Friday, May 17, 2019
Interview with David Loo, CEO and Founder of Perspectium
For today's interview, we sat down and spoke with David Loo, the founder and CEO of Perspectium (www.perspectium.com), a startup which is developing service management applications designed to help connect different, enterprise service management software products together. Loo--who was the very first employee at ServiceNow--explains what that means, and why companies use the startup's software. Perspectium recently raised a funding round from TVC Capital.
What is Perspectium?
David Loo: We realized that the software-as-a-service application in the marketplace have matured in the last five to 10 years, and as more and more applications have become software-a-a-service based, that maturity has brought forth a problem in that the data and processes in those SaaS application need to be connected and integrated into the enterprise. We're in the space, and leading the thought process on what needs to be combined, for example, CRM with ITSM tools, to create meaningful results that you can act on at the C-level. The company is all about data solutions which combine meaningful application frameworks together.
How did you get into this?
David Loo: I was the founding developer at ServiceNow, developing software-as-a-service for ITSM, and right from the beginning have been involved in building applications for the purpose of IT service management. I have been in IT service management for over 30 years, at companies even before ServiceNow. Coming out of ServiceNow around 2013, I realized that a lot of problems that we had been discussing and dealing with with customers adopting applications like ServiceNow into the enterprise, was establishing connections of that data and processes with systems in the enterprise. I was a principal engineer facilitating the integration and connectivity of the ServiceNow platform into these other systems. Naturally, after leaving ServiceNow, I had the realization that ServiceNow was not the only software-as-a-service application provider having this problem. All of the big SaaS movement was causing this problem with business processes and data. That's how we started.
What specific problem were you seeing?
David Loo: Ultimately, at the C-level, the CIO requires data metrics and intelligence, in order to compete and make decisions and take actions to further a company's agenda. The CFO requires financial acumen driven from metrics, which can be had from sales and operational information, however, they're often locked into these silo'ed application stacks. The chief revenue officer must have up-to-date forecasts, up-to-date information on customer opportunities, a view of sales opportunities, and customer issues at their fingertips in order to run their sales organization properly.
So how far along is your software now, and have you rolled this out to customer yet?
We have a very well defined story and product solution line around service integration and data integration. We have two parallel tracks we have constructed for our product line, which incorporates automation, and we've launched those solutions to connected siloed applications together in the most meaningful way. A lot of the times our customers look at us and ask if we're a consulting company, and ask us if this is something you are building for us, and the answer is no, we understand the problem, we've seen it over and over at other customers and opportunities, and we've built a specific SaaS approach and application which connects systems you have in a way that you will benefit from, using best practices.All of our products are lined up in terms of that. The third part we're trying to help get into this is the service provider market. As you know, service providers like Accenture and Dimension Data and Fujitsu Systems and others service hundreds, if not thousands of customers, who are buying services from them to help them manage their IT systems, their hardware, and their software installations and asset management, and so forth. The problem is traditionally, there is a swivel chair problem, where when one customer has an issue they want to report to that service provider. They end up either calling or emailing, and someone literally takes that same content, and manually enters it into a trouble ticket in a system like ServiceNow. Imagine that times 5000, and that makes for a very busy helpdesk team. So what we do, is we have a very specific solution for service providers, which automates the integration of that service provider's customer service system, with the service provider's ITSM system, in a way that all that happens electronically. That way, a customer can keep on using whatever system they are using, and the service provider still has a central place they can automated their own service management.
You're received some funding lately?
David Loo: Yes, we recently landed our Series B, our second round of funding. That was about 18 months after our first round of funding. We've been able to go right in to execute on our corporate plan, and are very excited about this next raise that we've done, and to be able to invest money to grow this company as much as we can.
What are the biggest challenges today for your company?
David Loo: In my mind, at this stage, it's the ability to have sales efficiency with enterprise customers. The challenge is this is a new category, or close to it, and what we do and sell to our customer has traditionally been something handled with consulting or a home-built solution. So, it's quite new. The challenge as we break into this market, is to make those enterprise customers realize this is a product solution that can be had, rather than something they have to spend bespoke project money on. They just don't realize that, because no one else has created a solution for this. So, the challenge has been having a conversation with big enterprise customers, at the right level, and to get the right teams involved. We're constantly challenged to reduce the sales cycle we have with these customers, and making sure we have the right level of customers we want to get to at this point in the company.
What's your biggest lesson you've learned as an entrepreneur?
David Loo: Keep going and be agile, and never give up. Essentially, everything that comes across your desk is an opportunity that should be looked at, and maybe, something new will be had from that. That's the way that I work, and this is my fourth startup.
Thanks!