Let's talk about cybersecurity. The other day, Alex and Jason got to sit down for an interview with Jason Loomis, the Chief Information Officer for Mindbody. What is Mindbody? It is a cloud business for anything that has to do with health and wellness. As Mr. Loomis himself puts it, if you have a gym, acupuncture clinic, a hair salon or anything of the kind, Mindbody will handle all the tedious activities that need to be done for a business to function but no one actually enjoys. They handle the booking of appointments, paying employees, billing customers, scheduling classes, marketing and pretty much anything else having to do with the annoying paperwork side of the organization. That leaves you free to come up with new ideas and spend more time having actual conversations with your staff and customers. Mindbody got started about twenty years ago as many companies do, in a garage. Since then, the company has grown considerably and is used by a large number of gyms and other establishments in various areas of the country.
Not that it has always been a smooth and linear development. One thing that Mindbody has been working on the last couple of years is being more agile. That means doing a better job of listening to more customers in a shorter period of time and being able to act on that. The last year only provided the latest example of that need. Given all of the lockdowns that plagued a number of businesses, especially the kinds of the businesses that Mindbody serves, they had to find new ways to deliver service. Fortunately, their customers knew the solution, stream workout classes over the internet. That opened up a whole new avenue for Mindbody that allowed them to serve their customers when many were stuck at home.
Since TARTLE is all about data, we had to know a little bit about how Mindbody looks at data. Given that the company is an app that provides services entirely through the internet, it should not be surprising that they place a high premium on data. One way they do this is paying attention to how many people are doing what with their service. This allows them to see where they need to focus, what areas need improvement and which are doing great. The result is a continually improving suite of services that drives revenue for Mindbody and for the businesses they serve. It even helps the customers of those businesses because it makes it easier for them to interact with their gym or salon.
They also place a high premium on data privacy, taking steps to anonymize the data they glean from their app, allowing them to get the information they need without tying it to specific individuals. They take security seriously as well, often going behind the mere requirements of the law to ensure that people are protected, encrypting data in order to ensure their customers’ information is kept private. Mindbody actually has a comprehensive security program. They are big enough that they can provide much more secure services than a lot of smaller competitors but small enough to be much more agile in responding to issues than the big corporations.
Security has become a much bigger issue in the age of COVID. When everyone is working at the office, security is fairly easy. Everyone is working behind the same firewall, using the same VPN and whatever other protocols may be in play. When everyone works from home, there are a variety of different security levels to be concerned with. You will have some with security on a par with the office or even better. Others will be getting their work done at the local Panera on an unsecured browser and allow their laptops to be discovered on the public network by any rando in the place. Fortunately, Mindbody takes that seriously, even though there is no direct revenue from it. That’s because they do something that too many don’t do these days. They put people before revenue. They understand that on the other end of their apps are real people who are affected directly by any sort of breach. That commitment to people first is why Mindbody is successful and why TARTLE is happy to count them amongst the data champions.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
