A Conversation With David Libesman, SVP and GM of AI & Data Analytics for WorkWave
Companies across every industry are recognizing a fundamental shift: data must drive their decisions. Strategic insights from operational information have become essential for sustainable growth and competitive advantage, especially in the green industry. WorkWave is making significant investments to embed advanced analytics and AI capabilities throughout our ecosystem. What’s motivating this substantial commitment? It stems directly from our core mission: empowering our customers with the tools they need to expand their operations and achieve lasting success.
We recently spoke with David Libesman, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AI and Data Analytics for WorkWave, about how and why the company is investing in this new technology and why that’s so important for our customers.
RealGreen: What attracted you to this opportunity at WorkWave?
David Libesman: When you look at a company with such depth that goes so deep from a vertical perspective, it provides a tremendous opportunity to optimize the information collected to help our customers grow their revenue and become operationally efficient.
What really excited me about WorkWave was that many of our customers grew from mom and pop shops. They were landscapers, pest control people out in the field. They didn’t necessarily have the background or understanding of how to run an optimized business. My vision is to help all our customers grow and support their hard work: How do we help them with analytics and AI to grow their business, make more money and run their business at a much higher profitable level? How can they buy another truck? How can they grow?
We’re helping them with software and running their business – growing, making more money, saving money and bridging the generational gap. You have younger generations coming in with cool ideas about how to do things alongside the legacy way of doing things. Technology, analytics and AI can help bridge that gap much quicker.
I love the mission and vision of WorkWave. We’re making a difference to these companies, not just delivering another product. We’re changing how they run their businesses.
RG: For green industry professionals hearing about how AI and automation technology are suddenly everywhere, what tools are you specifically looking to deliver this year with Wavelytics and Marketing Analytics?
DL: The first step is to create a strong foundation. There’s lots of data all over the place that means nothing on its own. We curate it, bring it together and turn it into clean, reliable information that’s ready to use. Then we provide insights they can’t see themselves.
The challenge is turning them into data-driven organizations where they can rely on accurate data and information. We’re delivering metrics that matter – things that will help them:
- Understand how to convert leads through better response rates from their print marketing
- Improve their conversion rate from response to purchase
- Bring in customers with longer lifetime value
- Grow existing customers with upsells
- Improve operational efficiency
We’re doing this in two ways. First, by showing them analytics that identify problems, and second, by providing recommendations about what they can do to address these problems. We can take industry-best practices and infuse them into everyone’s businesses through our benchmarking.
The AI component helps automate many of these processes, allowing businesses to grow without adding people. We make AI accessible by breaking it into trustworthy components and delivering real value for each piece. We don’t try to boil the ocean — we deliver individual components that make a difference.
RG: Looking two years ahead, how do you see this changing our customers’ daily operations and the green industry as a whole?
DL: By partnering with WorkWave, who sees such a big piece of the industry and has great technology to collect data, we’re going to help businesses grow faster. Small operations with 5-10 employees will become 10-20, then 20-30.
There will be more aggregation and consolidation in the industry, but also more people entering the market. This provides opportunities for people to start and grow these kinds of businesses by partnering with WorkWave. We’ll not only provide a platform but also teach them how to run their businesses.
I envision building this into the product so new customers get a complete package. Day by day, they’ll know the metrics they need to hit. We want to make this accessible and affordable for everyone, from the big players all the way down to SMBs.
RG: Can you describe your development process, why you’ve worked with customers from the start and how that’s affecting your approach?
DL: We’ve built a 100% cloud platform, from data ingestion to storage to creation — everything is cloud-based and managed services, which allows us to move quickly.
We’ve picked the best partners in the industry, so we can use the latest technology without having to do all the development work ourselves — something that allows even the smallest green industry customers to benefit from multi-million dollar investments at a fraction of the cost.
Most importantly, our customers know how to run their businesses better than we do. There are two strategies for product management: inside out and outside in. Getting customers involved from day one ensures that what we deliver will have a significant impact because we’re conversing directly with them rather than arguing internally about the process.
Our development sprints are just one week, and we’re turning things around very quickly. We’re working with product people and subject matter experts, bringing them all onto the field with us.
The benefits of this approach are:
- We’re developing solutions that truly meet customer needs
- Early adopters become our salespeople
- We gather authentic customer stories, which are the best way to sell
- We can deliver value in small, meaningful increments
RG: How is this different from generic marketing tools?
DL: This isn’t a generic marketing tool; it’s marketing analytics tied directly to operational systems, which is huge. It integrates multiple data sources – print marketing, QR codes, search files – and ties everything together.
Not only can you analyze campaigns, but you can also examine individual accounts and actual response rates, which was impossible before. It streamlines and automates while following the complete customer journey in real time, allowing adjustments throughout the process.
Every year, the system gets better because what gets measured gets improved. Just like in a workout where you compare yourself to last week’s performance, the system helps businesses continuously improve.
RG: Our philosophy at RealGreen is that we’re the first and the future; we were the first software in the 1980s built by a lawn care company for other lawn care companies. Now 40 years later with Wavelytics and Marketing Analytics, WorkWave is doing the same thing — we’ve come full circle.
DL: Absolutely. We’re not just adding value on our own platforms, but providing a foundation for businesses to grow and integrate with others, if desired. We want to have an open platform.
Businesses now have their data transformed into actionable information, allowing them to run streamlined operations without hiring specialized staff. They pay for a service maintained by an innovative, trusted partner focused on practical business improvements — not just cool technology for its own sake.
The future is here. The future is now.
Ready to transform your business with data? Discover how Wavelytics and Marketing Analytics can power your growth strategy, schedule a personalized consultation with one of our data experts.
