Vital MGMT founders Paul Starkey and Steve Firszt are aiming to bring their business intelligence system to a broader base. Building on the 25 companies currently in their BRAVAS coaching group, the industry veterans are opening the baseline process and metrics they’ve developed to all industry dealer companies. Vital will offer a cloud-based system that creates a standard process for structuring financial data and providing operational metrics for improving business performance.
The system, Bi4Ci (business intelligence for custom integrators), will utilize a web connection to QuickBooks to securely extract monthly financial data from participating companies. The system then calculates metrics, trends, and even comparative rankings between the companies on the service.
The dashboards are specific to, and well vetted by, CI business owners. “Owner/operators are very busy and these dashboards distill information to a form that is quickly understood and actionable,” Starkey said. “Bi4Ci takes at-a-glance business information to a new level.”
“Bi4Ci standardizes a financial/operational process that lets owners measure and manage their company more effectively than ever before,” Firszt said. “The ability to see their performance ranked alongside those of comparable companies provides added impetus for significantly improving bottom line outcomes.”
Bi4Ci allows smaller companies to implement the processes and metrics on an assisted basis, using professional QB instruction and online help resources for taking the required actions in their business. While it does not include direct coaching from Vital, the founders believe many companies can make significant inroads in performance.
The system was developed in conjunction with Cairnstack Software, the maker of the TRXio software platform for inventory management. “Reid [Hanson] and his team provided us a very quick-to-market capability and their familiarity with QB data and cloud-security was a key decision factor in our teaming up with them,” Starkey said. The two companies market their respective products separately.
Vital is completing automation of their current clients this month; new Bi4Ci clients will start October 1. The Bi4Ci service costs $299.00 per month with a one-time minimum set-up fee of $599. Additional resources for implementing the system are available.
