Have a vision
Before you can grow your company, you have to first know what your company is trying to ultimately do.
“The first step that we took was to refocus the company with a very clear mission to establish Informatica as the dominant leader in data integration,” Abbasi says.
Based on his experience at Oracle, he knew you have to be a leader to succeed.
“[You have to be] focused on a single category where you are the leader; you are in a strong position to redefine that market,” he says.
Look at what your company does best.
“It starts by asking what is core to the company and what is beyond the core,” he says.
He applied that filter to every strategy the company was doing and considering.
Based on his previous experience, he saw that Oracle had been a leader in the early stage market for databases and, as a result of that, had enjoyed healthy growth. As it tried to expand beyond that, Oracle learned the complexities of going into other market categories.
“Applying that lesson meant that if Informatica refocused on its core market, it would be productive to focus on how we could expand the core market, so our decision was to refocus on the core market and try to challenge ourselves on how do we grow that market,” Abbasi says. “Specifically what we asked was, ‘In what ways are customers gaining value from Informatica, and how can we deliver more value?’”
By looking at research, he saw that Informatica’s technology was traditionally used to aggregate data from a variety of databases to get better information and analyze trends.
“It turns out that our customers need to integrate data for operational purposes, as well, and by moving beyond analytical warehousing to operational data integration, we were able to expand our market fivefold,” he says. “ … By refocusing on our core market, we were able to take advantage of our pioneering leadership, and we’ve been able to redefine Informatica’s market every year.”
