Our recent investment in Peak

As the world digitizes around us, the data that is generated as the digital "exhaust" of our daily lives continues to multiply. This year alone, the world will record about 60 zettabytes of data!^[1] To put that number in perspective, a zettabyte is 1021 bytes, or one TRILLION GIGBYTES! And, not only is that number huge, but it is growing fast. The 60 zettabytes created in 2020 is 50 times what was created in 2010 and almost 500 times what was created in 2005!^[2] There are no signs of a slow-down either - in fact, it is expected to grow by ~25% in each of the next several years, meaning volume will double again in 3-years.^[1]

Much of this data is in the hands of the brands and service providers we work with - both in our consumer and professional lives. If leveraged properly, this data can offer tremendous value to those organizations. For example, Verizon and their partner Tableau tout an incredible 50% reduction in customer service analysis time,^[3] from using custom analytics dashboards. Moreover, Verizon was able to reduce call volume by 43% leveraging a set of rules derived by their Analytics Center of Excellence team.^[3]

However, just because you can collect data, it doesn’t mean that it is easily accessible (often it is stuck in silos, across SaaS platforms, on-prem applications, and internal servers). Even if made more accessible through a data lake or warehouse, it doesn’t mean that you can easily use it to make smart decisions and it certainly doesn't mean that you can leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate decisions – you need a platform (team or system or both) with the wherewithal to do that! In the example above, Verizon - currently ranked #20 in the Fortune 500 - leaned heavily on a team of 80+ in their Analytics Center of Excellence to run their business intelligence platform, and to generate data-driven rules to automate routing of customer calls.^[3] Few companies beyond the world’s largest have the resources for a team like this, and even if they did, there is a global shortage^[4] for the talent^[5] that can fill these teams.

Peak helps its customers address these challenges, to unlock the potential of data through their Decision Intelligence platform. Their full-stack "AI system" is a centralized system of intelligence that breaks-down organizational data silos and leverages AI to improve and automate decision making across a business. Their AI-templates offer AI-functionality "out-of-the-box" but with configurability to build higher value, more complex workflows. Basically, Peak helps organizations to scale analytics that help human decision making, and implement AI that automates intelligent decision making, through an enterprise-grade software platform and not just with more data scientists at keyboards.

Global organizations such as Pepsico and KFC have selected Peak to help them improve decision intelligence, as have many mid-market organizations. As data continues to proliferate, and Peak continues to build their platform and their AI temples, Peak can have ever greater opportunity to help their customers make better decisions and automate customer engagements. We're incredibly excited to partner with the team at Peak, particularly as they look to further expand in the US, and broaden their footprint globally.

[1] IDC's Global DataSphere Forecast Shows Continued Steady Growth in the Creation and Consumption of Data via businesswire.com

[2] The 2011 IDC Digital Universe via delltechnologies.com

[3] Verizon uses Tableau to reduce support calls by 43%, enhancing customer experience via tableau.com

[4] The data scientist shortage in 2020 via quanthub.com

[5] Talent shortage of software developers via fullscale.io