BodeTree

Today, a company called BodeTree is launching a new web-based solution to help small business owners make better sense of their financial data. Like another new startup in the SMB realm (that being InvoiceASAP), BodeTree is also leveraging QuickBooks to help import data into its service, but instead of focusing on online invoicing and payments, BodeTree wants to provide business owners with a real-time dashboard view of their financials, plus access to detailed reporting and analysis.But wait! Don’t fall asleep yet! BodeTree is actually kind of interesting, despite existing in the relatively boring financial software space. Even CEO Christopher Myers agrees. “It’s a big challenge to make something that’s really boring and unsexy to be fun,” he says. For what’s it worth, with BodeTree, he may have just accomplished that.The first thing you’ll notice about BodeTree is its looks. The cloud-based application, a 2011 Intuit App Finalist, creates a colorful, but uncluttered, online dashboard with a number of at-a-glance metrics that help you get a sense of where your business stands. One of the biggest, is the BodeTree guy, sitting under the window called “Business Enlightenment.”“It’s kind of a joke, and a play on the whole concept we have with the name of BodeTree. We want to be this Zen-like, easy-to-access place of enlightenment,” explains Myers. “We kind of say it tongue-in-cheek,” he admits.The Enlightenment Score, however, is kind of cool. It takes a look at everything in the business, including how you’ve performed historically, what your forecast looks like, how you’ve performed relative to your goals or strategy, how your peers are doing, etc. and then gives you a score. You can click on it to see the specific areas you need to improve. But the score is not really a number – it’s a visual score.The BodeTree logo guy himself is the “score” – he and the background change colors related to the current status of the business. Shining and yellow means things are good, rainy and green means it’s time to take notice, grey to black and things are bad.It’s one of those cute, clever little features

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash This is the first post in a new series about the enormous transformation that my company, BodeTree, has undergone in the past two years. In a short period, we’ve sold off our original line of business, reoriented our organization, and refocused on an entirely new industry, all while maintaining the culture and unique advantages we’ve developed over the years. As we set out to explore this journey and its accompanying lessons, insights, and warnings, it only makes sense to start with the fundamental question that stands at the center of everything: What would compel a successful business to undertake such a massive transformation? The answer is multi-faceted, but it boils down to the fact that we stumbled upon a new market that had more potential for disruption than we ever imagined possible. The story begins nearly two years ago when a friend of mine convinced me to explore franchising as a potential distribution channel for our core product, an eponymous financial management platform for small businesses. At the time, BodeTree was distributed almost exclusively through banks, though we did have some significant one-off clients (such as one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S.). We had achieved a level of success that we were happy with, but we had by no means had as dramatic an impact on the banking industry as we had hoped. Every deal we landed was hard-won and took on average about 18 months to close. We were tired and yearned for a chance to make our mark on the world in a meaningful way.Historically we had shied away from working with franchisors because we (wrongly) assumed that it consisted only of large, established players like McDonald's. Once we were introduced to the world of emerging franchise

That seems almost hokey at first, until it actually works. (“Oh, my guy is green? Better find out what I can do better.”)In case it wasn’t clear, BodeTree was designed for regular people, not accountants or other financial experts.“It’s a finance tool for people who hate finance,” says Myers.The service also includes a feature that generates a number of financial reports, including one that compares your business to that of the competition on several key data points. When you’re creating reports, the process is almost overly simple – there are big buttons you click on to designate who the report is for – an investor, your bank, an attorney, accountant, etc. Adding or removing pages to or from a report is as simple as checking a box, too.But Myers says the most exciting feature is the optimization option. On the dashboard, you click a green button to be taken to a page that has sliders on it which help you identify the key value drivers in your business. Here, you can see your performance relative to others in the industry and what your valuation is. As you adjust the sliders, you can see immediately how making changes in a few areas could improve your company’s overall value.It’s important to point out that none of this data is canned or generalized. BodeTree knows about your business strategy from the get-go thanks to its introductory quiz which walks you through a series of multiple choice questions about your business. Its proprietary algorithm then puts together a full strategy map for your business based on those answers.“When I was at Apollo, which owns University of Phoenix, we would hire consultants from all sorts of big consulting houses. They would charge us $2 million and walk through this same process and ask these same questions,” he says. “I was having beers with one of the guys who used to work with them, and we were kind of joking that you could simplify 90% of what they do down to a couple of questions. So that’s what we ended up doing.”Those top consultants, who charge