#104, Chief Strategy Officer @ Qlik, James Fisher: “Resetting the Clock” on Big Data

0:00We've got to move beyond science experiments. We've got to put AI into the hands of people in a trusted way that performs with policy, has ethical development standards behind it, transparency around it. And I think all of those things are going to be critically important to the market as a whole. But that's where Click is taking a leadership position.

0:27for those of you who listen to the podcast frequently you may know that early in my career in the tech industry i did a lot of work in the data analytics and business intelligence space so this one was a real treat i've been watching this organization since the age of big data and i've watched their evolution towards becoming a major player in the data analytics space helping many organizations make sense of their ever-increasing vast data estate. The organization is called Click, and we are very lucky to have James Fisher onto the podcast. He is the Chief Strategy Officer of Click and has witnessed the evolution of data analytics and business intelligence firsthand, previously working for SAP and business objects, more recently Click for the last 10 years.

1:14And he's very well qualified to provide commentary on how enterprise organizations, any organizations can leverage AI to optimize their data usage and also ultimately reduce costs and increase efficiency. This was a fascinating conversation. James speaks with passion. And during the interview, he was proudly wearing his Click t-shirt. So he's quite clearly a passionate advocate for the Click brand. In our discussion, we covered what CIOs need to consider when adopting AI, the hidden cost of technology, what James learned from his seven years at SAP and business objects, and of course, the societal impact in light of the proliferation of AI adoption.

1:55I really love speaking to passionate technologists, and James certainly ticks that box. It was a fantastic interview. I'm really excited for you to hear it. So without further ado here is James Fisher.

2:11James, it's lovely to get you on the Tech Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. I've been really excited about this one. I've been tracking Click for quite some time. Yeah, it's great to be here. Lots of directions to go in, but we always start with this flagship question to get things off to a good start. What does good leadership mean to you, James? So I've been very fortunate over the course of my career to have worked with some incredible leaders and have some mentors that I still speak to today from the very, very first job I got at PwC out of university. And all of those leaders have instilled sort of one key principle, which I've tried to carry forward, which is around openness and around communication.

2:55You can be great at your domain. You could be an expert in your field. You can work 36 hours a day. But with people around you, communication is key. And certainly in my role now as Chief Strategy Officer here at Click, then communication is one of the key things that empowers people, lets people know what they're part of, what is being expected of them. And if you get that communication piece right, then you're pretty much halfway there. Oh, absolutely. I think communication is definitely one of the pillars. I mean, you don't really ever make a leadership role if you haven't got good communication skills.

3:33And you don't excel in it unless you're exceptional with your communication style, I suppose. No, I completely agree. That's a really good answer. What do you like about being in a leadership role, James? What's your favorite part of leading people? I've always enjoyed the ability to influence an outcome and drive towards an outcome. Again, tied to that communication, sharing why we're doing things, the reasons behind it, what it means for folks, and then seeing them be successful. There's folks I work with today on my team that have moved through different roles at Click. We've developed people internally.

4:11We've seen people grow from offering someone that first job out of uni as an intern. That's how I started. And sort of paying that back to interns that we've had and then seeing them grow into leadership roles across the company and on my team is a real privilege and a pleasure. And that's more exciting than all of the other sort of things that go with leadership that folks could talk about. Yeah, sure. Well said. So I want to give the listeners a bit of context who may not be familiar with yourself or maybe not even with Click. So you studied business studies back in the mid to late 90s. I know you graduated in 1997 and joined PwC afterwards.

4:52Is that right? So I'm really keen to just, if you could just give us an overview of that guy who graduated, joined PwC, and just give us a little bit of an overview of your career up until the point of joining Click. Yeah, absolutely. So I did a business degree. And one of the things that attracted me to that particular business degree is it gave me two six-month work placements. And I was incredibly lucky to spend six months at KPMG and then spend another six months at what was Cooper's Live Brand at that time and what became PWC. And I think I had two white shirts. I was incredibly green. I had one suit and walked into the city on that first day and really didn't know what to expect.

5:40But met and worked with some incredible people. And really, that sort of shaped my focus and gave me an opportunity at the end of my degree to go back, work with the team I worked with at what was now PwC in the sort of group reporting space. We did a lot of financial fast close projects around how helping organizations report their numbers and go through that governance and compliance process more efficiently. And it was through, you know, an extended period of time at PwC that I got the opportunity to start working with different elements of software the PwC had had acquired and eventually looked to divest those around sort of 2000, 2002 after the Sarbanes-Oxley and the audit independence requirements came in.

6:26And that gave me the opportunity to join a company called Cartesis, which was based in Paris, relatively small organization that had been previously acquired by PwC. And then we grew that, we nurtured that. It was in the financial reporting performance management space. We built out that portfolio, again, sort of developed my skills across communication analyst relations into marketing, communications, and then ultimately into product marketing and product management. And that's what gave me the opportunity then after that was acquired by Business Objects and then SAP subsequently to broaden that role, spend more time in the analytics space.

7:06And that leads me to where I am today. Fantastic. So I'm really keen to hear about your experience working with SAP. Obviously, it's a very influential behemoth. We've actually had the CFO on not too long ago, Raynard Haid. I think it's a fantastic episode. But yeah, Raynard was talking about how SAP has really jumped all over the AI stuff and has aimed to innovate products, place a lot of emphasis on innovation in the last couple of years. But I'm keen to get your thoughts on what you learned from that experience. I know you joined in 2007. You spent nearly seven years there. What lessons did you take from working for an organization like that, that you put into practice in your career following that experience?

7:49Yeah, so if you think about Cotes, it was a relatively small organization, then got acquired by Business Objects, which was a renowned leader in the business intelligence space. And then that got acquired by SAP. There was an increasing, dramatically increasing scale of organization around everything that we did. You know, there were thousands of employees, you know, hundreds of different products that could be sold. And, you know, so that scale, that being part of that larger organization, you know, looking to bring the product portfolios together around the performance management space. Both Business Objects and SAP had been very acquisitive in that domain.

8:30So building a roadmap, enabling our teams, enabling our customers and the market for what that ultimately meant was very challenging. And you learn a lot about, I learned a lot about influence, how to work and collaborate across diverse teams, whether that's geographically, whether that's across the industry teams, the technology teams that SAP had. And again, that notion of influence, it kind of goes back to that point of communication I mentioned earlier. Yeah. That ability to work with people to influence and drive an outcome in a very collaborative way. I think anyone can sort of run up a hill and drive through a wall.

9:06But if you leave a trail of destruction behind you, that doesn't help people want to be on that journey with you the next time around. So I learned a lot at SAP. I mean, an incredible organization, incredible founders, an incredible brand, incredible product set, and an experience that I carry with me today. Yeah, I suppose Business Objects was probably the most successful BI product, business intelligence product up to that point. Correct me if I'm wrong, James. It was implemented in most enterprise organizations at one point, wasn't it? Probably you worked on the product marketing side. Is there any specific lessons that you learned in the early days of working with such a successful business intelligence product that stay with you now into your tenure with Click?

9:52Yeah, well, obviously, the business intelligence, the analytics market has changed dramatically over the course of the last 20 or 30 years. You know, I think Business Objects was, you know, a key leader, had some unique technology in supporting what I refer to as a very report centric view of analytics. You know, very structured, owned and managed by IT, a very kind of governed environment, therefore very, very scalable, very, very, you know, kind of trusted. So absolutely, the market changed around that. There's been greater demand for a new way of looking at data analytics. And of course, that's where click comes into the conversation.

10:35But I came into business objects on the performance management side. So financial reporting, planning, budgeting, forecasting, scorecard management, profitability, cost analysis. So a little bit different to the core business intelligence that business objects have been known for. So, again, that point of influence is critically important. You're effectively looking for mindshare. You're looking for mindshare and pre-existing customers. You're looking for mindshare in our go-to-market, in our services teams, in order to put your products and capability out there. That really refined from a product marketing perspective, you know, the ability, the importance of clarity of message.

11:18And again, back to that point of leadership, I had a great mentor who really instilled a methodology around creating structured messaging and what that means, how you pull that together. I'm sure many folks will have heard of a three by three message house. But that's something that even my first day at Click, I sat down and said, right, where's the messaging? Where's the roadmap? How do we pull that together? So right back from that first day of business objects and creating that new framework, we've carried that forward and it still exists today here at Click. Sorry, can you elaborate on what you mean by a three by three message?

11:55So quite often you look at messaging in the market, particularly in the tech stack, you go to a big event, as I'm sure you and your listeners do, and everything kind of basically looks the same. You know, cloud is washed on everything, big data is washed on everything, and now AI is washed on anything. So a three by three message helps really just focuses in on the core differentiation that you as a technology organization have and how you talk about it. One of the principles is don't explain everything that the product does, but focus in on those things that are uniquely different about your proposition.

12:33And then you explain the value that they bring, and then you explain the capabilities that enable that. And that's where you get that kind of three by three matrix of three key value of props and three key proof points and differentiators against each of them. Staying on the theme of your career, and we'll come on to click in a bit more detail shortly, But in the first, say, two-thirds of your career, what milestones really stand out for you, James? What were sort of watershed moments for you or what were really critical lessons that you learned and how did you overcome adversity or whatever it is?

13:06But what really stands out for you from the first two-thirds of your career? Yeah, so there's an ongoing learning experience. You know, I'm lucky that I've always been in a relatively consistent domain around, you know, performance management, analytics, business intelligence, you know, data. So I built up a set of expertise and by no means profess to be an expert. You know, in my field, there's lots of very smart people around. And, you know, that's one of the I think the key things in leadership is surround yourself with infinitely smarter people than yourself, you know, and empower them to be successful and everything will be good.

13:42But I've had that ability, that luxury of time over 15, 20 years to build up that expertise, to experience and see the evolution of the market to a small world. There's people that I see today that I've seen work at different organizations. So that's created a momentum. It's created a network that has allowed me to grow teams, to pitch for investment and expand what we do. And I think for me, the milestones really started to kick in. When I was at SAP, I came in looking after some of the performance management capabilities, worked with some incredible leaders that, again, nurtured me, that helped me develop.

14:30And there was obviously change. You can't live in the tech industry and not see change around you, whether that's companies being bought, companies making acquisitions, whether that's the economic swings that we see in the macroeconomic environment and some of the restructuring that inevitably comes with that. That's ever present in tech. So there were two kind of things that sort of came out of it. One was that I was given an opportunity as a result of that, one of the restructuring efforts to take on a bigger, broader team and then build that team. For me, that was, I think, really where I started to see that acceleration that took me to where we are here at Click today.

15:09But it also was a really important lesson. And one of the many mentors that I've worked with said to me, as we were going into that change. Look, you can't influence the outcome of everything that's happening around you. All you can do is really focus on doing your part of it and remaining focused, keeping your team focused on your part of it. And that will put you in the best position. And that's what we did. We kept our heads down. We kept delivering. And that gave me and also my team to go on to have a broader remit be asked to take on not just some of the performance management, but more of the mobile, the ERP, and then indeed the BI solutions at SAP and support that from a product marketing perspective.

15:53And that was a great opportunity that I like to think I've never looked back from. Absolutely. So mid-2014, an opportunity comes to you to join this probably not that well-known company, Click. Obviously, I think you were called ClickTech back then. but in SAP terms, probably a much smaller company and less established. Talk us through how that came about and that period of your life. Yeah, so funnily enough, we were talking earlier. My wife is actually part Swedish, part Welsh, and the family lives in a place called Lund in southern Sweden near Malmo, which is incidentally where Click was founded and where Click was headquartered for many years until the growing of the US presence.

16:42So funny enough, I'd known Click professionally because of being in the business intelligence space and seeing what the company was doing and the very rapid growth trajectory and momentum it had around what he called business discovery, data discovery, a more sort of business-focused set of capabilities. And I knew it because it was on the doorstep of my family's home in Sweden. So there was a lot of familiarity with it. But, you know, you get a phone call and says, hey, I'd like to talk to you about about joining Click. And, you know, at that point, not only had I been, as you said earlier, at SAP for a number of years, I've been at Business Objects and at Cartesis.

17:24And that had been a period of, I think, nearly 16, 15, 16 years of continuous employment in one in one company. So it was a big change and it was a big decision to take the call and ultimately a bigger decision to make the leap from SAP, as I said earlier, incredible brand to click. This episode was brought to you by Be Digital. Be Digital support leadership teams to optimize cost and get more out of technology investments. B-Digital and the team have unrivaled expertise with technology license management and data remediation and are therefore perfectly positioned to help prepare organizations for AI technology capability.

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18:36so can you can you tell us a little bit about the culture that you joined at click then back then and how that's evolved right up to now how would you describe how would you describe the culture at click yeah so i like to say that i think i had more interviews at click than most people have in a lifetime and i think that was a little bit of them getting comfortable with me is but also me getting comfortable with them. I had the opportunity to meet towards members of my team. I had the opportunity to meet members across the executive team and not just the CMO that we're in. But one of the things that was part of all of that is this notion of values.

19:14And Click has always had an incredible focus on its core values and investing in people around those values. You know, so making sure that someone is qualified to do the job, it has the experience to do the job, has the domain expertise to do the job is, of course, critically important. But can that person be successful at Click? Can that person work within the Click culture? And that's something that as a company we put, you know, huge emphasis on even today going through all of the acquisitions that we've made. Making sure that culture, those values persist is critically important. Of course, it's changed.

19:53It's evolved from being a single product on-premise maintenance company headquartered in Sweden to a global footprint headquartered in the US. It then went through an IPO process. It was taken private again in 2016 with new investors coming in. And it's transformed along that timescale. But the secret source of the technology has remained unchanged and the secret source of who we are as an organization, the people, the DNA of Qlik has evolved, but is still the beating heart of who we are. Yeah, I've got to ask you about this, though, James. I mean, obviously, I'm just thinking in terms of the last 10 years, in terms of the exponential growth of data volume, okay, is skyrocketed, obviously, in the last 10 years.

20:42The growth is accelerating through just the sheer volume of data collection across the millions of platforms that we've got these days. So how has Qlik adapted its technology to ensure scalability and performance without compromising on the speed or accuracy of the insights? Well, so we've made investments over our 30-year history. And I like to say that the secret source of click, which is the analytical engine, effectively is an AI engine. It's got an AI patent that uses machine learning to understand the relationships that exist within the data that's being analyzed. And that has a huge benefit in terms of how you explore data.

21:25You know, SQL is a great tool for moving data, but a terrible tool for analyzing it. You select exclude, you select exclude, you know, click persist that experience, that exploration experience across the data. So as the data volumes are increased, as analytical complexity is increased, as we move from descriptive to diagnostic to predictive and now more so predictive and generative forms of analytics and AI. The foundational principles, I think, are the same. You need to make sure you've got a robust technology, robust development processes. You've got to make sure that you're listening to your partners and to your customers in terms of how you're building and delivering product to market.

22:08And you've got to look at the elements that influence the core of what you're focusing in on. So for us, the core of what we were focusing in on was business intelligence, was analytics. But what became much more important with that growth of data is how do you make it available? How do you acquire that data? How do you bring that into a place where it can be worked with? Data literacy has been a big issue. So how do you help people work with the data and understand it in situ? So the notion of the data pipeline, the analytic data pipeline has become much more important in how you acquire data and then take that from an insight and into an action.

22:46So understanding that has been a big focus of what we've been looking at over the course of the last few years. And that's really what you see result in the end-to-end portfolio of solutions that Click offers today in the cloud. Yeah, because I think you kind of joined at that sort of crossroads, I suppose, around 2014, didn't you? When it was shifting from, you know, this big, big, remember big data? That was the term, wasn't it? Everyone was talking about big data. You don't hear that so much anymore, do you? So I think Click's product seemed to shift over to more of advanced analytics and that AI integration around the time that you joined.

23:23So you kind of joined at the time of this new era of the product. Is that a fair statement to make, James? That's absolutely fair. So, you know, Click has built an incredible base of very, very loyal customers and partners around the world. You know, with the ClickView product capability, you know, I guess as a describer, as a data discovery capability, very mode one analytics, if folks are familiar with that Gartner term, so very report centric. And then that's evolved into being much more analysis centric, or what Gartner will refer to as mode two in many respects. So the notion of big data, though, I think is really important.

24:04And 2010, the evolution of big data, the need to then work and transform data, that wave kind of happened. And in 2014, Qlik had responded to that with the release of its Qlik Sense capability, much more self-service orientated analytical tool. By that point, I think more or less, certainly in the following few years, we solved all of the big challenges with big data. That may seem like a big statement to make, but the idea of the four Vs of big data, volume, velocity, variety, and veracity, all need to be addressed in order to work with that. And I think in that there's a mid-2010s and towards 2020 as a company, and I think as an industry, we've done a pretty good job of addressing that big data to wave.

24:54However, where we are right now, we've almost reset the clock and that evolution into AI, into much more predictive, prescriptive and generative capabilities and the amount of data, as you referred to earlier, that's being created. You know, we've got a lot of work to do once again, particularly around the variety and the veracity of data for use cases moving forward. So how do you think the recent explosion of generative AI and the buzz around that? I'm sure you've obviously already made evolutions to your product set off the back of large language models and the impact of large language models on businesses.

25:32What does the next five years look like for Qlik from a product development standpoint, James? So, you know, as I said, we've built out our capabilities into the cloud. We've developed an end-to-end solution that can acquire data from any source, move that, transform it, provide trust and veracity around that, deliver that to any target, whether that's for operational or analytical use cases, and then provide a product portfolio that gives all forms of analysis on top of that, including some of the recent announcements we made around unstructured data and being able to ask questions of unstructured data alongside your structured data.

26:10in a conversational format. But then thinking about how that evolves in the world of automation and pushing those insights into action, into downstream applications is all part of the vision that we've built out. I think as we move forward, we're now at a crossroads when it comes to AI. I think we've seen a huge amount of experimentation over the course of the last 12 to 18 months. I think we've seen a lot of top-down directives around we should be using AI, so let's go find a reason to use it. And I actually think we're making big investments in the market as a whole around acquiring infrastructure and acquiring compute capabilities.