Tell us a little about eThority and its history
eThority started 16 years ago and focused exclusively on software for the education and healthcare markets, which are both industries with complex reporting and compliance needs. We worked to shape software solutions that flexed around the user’s work process – not vice versa. Over time, we realized there was a void in the general marketplace that eThority’s unique toolset could satisfy, and we began to look at expanding our product to meet these needs. Today, we deliver a self-evident, web-based business intelligence reporting solution to enterprises of all sizes in any market.

What was the basic problem eThority was trying to answer?
We saw that traditional software had devolved into feature wars, resulting in really crowded user interfaces that gave users an overwhelming choice of features and functions. Nowhere was this more prevalent than in the BI space, where most solutions required hours of training just to begin using the most basic functions. We wanted to put what we call a “user obvious” face on BI. Automobile manufacturers embrace the user obvious interface. They spend hours on usability testing to allow anyone to use their products with very little training. When you hop into a rental car, you look to see where they put the main levers, adjust the mirrors, hit the gas and go. The enterprise software industry, however, relies on tedious manuals, training and support. Combined, these create a huge barrier to adoption. Additionally, many times, users end up walking away from the solution because it is simply too complex. We wanted to develop a BI solution that effectively eliminated the training-required barrier and allowed anyone and everyone to access enterprise information.

Where does your inspiration for a user obvious interface come from?
A great example is film editing. Film editors spend a lot of time thinking about what to include and what not to include in a film. They constantly assess the need for every second of footage that makes it into the final. And, when it’s done right, you, as the consumer, never even think about it – you just appreciate the result. We’ve tried to do the same in our interface and development platform.

Also, I always think back to the first version of Quicken. Scott Cook didn’t try to force users to input information his way. Instead, he created an image of a check on the screen and users instinctively knew how to fill it out. Even if they were not comfortable with computers – everyone knew how to fill out a check. This was a simple metaphor, and we’ve tried to bring that thinking to BI.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing your clients and prospects?
There are three things that are common across our customers. First, all businesses are collecting vast and growing amounts of data. Second, more and more people within an organization need access to corporate data, both central data repositories like CRM and ERP systems, and tertiary or secondary sources like department-specific software or user-generated spreadsheets and databases. Lastly, businesses are faced with a myriad of compliance and security issues that must be respected when giving broader access to information.

How does your solution help your clients overcome these challenges?
A market analyst recently described eThority as being both the numerator and denominator of BI return on investment—both broadening access and decreasing costs. Through our user obvious solution, we help give enterprise-wide access to data. This harnesses the brainpower of the full organization and expands the ultimate value. On the other side, we save in IT costs because our solution does not require training and removes the burden of reporting from limited IT resources.

How do you see your solutions changing over the next 3-5 years?
eThority will be rolling out a self-evident development platform that allows customers to write custom business applications that easily integrate into the secure reporting environment of eThority Enterprise.. We will also be expanding our ability to handle unstructured data sources. Finally, with several partners, we will continue to build relevant market knowledge bases into our products to help give our customer’s data context.

About Mike Psenka
Prior to founding eThority in 1991, Mike Psenka worked with Price Waterhouse within their Open Systems Technology group implementing financial and manufacturing systems. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering. When not executing day-to-day business operations, Mike dedicates himself to the design and animation of eThority’s user-obvious interface and data visualization layer.