Gone are the days when we used to roam about with gigabytes worth of movies, songs, and shows; now, even a few terabytes feel like nothing. Not only have our personal lives moved online, but so have most businesses, inducing a boom in cloud computing and software as a service technology (SaaS).
One of the most reputable names in the market is Teradata. Teradata provides the most complete Cloud Analytics and Data platform in the industry for enterprise analytics, meeting the needs of multi-cloud environments, solving data challenges from start to scale. Its open approach embraces modern ecosystems to create a seamless experience for ingestion, exploration, development, and operationalization. The company has created the fastest path to analytics in the cloud at scale at the lowest risk.
Teradata’s Chief Marketing Officer and a member of the company’s executive leadership team is Jacqueline Woods.
Jacqueline is a results-driven technology and marketing executive known for leading corporate transformations and leveraging modern marketing approaches that utilize data and insights to accelerate meaningful business outcomes. Recognized for her track record in successfully growing businesses, Jacqueline’s experience covers both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets.
Jacqueline is the company’s chief storyteller and guides all aspects of its brand, marketing, and communications, including strategy, planning and delivery, as well as reputation management, PR and corporate communications, advertising, customer acquisition, demand generation, influencer and industry marketing — all in concert, working together and dedicated to creating enriching experiences and advocacy for customers, employees, and investors. Jacqueline is leading the revitalization of the company’s brand, image, and perception. Jacqueline also serves on the Board of Directors for Winnebago Industries, the Board of
Trustees for Community Reinvestment Fund USA, and is the president and board chair for the Greater Fairfield County Foundation, Inc. She holds a BS from the University of California, Davis, and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.
People describe Jacqueline as the “queen of analogies, with a warm sense of humor. She is a candid truthteller with high integrity. She speaks plainly and is empathetic and generous in giving her time to others.”
Let’s dive into her journey–
—To Teradata
Though Jacqueline has been in the technology sector for over 25 years, her undergraduate degree is in Economics and she began her career in the telecom industry with roles in finance and accounting. Following stints in payroll, internal audit, and sales ops, she went back to school and got an MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship.
Jacqueline’s love of tech, specifically high tech, prompted her to take marketing roles for some of the largest firms in the sector: Oracle, GE, and IBM.
Jacqueline recalls her first divisional CMO role, “I got my first chief marketing officer role at IBM in the division, known at the time, as IBM Global Financing. It was about a five-billion-dollar business and responsible for generating 10% of IBM’s net income. Operationally, the unit’s focus was on helping customers get into solution footprints for IBM products and services. It was also known for improving the company’s overall free cash flow. From there, I went on to lead marketing for the Global Partner Ecosystem business unit, a 13-to-14-billion-dollar business.”
During her time at IBM, she embraced IBM Watson, cognitive computing technologies, Blockchain and other AI/ML solutions. Thus began her passion for helping companies leverage data, analytics, and insights and in 2019 she joined NielsenIQ, as its CMO, to further build on her capabilities by helping their clients make better use of Nielsen’s consumer insights solutions. Her experience there prepared her for her role at Teradata as the chief marketing officer.
With the company’s core being a well-known database and enterprise data warehouse provider – offering a fast and low-risk data transition to the cloud – database analytics, and having the most advanced analytics in the industry, as documented by Forrester and Gartner, Teradata fit Jacqueline’s background like a hand in a glove.
Offering Differentiating Solutions
When Jacqueline started at Teradata in December 2021, the company was in the midst of a critical business transformation: taking a traditionally on-premises product business to a cloud-first environment, codifying the product, and using its characteristics to build a cloud-native product and Cloud and Analytics based business.
“The challenge was,” as Jacqueline clearly puts it, “how to transition from what was previously an on-premises business to one that is cloud-first, offering both our enterprise data warehouse and data analytics software as a service and amplifying it in the marketplace.”
The proposition is an important one as most companies want to move workloads to the Cloud to efficiently improve business performance. But that’s only one benefit of Cloud.
The broader context is the ability to integrate and harmonize data at scale using AI/ML to innovate faster, identify contextual relationships within data, both structured and unstructured, and to improve customers’ experiences.
With the total available market for cloud approaching one trillion by 2027, most companies’ plans include utilizing cloud solutions as a core part of their IT infrastructure strategy. Teradata’s unique proposition is that it meets the customer where they are on their cloud journey (the customer decides). Some workloads may stay put, while others may need to be cloudified – Teradata does both, giving its customers choice and flexibility to optimize their goals across their specific business continuum.
“Most companies have complex needs, still requiring multidimensional environments that include multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud, and on premises,” Jacqueline highlights. “The one thing that we have that most other companies don’t is the ability to allow people to scale their businesses across this spectrum. While the majority of workloads will move to the cloud, there are legal, regulatory, governance and compliance requirements that mandate technical specifications for standalone systems that guarantee the security of Personal Identifiable Information, and other data privacy needs that if breached, will cause significant harm.”
The significance of a cloud-based product and environment lies in its ability to scale, quickly, having to pay only for what one uses, and auto-provisioning. Teradata’s product also enables customers to do analytics, which would allow them to anticipate customer behaviors and utilize them to fuel business growth.
Jacqueline says, “I think in terms of our USP, it is our ability to have tight alignment with the industries that we are in, that we understand what their goals and ambitions are and what they’re trying to do, and we have the technology that helps them do that.”
Constant Reinvention
Cloud-based data and analytics is a competitive market with new players always entering the field. Staying on top of the area requires a thorough understanding of the current market and business trends and continuous innovation.
As Jacqueline shares, “We are constantly reinventing ourselves and ensuring that we are establishing the data and analytics narrative that pushes the innovation frontier to deliver on current and future needs. We are the pacesetters and setting the standards for value creation with our ClearScape analytics capabilities, landing in the number one spot for two years running, according to Gartner.”
Teradata focuses on its top global 10,000 accounts and specific opportunities in varied industries such as banking, retail, healthcare, and CPG, that trust and rely on its global leadership, proven innovation, and ability to truly deliver on the AI/ML needs of its customers so they can efficiently improve their business performance and grow profitability.
Prominence in Industry
Teradata has been recognized by renowned market research companies Gartner and Forrester as a prominent cloud vendor. Gartner evaluates capabilities for certain kinds of workloads and four specific analytic capabilities – Teradata has been listed as number one in all four for 2 years running.
Teradata has received several accolades for its contributions to ESG and its commitment to sustainability. The company is also recognized as one of the most ethical companies, best employers, and one of the best places to work. Jacqueline expresses, “These are four key reasons I believe that Teradata is a great place to work. I’m very proud to work for a company that is making a difference in the environment. We have the most sustainable product, which uses the lowest amount of energy per query and workload, in terms of performance and analytics.”
Put it Out There
Technology hubs like Silicon Valley have a lot of young entrepreneurs who are just kicking around ideas, thinking of new applications, or just trying to build new things. Jacqueline’s advice for these innovators is to put their ideas out there and to keep trying because you never know what will take off. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Jacqueline says, “For example, MySpace started as a space for people to connect, but then an idea to connect college students wanting a different platform to connect friends ultimately became Facebook. When Facebook wasn’t meeting some new needs, users added or moved on to Instagram. When YouTube became what it was, there was someone who said I want shorter video content and then shorter video content became TikTok. I think there are an unlimited number of ideas and needs that are out there. You know what you like, and you know what you’d like to see, and there’s an abundance of opportunities. My advice to anyone is to keep trying because your idea just might be the next big thing.”
