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If you're using Excel in your trading analysis, pick up a copy of Mastering Excel 2000.
Co-authored by Willow Solutions president Beth Klingher, Mastering Excel 2000 takes you through
the nuts and bolts of the newest version of Excel, with particular emphasis on
Excel's new Internet collaboration features.
With clear examples and details you won't find anywhere
else, this is the book to buy if you want to know about Excel 2000. Order it
now from Amazon.com.
Beth Klingher built Willow Solutions around the financial services industry, developing
Reuters Group PLC's first Microsoft Windows-based PC product for financial markets. Her solutions,
relying heavily on Excel, are now in use on hundreds of thousands of PCs worldwide. Beth talks
to Mark Kindley about her company and its future, and about her book on Microsoft Excel.
In The Trenches
Originally published in the Microsoft Certified Partner Newsletter
with
Mark Kindley
and
Beth Klingher
Founder and CEO
Willow Solutions, Inc.
Form Follows Function
Beth Klingher kept up her art after graduating with a fine arts degree from
a liberal arts college. Her medium today, as CEO of Willow Solutions of New Haven,
Connecticut, is spreadsheet interfaces, and she has an audience of hundreds of
thousands of admiring users at desktops in financial trading rooms around the world.
Between graduating from college and starting Willow Solutions in 1989, Klingher earned
an M.B.A. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of
Business, and worked on the development of Reuters Group PLC's first Microsoft®
Windows®-based PC product for financial markets. Her artistic sensibilities survived
these otherwise prosaic environs and now imbue the spreadsheets she designs for
financial markets with a certain grace and ease of use that masks the complex
formulae underneath. The fact that billions and billions of dollars in goods,
securities and currencies are traded every day by the people who admire her work
adds a certain high energy level to her current art form.
Klingher was one of the very early Excel developers; back when Windows was brand
new, Excel was still thought of as a Macintosh product, and Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the
financial markets. All that has changed, and, from having participated in those
changes, Klingher brings a unique perspective not only to the markets she serves,
but also to the importance of bridging the gap that too many developers leave
between their technology and the end user.
Klingher recently shared her in-depth knowledge of Excel with the world as co-author
of the book Mastering Excel 2000, an encyclopedic treatment of the spreadsheet
application that she has built her business on.
Although it has been growing at more than 40 percent a year for the last few years,
Willow Solutions is a relatively small company whose staff has eschewed the path to
stock options and IPOs and stayed focused on producing custom software that delivers
power to its users with a characteristic flair.
In The Trenches: How did
you get from fine arts to Willow Solutions?
Klingher: I was actually
hired out of business school by Reuters - the news and market
data company. I had many jobs while at Reuters but the biggest
one was the development of their first Windows-based product
- the Reuter Terminal. Reuters provides products for trading
environments, and they came out with the first PC based product
in the financial industry which allowed live market data from
the exchanges to feed into a spreadsheet. It was really quite
revolutionary at that time. The problem was no one knew how
to use it. That was when I saw an opportunity to start Willow
Solutions. I left Reuters in 1989. Willow's first products were
actually for Reuters. We then expanded from just Reuters to
working with many of Reuters' customers.
ITT: Has Reuters helped
you do that?
Klingher: Yes, they did.
We not only built tools for the company directly, but we also
developed relationships with the sales staff and marketing people
so they would come to us and say, 'I have a customer who wants
to buy 100 machines, but we need it to do X, Y and Z.' We started
building larger and larger systems for these customers, primarily
using real-time data—that was our focus—and it still is today.
The spreadsheet is the other focus. We don't always build everything
in a spreadsheet, but very often the user interface is a spreadsheet
or there is integration with a spreadsheet. One of the things
we are very good at is our user interface. My interest in art
and understanding of how things should interact with the user
come into play in my work today.
ITT: What about your relationship
with Microsoft during the early days?
Klingher: Well, we had,
and still have, a very good relationship with Microsoft. So
few people were using Excel back then. I think Excel had less
than one percent of the market. Lotus 1-2-3 was the overwhelming
leader, especially in the financial markets. At trading floors
people would just not talk to me about anything besides 1-2-3.
They also hated the mouse. I remember traders throwing mice
off their table and saying, "What is this? I don't want anything
to do with it." I'll tell you, if you had asked me back then
if Excel would win, I would have said, "No way." But, Lotus
1-2-3 just gave it away. Excel is also a phenomenal product.
It just does so much.
ITT: You haven't felt the
need to jump to a database?
Klingher: Well, we do. We
don't use Excel solely. We use Excel a lot because the customers
are comfortable with it. They can do their own ad hoc analysis,
and they can hook it up to their own spreadsheets, but we do
not use Excel by itself. Traders are our target market, and
they have spreadsheets that may not be huge but do have very
complex financial calculations that are pulled in from other
applications. Probably 80 percent of the traders in the world
depend pretty heavily on spreadsheets.
ITT: Are those Excel spreadsheets
today?
Klingher: Yes, they are
all Excel spreadsheets. You don't see Lotus 1-2-3 anywhere,
anymore.
ITT: You wrote the latest
book
on Excel. How did that come about?
Klingher: A referral from
Microsoft, actually. It's a joint book. Three of us wrote it.
It's such a thick book; you can't really tackle that kind of
thing by yourself.
ITT: What is your favorite
kind of assignment?
Klingher: We are brought
in primarily to design custom
applications for trading floors. We do a lot of work for
hedge funds, money managers, and portfolio managers. We also
do a lot of integration with other products at the customer
site.
ITT: What are the markets
that are fueling your growth?
Klingher: We have targeted
the hedge fund industry in
a really focused manner. It is growing phenomenally, both in
terms of the amount of money in hedge funds, and the amount
of hedge funds popping up right and left.
ITT: What do you consider
to be the most unusual thing about Willow Solutions? What sets
you apart?
Klingher: One of the things
that is unusual about a company our size is that we have written
software that is literally used on hundreds of thousands of
machines around the world. Another thing that differentiates
us is that our software is used in trades worth billions and
billions of dollars. Unlike other vendors who can afford to
come out with a product that may not be totally bug free, we
really, really have to test well. When somebody makes a trade
for US$5 million and there is a bug in our software that screws
it up, they are not happy. We have an extremely demanding client
base. Traders always want state-of-the-art; they want that
edge, and they have no patience for any kind of problems. That's
another reason we have stayed small and nimble — so we can be
incredibly responsive. When a client calls us, we have to respond
immediately. They can't lose a half day of trading. That could
be worth billions.
Mark Kindley is a former editor of VARBusiness magazine and founder and managing partner
of The Fifth Business, a custom research and analysis partnership specializing in
e-business and computer distribution channels.
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