Creating a report that compares your company to every company in your SIC code used to be so difficult. You needed to determine the companies in your SIC code. You needed to find the data for each company and download this into an Excel spreadsheet. You needed to then create a bunch of formulas to consolidate this data on a single sheet. And then next quarter you need to do this all over again.
Actually, with Rivet’s Crossfire product, customers are creating these reports during the demo and then with our relative date features, the report updates itself whenever there is a new filing on the SEC website.
I have done a lot of demos in my day. I have attended many seminars where they say you need to get the customer involved. Well we have taken this lesson to a whole new level. Lauri Harrison, our Director of Marketing, watched a demo and heard a customer remark that report design looks so easy. She made a suggestion to me that we pass control to the customer and allow them to create reports during the demo. Within a few seconds, customers have created reports similar to the following.
I must say that I was a little skeptical at first. I was thinking that customers would never accept control, but to my surprise, over half of the customers have taken me up on the offer. It is very interesting, because after we show them the basics, we let them determine what data they want to see and then we just tell them where to click. We have had clients create reports like the one above. We have had clients see a competitor and tell us they want to see more about that company. We have had clients consolidate extended elements with base elements. We even had one client, who just simply wanted to read through every disclosure about a competitor.
It has been a lot of fun. I am usually scheduled for 10 to 15 demos a week and I have never like canned demos. This way of demoing is as far from a canned demo as you can get. You never know what or where a client will click.
The next time you are curious about how other companies are performing. Schedule a Crossfire demo with Rivet and see how easy it is to find out about your competition. It only takes a minute and you can be in the driver’s seat.
Tags: crossfire, Products, reporting, XBRL
