The focus has shifted from "selling data by the pound" to understanding clients' businesses and configuring data solutions to solve specific problems.
In a recent episode of The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Matt Reilly, CEO of Fusable, shared insights into the company's transformation from a traditional media entity to a data-first business. This evolution offers valuable lessons for CEOs managing legacy businesses and aiming to leverage data for growth.
The Birth of Fusable
Fusable emerged as a spin-off from Randall Riley, a 110-year-old established media brand in the trucking and transportation space. The transition began when leadership recognized the intrinsic value of their data assets, which were initially acquired to find more customers. As Reilly explains, "When I came aboard, our mission was really to pivot this part of the company fully into the data space."
The company consolidated its critical mass in the data business, including digital assets, and made strategic acquisitions to enhance its data portfolio. This focus led to the decision to separate from Randall Riley and launch Fusable as an independent entity on May 1, 2024.
The name "Fusable" organically emerged during a marketing team meeting, reflecting the company's core function of fusing data sets to create more value for clients. This rebranding signifies a clear shift in focus and identity.
Leveraging Legacy Assets in a New Era
Fusable's unique position as a "110-year-old startup" presents both opportunities and challenges in the modern business landscape. The company has successfully retained valuable assets from its media heritage while pivoting to a data-first business model. This approach allows Fusable to combine the strengths of established industry presence with cutting-edge data capabilities.
Valuable Media Properties
One of Fusable's key legacy assets is the Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ), which Reilly describes as "sort of like the Wall Street Journal for the trucking industry". This publication, along with other media properties, continues to play a crucial role in Fusable's data strategy:
1. Industry Attraction: These established media brands attract professionals from the trucking, transportation, construction, and agriculture sectors to Fusable's online assets.
2. Continuous Data Collection: The engagement with these media properties allows Fusable to continuously collect and refresh its databases.
3. Enhanced Value Proposition: The up-to-date information gathered through these channels enhances the value proposition for Fusable's clients, primarily large OEMs in the industries they serve.
The Flywheel Strategy: Integrating Media and Data for Sustainable Growth
At the heart of Fusable's business model lies a sophisticated flywheel strategy that seamlessly integrates their legacy media assets with their cutting-edge data capabilities. This approach creates a self-reinforcing cycle of value creation, benefiting both Fusable and its clients. Reilly emphasizes the critical role this strategy plays in the company's success, stating, "Our platform assets are really an important part of our flywheel."
The flywheel strategy is rooted in the synergistic relationship between Fusable's established media properties and its data-driven services. By leveraging the strengths of both components, the company has created a powerful ecosystem that drives continuous growth and innovation. Here's how the flywheel operates:
1. Content Creation: At the core of the flywheel are Fusable's prestigious media properties, such as the Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ), which Reilly describes as "sort of like the Wall Street Journal for the trucking industry". These publications, along with other media assets, produce high-quality, industry-specific content that attracts professionals from various sectors, including trucking, transportation, construction, and agriculture.
2. Audience Engagement: The compelling content draws industry professionals to Fusable's online platforms and events. This engagement is crucial, as it provides multiple touchpoints for data collection and audience interaction.
3. Data Collection and Refinement: As users interact with Fusable's content and platforms, the company continuously collects and refines its data. This process ensures that Fusable's databases are constantly updated with fresh, relevant information about industry trends, user behavior, and market dynamics.
4. Enhanced Client Solutions: The rich, up-to-date data collected through media engagement is then leveraged to create more powerful and accurate solutions for Fusable's clients, particularly large OEMs in the construction, agriculture, trucking, and transportation sectors.
5. Client Success and Industry Impact: As clients utilize Fusable's data-driven insights to make better decisions and grow their businesses, they contribute to overall industry activity and trends. This, in turn, generates new topics and insights for Fusable's media properties to cover, completing the cycle.
The genius of this flywheel strategy lies in its self-reinforcing nature. Each component strengthens the others, creating a virtuous cycle of growth and value creation. As Reilly explains, "It's an important part of the flywheel strategy where we're creating content. People come to this content to learn from our editors. And then we have our relationships with our OEMs and our dealers and distributors who want to find out where should they go market or should they go sell".
By maintaining this delicate balance between media and data, Fusable ensures that its databases are "very updated and organically refreshing". This approach not only provides a competitive edge in data accuracy and relevance but also deepens Fusable's relationships with both its audience and clients, solidifying its position as a crucial player in the industries it serves.
Balancing Old and New
Reilly emphasizes the importance of carefully selecting which elements of the legacy business to retain as Fusable evolves. He stresses the need to be "really crisp about communicating the things that we're going to bring along on the journey with us and the things that we're going to leave behind." This approach allows the company to leverage its historical strengths while embracing modern business practices.
The company has chosen to keep aspects of the business that create competitive advantage and help build a moat around their offerings.These include valuable assets, parts of the culture that make them unique, and deep industry relationships. Some of these relationships stretch back 70 years or more, providing Fusable with a level of trust and industry insight that pure startups cannot easily replicate.
At the same time, Fusable has intentionally left behind elements of the culture that were perhaps family-oriented or not aligned with modern business practices. This selective approach allows the company to maintain its valuable legacy while positioning itself as a forward-thinking, data-driven enterprise.
The result is a unique market position that combines the best of both worlds. Fusable benefits from decades-long relationships with clients and data assets that have been market-leading for up to 78 years, as in the case of their agricultural asset, Iron Solutions or Iron Guides. This longevity has built significant trust and reliance within their respective industries. At the same time, the company now offers an artificial intelligence platform backed by half a century of market-relevant data and industry relationships.
By carefully leveraging these legacy assets while embracing new technologies and data-driven approaches, Fusable has positioned itself as a unique player in the market. The company combines the credibility and depth of a century-old business with the agility and innovation of a modern data company, creating a powerful value proposition for its clients in critical infrastructure industries.
Transitioning to a Data-First Business Model
The shift from a media company with data offerings to a data-first company with media solutions has required significant changes in approach and mindset. Reilly highlights two key differences:
1. Client Interaction: As a data company, Fusable aims to be crucial to clients' operations rather than just an interesting or relevant source of information. Reilly illustrates this with an example: "If you're in the ag space and you're taking a trade on a half a million dollar combine, you have to look at our asset to make sure you don't lose money."
2. Solution Selling: The focus has shifted from "selling data by the pound" to understanding clients' businesses and configuring data solutions to solve specific problems. This approach aims to help clients make more money and embed Fusable deeper into their workflows.
Implementing Culturaland Operational Changes
To succeed in this transition, Fusable has implemented several key strategies:
1. Clear Communication: Reilly stresses the importance of being "crisp about communicating the things that we're going to bring along on the journey with us and the things that we're going to leave behind."
2. Customer Success Focus: The company has invested in upgrading its client success function, led by Chris Gertzma. This team works to ensure clients are accessing and deriving maximum value from Fusable's products, which drives up client satisfaction and NPS scores.
3. Board-Level Education: Reilly describes a careful approach to managing board expectations, including establishing credibility, delivering results in chunks, and using pilot projects to demonstrate ROI.
4. Pilot Approach: Fusable conducted a pilot project that yielded a 10x ROI, which helped secure board support for larger investments in data integration and automation.
5. Cultural Openness: Reilly emphasizes the importance of creating a culture where mistakes are openly discussed and quickly addressed, which is crucial for managing complex data projects.
Leveraging AI and Integrated Data for Enhanced Client Value
Fusable's transformation into a data-first company involves integrating various data assets into a single, unified data layer. This project, described by Reilly as being in its "7th inning," aims to provide clients with seamless access to all of Fusable's data functionality, similar to how Netflix offers access to multiple channels through a single login.
To manage board expectations and mitigate risks associated with this large-scale project, Fusable adopted a pilot approach. Reilly explains, "when you're a private equity owned business, these transformations involve huge investments in data, people, platforms, and cultural change. There's a lot of education and expectation setting that needs to take place at the board level."
The pilot project demonstrated the power of combining data sets with artificial intelligence. For instance, what previously required 38 man-hours of analysis could now be accomplished in less than 30 seconds using a natural language processing interface. This dramatic improvement in efficiency and insight generation is at the heart of Fusable's value proposition.
The success of the pilot project, which delivered a 10x ROI, has been crucial in building credibility with the board and maintaining momentum for further development. It also helped in selecting the right implementation partner for the larger project.
As Fusable expands this integrated data layer to encompass all of their assets, they're fundamentally changing how their clients interact with and derive value from data. This transformation represents a significant shift from their legacy as a media company, positioning Fusable at the forefront of data-driven business intelligence in their target industries. By combining data sets and leveraging AI, Fusable has been able to dramatically increase the number of leads generated for clients while significantly reducing processing time.
As Fusable continues its transformation, it serves as a compelling case study for how legacy media businesses can reinvent themselves in the data-driven economy, balancing the value of established brands and relationships with cutting-edge data capabilities.
