June 10, 2015
Dear Shareholders,
It seems like everyone these days is talking about big data... There are a lot of companies on or jumping on the big data bandwagon. However, there is a missing piece that many of these companies arent getting, and this is the human-being. The actual user of the data, the decision maker. What about a product designed for the real person?
Human Centered Design
Our video game experience allows us to create this rich human-centered design that real humans can use (as opposed to heavy technology users in the back room). When we think about the design of Cumul8, to set it apart it must speak to any user. It must speak to people who need to see their data quickly and then create a story and make it relevant. That story has to be relevant to the person and to the decision they need to make, now. The challenge with big data is that it sells this promise but often delivers a complex, static, broad view that does not actually help the people needing to make the decision.
Most of our competitors have solutions that are intimidating to a non technical person. But, what is needed is a solution thats as easy to use as the video game, Minecraftand just as addictive.
Many of our competitors say they have thousands of customers. But just because you have purchased a product and its installed on your computer, doesnt mean you will use it. Are these customers actually using these products? And if they are using the products, do the like using them, do they feel compelled to use them, or is it something they are forced to do?
We believe that we have the chops from our years in games to make software for humans. We arent just saying thiswe are doing it. We have spent many years in the trenches getting beat up by demanding teenage boys who want software that is faster, easier, has more depth, has more features, looks better, and the list goes on... We get what people need and what people want and how they want it served up. We are bringing that human design focus to data.
We Are Not *Just* BI
Over the past few months we have been showing Cumul8 to many new clients. The simplicity of the design becomes quickly apparent as soon as someone sees Cumul8 in action. We are looking at market opportunities and seeing more industries open up.
During this period of intense marketing, we have learned that we are not competing with the big Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, like SAP, Tableau, or IBM. Rather we are complimenting these products. Cumul8 can sit on top of BI solutions and transform the data into something relevant. Essentially, we are taking that data from big BI solutions and helping people connect with the data, find patterns with the data, tell stories with the data, and make smarter decisions with the data.
We want more people in an organization to have the ability to grab company data, bash it together, and tell a story that will help efficiency, help save money, help tell a story.
Making Data Relevant
Ive included this flowchart below to show the key pillars of Cumul8. We believe that data must be shared from all sources and bashed together to create a story. It is the common story and the understanding that speeds up and improves the decision process.
Cumul8 Flowchart
As you can see in the diagram, through synthesis, interactivity, ease and collaboration, Cumul8 makes data relevant.
Translating Vision into Revenue
So after hearing feedback from shareholders, I know that its great to talk about vision but most of you want to know whats going on in terms of how Cumul8 generates revenue. We do not publish forward looking revenue figures (yet), but we can tell you that in the last 3 months our focus has been laser focused on sales. And more, this new sales focus is transforming our culture. Everyone in our building is a salesperson and tapping into their networks to demonstrate how easy it is to bolt Cumul8 into organizations and help them.
We are driving to sign up the clients we are talking with and seeing a list of new interest from referrals. Below, Ive got some bullet points on how we plan to generate revenue on both the enterprise and Saas side.
Cumul8 Enterprise: As well as our initial success with film and video game clients, we are marketing and selling the enterprise product in more industries. We have contracted a forestry manufacturing expert to drive enterprise sales in that industry. We have in-house expertise in digital media, entertainment. We are leveraging our relationships in post production globally and have hundreds of users in India. We have just signed an existing client for a third contract for development and maintenance. We are presenting to new clients on a regular basis and the interest has been very strong. We are seeing so many customers that just dont have a handle on their data. Even the companies that use big data solutions arent able to seamlessly turn that data into decision-making power--thats where Cumul8 comes in.
Cumul8 SaaS: We are developing the SaaS product fast with a plan to hit the market before the end of this year. We plan to commence our marketing push in the fall. This offering will be purchased at the individual level, as opposed to the enterprise level, so the market opportunity is vast. Like many SaaS products, our plan is to remove the barrier for buyers by offering a freemium initiation to start using the product. (Will we have huge SaaS revenues in 2015? Probably not, our goal is 100% focused on market penetration, but we expect to see growth in 2016.) The two levels of SAAS will be from the top and bottom. ◦The top will initially launch as a mobile tool connected into the data feeds in the company and lets anyone bash together different streams, create a visual story, then share that story. ◦The low level SaaS product is based around our current asset management system and is targeted to the worker and gives them a tool to better help them manage digital assets.
All in all, I hope that this update has shed more light on what we are doing on Cumul8. Any and all questions are always welcome.
Thank you for reading,
rory
http://www.eightsolutions.com/investors/investors/.../24-june-10-2015
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