We just launched a new release of our product over the weekend and I thought I would get a blog out to highlight some of the cool and exciting new features and enhancements the team has been working hard on over the past few months. Here we go:
New Indicee.com Website
The focus of our new site was to more clearly communicate the uses and benefits of Indicee and to more effectively target the user types that we see jumping into Indicee. We gave the site a new layout with a video that sits front and center. The idea is to quickly get you up to speed on what Indicee is all about and then offer you the ability to test the application out without ever having to sign-up: Indicee Test Drive. We hate ‘those sites’ (and we assume you do to) that ask you to give up your first-born child just to complete the “get more information” form. The worst part is that after you fill out the form you find out there is nothing to see and you are going to get a sales guy calling you. We like the self-serve, try before you buy option better.
Video is something we plan to use more of as we progress. By now you have probably watched the “What is Indicee?” video and I bet you are still scratching your head trying to figure out where we came up with the word “munge!” I will leave that for you to ponder while I tell you that we are going to be continually adding new “how to” videos in the help section that will guide you through all of the main areas of the product. These are not highly polished and produced videos. Instead they are short (less than a minute) and simple videos that cut to the chase. We plan on adding and modifying these on an on-going basis. So check them out and tell us what other videos you would like to see.
Accpac QuickStart
One of our key beliefs at Indicee is that moving you from “This Indicee thing sounds cool!” to “Holy cow that is actually my data on the screen!” needs to happen in ten (yes 10) minutes or less. Our product was architected with this vision in mind. We are developing a number of QuickStart solutions that will align with the most popular packaged software applications. Our early focus will be on small to medium sized business applications like Sage Accpac and MAS 90, Microsoft Great Plains and Navision, Quickbooks and a number of others. QuickStarts are pre-packaged datamarts that will enable you to upload reports from your favorite packaged application without ever having to talk to IT.
Our first QuickStart is based on Accpac, a small/medium business accounting software application. We have created specific sections on our website that communicate more specifically to you, the Accpac user. We even have an Indicee Accpac Test Drive that provides Accpac specific sample data. More importantly we have created a new user interface that guides you through the process of uploading your reports from Accpac including a “how to” help video.
We will be adding a number of other QuickStarts over the coming months. What would be your favorite QuickStart?
Indicee Datamart Designer
As I mentioned above, getting data into Indicee quickly and easily is a key component of our vision. It is also a major differentiator when comparing Indicee to other business intelligence products. Next time you watch a web seminar from a business intelligence (BI) company ask them specifically how they get your data into their application. Almost all of them will do the “BI dance” and eventually admit that they will need to put a consultant or 10 on the job. At Indicee we not only believe that querying and analyzing data should be self-serve but getting data into the system should be self-serve. That is why we spent the past year building the first version of our drag and drop interface to enable you to create a datamart. No longer does loading and consolidating data need to be done by the “techie folks” in the back room. We are early in the process so I don’t want to be too cocky and say that our designer will solve every problem just yet. But soon……it will tackle most of them.
Some huge areas of improvement over our last release include our ability to consolidate more than one Crystal Report, Excel spreadsheet or CSV (Comma Separate Value) file into a single datamart. Now you can grab a report from your ERP system and connect it to a report from your CRM application. That would be cool right!? Let’s get back to that “munge” word I was mentioning earlier.
The other cool capability is being able to take a QuickStart, like the one mentioned above, open it in the datamart designer and extended the data in the QuickStart to include sources from other ERP, CRM or virtually any packaged application that has data that can be related to the QuickStart data. Rather than starting from scratch you can start from something that already exists and build on it.
Data Model Sharing
When you create a new datamart you are really creating a storage location for data. The storage location needs to have some type of structure much like a closet needs to have shelves to store things on. In the Indicee world the equivalent of the closet is what we call a data model. One of the really cool things we can do in Indicee is to share models into public groups to enable other users to be able to re-use the models with their own data.
Question URL Referencing
Every shared question now has a URL that can be referenced directly by other group members via email or social media messaging to help promote the sharing of information across group members. Not much more to elaborate on this one. Short and sweet!
Email Alerts
Letting people know that there is new information available to view in Indicee is important to the overall user experience. We have added optional group settings to enable email alerts that can be sent following common group activities like the addition of data, new questions, new users and more.
Role security
A number of our customers have been asking for more control over how users can view data. More specifically we can apply security that associates a user’s account with particular data in the datamart. For example, If you have a data mart with sales per store, Indicee can associate a user’s account with a particular store and restrict that user to only seeing data from their store. Unfortunately, we do not have a user interface for this feature yet but if this type of feature is of interest to you please send us an email and we can get it set up for you: support@indicee.com
Wow…that was a long post. What can I say….the team cranked out a whole bunch of stuff over the past few months and I wanted to make sure I told all of you about it.
As usual we would love to hear from you about what works and what doesn’t. We develop our features based on your input.
Mark
