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What makes GRAX unique? – aka the “ego traps” that our competitors fell into but we didn’t

There are three core ‘Ego Traps’ many technology companies fall into – they also happen to be the three core principles that make GRAX unique:

1. Data Lock In – the dirty little secret in so many tech companies is that they hold your data hostage in order to lock you into their platform. There are arbitrary API restrictions or other tricks that force you to bias toward using the vendor’s platform. And while they may say otherwise, the real reason they do this is to take ownership of your data and to use it to lock you into their service – it’s an ego trap because it’s all about insecurity – they are insecure about the stickiness of their service and are afraid of losing you as a customer. Customers lose control of that data, pass it along to 3rd party clouds (say, a cloud-based backup tool), and at the end of the day, force you and your organization to learn yet another application.


*I should note that a number of Tier 1 vendors are starting to offer data portability – Salesforce.com is one example.


2. Historical Blindness – If you believe in the basic premise that analyzing changes over time holds the key to understanding cause and effect mechanisms in your business, then logically the more data you can capture, the more impactful your decisions will be (broader correlational dataset). Most SaaS tools undervalue historical data, offering limited time-based data capture and reporting – this only perpetuates the myth that “past performance is not an indication of future results.” The truth is that most SaaS solutions only capture 1% of historical data; and then wonder why they can’t make accurate predictions about pipeline velocity or customer renewal rates. The ego trap of data capture is a lack of vision – historical data is seen as a “check-the-box” compliance issue as opposed to a predictor of new growth opportunities emerging in the business.


3. Login Paranoia – Just about every SaaS tool is afraid of being ‘baked into” other solutions – if everything can be done outside of our tool, why would anyone login? Yet the unspoken truth is that customers would simply prefer to keep using the same tools they already know and love… and simply be able to do more with them. The ego trap here is the paranoia that SaaS tools need to keep their customers addicted to logging into their service. This silos functionality, imposes arbitrary restrictions (structural lock-in), and creates sub-optimal user experiences. All in the name of login paranoia.

GRAX doesn’t have any of the “ego traps” above – we’ve built the platform that we (as a customer) would have loved to use. We’re calling it a Data Value Platform, and we’re going to use it to help companies adapt faster.

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