Customer Interview: Cercle des Investisseurs Privés

We never would have predicted that a group of angel investors in Europe would be among the first Rollbase customers to build applications for managing dealflow quite like Cercle des Investisseurs Privés (ci-privés) has. The diversity of our initial customer base is a testament to the broad applicability of PaaS (Platform as a Service) and it continues to be an eye-opening experience for us to see how Rollbase has quickly adapted to very different domain-specific requirements. Check out the interview below with Peter Propper, Research Associate at ci-privés in Geneva, Switzerland, to learn more.

Rollbase: What kind of business is ci-privés?

Peter: ci-privés is a business angel club operating on European french speaking markets

Rollbase: What kind of applications are you building using Rollbase?

Peter: Applications to essentially manage our dealflow and, due to the nature of our business, our events.

Rollbase: What kind of applications were you using before Rollbase?

Peter: We were using Lotus notes, which we hated. However this gave us ample time to look for alternatives. We were afraid to commit to a high cost and hardly adaptable alternative, since we are still a young company.

Rollbase: What problems did you face that caused you to look for a platform like Rollbase? Did Rollbase solve these problems?

Peter: CRMs are not appropriate for our business, we really needed a tailored solution; a solution which Rollbase obviously provided.

Rollbase: What are your favorite Rollbase features?

Peter: We like a lot of them (if I had to state ONE, it would be the portals), but more importantly, since we could still be considered a startup, our business model and processes are still not yet set in stone. Rollbase gives us the unique opportunity to adapt our IT rapidly efficiently and at practically no cost. If I had to state a USP for Rollbase, it would be the latter.

Rollbase: What features would you like to see Rollbase add to it's platform?

Peter: Integration with email clients, hand-held synchronization capabilities (iphone). We'd also like to see a more interactive (web 2.0) interface - e.g. where you don't necessarily have to open records, but simply click on them and open them in a drop down style (google reader). We believe this could be great to quickly open communication logs without having to keep opening a new pages.

Rollbase: Would you recommend Rollbase to a friend or colleague in your own personal network?

Peter: Absolutely, I frequently talk about Rollbase with friends in IT departments of larger companies and startup companies in our dealflow. I already converted one very enthusiastic friend (Kurt from Switzerland). We like Rollbase for the product, its differentiation, but also the fact that we've been on it since the start and have a certain (perceived) proximity with the support and management.

We wish you the best,
Peter & the team of Cercle des Investisseurs Privés

Thanks Peter! All of the features you've listed are on our roadmap and we look forward to bringing them to you as things progress.

Customer Interview: Africa Inland Mission (AIM)

We are all proud to be providing Africa Inland Mission (AIM) [Wikipedia] with an applications platform for their unique HR and Recruiting initiatives. Check out the interview below with Electronic Media Developer Ted Barnett to learn more about how AIM is using Rollbase to unite all of its global offices onto one personnel system. Rollbase: What kind of organization is Africa Inland Mission? Ted: Africa Inland Mission (AIM) is an international evangelical Christian mission agency dedicated to the establishment of maturing churches among the peoples of Africa. AIM has over 950 active members ministering in Africa, the islands of the Indian Ocean, and to Africans living around the world. We are engaged in a wide range of ministries including evangelism and church planting, leadership development, youth ministry, medical ministry, community development and community health, aviation, and support service ministries. Rollbase: What kind of applications are you building using Rollbase? Ted: Africa Inland Mission (AIM) is using Rollbase to build a Global Recruitment and HR system to match candidates to the needs in Africa, track data and trends about our members, and unite all of our global offices onto one personnel system. Rollbase: What kind of applications were you using before Rollbase? Ted: Before Rollbase all of our offices built their own tracking systems from simple excel spreadsheets to Microsoft Access Databases. We used email as our only means of global interactivity. Rollbase: What problems did you face that caused you to look for a platform like Rollbase? Did Rollbase solve these problems? Ted: None of AIM's previous HR solutions integrated with one another, therefore forcing us to use email as the only form of global interactivity. As we have grown we found that this method of working further frustrated our goals of communicating effectively in the recruitment and tracking of our members.  Rollbase has now put all of our AIM office on the same page and allowed us to interact with data about members in real time.  Rollbase's simple application builder allow each office to also expand the system for their needs without having to learn complicated programming languages.  AIM now has a flexible and interactive solution to meet our complex global work environment. Rollbase: What are your favorite Rollbase features? Ted: We love the Ajax lookup fields, Workflow Events, Conversion Maps for importing our existing data, User Portals, Document templates and much more. The Organizational Management application does a great job at keeping our departments and roles organized throughout the system. Rollbase: What features would you like to see Rollbase add to it's platform? Ted: We would enjoy greater ability to customize forms and color schemas of Rollbase to match our company's identity.  LDAP Authentication.  Use of our own domain names.  More Ajax and less page refreshes and popup windows. Rollbase: Would you recommend Rollbase to a friend or colleague in your own personal network? Ted: YES!

Ted Barnett Africa Inland Mission Int. Electronic Media Developer Countries in which AIM works [map from wikipedia]

Customer Interview: DBERRY S.à.r.l

Recently we had a chance to connect with a few customers to learn more about how they are using Rollbase. Check out the brief interview below to learn how Kurt von Moos and his team at DBERRY S.à.r.l are solving a number of domain-specific problems with custom-built Rollbase applications.

Rollbase: What kind of business is DBERRY?

Kurt: DBERRY S.à.r.l is an innovative, privately held firm that provides groundbreaking business solutions and key support for growing as well as established organisations. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, DBERRY specialises in:

- Product Sourcing & Development

- Distribution

- Retail

- Direct & Indirect Sales

- Marketing Support

- Logistics Management

Rollbase: What kind of applications are you building using Rollbase?

Kurt: We are building applications that are targeted at CRM, Stock and Inventory Management and as a unique portal for B2B customers.

Rollbase: What kind of applications were you using before Rollbase?

Kurt: Nothing. We began working with Rollbase from the start.

Rollbase: What problems did you face that caused you to look for a platform like Rollbase? Did Rollbase solve these problems?

Kurt: Because DBERRY interfaces with 1000's of unique suppliers spread out over 5 continents and delivers via multiple sales channels, we urgently needed a centralised "hub" in order to manage the large volumes of data that pours in every day. Rollbase has not only enabled us to completely customise the way we receive, manage and export information but has also provided us with an extremely efficient means of communications between our suppliers, partners and customers.

Rollbase: What are your favorite Rollbase features?

Kurt: The ability to easily test drive and deploy applications was a life saver when we first started using Rollbase. It allowed us to get a temporary yet fully functional CRM database up and running within hours. This gave us the time we needed to work on more customised applications over the course of several weeks.

Another Feature we really like are portals. We plan on restructuring our entire E-Commerce and B2B site around Rollbase and it's portals.

Rollbase: What features would you like to see Rollbase add to it's platform?

Kurt: iPhone Support, sync capabilities with iCal or Google Calendar and built-in email functionality.

Rollbase: Would you recommend Rollbase to a friend or colleague in your own personal network?

Kurt: Of Course I would! In fact, I regularly debate Salesforce users. Usually, they see the light.

Thanks for your missionary work Kurt! iPhone support as well as Outlook and Google calendar sync capabilities are on our roadmap. We'll certainly let you know when these features make their way into the platform.

Cloud on Cloud: Rollbase moves to Amazon S3 for Storage

As any SaaS vendor will attest, cost of application revenue (CoR) is a critical metric that should be constantly monitored and trimmed to maximize margins as operations scale. Cloud computing services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), for which costs are precisely aligned with resources used and no more, can have a dramatic impact on overall CoR.

As of this week we've started an ongoing trimming process that will not only help reduce our CoR, but will have the effect of driving up the amount of resources available to Rollbase customers per unit cost. The first step we've taken in this direction is to move all file storage to Amazon's S3 service. This means that any file and image data stored in file fields, image fields, templates, shared images, etc, throughout your Rollbase account will actually be securely stored on Amazon's infrastructure.

S3 is now the default storage option for all new Rollbase accounts and we are quite comfortable making this move given that Amazon is providing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) guaranteeing 99.9% performance. Stay tuned for an update to the Rollbase PaaS plans allowing for much greater amounts of storage per dollar.

For customers who wish to use Rollbase-native storage rather than Amazon S3 we do have a simple mechanism to enable this for you. Whether for compliance reasons or otherwise, please contact us if you would prefer that your file and image data not be hosted on S3 and we will make the appropriate adjustment to your account (this is quite literally a simple checkbox on our end).