Staying a Touch Ahead – Client and Prospect Info at Your Fingertips

Despite being a CEO, as well as the founder and developer of three successful technology services companies, Nancy S. Keddy does not talk a lot about herself.

But ask her about her latest venture, Touch Ahead Software LLC (http://www.touchahead.com/), and she gushes with information about the company's revolutionary Web-based service known as "EquityTouch."

Keddy describes EquityTouch as a uniquely intuitive, fast and customizable product that not only tracks "touches" or contacts with customers, but "all of the people and organizations involved in deals, identifying how they relate to each other." It sounds like a giant step beyond customer/client relationship management ("CRM") software.

The former technology developer for TA Associates, one of the world's largest global private equity firms, notes that her cloud-based software service was originally developed to supply a rich and robust box of information to meet the sophisticated demands of the alternative asset community (private equity firms, venture capitalists and other asset managers). Deal-making professionals in this field can benefit greatly from having a Web-based tool at their fingertips which can shine a light on all the invisible gossamer threads that tie together the deal-makers in the world of asset management and investing, including lawyers, bankers, accountants, and investment advisers.

Thus, Keddy and her team developed a tool that can upload and analyze all kinds of targeted data from Web-based sources of information, such as Hoover's, Dow Jones or LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media. EquityTouch can also tie the data – ranging from financial data to social relationship information – to targeted companies or individuals as well. It can also track a target company's progress from private letter of intent to going public.

EquityTouch might just as well be called Legal Touch, HR Touch or Touch Them All because, as Keddy explains, "The ability to customize this program and upload data enables us to fulfill the uniquely simple or complex needs of any company or industry that must track and manage multiple layers of relationships." She adds, "Our solution layers lots of pieces together and allows the customer to reslice them in any way they like, allowing them to track and view data according to need."

Keddy notes that mere CRM products are "great for selling widgets" – one product for one target at a time. But she asserts that EquityTouch is much better for more sophisticated users with more complex needs because "it can relate multiple bits of data and data sources, as well as multiple people and organizations in all kinds of ways, highlighting intersections and activities involving your own organization and others."

Furthermore, Keddy maintains that the program can manage all this data with rapid response times because it is "cleaner, faster and more intuitive than ordinary CRM products." She credits three patented processes and some advanced, elegant programming for that success.

The Touch Ahead CEO convincingly makes the case that the Web-based EquityTouch service is superior to ordinary CRM software because:

• It easily imports and updates publicly available data, so that there is less time and effort required for data input and maintenance.
• It is more intuitive and easier to learn, plus it comes with free training and support provided by a human administrator rather than an online program.
• It is more adaptive and sophisticated in its abilities to track information, allowing users to sort organizations geographically for visits, to track movements of personnel among organizations, or to conduct other customized searches within an industry or organization.
• It provides superior security through two layers of security encryption: One for the Touch Ahead site and one for the client's own data (a key-code being required to unlock the data).
• It is built for power and speed, having the capability to navigate through hundreds of thousands of records and relate those records according to given search criteria in seconds.
• It can be accessed via any Web-enabled device, including tablets and mobile phones, since it resides in the cloud rather than on individual computers.

Because of these attributes, several organizations with national and even global reputations have already adopted EquityTouch, despite the fact that it has been on the market for less than three economically turbulent years. During that time, Touch Ahead Software has also grown from 2 employees to 15, and is rapidly closing in on 20.

Keddy credits attorneys Renee Inomata, Bruce D. Jobse and Raymond E. Baxter of Burns & Levinson with providing valuable assistance in intellectual property, general corporate and employment law counseling related to the successful launch of her latest venture.

She also asserts that they are more than just legal specialists. "They ask great questions that help me to think through a business problem," and they provide a "business-like analysis" for multi-branched legal decision trees.

Noting that she has utilized Burns & Levinson for all of her technology ventures since 1996, Keddy adds that she values their counsel because "they are direct and candid, they get right to the point, and there is not a lot of fluff with them."

She also likes that her lawyers "know the costs, as well as the solutions" and "they can explain why we should consider any given direction." She is especially pleased that, "I can always get a hold of a human being at the firm, and get an answer as to when someone will get back to me on critical matters."

The longstanding professional bond is about more than business though. "When you are dealing with critical issues all of the time, a sense of humor helps a lot. We can be brutally honest with each other and laugh about things too. That is really important to me," Keddy concludes.