Startups Focusing On Enterprise Applications
forbes.com
forbes.com
That said, there's an interesting point at the confluence of consumer apps and "the enterprise" and we're kinda working there. For example, two of our products could kinda-sorta-loosely be described as "Facebook for the Enterprise" and "Reddit for the Enterprise". There's definitely inspiration taken from the consumer-app world, but the fun part is taking that, some really cutting-edge semantic integration tech, mixing all of that with existing enterprise systems, and applying it to solving problems in gnarly new ways.
Our application is a procurement tool; specifically, sourcing. Sourcing isn't what most people think it is though. When large companies buy things, they don't just run down to the market and buy them. They go through a process that is broken up in to many parts. Sourcing is the process of identifying vendors and acquiring a price, which will then be formalized in to a contract, through which employees will purchase goods and services... DEEP BREATH
This process occurs for any goods or services that the company spends large dollar amounts on. The threshold varies from organization to organization, but we focus on contract values of $500,000 or more.
We built a modern implementation of a pricing tool that showed up in the mid-nineties: reverse auction. Our software is built in Ruby on Rails with a standard CRUD portion for most of the document handling and administrative work, and a couple of javascript/api apps for bidding and observing during a bid. Our software and process works a bit differently than our competitors. Most reverse auctions run for days, kind of like eBay in reverse. Bidders can stop by and drop a bid in whenever they want. Our reverse auction events are run "live". We schedule them for 30 minutes (typically), and bidders compete in real time through an interface that updates immediately.
Becaues the product is complex, we have a heavy professional services component. We've got bid teams and account execs who work with our customers throughout the process. On bid day, there are people on the ground fielding calls from bidders, talking the customer through the bid, and generally making sure that the ball gets across the goal line. Surprisingly, it's really exciting work. Our sales guys always say it's the most fun you'll have in procurement.
We're 3 years in, bootstrapped and profitable from the first year. We're actually going to do some hiring in the Cleveland, OH market, so if you're in the area, and you know Ruby on Rails, get in touch with me through my profile.
The company I work for is currently building a corporate travel booking system. There are hundreds of competitors out there, but all of them approach the problem from a financial system integration perspective. We try and take the "consumer" approach and apply it to a corporate environment - building products that look like a consumer product, but has all the backend functionality that a corporate would need.
So far it seems to be working!
The UK's GDS is doing some v impressive stuff on changing how government IT is developed, so they are managing to build websites (boring) but the way they do it is bringing in real change.
Which seems to be the best of both worlds.
Silly idea - I realised yesterday that the kickstarter model could apply to corporate budget allocation. A department puts it's core features and it's desired features up on the internal board, and other budget holders allocate some of their budget to those that they want to support.
it's basically trying to move corporate budgets out of communist style command and control and into a more open approach.
I toyed with some setups yesterday because it's different and would actually make change in the organisation (admittedly a hard sell)
I just would like to see something trying to change our organisations
Rather than voting on a single feature (like Nest offers), every idea's benefits and drawbacks are openly discussed in a moderated* fashion. The debate can include a detailed break-down of costs, allowing budgetary information to influence discourse and direction.
Also, imagine a hypothesis section wherein guesstimated outcomes are recorded, which can be compared with what actually happened.
[1]: https://community.nest.com/community/product-suggestions
[2]: http://davidjarvis.ca/world-politics/
*Groupthink is mitigated by randomly selecting moderators from the entire population, who are then empowered for a random interval of time. All users are anonymous.
It might work better for something like a partnership using a model like John Lewis.
Truly novel and innovative business cultures require tolerating a certain degree of failures and dead-end projects. The degree of uncertainty of such endeavours makes the Wall Street nervous. They prefer steady and reliable returns on their investments.
So it is not surprising that startups are focussing on a cash rich customer base. But it is unfortunate that they are not the fountains of innovation as one would have hoped for.