Here are a few of my conference observations:

Cloud computing is moving to the forefront of the Sage product strategy. In his keynote presentation, Himanshu Palsule, EVP of product strategy and marketing, called cloud computing one of two major trends to capitalize upon and introduced Sage North America’s cloud-based “connected services” as a key product strategy pillar. Connected services take “the richness of on-premise applications and connect to the reach of cloud-based services.” The launches of Sage SalesLogix Cloud and Sage Fundraising Online are examples of Sage dipping a toe in the “cloud” water (does that make it “rain”?)

Visitors at Indicee's booth at Sage Insights keenly interested in Cloud BI....or maybe Craig was sharing another uproarious story from trade shows past.

Business intelligence continues to gain in prominence within the Sage community. This year’s conference featured an entire presentation track dedicated to business intelligence, analysis, and reporting. And if the buzz at the Indicee booth was any indication, the opportunities for cloud-based analysis and reporting solutions are immense. Business partners outlined the challenges that clients are facing when it comes to creating and updating reports especially when the data resides in multiple systems such as Sage ERP MAS or Sage ERP Accpac and SageCRM. Conversations also revealed that the complexity and costs of typical on-premise BI solutions are often barriers to adoption.

Sage ERP Accpac – still near and dear to me – continues to garner much attention as the ERP of the future (very near future with Version 6 beta just around the corner); the slick user interface and improved workflow continue to impress. Kudos to the product team under the leadership of Scott Zandbergen, Erik Kaas, Alok Tyagi, and others.

The Simply Accounting group under the stewardship of Jamie Sutherland continues to be one of the most innovative teams in the Sage family. They have followed up on the success of Billing Boss, the online invoicing tool, with a mobile payment processing solution called Payment Boss.

Sage continues to be the “partner’s choice” for top vendor–forthrightness, integrity, and accessibility are a few of the words that come to mind to describe Sage. Speaking with fellow attendees and trolling the online forums, common themes are the positive feeling about the Sage team and a real bullishness about the Sage strategy.

A big shout-out to the entire Sage team for pulling off another successful Insights conference. Can’t wait until Sage Summit 2011 in DC.

Keep dialed into this channel for more Indicee news including the upcoming launch of our iPhone & iPad mobile reporting application (incidentally, Himanshu indicated that mobility was the other key trend influencing Sage product direction).

Scott Pledger

Related posts:

1. Wrapping Sage Summit in Atlanta
2. F5 Expo to host Cloud Computing panel April 7, 2010
3. Indicee for 2010 : New look, New product, New offerings

For me, it’s the opportunity to have impact. The ability to go out on a limb. The chance to come up with ridiculously creative ways to save a buck.

Attending Sage Insights 2010 conference in Denver this week. Hanging with old friends and making new ones in the Mile High City. For those of us that have done time as the “booth babe” or “demo dolly”, traipsing our laptops, banners, flags, t-shirts, business cards and promotional literature around the country, we recognize the high cost of shipping all of our wares from show to show. After 10 years and over 100 shows, someone suggested I try taking my booth on the airplane with me. Ok, it’s hardly carry-on luggage. The pilot never comes on to suggest that anyone wheeling aboard a trade show booth should please place it in the overhead bins wheels first. I took it anyway. It’s about $800 to ship one of these things, not to mention, for us Canadians, the pain and suffering of dealing with customs brokers while cross-border shipping.

So, away I went, booth in hand. If you’ve never shipped one, they’re not exactly teensy. About 65lbs and over 3 feet tall. Basically, it’s like shipping an 8 year old. A really wide 8 year old with wheels on the bottom. I expected it to take a while for everyone to figure out what to do with my over-sized package, so I made sure I arrived very early for my flight. Much to my surprise, they’ve handled this sort of thing before. No problem. 25 bucks and a baggage tag later, I was dropping the booth off at the oversize bag check-in.

Of course, arriving in Denver, I fully expected to deal with lost luggage, my booth bound for Spain. Nope. There it was, in all its glory, already unloaded from the belt when I arrived by the carousel, and as fast as I could wheel it over to the regular luggage offload area, there was my suitcase. Now, of course, I’m expecting the worst. Nothing goes this well for me when traveling. Must be a hassle waiting for me with the cab, the hotel, the delivery of the new shirts, something. Wheeling out the big black case, the suitcase and the laptop bag, I head for the taxi stand, fully expecting a negotiation with a mini-van driver on the oversize nature of my belongings. Instead, I’m greeted enthusiastically by a driver who insists he can fit everything into his car. And he does. Flat rate to city, just like everyone else. Tipped well.

Checking in? Everything is ready Mr. Todd (note, they actually used my real last name and got it right. Interchangeable first and last names are a curse, but that’s a whole other story.) Oh, and there’s a package waiting for you – must be those shirts you ordered. Wow. At this point, I’m waiting for the Apocalypse. Nothing goes this well on the road.

The point of the story? None really. The next step was to get ourselves to the store and buy some monitors to give away at the booth. Renting ANYTHING for a trade show is outrageously expensive. $1400 for internet service, $1000 for carpeting and vacuuming, $300 to rent a monitor, $3.50 for a bad cup of coffee – you get the idea. So, instead, I buy brand new monitors and give them away. Makes me happy – no waste. Instead of renting at inflated rates and wasting money, I get to make 2 people really happy as they wing home with their new monitors.

We head down to the local Office Depot store and find the monitors we want. “We’ll take two”, we say. “Sorry, I can only sell you one”, is the reply. Apparently, “one to show and one to go” is their stocking policy and they refuse to sell their display monitors. Fortunately, the store manager arranges for us to pick up a second one at the other store. We hop on Denver’s free tram service (really cool service that runs the length of the 16th Street mall) and a short 3 or 4 or 6 or 7 blocks away – depending on which story you believe – we pick up our second monitor and we’re away to the races. Oh ya, stopped by the Capitol Building for a photo opp with monitor – I think we’re making this a tradition.

Keynote session has just let out. People to meet, coffee to be had. 7 hours at the booth ahead. No sweat, I’m wearing comfortable shoes.

Related posts:

1. I’m in the wrong business
2. Going green at the show
3. Reflecting upon Sage Insights 2010

The one-day conference is aimed at business executives interested in the latest trends in the online space.  This year’s focus is social media, search marketing, mobile applications, and (our favourite) cloud computing.

Our CEO, Mark Cunningham, will be joining a panel of local “digerati” in the cloud space to share insights into where cloud computing came from and where it’s going!

Tickets are still available! You can check out the Tradeshow, the Sessions, or the Full Meal Deal that includes taking in the Keynote Address on Innovation by Canada’s own Malcolm Gladwell!

Register here.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Reviewing the Refresh – A Look Back at F5 Expo
2. Cloud Computing Enables Self-serve BI
3. Is Cloud Computing in your Company Culture?

We have received lots of feedback about how easy (and cost effective) it is to get up and running with Indicee compared to traditional BI tools.  Why is it so much easier?  Because Indicee does not require a direct connection to your data base.  Instead, with Indicee you simply upload the reports or data export files from your applications.

Manual uploads work really well for small deployments and make a huge difference in how fast our customers can get up and running. However, once users see the benefit of easy access to information they inevitably want more data and want it updated more frequently. Up until now, the only way to get data into Indicee was to save a report or data file to your computer and then upload the file to Indicee.  Uploading a single file once a week is easy, uploading 10 files every day starts to take a lot of time.

Uploading reports – hands free

Indicee users have asked for an auto uploader.  We have added it, and more. Indicee (with your permission), can now be set up to grab data files from your computer.  Here are some examples of how it works:

• Schedule your reports to a folder. Lots of applications allow you to schedule reports to a folder on your computer.  You schedule the reports to run every hour or day and schedule Indicee to grab the reports from that folder and upload them to your data mart
• Schedule your queries.  Some customers have set up queries to grab data. You can use a program like Windows scheduler to automatically run the queries and have Indicee grab the data files and upload them to your data mart
• Direct database connection. For more complex BI requirements, it is not always possible to find reports that contain all the data needed to answer your questions.  Indicee now has the option of connecting directly to common business applications or running custom SQL queries and then uploading the resulting data

Want to try it?

We are looking for early adopters.  For existing customers,  contact support@indicee.com and we can add the auto uploader to your Indicee solution.  New customers can take advantage our our Free48 team who will get your up and running within 48 hours. Contact our Free48 team to get started.

Related posts:

1. Asset or Expense: How do you account for Data Quality?
2. Hello 2009
3. Indicee Launch

We are excited to announce that we have released a major update of our service based primarily on YOUR feedback. The one thing we can never say enough….WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK. Good or bad we really want to hear what is working or not working in Indicee.

So let’s take a look at what our users have asked for in Indicee.

The Entry Point – Indicee.com

The main goal of our website has been to quickly communicate what Indicee does, how it works and how you can get going in 10 minutes or less. We have been focused on doing this in fewer and fewer clicks without losing some of the detail that new users want. Getting users into our application quickly is critical so we added a few key “on boarding” capabilities including:

Free48 – if you are not a Do It Yourself (DIY) type person. Let us get you started in 48 hours for free

Live Chat Support – You will see links to live chat all over Indicee.com. Take advantage of talking to Todd, our friendly support dude, live and in person to help you use Indicee more quickly and effectively.

Online Discussion Forums – our forums are new so we don’t have alot of action in there yet but we are monitoring them regularly. So jump in and start posting.

New Quickstarts

I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like to make things happen fast. Indicee QuickStarts have been designed to provide users with pre-packaged solutions for the most common Small Medium Business (SMB) accounting products on the market. A Quickstart is a pre-built reporting database (we call this a data mart) and a bunch of canned reports that you can use immediately.  If you use applications like Intuit Quickbooks, Sage Accpac, Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains or Softrak Adagio using a QuickStart is one of the best ways to get up and running with Indicee. Simply grab the existing output from your accounting application, load it into the QuickStart Wizard and you will have reports and dashboards that you can view, analyze, share and collaborate on in less than 10 minutes.

What if you don’t have one of these accounting applications? No problem….you can build a solution from scratch yourself or you can give us a call and we can get you started with our Free48. Building something from scratch doesn’t take days. It can be done in minutes or, at the most, hours.

My Stuff Overview

When you login into the Indicee application the first thing you see is the My Stuff tab. This is the main landing page of the application. If you have used our previous version you will see a major user interface redesign to enable greater usability. Here are a few of the changes:

• Replaced the drop down navigation box in favor of a sub-navigation menu.
• Added a “Tips” section that you can toggle between “show” and “hide.” We have created a bunch of videos and FAQ tips that will give you greater self-guidance when using Indicee.
• Improved graphics and layout to highlight “Latest Dashboard and Reports,” “Latest Data,” and “Latest Comments.”

Dashboards

If there is one “big ticket” item that we have added to this release it is Indicee Dashboards. So what is a dashboard? A dashboard allows at-a-glance visualization of company’s health and monitoring of key performance indicators. Simple to understand and high in ROI, dashboards are becoming “must-haves” for all businesses. Indicee Dashboards are simple to create and use. Traditional Business Intelligence tools usually require technical consultants or IT people to create the dashboard. Not Indicee Dashboards….mere mortals can create them.

Indicee Dashboards will display anywhere from 1-4 key visualizations that are generated by your Indicee Reports. You can share dashboards into private or public groups and users can drill down from a dashboard into a more detailed report. Keep your eye out for a more detailed post on “How to Create a Dashboard.”

Visualizations

Indicee has increased the number of chart types that you can choose from and has incorporated additional features such as data point pop-up bubbles, stacked charts and a table view.

Data marts

First of all let’s just be clear on what a “data mart” is. In a nutshell, a data mart is the “bucket” where we load the data that you upload to Indicee. When you upload your sales data from your accounting system and your customer data from your customer relationship management system, we pile this data into “bucket” and “munge” it all together. During this munging process we create relationships and connections between your sales and customer data. The final result is what we call a “data mart.” It is your supermarket full of data ready for you to browse and create reports.

If you create a data mart, then you need a way to monitor, manage and administer it. We have created a data mart interface where you can manage all aspects of  your data mart, from uploading data to sharing.

I hope you find the usability and functionality enhancements in this new version of Indicee useful. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Mark

Related posts:

1. Indicee and Excel
2. Indicee Launch
3. The Wild and Crazy World of Indicee

This is my 10th year of attending Sage conferences and I’ve yet to be disappointed in the content, the venue and the people involved. On occasion, they can even arrange for the excitement of a tropical storm to pass our way and lend a little credibility to the overall agenda.

Last night, we were treated to a visit to the Georgia Aquarium, the world’s largest and most engaging aquarium, according to their website. What interested me most were the promises of the presence of the only whale sharks in captivity outside of Asia and the only 2 Manta rays in captivity. I was not disappointed.

The evening started in “the belly of the beast”, the Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel. Certainly no “beast” in the traditional sense, but a feeling of being Jonah inside the whale when one considers the interior architecture of the building and its surreal, ribcage-like appearance. I wonder if architect John Portman was perhaps a fan of HR Giger’s alien imaginings when he created the building.

From there, we were treated to the driving rains and howling winds of Tropical Storm Ida, recently blown in off the coast from her brief reign as Hurricane Ida. The 10 foot walk from cover to the bus drenched us to the bone, as though tossed through the blowhole of the whale.

Entering the Georgia Aquarium is like being transported fathoms beneath the waves. The massive glass viewing window dwarfs us landlubbers and we are awestruck by the sheer beauty of the underwater realm we are so privileged to witness. Sea creatures of all shapes and sizes drift by, apparently in slow motion, unaware of or unimpressed by our presence. In short course, out of the darkness appears the massive shape of a whale shark, flying towards the glass. A giant Manta ray appears beneath, flying low to the ground, massive mouth agape and moving softly back into the shadows.

Every turn of a corner in the aquarium held new treasures and experiences, more fantastic food and drink and great memories to be made. It seemed fitting somehow to end the evening in the company of pirates, considering we had survived a visit to the depths of Davy Jones’ Locker and returned unscathed.

So what does this have to do with reporting and analysis? Nothing. I suppose I could have made some bizarre leap to try to imagine someone at Sage using a spreadsheet to calculate attendance and food and and … never mind. That would have been a little gratuitous and frankly, we simply had a great time.

Related posts:

1. Hello 2009
2. F5 Expo to host Cloud Computing panel April 7, 2010

The Audacious Goal

Indicee’s goal is to help frustrated business users who are trying to combine data from different data sources just to get answers to some basic business questions. Data can be tricky and if you don’t have the IT experience or the budget needed to buy really expensive software the options are limited. Back in the 90’s some of the Indicee team were responsible for creating Crystal Reports and the goal was to get everyone including my mom using it. While Crystal Reports is an amazing tool it was really targeted at techie IT people and software developers. Does this sound like you? I didn’t think so! Here are a few assumptions I have about you, our typical user: you probably don’t understand databases that well, you don’t have a burning desire to spend the next 6 months mastering a technical reporting tool, you don’t have an army of IT people around you and you probably don’t have the budget to fork out $100K for traditional business intelligence software. Am I right? Comon’ now I can hear you yelling out loud all the way from my office in Vancouver! Indicee is different, we are not trying to recreate another reporting tool for this same set of users, instead we are focused on getting to the “masses” of business users in small and mid-size organizations. Simple, easy to use, low cost and self-serve is what we are all about.

I have provided a bit more insight into Indicee below. If you would rather not listen to me ramble on just check out our Indicee video for the highly summarized version.

Diggin’ for Data

One of the challenges of business intelligence 1.0 is how they access data. Most business systems have a complex database underneath the covers that an average business user would run screaming from and this is exactly where traditional BI tools access their data. Indicee is different…rather than trying to go where the data is complex we decided to get our data from a place that is accessible and easy to understand – the output reports of your typical business system. Sometimes they come out as Crystal Reports, Excel Spreadsheets or just plain old text files. Any business user can look at these and understand them. Indicee sits on top of the existing BI 1.0 infrastructure and re-uses the data and meta-data locked inside files like Crystal, Excel and others. Cool eh? (that’s Canadian by the way!).

When we started Indicee we made a conscious choice to target the most common packaged applications that sit inside company firewalls. Why? Because that is where 95% of all business data is kept today and the majority of this data can be accessed from either Crystal Reports files or Excel spreadsheets. Indicee users can easily access these data sources, combine them with other data (CSV, SaaS sources etc.) and upload without the need to directly access information locked up in corporate databases.

Getting up and running in Indicee is fast. Whether you are building from scratch or you want to use some of our pre-built QuickStarts we believe we have simplified the process of accessing, loading and consolidating data as compared to using manual tools like Excel or complex and expensive BI 1.0 products. If you are using popular applications like Microsoft Great Plains, Sage Accpac or Adagio we have QuickStarts that will get you up and running in less than 10 minutes. Our plan is to expand our QuickStart solutions over the coming months for the most common packaged and SaaS applications.

Ask Questions. Get Answers

For years I listened to users wonder “Why can’t I just ask a question and get an answer?” And no matter how simple conventional BI tools try to be, the bottom line is you need to understand fundamental BI “language” to get answers to your business questions.

To address this, we built a simple interface that allows users to ask business questions in plain English. Reports and visualizations are then produced on-demand from data uploaded to the cloud, eliminating hours of tedious cutting and pasting data from reports into spreadsheets.

Indicee allows users no matter how technical to interact with their data in a really simple way. To do this, we’ve eliminated a lot of the bells and whistles you’ll get in some BI tools. Our reports are about helping you make better business decisions, faster. So we’ve cut our features down to give our customers maximum value.

Share, Collaborate and Engage

In today’s workplaces, emailing massive PDF files, or complex Excel spreadsheets is quickly becoming old school. Today’s businesses are about collaboration in real time.

Empowering and enabling business users in organizations to access data and information provides collaborative decision-making, transparency and alignment. Indicee users can connect with each other and share data securely with colleagues or associates in an online community/social exchange. It’s all done in thin air, BI in the cloud. Where users can comment, provide feedback, upload new data – work collaboratively.

The Game Changer

It’s funny when I think about how far so many software applications have come since we first developed Crystal Reports back in 1991. Almost everything you want or need to do for your business you can do in the cloud. SaaS changed the game for all software companies. But desktop BI tools are still lagging.

We figured it was due time to develop a real SaaS reporting and analysis tool. So try out Indicee. Click on our getting started button to try it out. You can watch one of our videos or take our guided tour. We’ve created three easy ways for you to try our product out without any cost to you.

But most importantly we want to hear from you. We want your feedback. I know everyone says that. But hey we’re a start up so we REALLY mean it! Call us if you need help getting going. Or just want to give us your thoughts on the product. We’re all data geeks here (and a few marketing and HR people thrown in). And we love solving data-related problems.

Mark

Related posts:

1. Developers of Crystal Reports software launch new business intelligence venture
2. Indicee and Excel
3. The Wild and Crazy World of Indicee

Swag is that stuff we get from the booths of the vendors at trade shows. The logo-encrusted, brand enhanced pens, cups, mouse pads and the granddaddy of all swag, the Squooshie Ball.

The science of swag is important. Do you really think people will come to your booth and take interest in your product if you don’t have the latest in marketing chic, like a ballpoint pen with highlighter attachment on top? The reality is that a great giveaway really does generate traffic at trade shows and, like it or not, you need something cool to capture the attention of potential prospects.

We are West Coast. It rains a lot here and we’re a SaaS product, so we are “green” by definition. The rain makes the forests green and there’s no waste involved in SaaS product architecture. No packaging to throw out when software is hosted in the cloud.

In preparing for Sage Summit 2009 in Atlanta, we wondered about how to keep that image and still ensure that people show up at our booth. The Indicee ‘green’ shopping bag is our answer.

• Everyone needs a bag to haul their goodies and trinkets around the show floor.
• Everyone needs a bag to transport the best of the loot home with them.
• Everyone ends up with a reusable grocery bag, keeping a little more plastic from our landfills.

And yes, the fact that our logo will be proudly displayed throughout is not lost on us.  If you’re in Atlanta next week, stop by booth #923 at the show. Enjoy the bag. We think they’re cool. We think they’re green.

Related posts:

1. Road Warriors
2. Reflecting upon Sage Insights 2010
3. I’m in the wrong business

Greetings and salutations everyone and welcome from your new Indicee Blogger!  I say “your” blogger because my goal is to provide great content for you based on your needs covering topics you find relevant for your business.  We’ll discuss management accounting and reporting matters, business intelligence and data management for non-techies, solving business problems, business management, and provide a forum for discussion on related topics.  This community can’t exist without you so let us know your thoughts through the comments or email.  If we’re missing something, let us know!  My background is industry accounting and finance with a focus on operations.  I’ve been in your shoes.  I speak your language.  I’ve worked in a number of industries and seen the best and the worst of business processes in action.  The goal of this space is to create a great resource for people like us!

As indicated by the byline, my name is Geoff Devereux.  I am your Community Advocate.  This is a departure for me.  We’re not 100% sure what that job title even means, but perhaps with time it will become clear.  There is an experimental element at play here that makes this entire exercise a bit of a science experiment.  In the meantime, I will try and keep things lively.  I am new to blogging but there’s a massive body of knowledge developing around the process and I’ll do my best to use Seth, Clay, Darren, et al. as guides for producing content that is engaging.  The format of this post is largely thanks to a post from Getelastic.com.  As mentioned, my background is accounting and finance, so I need all the help I can get.  I’m familiar with the glassy-eyed reaction to my response to the “what do you do?” question at parties.  History has not been kind in describing the social graces of our profession.  Let’s look to the future instead.

So bookmark this blog, tweet it, email it or add our RSS feed, and we’ll generate a whole new body of knowledge around Indicee. Again, your feedback is crucial to developing this resource in a way that creates maximum value.  We want to hear from you.

All the best until next time,

Geoffd@indicee.com

Related posts:

1. The Wild and Crazy World of Indicee
2. Indicee and Excel
3. Indicee Launch

Indicee was named to Rocket Builders’ Emerging Ready to Rocket list for 2009. The list profiles technology companies with the greatest potential for revenue growth.  Each year, based on analysis of trends that will drive growth in the information technology sector, Rocket Builders identifies twenty-five (25) private companies that are best positioned to capitalize on the trends for growth. Along with the top 25 who are commercialized and generating revenue, Rocket Builders also selects a list of what they call “Emerging Rockets” which are typically pre-revenue and pre-commercialized products. This selection methodology has been an accurate predictor of growth with “Ready to Rocket”companies exceeding the industry growth rate. Also, many of these companies raise investment capital and each year many of the profiled “Ready to Rocket” companies are acquired.

To see a complete list of companies that are Ready to Rocket or Emerging Rockets check out their website

Related posts:

1. Hello 2009
2. Indicee Launch
3. The Wild and Crazy World of Indicee