CAN’s Portal is designed to “looks very similar on both ends,” for CAN and clients, CEO Grant Stanley says.
Contemporary Analysis (CAN), a four-year-old B2B analytics company in Omaha, launched Portal, an online data-exchange interface for its clients, last week.
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“Customers don’t always have data that’s in perfect shape,” said Matt Crowl, a navigator at CAN.
While face-to-face collaboration has been the tried-and-true way to bring a new client’s data into workable condition, that method of sorting through a business’ information can require extensive travel. “With Portal, you get the data up there all in one place,” said Grant Stanley, the CEO of CAN. “I don’t want anyone to have to spend 10 hours in airports and planes.”
The goal of Portal then is to allow CAN clients and CAN staff to interact with the data online, eliminating the time and expense of travel. “It’s a user-friendly interface that organizes tools and lets us connect with the client without having them see the scary math,” Crowl said.
Stanley (left) said Portal was designed to provide a similar user experience for clients and CAN staff. “Portal looks very similar on both ends, and it’s very visual,” he said. “Front end and back end.”
So if someone from CAN is Skyping with a client, discussion of what’s onscreen should be fluid, thanks to the design and programming work of Oxide Design and Agape Red, respectively. In-line memos should enable collaborators to click on links to speed to a particular section in a lengthy report.
Portal was also built to handle the 30GB files that CAN handles on average. “We’d be driving hours to pick up a hard drive,” Stanley said. He noted that Portal can also handle much larger files if needed and still keep sensitive data under wraps. “The main feature of Portal’s data upload and download functionality is that it throttles uploads and downloads, restarts if interrupted and encrypts the transfer to our SSAE16, PCI and HIPPA compliant data center.”
The first of CAN’s five tools, Pulse, is currently available on Portal. According to CAN’s website, this system uses predictive analysis to identify clients, both current and prospective, that will be loyal, profitable and active.
The other four tools (Tracker, Capture, Beacon and Terrain) are slated to come onto Portal at a rate of one per quarter. Beacon is due out in December.
Gearing up for the extra work, CAN expects to hire 20 navigators (responsible for helping clients understand and apply predictive analytics to their businesses) and 10 data scientists over the next six months. The company, which currently stands at 20 employees and occupies 3,800 square feet of office space in the Old Market, was a team of just four people in 1,000 square feet a little more than one year ago.
“We really hit our stride,” Stanley said. “We’re at that point where we’ve figured out our business model, so we’re just working on scaling.”
Updates Sept. 16, 11 a.m.: Contemporary Analysis is four years old. A previous version of the story indicated it was a three-year-old company.
Credits: Photo of Stanley from linkedin.com.
