It all started in 1999 when I accidentally mistook the CEO of a small distribution company based in West Berkshire (UK) as the company cleaner.
Let me take you back to the turn of the new year, 1999, when I had an interview with a small software distribution company and a CEO who had just returned from the USA and a tradeshow that was on whilst he was over there. The CEO (now known as Les) handed me a floppy disk and said "try this and let me know what you think". The software Les handed me was Webtrends Log Analyzer. Seven months later, I worked for Webtrends and had shares which could 'make me a millionaire' in just Five years (I was 20yrs old at the time!!). One year on, NetIQ bought Webtrends and my shares value halved, but that wasn't so bad...
Many things happened from there on but the most significant event for me was the exposure I got to the world and opportunities that fell at my feet. I was now an International Jet-Setter, regularly travelling anywhere between the USA and eastern European territories and for a couple of years managed to indulge in executive Business travel including First Class train seats and Club/First class British Airways cabins.
Then, the dot com bubble burst. Suddenly, if I exercised my shares, I would owe the company money!
During the remaining Five years of my tenure at NetIQ/Webtrends, many things happened. I learnt more and was given more opportunities. No longer was I a member of the Support team but now a Professional Services Consultant, Business Analyst, Pre-Sales Consultant and a Business/Technical Trainer.
Fast forward to 2006, I decided to give my own Business and Web Analytics Consultancy practice a try, putting all my skills learnt from the last Eight years to good use. Five years on, big name brands across all industry verticals and with significant earnings along the way, I met my now fiancee and we decided to extend our family of Three by one more. That is when it all came crashing home that a software consultancy business with no IP (Intellectual Property) was a risky business rely on to provide the now one person income as my fiancee had finished her term in the Royal Air Force after Twelve years of service.
So, after having a long standing relationship (the best part of Nine years) with a previous technology partner, Speed-Trap (both the CEO and Sales Director) and having spent the previous Twenty-Four months prior helping businesses understand how and why customer level insight was important to help the business achieve it's long term objectives, I joined the Customer Insight company in the capacity of Pre-Sales Consultant.
It is probably worthy of note that on April 11th 2011, Speed-Trap changed it's name to Celebrus Technologies (Celebrus is Latin for 'Rich-in' and Speed-Trap is definitely rich in Technology).
Today I champion the use of Celebrus Technologies. I firmly believe in the amount of value in the data generated by Celebrus, the benefit, use and practicality of a 'tag-free' data collection platform with an Analytics server which processes in real-time (seconds, not minutes or hours) Twenty analytical data models to produce Forty detailed, individual level tables which could answer any question asked or raised by an analyst or business. Couple that with the other features available in the Celebrus Technologies product suite and a business has a seriously powerful platform worthy of taking a closer look. No one else does real-life demos live on a prospect web site...
