Qlik merger feeds ‘Data Revolution,’ new KOP HQ

Source, philly.com, Joseph DiStefano

Qlik, a business-data-analytics and -management company owned by Chicago tech buyout firm Thoma Bravo LLC, employs 2,000 engineers, sales, and support people — but nobody went to work at its Radnor headquarters last week.

Chief executive Mike Capone was off leading a string of client events in cities around the world — Qlik’s Data Revolution tour — as workers hauled equipment up Radnor-Chester Road and prepped Qlik’s new headquarters at 211 Gulph Rd., King of Prussia, for its opening Monday.

“We’ve been on the road — 20 cities this fall,” Capone said on the hometown stop in his tour last week. IT managers from AmeriGas and the Philadelphia School District (which uses Qlik to track student performance and teacher attendance) were singing the praises of Qlik data presentation during breakout sessions at a Penn’s Landing hotel.

“My marketing guy got to go to Paris and London. I did Philly, New York, Chicago,” he said.

The city School District uses Qlik “to provide a centralized source of information” for principals to track student and teacher performance, it said in a statement. Ready access to data on student attendance, suspension, test scores, reading levels, graduation, and college-matriculation has “changed the conversations that district chiefs are having about how to provide supports, programming, and policies,” the district said.

Qlik last winter named Capone, former chief operating officer at Medidata Solutions of New York and a past ADP executive, as its new CEO with a mandate to grow the business.

After shaking up the sales and marketing team, he promptly purchased Podium Data, a Lowell, Mass., data-management firm whose clients include TD Bank, Charter Communications, and Cigna. He also advertised the combination as a wall-to-wall data collection and presentation service. (Podium’s product has been renamed “Qlik Data Catalyst.”)

It sounds like a lot of tracking. But Capone says he’s leading a “democratization of data” that allows truck drivers and classroom teachers to brag about their successful work. “It’s not fair for someone in the professional offices to come and say, ‘You’re terrible,'” when any worker can now measure output in her or his self-defense, with tools like Qlik’s. “We’re approaching the world with a full data platform, getting all that raw data companies are collecting prepared and cataloged, so users can have an intelligent data experience” on a single platform.

Why King of Prussia? It’s closer to restaurants, hotels, and other amenities. “The Radnor Inn was a lovely place. But we have more choices in King of Prussia,” Capone said.

Some staff will miss the SEPTA Paoli Line train stop in Radnor, close to the old offices. Qlik will pay taxi and Uber fees to bring city commuters up to the new place.

That space, where about 350 will work, has an open floor plan, with natural light along the work stations, and conference rooms in the middle.

A publicly traded company from 2010 to 2016, Qlik was taken private in a $3 billion purchase. Thoma Bravo’s other Philadelphia-area companies have included manufacturing-process supply chain software maker Elemica in Wayne; human-resources software company Frontline Education in Malvern; and insurance software developer Internet Pipeline Inc. in Exton.