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Using software technology to achieve return on innovation

David Rose is the president and one of the founding partners of Brio, a boutique software firm that helps companies attain a return on innovation. The firm leverages technology to ensure clients operate better, achieve greater profit, change faster, and reach their customers in more meaningful ways. Brio’s projects have ranged from UX design to IT assessments to content management, app development, e-commerce, strategic technology consulting, and much more.

EDWIN WARFIELD: How did Brio evolve from a website development company into the firm it is today?

DAVID ROSE: AI is obviously the big technology that everyone should get familiar with. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, has Einstein which is their AI checking numbers in executive meetings. It has apparently caught big errors in some of the number reporting from certain managers reporting to Benioff. In general, both AI and machine learning are changing and touching everything that we do, and there’s going to be this crazy change in technology over the next few years—maybe over the next five years—where every advancement in computers is no longer the responsibility of people. We’re getting to the point where some of these computers can actually start building new programs and finding better ways to do things. It’s pretty interesting to see some of that come to life.

In the Salesforce world, it’s easy to see how that can be applied to sales. Your CRM can tell you when to follow up with a client or what to talk about, or new leads that you should be talking to. I think it’s also interesting to see how that applies to some more traditional industries like marketing in general. AI can figure out what are the real best leads for you to go after and how to go after those leads. But really, it has applications in every industry—in healthcare, in the automotive industry—in a bunch of these different spaces.

Interestingly enough, that also plays into this concept of self-driving cars. As we’re involved in a legal space and we’re involved with a lot of personal injury attorneys, they’re very aware of how these new technology advances change the law. If you get involved in an accident and the car is driving, who is at fault? There’s this big shift now. People are starting to look at how personal injury cases may turn into product liability cases. That’s an interesting way that AI, machine learning, and these self-driving cars are changing the legal industry.

I think we will continue to grow in headcount and in revenue. I think we’ll continue to service these lines of business. I see Salesforce being 50% of the business in five years. We’re always in tune with the idea of exploring a product, the idea of growing by “if I want to double my business I have to double my headcount”—product companies don’t have that same problem. That’s always been an interesting thing rattling around in the back of my head. So, if there is an attractive product I think we could get into the product space a little bit.

Regardless, I think we will continue to grow. There’s still a huge need in this area for middle market firms to better leverage technology, and I think it is becoming more of a requirement to survive rather than a “nice-to-have.”

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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