Sounds like Q1 earnings was a rollercoaster of excuses and understated dissatisfaction ! What makes TDC weak in a strong market ? How to thrive again ?
That’s the question. Calm and clear answers awaited.
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Agree 1000% on the Lifers. I know because I used to be one of them (> 25 years). Fortunately I got out. Thing is, the lifers have no where to go, and are scared to go elsewhere.
Americas started - 40m in Q1 due to the apple erosion. Customers are leaving in droves because put simply they want innovative products.
We've been run into the ground by successive failures in the ELT ranks who don't display any leadership.
Best hope is for a PE buyout at pennies in the dollar.
I left Teradata and now work for a company that uses Databricks and Snowflake.
Put quite simply Databricks and Snowflake just work. Also both companies have qualified technical resources embedded into in-house teams. They fix or address any issues that come up and demo new functionality whenever something makes sense.
Seeing how easy our competitors are to use compared to Teradata made Teradatas marketshare easily understandable.
Also internally at Teradata anyone pushing for change was ganged up on and eventually booted by lifers that are generally against change and supported by leadership.
The solution is simple.
Stop worrying about profitability and focus on growth.
Stop worrying about margin and focus on adoption.
Stop trying to create a product that solves everything. Create a product that works and can be sold based on real world use cases.
Open up travel so that the real people who understand the technology can meet customers and sell (not GTM).
Go back to incentivizing and recognizing people that go above and beyond their role and finally stop hiring people from Oracle and Microsoft. Stop this DEI madness.
Just maybe if they had actually promoted from within and had people in leadership roles that actually had knowledge of how Teradata could be successful it would be different. And sorry SM, promoting RP is not the same as "promoting from within"
But we did waste years denying the reality of the cloud, focused elsewhere for too long, and have an ELT that has no clue of the technology or value so tough to reverse the damage at this point.
Many "lifers" are not going to go to the competitor, and lots are in a position to not need a job after Teradata, so stay and help were they can and get the inevitable package during the soon to coming layoffs. Better than quitting and letting them off the hook
TDC missed the cloud technology turn (incredible but true). Subsequently, they have been in catch-up and denial of equal measures. They fell into the innovator's dilemma with Snowflake and watched them eat lunch. They placed too much importance on their legacy technology and did not listen to their customers. It was compounded by an out-of-touch BOD who installed a first-time public company CEO, CFO, CPO, CMO, and CSO, and each has a weak leadership team. From a shareholder perspective, there was a 50% y-o-y decline in stock price. They are not attractive to an acquirer, and a P/E firm would gut the place. To name a few, the company is systemically rotting from the head down.
Well a lot of the "Lifers" are not in positions to execute change. Many of us see the problems and work within our management chain to raise them but unfortunately they hit the brick wall of leadership flunkies that have no knowledge or experience but are there to protect the C level.
Part of the bigger problem on top of the years of poor leadership are the 31 year + lifers that circle around the lifer club and play the politics. Don't you find it funny that several in the company have always avoided Layoffs unlike the newer hired more diverse group of industry experienced people? How Do the JL NW JW CH CG RA and others continue to have positions with all this TDC experience and nothing has changed....no new sales strategy, terribile competitive offering, Zero value selling and demos that have more code than a wiring diagram? The "NEW" promoted Sales VP's still have no new prospect pipelines, call on the same contacts in SFDC and do nothing to drive a GTM strategy with marketing or the customer's business teams. So its imcompetence and paycheck politics all around!!!
Look at it from the customer side. Would you stake your CIO job by recommending Teradata?
Asking about a turnaround for TD is like asking about a turnaround for Blockbuster in 2008. There isn't one. It's not that there is a better comparable product that has certain advantage. The whole concept/industry has changed. And convincing a customer to buy TD nowadays is like convincing someone to rent a VHS tape in 2010. I hope that's a good analogy. And like Blockbuster there is a chance to salvage pieces, like existing contracts, real estate, some IP and patents,...