Record sales year fuels Alchemex innovation

Leading BI vendor, Alchemex, is finding that smart companies continue to discover the opportunity that exists in business intelligence (BI) in Excel, in today's economic environment, and has invested significantly in training, skills development and software development to further penetrate the SME BI market.

Displaying, over the last 10 years, an astute ability to understand the requirements of the SME market, the company is experiencing a record sales year.

MD of Alchemex, Gary Boddington, explains that “in the absence of large IT budgets and specialised BI staff, an affordable solution that offers immediate return on investment is crucial. And even more appropriate for a small to mid-size business is BI in Excel, a powerful decision support tool when integrated with the right applications and tools, and used within a structured framework.”

Charles Teversham, Alchemex Sales Director, attributes the exceptional sales growth in 2009 to “the ability to leverage existing technology - so important in today's environment. Automating spreadsheets and producing meaningful reports that traditional ERP business applications cannot provide maximises the value of existing investments and provides insight into a business. The resultant time-savings and increased productivity go a long way to reducing the load on the business owner, financial accountant or bookkeeper.” Having recently returned from the Sage Insights '09 Conference, in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, he is also optimistic about further global potential.

Alchemex is known in the industry for innovation and 2009 is no exception. With an introspective approach to improving training and skills development, Alchemex has officially launched a global Partner Certification Program that aims to grow a skilled base of Alchemex professionals that can partner with Alchemex and obtain industry recognition via three different types of Alchemex accreditation as follows:

* An Alchemex Certified Business Partner is a reseller that is certified to sell the Alchemex product suite, deriving revenue from licence sales and professional services. An Alchemex CBP can sell, implement and support a full Alchemex Business Intelligence solution, with Alchemex Certified Professionals on their staff.
* An Alchemex Certified Training Centre is an authorised provider of official Alchemex and/or 'Excel on Steroids' training.
* An Alchemex Certified Professional is an individual who is certified to offer software implementation and report-writing services (Certified Professional Consultant) and/or training (Certified Professional Trainer).

Sean Elliot, Finance and Operations Director at Alchemex, is excited about “a world-class global partner programme that is the culmination of months of preparation and consolidation. To become certified, prospective business partners are required to undertake a defined certification process, including training on the Alchemex product as well as specialised Excel training for business reporting, via our online learning Academy. The business case is a potentially lucrative one, with Alchemex providing the necessary skills, support and value for business partners to make the most of servicing the rapidly growing end-user base of the leading developer, enabler and support provider of affordable Excel-based BI software for SMEs.” The programme will recognise the growing community of Alchemex experts while clients will be able to seek out trusted and reputable professionals at http://www.alchemex.com/FindABusinessPartner.aspx to assist with Alchemex installation, support, training and report writing.

The Alchemex Certified Professional Consultant qualification has been particularly well received, with in excess of 30 certifications having been awarded to date. International Skills Development Manager Gael Rowland attributes this to “a concerted attempt to make all of our certification material relevant, informative and always available in a simple and intuitive interface, which is backed up by the world-class service that Alchemex strives to provide in everything we do”.

Interested parties can ascertain the benefits, requirements and processes of the various certifications as well as sign up online to become a business partner.

Alchemex Product Training content has also been upgraded during the course of 2009, with the Alchemex Administrator and Alchemex Report Manager courses being relaunched this month, both classroom-based and online, with a revised structure and plenty of new content to skill delegates up in the creation and maintenance of database connections and containers and the creation of reports respectively.

Alchemex launched a new-look Web site in June of this year to reflect the new corporate image of the company and add value to users. The new site offers easy access to product information and business partner details, as well as a revitalised knowledgebase with excellent search functionality.

Users, business partners and potential customers can get online support, useful downloads and up-to-date news and events information at www.alchemex.com. In addition, in line with the current social networking revolution, the BI Community has just been launched by Alchemex, as a social network where users of Alchemex and any BI software powered by Alchemex, as well as Excel users, can access videos, join groups of like-minded business people and interact via discussion forums. “We have worked so extensively in a business intelligence context and have, together with the growing global base of Alchemex Certified Professionals, so much knowledge to assist people to use Alchemex and Excel smartly,” says Boddington. “Distributing that knowledge has always been a challenge, but now everyone is welcome to join the BI Community, where they can post questions and network with experts around the world on a host of BI, reporting, Alchemex software and Excel issues, as a member of a thriving online community.”

But Alchemex's most exciting innovation for 2009 is yet to come. Although they are keeping relatively quiet about the launch of their new “Excel Genie”, talk in the industry is that this promises to be arguably Alchemex's most exciting and successful product to date. With the beta release out this week, Teversham says that SMEs “can look forward to even simpler and even better Excel-based BI”.