Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 7)

Ulf Zetterberg: It’s almost like a knowledge management system because if these self-service systems are built the correct way, an intelligent user can leverage this as a knowledge platform and perhaps do advance queries. It becomes almost like a dialogue. There’s a big debate in the legal industry about the automated lawyer or the IT lawyer and how much of legal or lawyer can be replaced by machines. But you can probably replace lots of that in day-to-day work to speed that up. You can save the most sophisticated work for the best lawyers.

Sramana Mitra: I was talking to somebody form the manufacturing industry for our Thought Leaders in Big Data Series and this came up as well. A lot of manufacturing functions could become completely machine to machine, completely ruling out the role of the human being from the process. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This is actually a good segue to my final question. Where do you point entrepreneurs to look for opportunities for building new companies? I think we’ve already started that discussion. If you take the base layer of unstructured data and then on top of that, you look at the different application areas. You were saying to apply another filter to it, which is try to find things that you can sell to business users without having to deal with IT in the process, and focus on application areas that can take advantage of 20% of the high-impact data that is really going to drive the heuristics value. Can you give some concrete examples of business problems where these apply?

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mall for Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 1)

E-Commerce is blossoming all over the world. In this story, we take a close look at what is happening in Africa, especially Nigeria.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as Mall For Africa. Tell us about what you do and what’s happening in your world.

Chris Folayan: I’m the Founder and CEO of Mall for Africa. Mall for Africa is an online application both for PC and mobile that allows people in Africa to purchase items from US and UK sites. Most companies currently do not ship directly to any country in Africa, but Africa is a thriving continent and people there want to purchase items from the US and UK. Since many sites in the US and UK don’t do that, we’ve created a platform that, in essence, opens up  true global e-commerce to the people of Africa. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You say it’s broader than that. The unstructured data problem in the enterprise is a broader problem, but I believe it’s going to get solved in pieces just like the contract problem will be solved at the contract lifecycle management level. Then there are other types of unstructured data in the enterprise. There are huge amounts of social media information, which is all unstructured data that needs to be analyzed. It’s a whole different application. It’s going to be solved at the customer analytics level. All these are different applications of different heuristics. What you’re looking for in terms of managing and analyzing the unstructured data is very different.

Ulf Zetterberg: Absolutely. I didn’t mean that there’s going to be one universal tool. There’s a very large farm of data that the customer has very limited insight into today compared to the structured stack they have. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What does an enterprise account look like for you?

Ulf Zetterberg: Enterprise accounts are very distributed and fragmented. It could have two or three fairly old legacy data sources. It could be that the applications have been there for five to ten years. The usability and transparency is very poor. It’s a big project for them to try to find information and know how to extract the right information from each contract. One of the use cases that clearly puts this in the center is M&A. When you acquire a company and integrate that or you make a divestiture, it’s probably more troubling for many large companies, because now you need to know what contracts should go with that divestment. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I imagine it’s a fairly horizontal process. You basically work with all kinds of companies, right?

Ulf Zetterberg: Yes. There are certain industries though that particularly have more challenges and therefore see extra value with Seal. We also have an analytical module, which allows customers to do ad hoc queries and specific correlations of information. Financial Services is one of our largest verticals. Financial Services are hit by new regulatory requirements almost on a monthly basis. They can’t project what they need to capture on contracts on an on-going basis. Rather than burden their production systems, they use the metadata in those systems for what is needed to run the day-to-day business. When they need to rummage for regulatory questions or disputes, they use Seal to extract the information. Contracting per se is horizontal, but once you get into verticals, you can also have various industry-specific languages that you start to capture. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s put this in an ecosystem map. The contract management part of the business has quite a bit of activity. One that comes to mind is Aptus.

Ulf Zetterberg: They ride on the wave of Salesforce. Contracting has typically been driven by different departments. There hasn’t been any system for enterprise contract lifecycle management. Customers want to have one single system that they could use, but it never happens. Procurement tends to use its own system that is very much driven out of a supply or procurement system. You have contracting as a function there. Sales side usually is the back-end of the CRM system.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ulf Zetterberg, CEO of Seal Software (Part 1)

Unstructured Data Analysis coupled with Machine Learning is the most exciting area of business right now. In this interview, we discuss how Ulf and his team apply the process to Contract Analysis.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to you. Tell us a bit about your background as well as Seal Software.

Ulf Zetterberg: I am the co-founder of Seal Software. I’ve been spending most of my time around content management. I have a passion for transformation of data to information, so it becomes useful and valuable inside a business process. I’m a serial >>>