How to Obtain New Competitive Powers by Using AI to Tell You Who’s Who in Your Data
By Ton Dobbe of Value Inspiration, published May 20, 2019
This is our second guest blog on senzing.com.
Every week I interview entrepreneurs and experts from around the world to share their big idea about new forms of value creation and the potential we can unlock when technology augments the unique strengths of people to deliver remarkable impact.
Breaking Artificial Barriers of Access
I got inspired by the big idea behind Senzing; hence I invited CEO Jeff Jonas to my podcast. We explore the power behind entity resolution as the fuel to create the most advanced fraud detection, scoring, recommendation or intelligence systems. We also address the need to democratize this type of technology, so that it can be of benefit to anyone anywhere. And last but not least, we address what’s required to create solutions that people want to tell others about.
The Thing that Triggered Me Most from My Interview with Jeff
“If you can take 10 x out of the complexity of getting it going, then why not take 10 x out of the price?”
Why Did this Trigger Me? What’s the Bigger Value Here?
It’s the opportunity we have today to democratize capabilities that, up to now, have only been available to ‘the few’. Traditionally entity resolution has been led by heavy, people intensive, and highly expensive deployments. Consequently, it has only been adopted by the top end of the market. And this is what Senzing decided to challenge.
When I asked Jeff about the big idea, this is what he answered:
“I became particularly focused, well really obsessed, with this thing called entity resolution, which is technology that figures out when two people are the same. It’s a hard problem for folks, and when you can solve that well, you can solve all kinds of problems and create all kinds of competitive advantage. But if you look at these solutions, they primarily require experts to make them operate. They’re pretty darn expensive, the good stuff’s at least a million.
So, the big idea is to democratize that. Not just to help big elite organizations understand who-is-who in their data, but also the small non-profit who just got duplicates in their Christmas mailing list. So, we challenged simplicity as well as the cost, and that opens the door to democratize the market.”
What’s the More Significant Question/Opportunity that Raises?
It’s the question – ‘Is it the solution category or the mind-set of technology providers that determines if solutions are easy or hard to obtain by its target market?’
When I asked Jeff about this, he positively surprised me:
“Our mantra is: It has to be easy to consume. And that means like dissolving under your tongue. So, when we came fully out of stealth in June of last year, we opened up the pipes and let the world just download it. It’s very safe for somebody to just give it a go and kick the tires. So, you can download the software for free without even telling us your email address. You just try it on your own data and then call or email us if it’s not as easy as we say. What we see, really 80% of the people that try it tell us it works out of the box, without a single tweak.”
With this, Senzing proves that it’s all about mindset. Any vendor can make complex solutions easy to dissolve. Simply make it a design principle to remove the friction. If you want to create momentum, the easier you make it for customers to move, the more that will work in your advantage. It’s a win-win for everybody.
Listen to the big idea behind Senzing, and why it has the potential to democratize the entity resolution market forever, thereby introducing new sources of competitive advantage in the hands of the masses.