A few thoughts on how AI is changing how teams use planning data

Hello! I wanted to write a few words about how we see software and planning data evolving, and Plota’s approach to this change (and, no, this was not written by AI!).

For a long time, when it came to planning software, there were two things that were hard to reproduce. The data, of course, but also the software around that data.

Non-enterprise software has rapidly changed and, in the last couple of years, has become unbelievably quick and cheap to produce. I think it’s now accepted that almost anyone can build a basic website with AI assistance and have it live by the end of the day. Product and commercial decisions are still crucial, but the speed of developing ideas and producing something tangible is incredible.

This ability for companies, from small to large, to build internal and client-facing software has meant they can finally bring multiple datasets, including a company’s proprietary customer data, into their own tools. I’ve lost count of the times people have said, “we just need a single source of truth”, but having spoken to many in the industry, this is finally becoming a reality for some.

It has also meant that teams are looking again at the software they use and wondering whether there’s a better way to do things. Do they really need 15 separate logins to a suite of tools when often they are only interested in one dataset? And is pricing by user really the best value for making that data useful across their business?

Our view at Plota is that accurate, reliable datasets are becoming relatively more valuable, and where we can add most value is in the flexibility and efficiency of providing that data. Plota search allows anyone to use Plota and inspect the data, and this will continue to remain free.

When we add a new Pro feature, we have four tests:

1. Is the data accurate and inspectable?
2. Are we transparent when there are limitations?
3. Is it timely enough?
4. And, crucially, is it commercially useful?

We’ve seen many of our competitors take a different approach. We are not convinced that a four-page AI site survey PDF is what most people are looking for at the moment. Our view is that teams want to inspect the underlying records, move quickly, automate repetitive work, and incorporate planning data into the workflows they already use.

Our API is our primary commercial product. It has been fantastic to see recently how our customers are building on this and developing their own internal and client-facing tools. Our customers generally already know how to automate this data in a way that’s useful to their business, but where this isn’t the case, we’ve added a few tools to help, including our Pro alerts, webhooks, and Pro features built into Plota search. It’s a self-serve product, and you can test our API for free. There’s no time pressure, and we certainly won’t bombard you with sales calls. Among customers who upgrade, the average testing period is 17 days.

If you’ve got this far, thank you. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or want to find out how Plota can help your organisation.