Sounds like Teadata is making waves. Thanks for the info!
@PredictableChaos: Teradata competes with IBM, H-P, EMC and Oracle. Teradata has one of the broadest data warehousing product portfolios. Its solutions are said to offer superior performance capabilties and are more reliable/stable when it comes to very large data sets.
Re: Removing the Middle Man
Street Smart
5/22/2012 5:09:33 PM
@PredictableChaos, I think your criticisms of the "eliminate the middleman" paradigm are well-founded. In fact, I don't want to be in the position of defending the strategy across the board because I think there is LOTS of room for good old-fashioned, value added customer service and handholding.
It may come to pass that only the "middle of the road middlemen" will be the ones eliminated, meaning only those who don't have a compelling reason to be there or who don't provide any compelling value added.
But it does make one realize all of the barriers that have fallen in the last couple of decades, both because of the Internet and because of the B2C trend. Warehouse stores, the availability of just about anything to rent, Home Shopping Network, Ikea...the list goes on and on of companies that provide goods that were heretofore considered "wholesale" to consumers at cost-plus prices.
As margins get shaved, it's inevitable that there will become a niche for "full service at a slightly higher price." The players who lose in this scenario are entities such as Best Buy who become Amazon showrooms without any benefit to show for it.
@Street Smart,
Jeff Bezos will always talk about eliminating the middleman - that's his value proposition at Amazon and he runs a good company. But even though it's wonderful, I find I don't buy everything at Amazon.
In insurance, Geico is famous for "eliminating the middleman", yet other insurance companies are competitive with large networks of agents. And Geico itself introduced a smaller number of agents and local offices some years back.
In automotive, there have been a number of efforts to improve the process by moving sales online. E-Bay, for example. Most have not met the lofty expectations they set for themselves. CarMax and AutoNation ended up looking quite a bit like traditional auto dealerships. AutoTrader.com seems to be making some real inroads, IMHO; but the changes in the this industry too, have been more sizzle than steak.
Bringing it back to Teradata (TDC), I agree their data analysis and support of their customers is critical. In fact, I view it as so critical that I would expect retail chains to own this function rather than outsource it.
PC
Re: Removing the Middle Man
Street Smart
5/22/2012 7:43:30 AM
@PredictableChaos, I first heard the "middlemen create dinosaur businesses" from Seth Godin, but I read an interview with Jeff Bezos the other day and he mentioned it, too.
The idea is that any business that could provide its product or service direct to consumer via the web, warehouses, etc. but chooses the "gatekeeper" model is vulnerable. For example, insurance is a big one--theoretically no need for an agency when the web could sell insurance directly. Another example would be car sales, where there are different prices for different people and NO transparency as to the "real" cost of the item. Darn, I know everyone will miss car salesmen!
It's not a big industry, but interior decoration is another one. All the "to the trade" access and designers building their fees into shady antique pricing is bound to go the way of the brontosaurus one day very soon.
Interesting to me is the fact that Apple has gone the other way. They build in the personal link as part of their product cost rather than trying to minimize it. In fact, if you had the choice to buy your iPad at Best Buy or from your cellular carrier, why would you do it at the same price?
Hope this gets us ALL at IU thinking of industries where we can storm the gates and prosper by doing so!
Best,
Street Smart
@Street Smart,
What are some examples of businesses with middlemen that will be dinosaurs?
@Robert,
Who are Teradata's competitors and how is TDC better? Sales data is a necessity for any brick-and-mortar that wants to compete with online. I would think that the larger retailers would be doing this in-house.
I've been seeing a line of thought a lot recently that says that businesses with middlemen will be the ones ripe for transformation in the months and years ahead. In this global, connected world middlemen and the industries that have them are dinosaurs. That philosophy seems to be right up Teradata's alley and I think it's poised for great things.
Re: marketing analysis
Phoenix
5/18/2012 12:30:06 PM
The stock has a lot of potential from what you've mentioned here. Higher than expected revenue growth predictions show that they are likely to continue to grow and are on an upward trend. With the current demand for datawarehouseing it's likely this market will continue this way.
Re: marketing analysis
ProfR
5/18/2012 7:28:16 AM
Yes, there has been a lot of discussions recently with business execs that say they are sometimes frozen in their decision making by the large amounts of data they see. So having a good way to store, better analyze and gain insights into the data is key.
Teradata is definitely involved in social networking data analytics. And the stock got a little cheaper today (-2.2%) thanks to the continuing sell-off in the tech sector.
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