Host Analytics achieves success by helping others manage theirs - bizjournals:

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The Redwood City company provides softwarr that helpscompanies budget, manage, forecasyt and analyze their financial helping them move beyond Microsoft Excel It has raised about $15 million in venture funding in the past year and doublede the number of customers using its software-as-a-service products in that Most recently, New York-based StarVest joined initial investors Tridenr Venture and Advanced Technology Ventures in an $8.7 milliobn Series B backing in May. On-demand corporater performance management via software as a servic is an extremely hot area in businesd intelligenceright now, said Deborah a StarVest general partnere who joined the company’s board.
“SaaS has openecd the market broadly for business Farrington said. “The methodf of delivering the application by software as a serviced enables the midmarket to have business intelligence applications that they coulf neverafford before.” Started in St. Louis Host foundeer Jim Eberlin launched the compantyin St. Louis in 2000 and bootstrappec it forseven years. Eberlin captured some marqueee companies within the firstsevenn years, including consumer goodx manufacturing giant Proctor & Gamble Co. and technologyg manufacturer PitneyBowes Inc. But Eberlin realized in 2007 he needed funding to further developthe company’sz potential.
A $6 million Series A afforde an experienced management teamand jump-starteds the sales and marketing engine. Eberlin recruited Jon Kondio out ofOracle Corp. in June 2008 to serve as CEO and movedthe company’s headquarter to Redwood City to be closer to his investors and the technology Kondo, a 10-year veteran at Hyperionn Solutions Corp. before its $3 billionh acquisition by Oracle Corp. in 2007, was runningh Oracle’s enterprise performance management for all of Norty America atthe time. He calls Host’d product an A-to-Z offering with almost as much capabilityt asits on-premise competitors.
one of the populafr on-premise offerings, takes far longet to ramp up and costs exponentially more than thepopulae low-cost SaaS products, Kondo said. “Most of the competitiomn is againstthe on-premise players,” Kondo Otis Spunkmeyer Inc., the San Leandro-bases cookie maker, uses Host for its profitr and loss budgeting. It’s far superior to forecasting in a Microsoft Excel saidJoel Feldman, director of financial planning and analysie at Otis Spunkmeyer. Feldman lauds the minimaol resource commitment in termsof IT, the reliablw data repository and easy implementation.
“Host has allowedx us to go deeper and develoo oursales plan,” Feldman “It’s allowed everyone in the entire organizationb to work off of one plan. The fact that it’ws a Web-based tool has allowed everyone to be involved as opposed to thesr hundreds of linkedExcel spreadsheets.” Farringtoj said that within the corporate performance area, Host Analytics is the leadinyg product. For StarVest, due diligence meands a lot ofcustomer “Again and again we heard the custome compare Host to competitors such as OutlookSoft Corp., Cognos Inc. and say it deliversx very similar functionality at a fractionh ofthe price,” Farrington said.
StarVest, which targetsw technology-enabled business services, has been actives in the business intelligencemarket lately. In the firm joined Trident Capital and Emergencs Capital Partners ina $10 million Seriess C round for Bellevue, Wash.-basef PivotLink Corp. PivotLink and Host Analytics joinexd forces in a June strategifc partnership in which Host willresell PivotLink’es analytics and reporting offering. The combination brings togetherabout 15,00 business users in various vertical markets.