Thank you for making 2008 a great year for Indicee.  We began 2008 with a small but talented team, a simple product prototype, limited funds and a few ideas on go to market strategies that would turn our company into a growing concern. While our team is seasoned in the business intelligence space I will be the first one to say that we are working toward solving a challenging problem. The concept of making business intelligence simple & easy has its obstacles. Some might even say that simple & easy business intelligence is an oxymoron and maybe we are just morons for attempting such a lofty goal. But there lies the opportunity and the barrier for others who may try to follow

When 2008 began we knew there was a demand for a better way to collect, analyze, share and collaborate on business data but we needed the user community to begin helping us shape our services. In August we released our first public beta under the radar…like a stealth fighter flying through Russian airspace. There were no press releases, no fan fare, no hype. Instead we focused on organically gathering early adopter business users that could resonate with the pain of living in what we call “spreadsheet hell.” Business users with an analytical focus that spend their days cobbling data together from numerous reports and data dumps into tools like Excel were our target users. This problem is widespread and I can guarantee you that if you talk to ANY business analyst in ANY company of ANY size they will confirm my assertion.

The focus of our beta program was not the typical web start-up strategy…..”let’s just get a bunch of email sign-ups so we can tell our investors that we have thousands of users!” Instead we have focused on gathering a smaller number of quality Beta customers that work very closely with the Indicee team to help define the workflow, user interface design and overall feature set.  We have customers using Indicee across numerous industries including manufacturing, legal services, consumer products, food and beverage and retail. The best part is that these customers are validating our early assertions and the product is already spreading to more and more users in each organization.

But we didn’t stay under the radar for too long. In November one of our local Vancouver newspapers got wind of the Indicee story and did a feature on our venture.  It was great to get a bit of buzz and it led to a steady stream of new users and customers. But really we are still flying under the radar until a bit later in 2009.

I like to think of 2008 as our “build year” and 2009 as our “launch” year. I won’t hold our product team to any hard dates just yet but we are targeting our first commercial release in Q2 2009. What does “commercial” mean? Simple….if the Indicee service is something you would pay money for then it is ready for the commercial tag. We are going to be working with each of you, as a member of the Indicee community, to help us define what “commercial” looks like.

So what can you count on coming in 2009?

• 1. Improved reporting and analysis features – calculations, comparisons, summaries, charting, enhanced question user interface, data filtering and more….we call these table stakes business intelligence features that almost every user will want.
• 2. Quickstarts – we will be creating pre-packaged solutions for targeted accounting and ERP products like Sage MAS 90/200, Accpac, Quickbooks, Navision, Great Plains and more. The goal is to enable you, the business user, to upload existing canned reports from any of these applications and be up and running in 15 minutes or less. We won’t be able to tackle all of these Quickstarts in 2009 but you can count on 2 or 3 at the very least.
• 3. Data Import – one of the big differentiators of our service is the ability to take existing reports or Excel files and upload them into Indicee without having to call up your IT person. Enabling you to use files you have at your fingertips liberates you from having to talk to IT every time you want to do something with your data. If you are using Indicee now you will know that we only support single file data imports. In 2009 that will change and we will be adding the capability to get data from multiple sources and relate the data together in our data import process. Imagine being able to get a canned report from your accounting application and your CRM application and then mash them together. That is powerful and that is where we are going!
• 4. Online subscription and payment – I know, I know…free is better but at some point we would like to make money. But not to worry…we will always have a free version of the service. For the paid version you can count on monthly and annual subscriptions that can be done via credit card.

I can’t tell you everything we are working on! I have to keep a few things secret but these 4 key areas all fit under the umbrella of what we call self-serve business intelligence. We aren’t quite there yet but 2009 will be all about making Indicee more and more self-serve from the way you learn about the service, to the way you buy the service and to the way you utilize the service.  In the short term our team has to do a bit of the work to get you up and running but each time we do that we are defining more clearly how our self-service capabilities need to work.

Do you have a business problem that Indicee might be able to solve? Do you use accounting or ERP packages like Sage, Quickbooks, Microsoft Navision or Great Plains and are you struggling to get the information you need? I would be interested to hear about your business challenges that revolve around data, reporting and analytics.

Thanks for your support in 2008 and I wish each of you all the best in 2009!

Mark
Founder & CEO, Indicee
twitter.com/indicee