BI for the little guy: Xambrosius courts small business
We humans love to root for the underdog -- David and Goliath, anyone? -- and in the business intelligence space, there are a lot of hulking giants.
To address the better-than-a-spreadsheet but not-quite-an-aircraft-carrier market, Ann Arbor, Mich.-based startup GPX Software has released a business intelligence tool suite called Xambrosius that it says is designed and priced specifically for small businesses, e.g. accountants, consultants, and bankers.
(Where's the name come from, you ask? Xambrosius is derived from Ambrosius, one of the names for the soothsayer of Arthurian legend. He's more popularly known as Merlin the wizard.)
The GPX team hopes that its software-as-a-service offering is positively ambrosial (sorry, couldn't resist) compared to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, thanks to tools that help forecast balance sheets, income statements and statements of cash flows by incorporating 16,000 private company salaries and comparable information bits mined from the web.
A quick rundown on features:
- Map assumption tables and notations to ProForma elements to recreate thought processes or adapt them as necessary.
- Should questions arise, time and date stamp audit trail captures every new or changed item in a separate CSV file for review.
- Data prompting, which reduces missed or incomplete information for complete and accurate financial documents.
- Up to three "virtualized models" that provide iterative updates for scenario planning. Colloquially, "what if" scenario exploration.
- 15 years available in the model. "It's ideal for life sciences applications," GPX says.
- Up to four concurrent users to see, modify, test or analyze a financial model.
And here's a rundown in video format:
The three-year-old startup counts neighbor Ann Arbor State Bank as its first customer; the company hopes to add more by going after users of Salary.com, via a partnership struck way back in November.
Dull, or divine? We'll soon see.