It may be continuing to make strategic acquisitions such as the recent purchase of Datum, but the CEO of Infogix says the firm’s recent rebrand will ensure it can tell a clear and cohesive story about it is trying to help organizations address their data management and governance challenges.
Based in Naperville and originally founded as Unitech Systems, Ill, Infogix has been in operation for four decades, offering software applications that help diverse areas of B2B firms such as sales, marketing and operations. Over the past 18 months, however, it has also grown substantially through a series of M&A deals, including its decision last month to buy metadata management firm Datnum for an undisclosed sum. Other acquisitions included Lavastorm and Data Clairvoyance Group.
In what it described as a “brand revitalization,” Infogix said it will unify its portfolio under the name Data3Sity, which will be positioned to customers as a holistic suite that can govern, manage and use data in a way they can trust.
“The historical brand wasn’t even something where I would call it a brand — there was basically a tagline and a logo that maybe made sense at the time,” Early Stephens, Infogix’s CEO, told B2B News Network. “If you visited our website before now and you spent an hour and asked what we do, you really couldn’t tell.”
The brand work simplifies much of that technical minutia into language that can better support its sales team, Stephens said, including a new logo, “The Power To Trust” tagline, along with new mission and vision statements, among other assets.
Stephens noted that Infogix has rebranded at a time when the kinds of organizations it serves are going through their own changes in terms of establishing the leadership and resources around data management. In more forward-looking firms, a chief data officer tends to become the primary stakeholder, he said, though in other cases buying decisions might roll up into operations or COOs.
“It’s almost kind of a joke — you’ll see firms that go, ‘Now I have to start a chief data officer position,’ but they’re given no budget, no staff and completely responsibility for data governance,” he said. “Organizations have to learn to prioritize this. “There’s a ton of use cases but the biggest one is that, in order to compete today, you have to reduce the cycle time to insight. Instead of six to 18 months, you need to make that cycle time really short.”
Another key driver, of course, is compliance. Stephens said Infogix is closely watching the impact of legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, as well as similar laws on the horizon in places like the State of California.
“It represents a big shift in the opportunity,” he said. “The fact is, you cannot comply with these regulations without a rich metadata strategy.”
The marketing around Data3Sixty will try to address both factors, Stephens said — the threat of fines that makes some firms prioritize their data management strategy, as well as those who simply want to survive industry disruption.
“If you don’t have a CDO specifically today, I do think it’s a matter of time. It’s a competition thing,” he said. “Before too long, a company like Amazon is going to require everyone to be really good at their data in virtually any market.”
Shane Schick
