Jared Lees of Domo on Making Smarter Decisions with Data Analytics

Who is Jared Lees

Jared Lees is the VP of Product and Solution Marketing at Domo, where his strategies help customers realize the transformative potential of Domo’s data experience platform. With expertise in digital CX, Jared enhances customer experiences, boosts sales, and fuels multi-billion-dollar growth, all while championing success and development.

Data-driven decision-making has become more important than ever. Businesses across industries are recognizing the transformative power of data analytics in modernizing their operations and gaining a competitive edge.

In this interview with Jared Lees of Domo, a cloud-native data experience platform, we delve into the role of data analytics in today's business landscape and understand how companies leverage data to drive tangible results.

As AI continues to play a crucial role in data analytics, Lees also highlights Domo's ambitions for incorporating AI into their platform and how it will further empower businesses in their data-driven journey.

Spotlight: Can you talk about the role of data analytics in modern business operations and how it has transformed industries?

Using analytics to be data-driven is essential for modern businesses to remain competitive because it enables them to make smarter and faster decisions. We see customers completely transform their businesses every day by infusing data into their decision-making process and making it more accessible and actionable to everyone in their organizations.

By taking the guesswork out of the real-time decision-making that every role requires, we’ve seen companies accomplish incredible things - from reducing costs and driving incremental revenue to elevating customer experiences and improving employee safety. All of this creates a data-driven culture that enables the business to generate more insight and faster, smarter decisions, resulting in more success. 

Within the marketing organization at Domo, we regularly analyze customer data and marketing performance to improve our impact, which leads to developing more effective marketing campaigns, optimizing featured inventory and enhancing the overall customer experience. We see the impact of these benefits across industries – spanning media, retail, manufacturing, consumer goods and more. 

Ultimately, leveraging customer data to develop more targeted and personalized marketing strategies drives revenue growth, more efficient marketing spending, improving customer loyalty and enhancing brand reputation in today's data-driven marketplace.

How have companies leveraged data analytics to gain a competitive advantage in their respective markets?

We regularly see companies improve their competitive position as their data investments allow them to have a more holistic and objective understanding of what is happening across their business and the potential impacts of their decisions.

For example, we work with one of the world’s most popular sports media companies that now use analytics tools to pull in TV ratings, website traffic and social media analytics in real-time. Customer satisfaction drives subscription renewals and cancellations, so acting on those insights is tied directly to revenue.

Insights that used to take weeks or even months to get are now available within moments, making our customers much more competitive when so many other streaming options are vying for consumer attention. Media companies like this are also now using data platforms to collaborate with partners and share insights with employees to improve marketing performance. 

Another example is the fast-casual restaurant industry. One popular chain that used to gather data manually across locations is now using analytics platforms to customize dashboards that monitor its performance, track inventory, analyze customer feedback, and improve its menu and services in real-time.

At each store, customers can scan a QR code to leave feedback on delivery speed, food quality and more. This data is automatically collected, making it simple for store managers to see moment-by-moment feedback for their individual stores while enabling corporate leaders to understand customer sentiment as a whole.  

Many businesses struggle with managing and analyzing data from various sources. How does a comprehensive data management platform like Domo help companies streamline their data processes and make better-informed decisions?

Domo provides a centralized data management platform for businesses to collect, integrate and analyze data from thousands of sources. For marketers, it’s simple to pull data from paid media, email, advertising, CRM systems, sales data and more. By consolidating this into a single platform, businesses can gain a more holistic view of the customer journey and make more informed decisions about campaigns based on real-time insights.

The benefits aren’t limited to consolidation, and companies can leverage a range of features with the right data platform. For example:

• Domo’s AI-powered insights and recommendations help businesses uncover insights they may have missed and be alerted of opportunities for improvement. 
• Domo’s embedded analytics solution, Domo Everywhere, enables businesses to embed Domo's analytics capabilities into their own applications, websites and products, as well as their customers and partners – extending the access and use of data analytics to more individuals while maintaining security and compliance.
• With features like predictive analytics and anomaly detection, businesses can proactively identify issues and opportunities, improving their decision-making and driving better outcomes. 
• Visualization and analysis tools enable businesses to easily combine and interpret their data using drag-and-drop data visualization and automatic data mapping. 
• Businesses can quickly identify trends and patterns to make data-driven decisions in real time. 
• Domo, in particular, also provides collaboration tools that enable teams across the business to work together and share insights. With features like data sharing and alerts, businesses can ensure that everyone is on the same page and that important insights are acted upon quickly.

Domo even has a marketing suite that provides additional features to enable businesses to optimize their marketing campaigns, improve customer engagement and increase ROI. By providing a centralized platform for data collection, analysis and collaboration, Domo can help businesses improve their efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately, drive growth.

Can you share some examples of how Domo's platform has helped businesses improve their data analytics and drive tangible results?

Domo’s platform breaks down data silos and puts actionable data in the hands of everyone within an organization. With Domo, companies can easily leverage their data and deliver actionable insights in real-time. Below are a few examples that show the way data can be leveraged across industries:

• One of the largest American auto parts retailers used Domo to enable their district managers with access to store performance metrics. By using one of Domo’s low-code, purpose-built applications, managers can access their data with a “live” review and feedback loop that helps the team receive and act on data in real-time.
  
  • This app eliminates dozens of spreadsheets and hours required to bring together, analyze and act on data by putting it into a consumer-like application. It uses the intelligence in the Domo platform to personalize and drive the right actions at the store level to improve each store’s performance. 
• When a regional supermarket company used a Domo Data App to move the database for 4,000 of its top-selling products to the fingertips of its inventory managers and suppliers, out-of-stock problems plunged by 60% – even during the height of the pandemic.
• One regional credit union uses the power of Domo to provide customized offerings, improve loan performance and board reporting. Before Domo, the credit union’s multiple data sources made it nearly impossible to keep up with its customers’ needs.
  
  • By bringing all of its data together with Domo, the credit union was able to create a single source of truth that helps produce insights at speed and scale. It can now process about $4 million in loans per loan officer per month, up from the $400,000 a month per loan officer before Domo. They went from 12 lenders down to four, and yet almost immediately tripled their lending production on a monthly basis. Domo has also helped the credit union increase sales by 30%, growing from $100 million to $340 million. 

Domo is a leading player in the data analytics space. Why is it important to have a cloud-native data experience platform like yours?

A cloud-native solution like Domo is crucial to unlocking the value of data within an organization. With the amount of data that powers organizations today, being cloud-native enables more seamless ways to connect, integrate, transform, and create applications that empower teams to make impactful business decisions.

Additionally, without a cloud-native solution, maintaining data governance and deploying AI and ML models and business apps becomes exponentially more difficult to achieve. According to recent reports, 92% of organizations currently use a multi-cloud strategy, and 80% use a hybrid cloud strategy. 

Domo is one of the only vendor-agnostic solutions in the market today, so no matter what cloud providers companies use or if data resides on-premise, Domo provides total freedom to determine which data you want to bring into your environment.

The Domo platform comes complete with more than 1,000 pre-built connectors to simplify data integration, ensuring the data needed to drive action is accessible and usable. And the Domo Cloud Amplifier solution enables the ability to query data at rest across clouds.

Domo’s platform includes key data prep, security and governance tools, as well as data science and machine learning tools – all of which are foundational for organizations to quickly build apps to automate processes that provide better data experiences for everyone in the organization. 

DOMO has an extensive list of big-name clients, including industry leaders like eBay, NBA and Unilever. Can you highlight some of the notable success stories of how your company has helped its clients unlock the value of their data and achieve measurable outcomes?

Domo is constantly helping customers achieve outcomes by uncovering ways to activate data they never thought possible before. Here are a couple of recent examples that have really stood out. 

When one of the largest multinational consumer goods corporations launched an initiative to help the American people during the COVID-19 pandemic, they turned to Domo to help accurately track the campaign impact and coordinate key resources, including volunteers and products.

Using Domo Everywhere, a feature that allows users to securely share custom and interactive dashboards with individuals outside of the organization, the company was able to generate multiple live data insights across the campaign website, allowing leaders to coordinate efforts better. The collaboration enabled by Domo led to more than $25 million in goods and services donated to communities hit by COVID-19.  

Viewership metrics are crucial for sports leagues to determine the schedule for upcoming seasons. We have worked with some of the largest leagues and sports associations in the world. One comes to mind that it was able to transform its previously manual computation process for its estimated viewership to an automated pipeline of data that uses a wider set of variables to produce assessments of estimated viewers instantly.

With a new automated pipeline, the association was able to increase the speed and agility of its data to determine the impact of crucial factors like broadcast networks, players on the court, winning streaks, etc. While the association’s partnership with Domo has improved the viewership estimation process, it ultimately has helped the entire organization improve its decision-making.  

The concept of "data democratization" has gained traction in recent years, advocating for making data accessible to all employees within an organization. How does Domo's platform empower organizations to foster a data-driven culture and enable data democratization across the enterprise?

Domo makes it exceptionally easy for companies to manage, access, share, and activate data while maintaining the governance and oversight that technical teams require.

With reliable data at their fingertips - literally as convenient as their mobile phones - people in every role can make better decisions and take actions to improve business outcomes. It lets companies nurture a culture of curiosity that empowers employees and increases the value of their data assets. 

In fact, research from our recent Sleepworking: How Employee Disengagement Is Hurting Your Business Reportfound that a lack of access to company data and modern technology hinders many workers’ ability to meaningfully contribute to business results - a challenge that translates to $6.5B in lost productivity for U.S businesses each week.

In other words, companies have a lot to gain by extending the benefits of data beyond the chosen few who have the skills to access and interpret the data, and Domo lets them do that quickly, effectively and efficiently.  

Can you discuss some of the unique features and capabilities of the platform that set it apart from other data analytics solutions in the market?

Domo is known for being intuitive and easy to use. It lets customers rapidly develop and deploy data-driven solutions, as the only self-service data experience platform that offers industry tools built on a fully integrated, cloud-native, mobile-first platform. We’re on a mission to bring the benefits of data-driven decisions and actions to those who are traditionally underserved by BI and analytics.

To make our mission a reality, Domo classifies our features as low-code, mid-code and pro-code, so users can easily distinguish which offerings would best match their skill set. From data consumers with minimal or no coding skills to experienced developers, our platform offers an array of features for integrating, analyzing, and taking action on data. 

1. With data privacy and security becoming increasingly important, how does Domo ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data for its customers, especially when dealing with sensitive and confidential information?

Domo is committed to the security and confidentiality of our customers' data. It meets the enterprise security, compliance, and privacy requirements of global organizations, even those based in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, healthcare, life sciences, government, energy, technology and more. 

To ensure the data in Domo’s platform is protected, we set up the Domo Trust Program that has safeguards to fully fortify our customers with enterprise-grade data protection that scales. Among the safeguards included in this program are a Security Council, comprising a cross-functional team of senior technology and business leaders, and built-in security, compliance and privacy controls that are continuously being reviewed and revised to meet the highest industry standards. 

Last year, Domo’s platform earned Certified status for information security by HITRUST, a certification that verifies Domo meets critical regulations and industry-defined requirements, and is appropriately managing risk for its customers. We’re proud to be part of this elite group of global companies who have been recognized by this program for their premier level of data protection and information security.

Domo has a strong presence in various industries, such as retail, finance and healthcare. How has your platform been tailored to meet the specific data analytics needs of these industries and deliver value to their businesses?

From the start, the vision was to build a data experience platform that empowers people to be multipliers of business impact. To thrive in the future, data needs to be more accessible and in the hands of everyone, no matter their experience. The Domo platform provides the foundation and tools for bringing data experiences to life.

Domo is a cloud-native data experience platform that goes beyond traditional business intelligence and analytics to make data visible and actionable for all employees–from the frontline worker to the CEO. With user-friendly dashboards and apps that go from easy self-service to custom pro-code options, Domo delivers intuitive experiences underpinned by data science and a secure data foundation.

Looking ahead, what exciting developments or future plans can we expect from Domo regarding product enhancements, partnerships, or expansions into new markets?

Domo has big ambitions for the future of AI - which is truly powered by the data connected to it. We happen to have the most end-to-end connected data stack in the world, opening up numerous possibilities with workflows, alert-based actions and automated apps.

We recently launched our AI Service Layer, which simplifies the inherent complexities of the AI ecosystem – for technical and business teams alike - so businesses can leverage it in the real-world data experiences their employees have every day. We will have a lot more to come as we explore even more possibilities for AI in our platform. There are some other advancements we have our eye on as well. 

According to Ventana Research, by 2025, over two-thirds of organizations will operate across multiple public cloud computing environments, necessitating the requirement for a unified data platform to virtualize access for business continuity. Domo is ideally suited to fill that need, and we will continue to provide easily integrated enhancements that work with customers’ existing platforms. 

Cloud Amplifier, Domo’s newest product announced at our recent virtual conference, Domopalooza, does just that. With Cloud Amplifier, customers can make the most of their existing data and reporting investments by connecting more data, unifying data governance, and making real-time, actionable data and insights available to multiply business impact.

Highlights include:

• Snowflake: read and write access, now Generally Available (GA)     
• Dremio: read-only, now GA
• Amazon Redshift: read-only, currently in Beta     
• Databricks: read-only, currently in Beta     
• Google Cloud’s BigQuery: read-only, currently in Beta;    
• A robust roadmap to expand these services     

These integrations help dissolve the boundaries of data silos, putting data to work from right where it lives.

Keep up with Domo on LinkedIn and read more interviews with industry leaders here!