When you start a software company, you have to create a great product (obviously), but you also have to cultivate a space in the market for your product. When these two align, something amazing happens: Customers ask for exactly what you’ve spent years building. You realize you’ve hit the mark. I had the great pleasure to witness this moment first hand just a few weeks ago, with our network-based transaction monitoring software, INETCO Insight. This is the story of when I really knew we had it right (not that I’ve ever doubted it…).
Six years ago big IT management software companies were advising banks to instrument every component of their IT infrastructure, poll for performance data every 15-30 minutes, and maintain hundreds of complex rules to try to only alert on events of significance. We thought this sounded too hard, too slow, and too expensive to maintain.
Our hardy band of early adopter customers agreed. There was a space in the market for monitoring transactions instead of components, doing it in real-time, and thereby putting IT ahead of the curve in detecting performance incidents. Unfortunately, the broader market didn’t agree with transaction monitoring software… yet.
So we set to work simultaneously creating a product, and creating a space for that product in the market. Our customer presentations used to start with a 20-minute explanation of why you needed to re-examine your monitoring strategy and why transaction monitoring software made sense. Sometimes we could convince people, many times we couldn’t. But, customer-by-customer, we proved out the concept, winning the trust of companies like Moneris, FIS, Fiserv, and others.
Gradually that 20-minute explanation shrunk to 15, then 10, and then three weeks ago I walked into a major European bank. After the introductions, the project leader said: “We’re looking for a real-time alerting and transaction monitoring system because our current system is too complicated, at least 15 minutes behind, and too hard to maintain”
I nearly fell off my seat.
Elated, but still skeptical that this was an anomaly, I visited a major European payment processor in the afternoon. When the project leader spoke up, he said: “We’ve always kept an eye on real-time alerting and transaction monitoring technology, but, until now, haven’t had a business case to make the investment.”
Until now you say?
And that’s when I realized that I had witnessed the moment that every software executive hopes for when they start the long journey of creating a product, and a space in the market for it. The moment that customers begin consistently to ask for exactly what you’ve spent years building. And that’s a great feeling. It’s also a real testament to the vision of our early customers and our technical team that worked so closely with them.
So, we’d be more than happy to spend 20 minutes explaining why you need real-time transaction monitoring, alerting and analytics – after six years just about anyone here can make the case eloquently – but something tells me you don’t need that any more. You’re just looking for the best product to fill that space and meet your needs. I speak for everyone here when I say: that is a conversation we’d love to have.