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You seek mussels. We find pearls. |
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| Interview with Guido Alt, CEO of |
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Question: Mr. Alt, you have secured a number of very attractive contracts in the last few months. How would you define caatoosee's unique selling proposition within today's marketplace?
Alt: caatoosee has established a tangible competitive advantage: the combination of innovative software for information qualification and our vast experience in solutions and integration. We can now offer our customers enterprise-wide solutions supporting end-to-end information processes, for structured and unstructured data sources alike.
Question: How does a company benefit if its employees discover pearls while looking for mussels?
Alt: Given high wage costs, what greater benefit can there be for a company than knowing that their employees can find the information they need faster and more efficiently? Todays managers have had to become masters of prioritizing weeding out information they dont need. Consider the daily bombardment of e-mails. You only have to look at the latest study conducted by Professor Moser, the results of which we present in our annual report. Our technology forwards e-mail queries straight to the employee responsible. It allows users to find qualified information in company archives quickly and effectively. Lamentations such as "If only we knew what we know" are a thing of the past.
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Question: Surely thats not the end of the story?
Alt: Well, there is the issue of customer retention. Take online shops, for instance. In spring 2002, we conducted a survey of 250 e-tailers. More than 200 of them returned no matches found when the search query contained errors simple spelling mistakes. Where is the service in that? Users wont try again theyll go to the competition. Every "no match" translates into "revenue lost". Online shops that deploy our technology can suggest similar items to users if they make mistakes in their search query, delivering a list that the user can choose from. We know from our customers that they have been able to significantly reduce the number of customers switching to the competition.
Question: What other options do you envisage for deploying your technology in businesses?
Alt: There is the challenge of managing customer data in an ERP system. As a rule, such systems are teeming with duplicate customer records. Sometimes a customer is stored as Guido Alt, sometimes as G. Alt, and again as Gido Alt. Entering the same person several times over generates high processing and support costs. Our iq-technology weeds out and prevents duplicates. The opportunities presented by this solution have also been recognized by SAP, the world's leading supplier of ERP systems; that is why SAP has opted for our iq-server to support its customer relationship management.
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Question: This iq-technology is extremely user-friendly. But does it make economic sense to businesses?
Alt: Of course, the return on investment will vary from company to company. But fast and efficient information processes allow a company to gain momentum. In some cases, that can be the key to a companys competitiveness. In other cases, the ROI is determined by the virtually unlimited scalability and the modular design of the software. Used in online shops, information qualification improves user-friendliness which directly impacts on contribution margins. And Ive already discussed duplicates in ERP systems. In a nutshell: when our technology is deployed, the ROI becomes very palpable indeed - immediately, not just in five years' time.
Question: Finally, a question about the future. Where do you see caatoosee in 2005?
Alt: This is a question I am asked frequently. But it is very difficult to give you a precise answer. However, we believe that the market will witness a boom in the coming years. A recent study published by Gartner would seem to confirm our forecast. According to this study, the majority of companies believe that the growing information overload could adversely affect their competitiveness in the near future. This opens up an enormous market a ringing endorsement of the course we have elected to take. While in the Internets first phase of development the emphasis was on quantifying information, the focus in the second phase is on qualifying it. And that is where our iq-technology will play a key role.
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