Tough economic times have hit everywhere, and Josh James knows it.
Co-founder and chief executive officer of Orem-based Omniture Inc., James nonetheless on Wednesday asked companies to think twice before cutting their spending on technology — especially the kind that can bring in revenue.
"If you look at the economy, yeah, sure, it's not great and it's not good for any of us and it's not a fun time in that regard," James told a crowd of about 2,000 at the Omniture Summit at the Salt Palace. "But something I've been thinking about a lot lately is technology and evolution technology is no respecter of whether the economy is doing well or doing poorly.
"Now, I wish it was, because it's a lot easier to invest if a company's doing well. But evolution technology, it doesn't care. It doesn't care how the economy's doing. Change is going to come when it's ready to come, and it's happening right now, and we all know that and that's why we're all here. … It's an exciting time. We're either going to lead the change or we're going to watch that change happen to us."
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive and architect of WPP, a communications services company, said "it isn't fun" in describing the current economic environment, with tech budgets being targeted for cuts.
"Clients, a lot of whom are in the room with you at the moment, are under tremendous pressure and there is no way that we or you can complain about that," Sorrell said, speaking to the conference from New York. "It is a fact of life."
Sorrell said companies like his and Omniture "have to help our customers optimize their spend." Omniture helps its 5,100 customer companies worldwide optimize their online business by helping them better spend their online advertising dollars and help them get more money from people visiting their Web sites.
That's keeping the company busy. Last year, it had $309 million in revenues and tracks about 1 trillion online transactions per quarter, or about 250,000 per second.
"For each of you, you have millions or you have billions of transactions that are happening every single day, that are happening every single month, and every single one of those transactions is more information about how your customers are behaving. It's more opportunity to understand how you should be interacting with them," James said.
He equated customer data like oil. Both build pressure unless used, he said. Oil can be pulled from the ground to fly airplanes, drive cars and heat homes. Data can be used to create personalized experiences for online users, he said. Users can get a different front page or other customization.
That personalization will improve their overall experience, make them happier and "have them spend more money, read more articles, read your frequently asked question section more, do more support online — whatever it is you're trying to get them to do," James said. "They're going to do more if you give them a personalized experience."
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