作者: 大数据观察来源: 大数据观察时间:2017-08-19 11:48:440
大数据分析为大型企业提供了一种分析历史和实时数据的途径,从而监测公司的绩效,并更好地预测下一步将发生什么。现在,来自中欧的初创企业 Futurelytics 希望成为大数据拼图的第三块——规范分析(prescriptive analytics)的领导者之一。规范分析是指使用来源于大数据分析的信息来建议企业作出什么改变从而提高绩效。
今天,这家位于捷克的初创企业宣布完成规模为80万美元的种子融资,以打造其产品,领投企业为指数创投(Index Ventures)和Credo Ventures。其他投资者包括Kima Ventures及投资投资人罗伯•柯维(Rob Keve)。本轮融资首先于本月早些时候通过Form D文件披露的,当时没有介绍投资者的细节。
除了专注于规范分析领域外,Futurelytics也在关注解决企业IT的另一个特定问题:到目前为止,小型企业对大数据的使用并不多。大数据的崛起——特别是出现大量服务,帮助解析、分析和利用所有在普通的联网企业中收集的信息——在过去几年已经成为了企业IT领域的一大趋势。不过取得进步的同时也需要付出一定的代价——考虑到此类产品的成本,以及执行这些产品所需的投资,需要数十万美元。这实际上使这些产品变得只能供最大规模的企业使用。
Futurelytics专注于为小型企业解决问题,这是那些原来为大型企业而创的解决方案的大趋势之一,即为规模较小的组织提供大小(和价格)合适的解决方案。
不过该公司进入该领域的举措更多是源于个人体验:联合创始人兼首席执行官丹尼尔•哈斯提克(Daniel Hastik)一直在运营另一家初创企业,专注于网络托管,之后开始感到如果自己能够更好地解析有关现有客户的信息,那就可以更好地管理自己的业务,他向大学同班同学米雷克•瑟尼(Mirek Cerny)进行咨询,看他是否能够解决这个问题。这个基本的解决方案之后成为了Futurelytics的基础——瑟尼成为该初创企业的首席技术官和联合创始人。
Futurelytics现在提供的产品主要关注2个领域:CRM和电子商务行业,在这些行业行为模式正浮出水面,并且用于评估和分解客户,为企业提供建议从而实现“盈利增长、客户留存率提高并吸引新客户”。为什么先选择这个两个垂直频道?因为这两个领域具备了丰富的经验,已经为为英国乐购等零售巨头打造了类似的规范分析服务。
对于中小型企业来说,电子商务刚好也是重要的垂直渠道——电子商务运营从未拥有如此多商业智能服务来帮助他们改善业务。为此,Futurelytics的平台已经与Shopify、 Magento、Salesforce和Sugar整合,从而收集和解析数据。
哈斯提克指出,该公司的电子商务解决方案适合于年收入达到100万美元、客户介于3万至5万的企业。“市场是巨大的,”他指出。不过该公司也看到将技术拓展至其他领域的机会,例如游戏,在这个领域有多个独立开发者,他们寻找更好的工具来衡量下了一步应该增加什么特色内容,从事保持游戏对玩家的吸引力。
目前Futurelytics的服务已经吸引了比较大量需求,不过该公司希望在产品继续开发期间限制客户数量。
哈斯提克和瑟尼告诉我,其平台现在有大约40家企业,另外有250家正在排队等候,现有的客户“告诉我们他们想要看到什么”,Futurelytics将这些需求整合到他们的产品中。该公司希望聘请更多销售人员并且完全使平台自动化,从而与多个不同类型的企业合作,因而在未来Futurelytics可以“有需要的话,一天增加数千家企业”。
(的确,到目前,规范分析已经用于多个其他垂直领域,包括医疗保健和天然气,因此大家可以看到其潜力是非常广泛的。)
同时,Futurelytics也受到了一些赞扬:这是首家获得英国孵化器Seedcamp融资的捷克初创企业,该公司对Futurelytics投资了5万欧元。
风投企业感兴趣的地方在于,Futurelytics如何处理大数据分析(较为复杂)的第三块拼图,以及该市场尚未被触及的部分。指数创投的简•哈默(Jan Hammer)“我们对Futurelytics专注于长尾客户感到满意,这些客户不会自发地购买和运行复杂和昂贵的大数据工具。Futurelytics服务的差异在于,安装的速度以及通过一种‘自动驾驶’的方式提供结果。Futurelytics通过平台进入市场,例如通过Shopify面向电子商务客户,解决方案成为一种即插即用的基础设施,无需在客户方面设立专业服务(或者专门的IT人员)。”
“我们认为Futurelytics将大数据提升至新的级别,从预测洞察到规范性行为,”他继续指出。“引擎将客户的最终用户群分割,以规范性的方式提出自动分割、客户洞察、行动以及推广活动。对于那些在大量数据当中徘徊的客户,这是一项理想的解决方案,他们可能甚至已经部署了一些大数据工具,但是在可供使用的数据与行动之间缺乏联系;Futurelytics提供的答案就是自动化。”
Futurelytics也是谷歌的合作伙伴。后者在Futurelytics获得Seedcamp融资后与其达成合作,Futurelytics实际上成为了谷歌正在开发的新产品的早期用户,这些产品是为了通过云计算服务从而更好地瞄准企业。
目前Futurelytics实际上将总部分别设在了捷克俄斯特拉发,以及澳大利亚墨尔本,其中瑟尼管理位于俄斯特拉发的技术团队,哈斯提克管理位于墨尔本的商业开发和产品业务。哈斯提克的计划将是最终进入硅谷,从而将公司带到新的发展阶段。这需要吸引更多用户,并且开始A轮融资。
英文原文:
Big data analytics has given large enterprises a way of analysing historical and real-time data to monitor their business’ performance, and to better predict what might happen next. Now, a startup out of central Europe called Futurelytics is hoping to be one of the leaders in the third piece of the big data puzzle: prescriptive analytics, or how to use the information gleaned from big data analysis to suggest what a company should change to improve performance.
Today, the Czech-based startup is announcing a seed round of $800,000 led by Index Ventures and Credo Ventures to build out its product. Other investors include Kima Ventures and business angel Rob Keve. The round was first made public in a Form D filing earlier this month, without details of the investors.
Apart from its square focus on the area of prescriptive analytics, Futurelytics is looking to solve another specific problem in enterprise IT: the fact that big data has up to now been less accessible by small businesses. The rise of big data — and specifically a rush of services to help parse, analyse and harness all the information that is now getting amassed in a typical, connected business — has been one of the big trends in enterprise IT in the last couple of years. But progress has come at a price — literally, with the cost for such products, and the investments needed to implement them, running into hundreds of thousands of dollars. That has effectively made these products usable only by the biggest companies.
Futurelytics’ focus on solving problems for small businesses is part of a bigger trend of solutions originally created for large enterprises that are getting right-sized (and right-priced) for smaller organizations — with a focus on big data for SMEs.
futurelytics foundersBut the company’s move into this area comes more from personal experience: co-founder and CEO Daniel Hastik (left side in picture) had been working on another startup, focused on web hosting, when he started to feel that he could be running his business better if he were able to better parse the existing information he had about his current clients. He tapped Mirek Cerny (right), who had been a university classmate of his, to see if he could solve the problem. That basic solution then became the foundation for Futurelytics — and Cerny became the startup’s CTO and co-founder.
The product that Futurelytics offers today is focused primarily in two areas, CRM and the e-commerce sector, where behavioural patterns are surfaced and used to rate customers, segment them and provide recommendations on what a business should do next to “grow revenue, improve customer retention and acquire new customers.” Why these two verticals first? They are where the two, in previous consulting jobs, already have had extensive experience building similar prescriptive analytics services for retail giants like Tesco in the UK.
E-commerce also happens to be a significant vertical for small- and medium-sized businesses online — e-commerce operations that have never had much in the way of business intelligence services to help them improve their businesses. To this end, the startup’s platform already integrates with Shopify, Magento, Salesforce and Sugar to collect and parse data (with more sources getting added).
Hastik notes that the company’s sweet spot for its e-commerce solution is the company that has $1 million in annual revenue and between 30,000 and 50,000 customers. “This market is huge,” he notes. But equally, it sees opportunities in extending the technology to other areas like gaming — another where you have a number of independent developers who are looking for better tools to gauge what they might add next to keep their games interesting to users.
There has already been some significant demand for Futurelytics’ service, although it has been intentionally limiting sign-ups while the product continues to be developed.
Hastik and Cerny tell me that there are some 40 businesses already on its platform, with another 250 on the waiting list, with the existing users “telling us what they would like to see” and Futurelytics incorporating that into the product. The intention is to hire more sales people and to fully automate the platform to work with a number of different kinds of businesses, so that in future Futurelytics can sign up “thousands in a day if we need to, not one per day.”
(Indeed, prescriptive analytics has to date been used in a number of other verticals like healthcare and natural gas, so you can see that the potential is wide.)
In the meantime, Futurelytics has had some accolades already: it was the first startup out of the Czech Republic to win funding from Seedcamp, the UK-based, pan-European accelerator, which put €50,000 into the company as part of the process (Saul Klein, a partner at Index, is currently the chairman of Seedcamp, which is yet another strand of how the startup is connected to the VC).
The VCs are interested because of how Futurelytics is tackling this third and more complicated part of big data analysis, as well as an untapped market for receiving those services. “We like Futurelytics’ focus on the long tail of customers who would not naturally buy and run a complex, expensive BI tool,” said Index’s Jan Hammer. “They differentiate via the speed of install and delivering results in an ‘autopilot’ way. Futurelytics go-to-market is via platforms, such as Shopify for e-commerce clients, and the solution runs as a plug-and-play infrastructure without the need for professional services (or a dedicated IT person) at the client end.
“We believe Futurelytics takes BI to the next level, from predictive insight (someone at the customer end watching yet another dashboard) to prescriptive action,” he continues. “The engine segments the customer’s end user base and proposes automated segmentation, customer insight (based on hard numbers), actions and campaigns in a prescriptive way. It is an ideal solution for those customers who are swimming in vast amounts of data, may even have deployed some BI tools but lack the connection between lots of available data and actions; the answer Futurelytics provides is automation.”
It is also a partner of Google’s. The company tapped Futurelytics after it won Seedcamp funding to become, effectively, an early user of new products that Google is developing to better target enterprises with cloud-based services. You can see how the two might fit together strategically.
Right now Futurelytics is effectively co-headquartered between Ostrava in the Czech Republic, and Melbourne, Australia — with Cerny running the technical team in the former city, and Hastik running business development and product in the latter. The plan will be for Hastik to eventually move over to Silicon Valley to take the company to its next stage of growth. That will include signing on more users and raising a Series A.
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