In this interview from Qlik Connect 2026, Christopher Powell, chief marketing officer of Qlik, joins theCUBE Research's Rebecca Knight and Rob Strechay to discuss how enterprises are moving past AI experimentation toward operational dependence — and what foundational work that shift demands. Powell argues the AI inflection point is less about whether the technology works and more about whether the data does. He outlines three prerequisites for enterprises ready to operationalize AI: a trusted data foundation, deep contextual understanding of proprietary environments and architectural flexibility to adapt as innovation accelerates. To address the trust dimension, Powell highlights Qlik's trust score for AI, which evaluates data lineage, provenance and access history to give AI systems confidence in the inputs they're acting on.
The conversation also explores how leading organizations are building human expertise into agentic systems before removing humans from the loop — a model demonstrated on stage with UPS, where domain knowledge defines the boundaries of autonomous action. Powell breaks down the evolution from standalone AI tools to agents to fully agentic workflows, noting how this progression is dissolving organizational silos and forcing companies to build shared data foundations across marketing, sales and customer success. He underscores cost management as a strategic imperative, warning that AI environments built without embedded cost controls will fail to scale. From emerging efficiency stories — including customers spending a few hundred thousand dollars to save $15 million annually — to the broader organizational rethinking required to lead in the AI era, Powell outlines why companies that ask not how AI can improve existing processes, but how it will fundamentally transform them, are the ones best positioned to win.
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Marcus Tannerfalk, Qlik
In this interview from Qlik Connect 2026, Christopher Powell, chief marketing officer of Qlik, joins theCUBE Research's Rebecca Knight and Rob Strechay to discuss how enterprises are moving past AI experimentation toward operational dependence — and what foundational work that shift demands. Powell argues the AI inflection point is less about whether the technology works and more about whether the data does. He outlines three prerequisites for enterprises ready to operationalize AI: a trusted data foundation, deep contextual understanding of proprietary environments and architectural flexibility to adapt as innovation accelerates. To address the trust dimension, Powell highlights Qlik's trust score for AI, which evaluates data lineage, provenance and access history to give AI systems confidence in the inputs they're acting on.
The conversation also explores how leading organizations are building human expertise into agentic systems before removing humans from the loop — a model demonstrated on stage with UPS, where domain knowledge defines the boundaries of autonomous action. Powell breaks down the evolution from standalone AI tools to agents to fully agentic workflows, noting how this progression is dissolving organizational silos and forcing companies to build shared data foundations across marketing, sales and customer success. He underscores cost management as a strategic imperative, warning that AI environments built without embedded cost controls will fail to scale. From emerging efficiency stories — including customers spending a few hundred thousand dollars to save $15 million annually — to the broader organizational rethinking required to lead in the AI era, Powell outlines why companies that ask not how AI can improve existing processes, but how it will fundamentally transform them, are the ones best positioned to win.
In this interview from Qlik Connect 2026, Marcus Tannerfalk, head of product design at Qlik, joins theCUBE Research's Rob Strechay to discuss how AI is transforming the product design discipline and pushing analytics beyond the dashboard into an omnichannel future. Tannerfalk opens with a vivid real-world example: a professional hockey club using Qlik to run a Moneyball-style approach to squad optimization, analyzing players across multiple markets to maximize value within tight budget constraints. He then explains how AI is radically reshaping product design...Read more
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What is the hockey activation here at Qlik Connect, and how is Qlik being used to measure and analyze player performance?add
What does the organization hope to be able to say at Qlik Connect 2027 that it cannot say today?add
>> Hello and welcome back to Qlik Connect 2026. We're here live on the floor and we're checking out another one of the sports activations here. Really, one of my favorite things is hockey. Anybody who knows me, I love hockey. I love the stats around hockey. Got a lot of stats of the people who are trying out here, trying to hit all the corners. Not going five-hole today, but we're going to see a lot of what's going on here. And I'm joined by Marcus who runs product design for Qlik. Welcome on board.>> Thank you. I'm super excited.>> Yeah. I mean, this is your hometown team that's representing here. You got to Qlik works with them on this. Kind of help us understand what's going on behind us here.>> Yeah. So right now, it's more of a leisure thing. They're measuring how hard they're shooting and also where they're hitting the buck. But they are actually using Qlik to really analyze their players, and it's super, super exciting to see how they do that, this team.>> And you stopped there and saw that.>> I was there a couple few months ago to visit them to see how they're doing it, and it's super impressive. Being data driven like they are with their players and how they're trying to basically do Moneyball, that's the film, right?>> Right.>> I love it. And that's what they're trying to do. Optimize their squad because they have a limited amount of budgets. Can only play so much for the players, so they need to be very cost-efficient.>> Yeah. There's only so much room on the jersey for sponsorship and the helmet too.>> That too.>> So you're running product design, very important. UX and CX is so important. It must be changing with the way AI is going and things like that. Kind of talk to how you're addressing that and how you're bringing that to Qlik.>> Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right, it's radically changing right now. Radically. What we used to do is really draw up beautiful things that work for users, right? But nowadays, that is shifting radically because AI is moving people to other places than just being inside of Qlik. So with MCP, for example, you can use Qlik wherever you want to, whatever vendor you're playing with, or whatever LLM vendor that you have. So that means that we in product design, we're actually working now on how to interpret it. The different questions that comes from the user, helping them to make the experience as great as possible for them.>> And also, you're learning how the different agents are using. I saw Claude and it showed up probably with your UI in Claude because they're doing that with MCP and other things that are going on behind that and a lot of different structures that are really important in changing the game for UX.>> Yes. So MCP apps also brings the ability to have our parts of the UI inside of things like Claude, which is super, super exciting. So we have a completely new arena to play in now. And that's the thing. We talk about this as omnichannel AI. So it's not only AI inside of our native product anymore, it's AI in so many different channels. It's super exciting.>> And I would assume that, that also helps with organizations that are trying to get more out of their data because it can help them simplify how they talk to their data and things like that. I have to expect that these guys don't exactly have the largest data team in the world.>> No, and that's the thing, right? Adaptability is one of the key things here as well. Like playing where the users play, basically. If we take the analogy of hockey, you have defense, you have offense. So of course, they do different things and they use different techniques. They use different tools. So if we can be present where the user are present in the tools that they use today in the different AI tools, that's a win-win situation, both for us and for the user that they get the better experience for themselves.>> And when you see things like, "Hey, Claude's going through and helping build out these dashboards that are live dashboards and helping ..." Again, we were talking to Drew about the example he was showing on stage where, hey, it's helping the healthcare company and the hospital system understand about falls and things of that nature. Same thing here. When they're playing Moneyball and they're like looking and going through the university ranks in the US or across Sweden or in Germany, they have to understand, "Okay, what would this team look like? How do I model this team out?" That must be, it's different, but the similar types of modeling that they want to do and representation.>> Exactly. And we start to talk about this now as a context layer basically, right? So if we can help to build that for our customers, and they have done a great job already with the applications and the data models that they have, but we can add even more metadata, even more structure to that so that people actually get even more value out of using their LLMs today.>> So as we go into Qlik Connect 2026, as we get out a year to Qlik Connect 2027, what do you hope that you can say that you can't say today?>> Oh, wow. That's a great question. First and foremost, I will be presenting in a couple minutes, actually, an initiative that we're working on right now where we're unifying a lot of the native experiences that we have, but that basically means that we're simplifying it and making it more adaptable to the users themselves. So hopefully, that will be what we show main stage next year. So there's going to be an early prototype that we show that right now. But more importantly, I think we're going to see even more of the examples of how we play a core piece of role in different avenues and different channels for those users, where they play, how we can help them. That's a great shot.>> It's definitely unloading, that's for sure.>> Wow.>> Yeah. So I hope that we could see that on the main stage too.>> That would be amazing.>> Well, Marcus, this has been great. I really appreciate you for coming on board and good luck with it and good luck to the team.>> Thank you, Rob. We need it. Appreciate it.>> And all of you, stay tuned for more from Qlik Connect 2026. We're going to be back. Stay tuned.
