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Speaking from the perspective of a Finance department (small or large), this product's competitor is Excel. Google spreadsheets is not really a direct competito

Speaking from the perspective of a Finance department (small or large), this product's competitor is Excel. Google spreadsheets is not really a direct competitor. Most finance departments use less than 20% of Excel's functionality. Where they waste the most person hour cycles is syncing data in spreadsheets and recreating formulas that got blown away by someone who emailed back the spreadsheet. From a Finance department perspective, the hard part is getting their attention. The pricing seems reasonable, compared to the stuff in my world, i.e. Cognos, Hyperion, etc. but Finance departments can be weird about money. They're ok wasting person hours that are worth more than the cost of software that will pay itself off quickly. I think this is an interesting product, but the challenge for it as a business is more of a marketing problem than a technical problem.

revorad 16y ago
Isn't data security also going to be a problem with Finance departments? Surely they don't want to put their sensitive data on a third party server?
- slantyyz 16y ago
  It can be. I doubt any public companies would consider Hypernumbers for SOX reasons. I know of a few companies who had no problems, however, having their finance data on a third party external server, but in a different context. I believe that GoodData (hosted business intelligence) is doing quite well, and I would think that a large portion of their clients are sending finance data to them.
  - gordonguthrie 16y ago
    One of the reasons Salesforce penetrated the enterprise space is that they priced under the pre-approval limit for corporate credit cards. People signed up, loaded up their data, claimed the money back and then told IT/compliance by which time the hens had flown the coop... There is no way any seriously large company would put us on their approved list (at the moment) which is fine.

revorad 16y ago

Isn't data security also going to be a problem with Finance departments? Surely they don't want to put their sensitive data on a third party server?

slantyyz 16y ago
It can be. I doubt any public companies would consider Hypernumbers for SOX reasons. I know of a few companies who had no problems, however, having their finance data on a third party external server, but in a different context. I believe that GoodData (hosted business intelligence) is doing quite well, and I would think that a large portion of their clients are sending finance data to them.
- gordonguthrie 16y ago
  One of the reasons Salesforce penetrated the enterprise space is that they priced under the pre-approval limit for corporate credit cards. People signed up, loaded up their data, claimed the money back and then told IT/compliance by which time the hens had flown the coop... There is no way any seriously large company would put us on their approved list (at the moment) which is fine.