eThority presented to BBBT with Mike Psenka (President/CEO), Whitney Hutchinson (Director of Marketing), Mikell Lewis (PR Coordinator), Lou Pugliese (Executive Chairman). Psenka started the company 17 years ago with information management
tools in healthcare and, in particular, medical schools. His analogy is that their tool is like an automobile in relation with walking or flying. They satisfy the critical need for universal
information delivery that anyone could immediately utilize. The company is privately held, no VC funding and profitable.
They state, "We design software that conforms to the way that you work--not vice versa. In our opinion, all software should be designed to serve the end user, which means making it easy to use. Every next step should be obvious...
user-obvious, and should not require training." That claim certainly has tremendous interest from corporations, but it is a claim that many vendors make but few actually deliver.
We spend considerable time discussing the issue of governance with data control. Psenka gave an example, "An eight-column report has thousands of permutations, but IT can only support a hundred or so. Add of course, users will want yet another permutation. Further, if you add one additional field, there is a huge ripple effect of more development work for IT. Users need to allow users to extend the base 'System-Of-Record' data with other data, but in a controlled fashion. Psenka then described their distributed security model.
For a feeling of the eThority tool, play with their interactive demos in the
Demo Grounds.
My Take... eThority is an example of innovative UI design for usability as a user-facing information delivery tool. Note that I avoided the traditional terms "reporting" and "BI" since the product does not fit comfortably into established categories. There is good news and bad news here. Market penetration is initially difficult...getting in front of the right decision makers. However, the right people will quickly see the business value to eThority.
I like the 'databook' approach: simple flat table as entry point and group/sort/filter easy, along with a secured sharing mechanism. I like the well designed widgets for charting, histograms. I really like the way that chart forecasting is a simple 'slider' extension of the chart. I like their bold initiative to move into complex analysis, like predictive analytics, with a user-obvious interface! However, I am concerned that the company find a viable niche within the BI market.
