Business intelligence | Keith Fenech

How did Trackerbird come about?

Before Trackerbird, I occupied the role of Product Manager for an international software company, interacting daily with software engineers, marketing, sales and company executives. Here I came to realise that Software Product Managers and company executives are constantly expected to take crucial and strategic decisions affecting the product roadmap, however many times the data required to take such important decisions is either missing, incomplete or too time-consuming to obtain. This is especially the case when trying to gather facts about how people out there are actually using their software. Given this lack of business intelligence, many times software companies end up taking strategic decisions based simply on their gut feeling, without having an accurate tool to measure product performance metrics or consumer reactions to changes in their product.

Trackerbird was born to fill this gap in business intelligence. We wanted to build a solution that helps software companies collect real-time data on how people are using their software, and present this in the form of actionable metrics and reports that directly answer their Product Management questions.

How can software companies benefit from the new Software Analytics Service you've just launched?

Well, let's say a company builds a software product and invests time and money in marketing its product. They use SEO and Web Analytics to measure and improve the number of downloads. But from 1,000 downloads a month they only get to sell 50 licenses. So what happened the the rest? Did people bother installing the software? Did they use it for the whole 30-day trial or did they dump it after the first five minutes? What features did they use during evaluation? And what made them buy or uninstall the software?

Trackerbird was designed to answer all these questions and presents companies with a goldmine of information which can help Product Managers understand what their customers really want from their software. Through its feature tracking, runtime analysis and Conversion Funnel analysis reports, Trackerbird helps companies understand their audience so they can build software that resonates better with customers in order to increase sales conversions.

Trackerbird also includes other features such as exception tracking, license key management, a check-for-updates server as well as a direct-to-desktop messaging framework which companies can use to send out informational or promotional messages or surveys to the desktop of customers running their software.

Are there any privacy concerns when using the service?

All data collected by Trackerbird is totally anonymous and secure. We do not store any IP addresses and do not collect any data that can identify a particular person. The API offered by Trackerbird also supports multiple privacy levels as well as an opt-in/opt-out mechanism which enables software developers to get permission directly from end-users before gathering any usage data. Therefore the service was designed to minimise any privacy concerns by end-customers.

How is the company, a start-up, faring during a global economic crisis and stiff competition in the IT sector?

Well, just like all startups, we do have our challenges and the fact that a number of companies have been forced to cut down their budgets in view of the economic downturns will of course have an impact on potential sales. However on the other hand, the product that we are offering is quite innovative, so people are generally still quite inquisitive. The good thing about this is that the information collected by Trackerbird actually helps companies measure the effect of their marketing campaigns and product updates. This allows them to focus their budgets on what works without wasting money in developing and marketing stuff which lacks an effective ROI.

Fundamental shifts are now occurring in the software industry. 'Cloud' is becoming the new buzz word. What are the strategies Trackerbird is executing to meet today's fast-changing requirements?

Cloud Services have been in vogue for a couple of years now and in 2012 we have seen an outburst of attention-grabbing headlines related to 'Big Data' which is very much part of the Business Analytics market we form part of. This market has been growing at 10-15% annually and will reach $50 billion by 2016, as confirmed in a recent press release by IDC (www.idc.com). This growth has pushed the development of new technologies that allow Big Data to be processed effectively, in a way that was not possible using traditional Relational Database systems.

Trackerbird was designed to collect and process huge amounts of data in real-time by building on top of these innovative design techniques that are today being used by industry leaders such as  Google and Amazon. As businesses put heavier demands on their Analytics requirements, Trackerbird will keep on experimenting with emerging technologies to offer even more powerful and scalable Analytics tools to our customers.

What kind of application expertise and guarantees is your firm providing to customers?

The team behind Trackerbird bring together a nice cocktail of business, Product Management and Software Development experience that allows us to offer customers a solution which directly fits their business needs. Our constant craving for innovation coupled with the technology and business expertise we have gained over the years will guarantee that our customers will always get access to the latest technology and design techniques that allow us to remain innovative and competitive.

Where do you feel your company will be in a year or two?

Well, we are still in a very early startup phase so our focus right now is to get as much feedback as possible from customers and trial users. We are operating in a relatively new field, and given the product we are offering is of exceptional quality, we would like to push this to a stage where it becomes the product management tool of choice for Windows desktop application providers. As we grow our roots we would also like to widen our scope to support other programming languages and platforms.

What does it take for a software company to try out your software?

Well, we offer a freeware version of our service so anybody interested to trying it out can simply register a free account on our website - www.trackerbird.com - and integrate the API with their software totally for free. Basic integration takes less than 30 minutes of development time, and if the company is a startup or the product has under 400 installations, then they can remain using our freeware version for as long as they want, no fees or commitments. Companies having larger products can then choose to upgrade to one of our premium plans.

What are the major challenges a start-up like yours faces?

Being self-funded, we have to operate on a very lean budget and this can be quite a challenge especially when it comes to Marketing and building an international brand name. So building product awareness in an international market is definitely a tough task. Being a small team, we also end up working long working hours to meet our goals, which can sometimes take its toll. But overall, I must say that with a strongly bonded team and enough determination to succeed, all challenges can be overcome.

How many other companies offer the same solution? What exactly makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace?

We currently know of two other companies offering a similar service to Trackerbird, and both of these are relatively new on the market. However, Trackerbird has gone a step further to focus more on offering actionable business intelligence rather than just gathering raw metrics. For example, with Trackerbird reports, you can interactively drill down to focus on specific sales regions, product versions, editions, languages, platforms or license types. This means you can answer specific product management questions in real time, which is not really possible with competitor products. We also provide very powerful conversion funnel analytics which helps software companies understand and improve their conversion trends. Another unique feature is our Reachout direct-to-desktop messaging framework which companies can use to send out messages directly to users running their software.

What do your customers/users say about your product and/or service?

In the first few months after launch we had interest from a number of software companies from all over the globe, some of which are established public companies. The feedback we get from customers is very positive. I am happy to say that we very often get a "wow" response when we deliver live product demos, and this is especially evident with Marketing and Product Managers who immediately recognise the potential. Software Developers also tend to like the simplicity of integrating Trackerbird within their product.

What additional areas might Trackerbird be able to expand into?

We definitely will expand into other platforms, and our target is to support more programming languages in order to grow our target market beyond Windows desktop applications. However we want to remain focused specifically on Software Analytics, and grow our expertise in the area.

What advice do you have for up-and-coming entrepreneurs?

Act fast, launch fast, get feedback and re-iterate. Don't just aim to create the 'ultimate product' since you might end up drying up your cashflow and team motivation even before you have a product to launch! I would say the glue that keeps it all together is passion and motivation, because if you are passionate enough at what you do, the rest will follow.

For more information log on to: www.trackerbird.com.