A couple of years ago, one of the most frustrating things about Tony Yu’s job was that it was difficult to make simple changes to his company Web site.
Yu, a management consultant at Lough Barnes Consulting Group, wanted to input changes to his site without having to go through red tape at work. Enter Readyportal, an online content management solution from Toronto’s Debut Logic Canada Inc.
“Prior to signing on with Readyportal, whenever we had to make a request, we had to file it with our Web designer, and then she would have to go through a process, and then we have to follow up to check on the status – it was all very out of our hands, pretty much,” Yu said.
“And ever since we signed onto Readyportal, it really empowered us to make quick and fast changes, because we’re a management consulting firm. We have to be agile to meet specific opportunities or the changes in the market, so Readyportal allowed us to do that very quickly.”
And although Yu has a background in software development, he said he found Readyportal was a good solution – not just for him, but also for the non-technical people in his office.
Readyportal is designed to mesh online content management with social collaboration. That allows businesses to easily access their own data, but it also allows them to connect internally and share information across their own networks.
“An organization has all these conversations going on which we never are able to harness,” said Rajiv Chatterjee, founder of Debut Logic, which created Readyportal. “So hey, we went for a meeting, OK, our marketing budget is so-and-so, and then conversation happens and a document comes up.”
“Now the document is the end result, but what we have missed in the entire process is that we have not captured the … conversation that went into making this document. But that conversation is very important – it’s latent knowledge.”
This method of sharing information is also more secure than using a social network like a Facebook group to discuss workflow, he said.
Chatterjee pointed to Readyportal’s most recent installation for Army OneSource Resource Center, an online social services resource for American soldiers and their families. Readyportal’s system kicked in March 15, and it can be used for agencies supporting soldiers across the U.S. to share information. For example, if an agency shares information on how they deal with soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, another agency elsewhere in the U.S. can pick up on that and learn from its experiences.
And Chatterjee pointed out that Readyportal is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, so it is quick to modify and customize. He counts bigger entities like the City of Amsterdam and the U.S. Department of Education as among his clients, but many of his customers are SMBs. Smaller businesses appreciate the fact that Readyportal can be implemented within weeks, rather than months, and that fees range from $50 a month to $10,000, depending on a company’s specific needs, he said.
Before starting Debut Logic in 2006, Chatterjee studied at the University of Houston and worked in San Francisco, Calif. He had been debating going to school for business when he changed his mind, opting instead to move to Toronto and build his own software company.
“Post 9/11 changed everything for me, to be honest. I didn’t want to live (in the U.S.) any more,” Chatterjee said. Of Indian descent, Chatterjee decided he’d prefer life north of the border and was enticed to come to Toronto because he had family in the city.
“And at that time, I didn’t know how great the software industry in Toronto was. I had no idea, because we always looked at Toronto software and were like, yeah, whatever, we’re the Silicon Valley guys … But it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.”
But while family and a lifestyle change were the main reasons Chatterjee came to Canada, a strong software economy was what encouraged him to stay. He said he was really impressed by the engineering talent pool, the tax incentives for Canadian software companies, and the chance for his company to expand globally.
Readyportal’s next steps are to expand operations in Brazil and the U.K. It already has seven clients in South America and is looking to open a Sao Paolo office later this year. It works via partners in the U.K.