Thor Olof Philogène, CEO of Stravito, shares his mission to empower EVERYONE in your company with actionable knowledge.
Thor Olof Philogène, CEO and Co-founder of Stravito’s journey, began at Swedish fintech Zettle, where he, alongside his co-founder, who is now Chief of Staff Sarah Lee, witnessed the frustrating disconnect between vast data and actionable customer insights.
This experience sparked their mission: democratizing access to customer knowledge and empowering every member – regardless of location or role – to leverage research and data effectively. But Stravito’s vision goes beyond mere accessibility. In this interview, he reveals how they’re transforming how companies harness their knowledge to drive intelligent decisions, unlocking true competitive advantage.
Join us as we delve into Thor’s entrepreneurial journey and discover the groundbreaking solutions powering Stravito’s mission.
Excerpts from the interview;
How does data abundance impact business decisions, and how is Stravito navigating this change?
The rising accessibility of data has fundamentally reshaped the view of the business decision-making landscape. With abundant data at our fingertips, businesses are increasingly adopting a mindset where data-driven insights are not just a preference or ideal but a strategic necessity.
But the value in data comes only from its usage, and it’s common for companies to have enormous amounts of market data and market research that sit unused due to natural inefficiencies across global offices, dispersed teams, and less-than-optimal IT systems. That’s where Stravito comes in. We’re solving this problem by creating an internal “Google for businesses”, a repository that helps the world’s largest enterprises create one central hub for all their research, insights, and analytics data, making it available and easily accessible for everyone in the organization.
Stravito democratizes access to market data and research to ensure that it is not only accessible but also alive and in use across all parts of the organization. Ultimately, the ability to access data and insights for everyone in the organization results in more informed decision-making, product innovation, and opportunities identified, thus increasing revenue and profitability.
How does Stravito help organizations unlock data’s potential despite common challenges?
Large organizations commonly face challenges such as accessing and sharing information and data, managing information across different systems and siloed groups, and capturing knowledge from individual employees and centralizing it so it can be used by others who need it. Stravito addresses these challenges by providing an easy-to-use knowledge management platform that helps organizations centralize their internal and external data, access and share information effectively, and empower all employees with the information they need to be productive and make better, insights-backed decisions.
What are the benefits and risks of incorporating AI into knowledge management systems?
The primary benefits of incorporating AI into knowledge management systems center around enhanced efficiency, productivity, and creativity for users by removing a large part of the manual work and making it easier for users to discover new information through a simplified, conversational interface made possible by generative AI technologies.
On the flip side, the risks of incorporating AI into systems are multi-dimensional: Enterprises need to ensure they only work with trusted vendors for their AI solutions and that the data they use in AI-enabled systems is handled securely and compliant. Of course, there is also the risk of hallucinations from generative AI, which has received much media attention over the past year.
At Stravito, we only use a customer’s proprietary data to generate AI-enabled answers – unlike open AI apps that pull from the public domain. We also only work with trusted partners and have built technical safeguards into our technology that minimize the amount of data sent in each instance a request is put into our AI products. Furthermore, we have ensured that no models are trained on customer data. All with the intent and purpose of maintaining the integrity and security of our customers’ data.
Can you tell me more about Stravito’s approach to data handling and organization for large datasets?
The Stravito platform has a robust and secure technical architecture built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), optimized for efficiently handling and organizing large volumes of data. At its heart, the platform integrates multiple solutions and databases for high-performance data management and scalability alongside industry-leading platforms for secure and scalable object storage.
Can you elaborate on any notable success stories where Stravito seamlessly integrated with diverse enterprise systems?
As an enterprise-focused technology vendor, Stravito prides itself on maintaining the highest standards for security and privacy and the seamless integration of our platform into each customer’s unique technology stack.
Stravito integrates with many commonly used enterprise technology tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, Google Drive, Slack, and MS Teams, as well as data and research tools like PowerBi, Tableau, Mintel, Euromonitor, and many more.
While all customer setups are unique to suit their particular business, one great case study is that of Reckitt, who had 5,500 digital folders that all needed to be connected via Stravito. Today, employees at Reckitt have a single point of entry for all their insights, no matter where they are located. Another great example of a customer success story is Heineken, who uses Stravito as the core of Heineken’s insights ecosystem.
As the volume of data grows, how does Stravito ensure scalability and maintain optimal performance for its users?
Stravito is built for the world’s largest enterprises and their needs for secure storage of sensitive company information. As the volume of data in Stravito increases, we ensure scalability and maintain optimal performance by using specialized web services that support seamless scaling of database operations, adeptly handling growing data without compromising performance.
The scalability of our technologies for storage plays a crucial role, enabling us to manage large data volumes efficiently and ensuring data is available and accessible without delay. Moreover, our ongoing monitoring and optimization strategies ensure that performance is continually assessed and enhanced.
By leveraging industry-leading advanced analytics and performance monitoring tools, we proactively identify and address potential bottlenecks, ensuring our platform remains agile and responsive as data demands grow.
