SmoothSpan Blog

I had a chance to catch up with Lucid Era’s Ken Rudin, VP of Market Development and Co-Founder, last week.  It’s been a little while since I last talked to Ken, so there was a fair bit of news. 

Lucid Era has always been high on my list for having been innovative in thinking about how to take as much friction as possible out of the SaaS buying cycle.  They have a concept called the “Pipeline Health Check”  that is very slick.  You give them access to your Salesforce.com CRM system, they process the data through their analytics solution, and 48 hours they’ll tell you meaningful things about what’s going on.  Hence I liken it to an MRI scan for your Sales Pipeline.  But there’s more.  LucidEra has decided to sweeten the pot.  If they don’t find at least $100,000 of change (up or down), they’ll pay you $1000.  Considering the Health Check is free, that’s an interesting guarantee.

There are some other announcements associated with the latest release of LucidEra, including some new dashboards built with Flex technology as well as more historical trending and analysis.  One of the coolest features is for “guided analysis.”  Using analytics tools effectively is one of those things that requires talent.  You either get it or you don’t.  One of the hardest things to “get” is what question to ask next based on the analysis your looking at right now.  LucidEra’s guided analysis helps solve that problem by telling you what other reports other folks looking at the one you’re seeing found useful.

LucidEra is built on a full analytics platform, so there are general purpose tools underneath.  Where they really shine is in turning those tools and platform into solutions to real problems that don’t take a Wall Street Quant to decipher.  Check them out!