenges there. Complexity is one dimension, and a second is the urgency which is the driver. There is also the question about product fit and competition.

SM: What is your view of the product road map?

ZR: We invested heavily in technology. We have been very fortunate in the last couple of years to be able to do this. I would say, frankly, that since SAP invested in the R3 infrastructure I am not sure there were a lot of people who had the luxury we had, meaning the money, skill sets and time, to go in and develop the next generation of applications from the ground up.

From a product roadmap perspective, we always have ambitious objectives. We have automated almost the entire revenue management lifecycle. The next challenging ground will be the analytics component in order to provide executives appropriate dashboard views. The challenge will be to take the data and leverage it to build the business. We see a huge trend right now to provide a lot of planning, decision support, tools and business intelligence to drive improvement in the businesses.

SM: Do you have projects along those lines going on internally, or is there something on your radar screen you would like to acquire?

ZR: We always look at make versus buy. As related to analytics, it is something that we will definitely look at partnering and acquiring.

SM: Have you seen companies out there that you like?

ZR: Yes, in fact we made a few small acquisitions in that space. We have not announced one very relevant one yet. We are also going to announce a strong partnership in analytics in the next few weeks. We are always looking for opportunities. We are always looking for innovative companies that deal in the analytics space and can provide strong algorithms and strong decision making tools.

We have a blueprint for acquisitions and we have three priorities. The first one is that we are looking for solutions which are going to enhance our competitive positions in the industry we are in. We are dominant in our industry, so we have unique needs in semiconductors or medical devices. The second one is that we are always looking for horizontal solutions which will allow us to sell to many verticals. Finally, we are looking for the next vertical.

This segment is part 11 in the series : Serial Entrepreneur Zack Rinat on Model N
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