Kelly Wright - Tableau Conference 2014 - theCUBE
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2014-09-10

Kelly Wright, Tableau Software, at Tableau Conference 2014 with John Furrier and Jeff Kelly

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Building around the same customer focused culture and sales strategy from the beginning, Tableau Software, Inc. focuses on taking on the local and international market. The company’s efforts revolve around enabling people to better see and understand data, explains Kelly Wright, EVP of Sales at Tableau, in a live interview with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante at the Tableau Conference 2014.

As the first sales person to work at Tableau, Wright has the longview on the company’s maturation. “I’ve seen how things have changed and evolved. We have a lot more people and customers,” Wright said, yet “the culture was really sound from the beginning.”

The company was built by people who were very passionate about the mission, which was “people had to see and understand data. It is still our mission.”

A widening target
 

Wright considers Tableau to still be the disruptor in the business intelligence (BI) market, but has quite a huge target to pursue. “Now we’re a public company, but we’re still barely, barely scratching the surface.” Although there are “50 million” companies out there, Tableau has 20,000 customers, “we have a long way to go,” said Wright.

Commenting on the challenges of working in a startup, Wright said that “when you’re in this company building mode, you put your head down and you go. It’s always about going out and finding the next customers,” getting the customers excited about your customer. Tableau’s strategy is “treating each customer like they are gold.” She said she did not remember a particularly challenging moment because “it was an uphill battle all the time, we’re still kind of the underdog.”

Wright did pinpoint the moment of absolute triumph in Tableau history to be the company going public at the New York Stock Exchange in May 2013, surrounded by about 100 employees who had attended the ceremony. “That was the moment of a lot of pride,” she added.

Discussing specifically on the sales strategy and how it evolved, Wright said “our model is really quite simple – we help people to see and understand data.” Tableau helps people to answer their own questions and empower them with agility and self-service. “As we add more products, it’s really extending the number of people we can help. In terms of how our sales strategy is working, it’s the same that it’s always been.”

Evolving with customers
 

Asked if the profile of the buyer has changed, Wright explained that ten years ago “we were interacting with the business end users.” Right now they are talking with both end users, and the IT, C-suite side. “There is a cultural shift going on right now, companies are starting to realize that the way of the past is very different than the way of the future,” said Wright.

In the past, the user who had a question had no idea how to operate the systems that provided the answers. Today, with massive amounts of data coming so fast, the traditional analysis model would take too long, and companies need to empower their users.

International sights
 

Furrier asked how Tableau is taking advantage of international opportunities and whether they plan to use their channel to expand. Wright said the company is currently putting a lot of time and resources into expanding its international market. Tableau has offices in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific regions, with new locations in Japan, Germany and Latin America, and plans for Australia next.

“We’ll be building direct sales forces in all of those  region. As we do more international, the channel is getting more important,” Wright said, explaining that in the EMEA region and Latin America, the channel is the way of doing business.

“Tableau is agnostic, anyone can do it.” When they set up shop into a new country ,  the choices are to “go with our direct team, or empowering our channel. Our partners are the ones who are the local feet on the street,” providing the local support in the local language. “When we open an office, we try to be very aligned. In Japan for example, Tableau has the website in Japanese and has the product localized. Partner support helps achieve that goal.

Wright said that the company’s channel and customer focus is clearly seen at the conference.  “I think you can see at this show today, if you go down to the partner expo hall, there are so many partners here, way more than we’ve ever had before.” She mentioned Hewlett-Packard, Co.’s Vertica, Alterix, Inc., Terradata Corp., and 100 customer speakers there sharing use cases  – hospitals using Tableau in the operating room, teachers in the classroom and corporate presentations, to name a few.