Blog
Trampoline Systems announces investment from leading industry figures
By Charles Armstrong | November 30th, 2010
Today, as snowflakes fall around the Trampery, I’m delighted to announce investments from 10 leading figures in the software and financial industries. The investors include:- Ian Smith – former Managing Director, Oracle Corporation UK, Ireland and South Africa
- Steve Broughton – former Managing Director, Business Objects UK
- Paolo Juvara – former Senior Director of Applications, Oracle Corporation; CTO, Open Bravo
- Leon Howard-Spink – Manager of European Alpha Plus Fund, Schroders
We’re also pleased to announce that Steve Broughton and Leon Howard-Spink are joining Trampoline’s Board of Directors.
Today’s announcement marks an exciting expansion in the Trampoline team. As we build on the success of our ground-breaking SONAR CRM product we are privileged to be joined by such outstanding individuals. Their experience, talent and influence will be instrumental in advancing Trampoline’s strategy and delivering transformative solutions for the world’s leading enterprises.
Posted in Crowdfunding, Trampo news | No Comments »
Trampoline’s innovative funding model cited in Parliamentary evidence
By Charles Armstrong | November 9th, 2010
We were delighted to learn that Trampoline has been cited in evidence submitted to one of the UK Parliament’s Select Committees. The Committee is investigating possible new funding models for the arts and cultural ventures in Britain. Crowdfunding is one of the models being considered. Trampoline was the example held up to illustrate how it can work. When we decided to take this route we specifically hoped we might inspire others to consider a similar solution so it’s great to know we’ve made some impact. You can read the complete submission on the UK Parliament website.Posted in Crowdfunding | No Comments »
Ovum cites Trampoline for next-generation CRM
By Charles Armstrong | August 16th, 2010
Technology analyst Ovum has published an article “Using Social Search & Analytics to fix CRM” emphasising the need for businesses to incorporate data mining and social network analysis solutions as part of their CRM strategy. The article highlights Trampoline as the outstanding vendor in this technology sector. Ovum identifies three areas where such intelligence is transformative. First, providing a solution to the problem of incomplete data that plagues conventional CRM solutions:“Accessing the “missing” 75% of actionable information is vital from a competitive and business survival perspective, and so organizations must consider the option of information discovery tools alongside traditional enterprise search solutions.”
Second, enabling employees to instantly identify which of their colleagues can introduce them to a new contact:
“According to Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0, “social calling” (or a “warm introduction”, as traditionalists might call it) is 8-10 times more effective than cold calling, and so the business value of social connections is there for all to see.”
Third, understanding the comparative strength of different relationships in a B2B sales process:
“In the world of B2B sales and marketing relationship management, developing and fostering relationships with the right people is incredibly important, and so by analyzing the information held in an organization’s email system, existing CRM platform, and corporate directory a more useful insight into the strength and nature of a customer relationship can be obtained.”
It’s exciting to see mainstream analysts like Ovum advocating the use of data analytics technologies as part of a CRM solution. The article caused quite a stir in the analyst community and has been covered by a variety of other titles including CIO Magazine Germany, Katonda Magazine, Computer World Norway, Computer World Philippines and CIOL.
Posted in Media, SONAR | No Comments »
BBC broadcasts “Start Up Stories” film on Trampoline
By Charles Armstrong | June 28th, 2010
Today the BBC broadcast a seven-minute film on Trampoline as part of their Start Up Stories strand. The film covers Trampoline’s beginnings, our first experiences hiring and raising finance, and what advice we’d give to entrepreneurs thinking of starting their own company.
To my delight the BBC even managed to find some footage of the island of St Agnes which they included in the film! A total of ten businesses were selected for Start Up Stories including such luminaries as Autonomy, Slide and Zappos so Trampoline is in great company.
The film concludes with my advice to aspiring entrepreneurs:
“Don’t put things off by going to study for an MBA. Just dive in and start your business. You’ll soon discover if it’s what you really want to do.”
You can view the whole film on the BBC website.
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Looking for a Flash developer for visualisation project
By Charles Armstrong | June 14th, 2010
We’re looking for a freelance Flash developer to work with us to create the next generation of SONAR CRM’s breathtaking visualisation of customer relationships. Ideally we’d like someone who will come and work with us here in the Trampery but we’ll consider remote collaborators too. We’re ready to kick off immediately. Please pass on the word to anyone you know who might be interested.Required experience
ActionScript 3
Desirable experience
Flare Framework
Functional programming paradigm
Adobe Flex
General knowledge of visual data presentation (layouts, transitions, graphs, plots etc)
JavaScript
If you’re interested
Send a mail to incoming@trampolinesystems.com with details of your experience and links to relevant projects you’ve worked on.
Posted in Jobs | 1 Comment »
Trampoline awarded UK trademark for “SONAR”
By Charles Armstrong | June 2nd, 2010
We’ve just received confirmation that Trampoline’s application for a UK trademark on the “SONAR” name has now completed the approval process and has been officially registered. This is great news for Trampoline and our customers, guaranteeing clarity in the market. We started using the SONAR brand in 2006 when it originally started life as an acronym for SOcial Networks And Relevance.At the end of 2008 we were disturbed to discover that IBM was promoting their own network analysis technology under the “SONAR” name. We contacted IBM pointing out that this was bound to create confusion with Trampoline’s products. They said their product was only at a development stage and wouldn’t necessarily be brought to market under that name, but they stopped short of making a commitment.
Since then we’ve been working to secure the UK trademark for SONAR. We’re delighted this has now been granted. Meanwhile we’re proceeding with trademark filings in other territories.
Posted in SONAR, Trampo news | No Comments »
Trampoline launches SONAR CRM
By Charles Armstrong | May 26th, 2010
Today I’m excited to announce the arrival of Trampoline Systems’ new baby, SONAR CRM. This is the culmination of a four year journey which began in 2006 with our original vision for SONAR. It marks an important milestone for Trampoline and an entirely new paradigm for customer relationship management.Ever since the launch of Siebel’s “Sales information System” in 1994 businesses have deployed CRM platforms in an effort to increase the effectiveness of their sales operations and their ability to forecast next quarter’s revenue. To attain these benefits they needed everyone in the sales team to be dilligent about keeping the system up to date with their contacts and activity. Unfortunately human nature has often proven recalcitrant and many businesses have failed to achieve the results they hoped for.
CRM systems have continued to improve. They’ve moved to the cloud, been integrated with other programs and wired into social networks. But the paradigm of manual form-filling has remained unchanged. Until today, that is.
SONAR CRM is a social analytic technology designed to run alongside an existing CRM solution. It works by analysing patterns of electronic communications using data from corporate email servers, directories, CRM platforms and other sources. When you make a new contact SONAR CRM automatically picks it up. There’s no need to manually record activity. SONAR CRM does that automatically. It also tracks the symmetry, strength and responsiveness of each interaction. For business to business accounts SONAR CRM brings even greater benefits. It automatically identifies decision makers and works out the best way to reach them. It analyses the structure of the account and highlights deal-losing weaknesses and failure points. It helps turn borderline deals into wins.
SONAR has always been renowned for its sophisticated visualisations and they’re a central part of SONAR CRM, helping make sense of complex accounts. But now they’re accompanied by powerful tabular and chart reporting so users can get the insight they need in whichever form is most appropriate. We’ve also streamlined deployment and maintenance by providing SONAR CRM as a cloud app with user and admin interfaces accessed through a secure website. To integrate with email and CRM systems running internally customers simply install the lightweight SONAR Connector inside their firewall which extracts the relevant information, strongly encrypts it and passes it on to the main server for analysis.
Over the last six months we’ve been piloting SONAR CRM with some big-name customers and the results have been phenomenal. Using SONAR CRM customers have increased their pool of known prospects by more than 400% compared to existing CRM data.
Today we’ve added details of SONAR CRM to the website and there’s more coming in the weeks ahead. In the meantime if you’d like to know more please get in touch. If you’re on Twitter you can also follow @tramp0 for updates.
Posted in Organisations & Technology, SONAR, Trampo news | No Comments »
Trampoline in Wired Magazine cover article
By Charles Armstrong | May 14th, 2010
The cover article in June’s edition of Wired UK is titled “The Great Trust Experiment”. The article offers a detailed analysis of the wave of innovation in financial models triggered by the internet. As the title suggests, the article focuses in particular on the role of trust and personal relationships as the basis of financial interactions.
Three case studies are used to illustrate the emerging models. Kiva represents a new way for citizens in wealthy countries to establish a direct relationship with entrepreneurs in poor countries and support them through small loans. Zopa epitomises the rise of peer to peer loan markets, providing an alternative to conventional bank loans. And Trampoline demonstrates how crowdfunding offers an alternative to venture capital for fast-growth businesses.
James Silver, the article’s author, interviewed me back in March as we were preparing to offer the second tranche in the crowdfunding process. The section he wrote about Trampoline gives a good summary of how our crowdfunding model works.
Posted in Crowdfunding, Media | No Comments »
Crowdfunding presentation at British Library
By Charles Armstrong | April 23rd, 2010
Next Tuesday (27th April) I’m giving a presentation on crowdfunding at the British Library. I’ll be covering three areas:- How the venture investment landscape is changing and what it will mean for entrepreneurs.
- The different models of crowdfunding and what they are suited to.
- How Trampoline organised a successful equity crowdfunding project.
See the full details for time and location. Tickets cost £40 but if you contact us we can arrange a 50% discount for a limited number of guests. The event is organised by Keystone Law, a UK firm of solicitors mainly working with start-ups. They’re one of the few firms taking an interest in crowdfunding at the moment for which I applaud them.
UPDATE here are my slides from the presentation
Posted in Crowdfunding, Events | 2 Comments »
Trampoline interview by Techfluff TV
By Charles Armstrong | March 19th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago Techfluff TV came to interview Trampoline as one of ten business featured in their Silicon Roundabout series. This was inspired by Wired Magazine’s feature on the cluster of innovative technology businesses that has sprung up in the Shoreditch neighbourhood of east London, centred on Old Street roundabout.The interview went live on NextWeb today.
Posted in Media | 1 Comment »