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Alex Ladd, Chief Executive OfficerCould you provide us with a brief overview of the company?
Focusing on the enterprise performance management (EPM) space, we help companies throughout their journey choose the best solution and its implementation, optimization, and deployment, all the way to managing it post-implementation. We offer customers business intelligence and analytic tool selection, predictive modeling development, real-time streaming analytics, application design, and best practices for their financial planning. MindStream Analytics works with clients to find a solution that improves value and offers better insight into their data. We are a full-service analytics company, whose AppCare solution is recognized by Channel Futures MSP 501.
What are the challenges your clients face concerning cloud adoption and planning, and how, as a company, have you aligned yourself accordingly?
The most significant pain point in the marketplace is trying to perform financial planning on a large multi-tabbed spreadsheet. This presents many problems such as lack of security, process control, error overlays, formula problems, and version control. It is often difficult to cobble the finished product together to create a consolidated view. Often, the process is put into a series of stages where it can take weeks to accomplish one stage. The long tedious steps get mixed-up together instead of getting iterative and collaborative - which is the very goal of an effective budgeting and forecasting process in the first place.
Could you elaborate on the onboarding process that you follow or the technology you use while delivering the solutions?
Usually, our customers are CFOs, Controllers, or Finance VP’s that are the heads of financial planning and analysis (FP&A).
Working with clients toward a solution that improves value, we offer better insight into their data for enhanced analytics capabilities
This spans across a variety of different industries regardless of the vertical that people are in. We all arrive at our budget and forecast numbers in a variety of different ways, but the goal is always to manage their business against milestones or parameters that they have set.
The methodology we use is a modified version of Agile called Compass. It allows us to have an iterative process that is driven by the customer. Compass allows us to incorporate feedback throughout the project lifecycle. It accomplishes a second objective, by enabling us to train the customer throughout the process and not just having a dedicated training at the very end. Learning as they go makes them self-reliant to handle the solution independently without any assistance.
On the technology side, we are a multi-vendor and offer several different products that we implement. Amongst the variety of cloud planning solutions, Oracle and NetSuite are a big part of our practice. We also service Anaplan, OneStream, and Adaptive Insights customers.
What differentiates the company from the other players in the market?
We are able to deliver a leading-edge solution that was previously accessible only to the largest companies in the world, such as Fortune 500. The smaller companies were not able to afford these advanced solutions. By focusing on this one thing and doing it well - we were able to get economies of scale that bring a price point where it makes sense for smaller companies with 25 million or 50 million revenue. This was the real game-changer. We’ve enabled small organizations to bring a level of sophistication to their financial management with the advanced solutions that were once only accessible to billion-dollar global corporations. This helped clients become more financially diligent in their pursuit to increase their net income and to manage their expenses and business better. One of the ways that this manifests itself is cash flow management. Many companies actively manage their cash, but don't necessarily budget and forecast their cash flow. We have provided organizations with a solution that enables them to manage their cash very effectively. This saves them from borrowing costs and helps them with collecting receivables, ultimately improving their overall financial health.
The other key differentiator is AppCare - our award-winning managed services offering. We’ve been recognized as the only pure-play analytics company by Channels Futures to ever make the list of the top Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) in the world. We have made the Top 501continuously for five years now, and it’s something we’re incredibly proud of. After 6 years we are currently delivering AppCare to customers all across the globe.
What do you envision for the company in the future?
We are looking forward to enhancing our services to attract a different customer base and increase the number of projects on an annual basis to hundreds. We have already started our journey towards this goal. In just five days, we have signed 13 new customers, which was unthinkable for us a year ago. We can deliver these solutions to a vast base of the customer as they find us trustworthy and reliable. We have observed that there is an intense desire among clients to have a more turnkey approach to their reporting. The concept of self-service reporting—where everything behind the scenes is done for them – is a trend. They can consume the data as they need to analyze reports each day without worrying about the process that got the data there – as long as the numbers are correct. Organizations are already using tools such as Google Analytics to simplify their tasks. In the same way, we are also planning to develop similar capabilities for their financial reporting, where the client can review their reports without worrying about pulling all the data together from its different sources.
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