Meet the Kalibrate team: Bill Dakai, SVP Location Intelligence

At Kalibrate, we believe our success is driven as much by our people as our technology. Here, we meet Bill Dakai, SVP Location Intelligence.

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What’s your role at Kalibrate?

I was previously the Managing Director at Trade Area Systems (TAS) when we were acquired by Kalibrate. Today, I lead the development of Kalibrate’s location intelligence products.

This includes setting product direction, talking with clients, assisting the sales and marketing teams, and overseeing the execution of day-to-day activities. We have excellent internal capabilities to help us grow and continue to respond our products to the changing needs of customers in a broad range of industries and markets.

What does a typical day look like?

Most of my time is spent ensuring clients are successful. I feel that a lot of companies forget that it is not about them, but about the success of their clients. The truth is, when you take care of your clients, they take care of you.

I spend a lot of time meeting with clients, prospects, or Kalibrate teams. Before COVID, I was on the road about 50% of the time talking with existing clients and prospects. It’s extremely important to understand the day-to-day responsibilities of our clients, so we can ensure they are maximizing the return-on-investment potential of our products. In addition, constant contact with clients and prospects allows me to understand market trends so I can prioritize software features to solve future needs.

What do you love about your role?

I love location analytics – it’s what I have spent my life learning, practicing, and teaching. I also love watching my co-workers take on additional responsibility and grow. We’ve got an outstanding team across Kalbrate, and it’s a great pleasure to work with a diverse group of people from across the world. The sense of satisfaction when a client tells us we enabled them to be successful is the highlight of any day.

Tell us about your journey with Kalibrate

To rewind slightly, I co-founded TAS in 2003. At that time, web-based mapping and spatial databases were in their infancy, but the sector was growing extremely fast, and it was clear there was a lot of opportunity. Two years later, Google launched Google Maps and spatial databases were becoming mature. We grew from a small enterprise to supporting Fortune 10 companies with some of their biggest strategic decisions.

TAS was acquired by Kalibrate in 2020 and it’s been quite a ride since. Our team has integrated into the Kalibrate global structure. This has enabled us to solve more of our clients’ problems, in more countries and markets worldwide. Alongside this, we now have extensive investment in our product development, so the platforms we take to market really surpass anything that’s been available in the GIS space before. It’s extremely exciting, and we’ve much more to come on our roadmap.

What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities facing retailers?

Retail real estate decisions are becoming increasingly difficult. The days of driving around a site to get the flavor of the area and cross-checking that against a demographic report are long gone. Consumers now have so many channels to shop (online, brick-and-mortar, order online and pickup at store, home delivery from brick-and-mortar location) and the success of a brick-and-mortar location is dependent on what channel the people in the area tend to shop.

So how do you go about quantifying this? If you have a customer loyalty program, you should have all the data that is required to answer these questions. If you do not have a customer loyalty program, you are behind the times and you will have a hard time keeping pace with your competitors.