Data is being collected at a record rate. Every move we make and every process we complete is now tracked. We wear fitness trackers and health monitors. Today's systems track our purchases, our location, and events in our personal lives.
Large enterprises have the IT horsepower and talent to gather, manage, analyze and monetize all that date. But what about small business owners and entrepreneurs?
That's where Grow.com enters the picture The three-year-old company provides business intelligence (BI) dashboards that unite data from hundreds of sources, including spreadsheets, databases, and SaaS applications. And yes, the system is designed for small businesses.
In fact, Grow.com has been laser-focused on making their platform attainable for any business, regardless of size. The company even recently hired Richard Tripp as chief product officer; he brings more than 15 years of executive experience to the BI start-up, and will oversee product management and engineering to help Grow dominate SMB BI space.
HubSpot Invests in Grow.com
Among the more recent moves: Grow.com received $16 million in Series B funding from HubSpot alongside various institutional investors. To date, Grow.com has secured $26 million in total funding from investors. The latest funding will fuel sales and marketing efforts, drive R&D for new app features, as well as deepen the HubSpot integration to more effectively serve mutual customers.
Assuming Grow.com works as advertised, the SMB market can surely benefit from business intelligence insights. In an enterprise environment, strong performance in some business units can mask poor decisions in weaker business units. But SMB businesses don't have the same luxury. One poor decision could be extremely costly across the entire business.
With that reality in mind, Grow.com offers Executive, Marketing, Sales, Investor, Support, Financial, Operations and HR dashboards that can be custom built for any company requirements. The platform is priced to work with companies ranging from two to 200,000 employees. The company boasts over 150 integrations with some of the top SaaS platforms for businesses including social media channels, email marketing platforms, and project management applications.
IT Service Providers and Business Intelligence
Of course, the MSP market also has a range of business intelligence (BI) dashboards and platforms -- including everything from PSA (professional services automation) systems to BI-centric tools like BrightGauge and MSP CFO.
Moreover, big enterprise vendors are coming downstream into the SMB sector with business management tools. Recent examples include Microsoft Dynamics 365 Central and Salesforce.com's CRM and ticketing system for SMBs.
We'll be watching to see if or how those SMB management and analytics systems attract IT services providers as customers.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
