April 11, 2024
3. [Keynote] - o9 Solutions - Sanjiv & Chakri
After a record-breaking year at o9, which saw its annual recurring revenue (ARR) increase by 47% and its valuation increase from $2.7 to $3.7B, o9 Co-Founders Chakri Gottemukkala and Sanjiv Sidhu reflect on the company’s most significant achievements in 2023.
Chiefly among them was a significant value milestone achieved with T-Mobile. "We had our first client who publicly stated one billion dollars of value realization from the o9 planning transformation," said Chakri, o9's CEO. "By accelerating the rollout, reducing inventory, improving productivity, and reducing the cost of goods, a billion dollars has been realized over a three-year timeframe."
Upon being asked what his most impactful lesson learned from the previous year was, at the top of his list was taking an iterative approach to overcoming data challenges. "Planning transformations require good data. So, you have to address the data challenges," he said. "And what works best—what has proven successful—is an iterative approach. You try certain things, you innovate, you learn, and you iterate."
He cited examples from o9 clients T-Mobile and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, companies that “embraced data as a challenge” and leveraged the o9 platform's flexibility to “capture missing data” rather than significantly delaying their implementations with protracted data-cleansing efforts. The latter approach his fellow co-founder, Sanjiv Sidhu, likened to “building your muscles before you go to the gym.”
Chakri also expressed his excitement around generative AI, sharing that the company is already seeing "game-changing results" from the pilots o9 is running with several clients. According to the CEO, GenAI will help planning leaders answer what he calls the 'three W's of management': what is happening, why is it happening, and what should I do about it?—activities that he says are still "80% tribal-knowledge driven."
"The ability to convert tribal knowledge into digital knowledge is what we believe to be the fundamental opportunity," he stated. Sanjiv echoed this sentiment, saying, "Companies that take advantage of [generative AI] will definitely get a huge competitive advantage."
