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iPushPull Update – Simple Page Access Management

We had to smile when Dropbox recently announced that they’d finally added User Groups support to their business package, as iPushPull has featured User Group access control from Day One. It makes it easy to manage the access each team within a business has to different pages – when a new team member joins, just add them to the team group, and when someone leaves, remove them. It’s a feature that’s very popular with our enterprise customers as it enables them to model their iPushPull page permissions directly on their organisational structure.

However, we thought that it might be a bit heavyweight for our smaller customers, so we spoke to some of them and came up with the new feature that we’ve released today: Basic Page Access Mode.

ipushpull_basic_access_mode

Basic Page Access mode simplifies the management of user access for businesses with a smaller number of users and pages. Page access permissions are displayed in a matrix showing which user has access to which page, and what level of access they have (Read/Write, Read Only or no access at all). Each square on the grid can be toggled between the three states by clicking it (or tapping it on mobile). The Transpose button lets you switch the horizontal and vertical axes if it better suits your particular set up.

Basic Access mode is now the default for customers on the Free Trial and Business plans. Enterprise users will be able to switch between Basic and Enterprise modes using the Page Access Mode dropdown on the Folder settings tab:

page_access_mode_select

 

Note that your Enterprise mode settings are retained when you switch to Basic mode, and vice versa, so you can return to them by switching back. If you have any questions please contact our support team at support@ipushpull.com.

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Five things for SMEs and Startups to consider when applying for InnovateUK SMART grants

One of the highlights of the past year at iPushPull was winning our first SMART award from InnovateUK. Winning the second was even better (well, it was a lot more money!). Both grants have helped us fund our ground-breaking research and development work in the fields of security and encryption. We’re aiming to integrate the results of these projects into our existing product line, expand our offering into new areas and hopefully gain some IP in the process.

InnovateUK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board) is the branch of UK government responsible for funding, supporting and connecting innovative businesses. They run a wide range of funding competitions, many of which are targeted at specific technologies or problem areas. If you can’t afford to wait for the perfect competition for your product, the SMART awards for SME innovation might be right up your street. These competitions are run every two months.

Since we won the awards a number of people have asked us for advice about the grant application and management process. There is plenty of information on the SMART website and I advise you to read it all. But here are some things a start-up should consider before applying:

  • Applying for a grant is simply a matter of completing an application form. This form is fundamentally an exam paper, with each question worth a set number of marks. So pretend you’re back at school, read the questions carefully and make sure you answer what you are being asked (especially the questions about finance). The system rather laughably suggests that the form will take around an hour to complete – set aside a week or so to get it right.
  • There are three types of award, each for a different stage of a project’s lifecycle. A Proof-of-Market project leads neatly into a Proof-of-Concept, which leads in turn into a Development-of-Prototype. You can apply for any of these in isolation but, if possible, think strategically and maximise the amount of grant you can claim by starting with a Proof-of-Market project and taking it from there. And make your application for the next stage easier by shaping your project’s deliverables to match the inputs InnovateUK wants for the next project stage.
  • On the topic of deliverables – InnovateUK will want sight of the deliverables you tell them you will produce, even if they are just internal reports. So consider what is going to be valuable to your business and don’t over-promise.
  • SMART grants are a great way for start-ups to get investment without giving away equity. But they can only part-fund your project – you have to provide a significant proportion of the money from your own company funds. So perform a cash flow analysis up-front to make sure you’ll complete the project before running out of money. And don’t forget that…
  • Winning a grant may reduce the amount of R&D tax credits you can claim. The rules are complex – ask your accountant for help!

I hope this article doesn’t put anyone off, but I hope I’ve shown that applying for a grant is a more nuanced decision than it might seem at first. Good luck!

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Nail-biting climax to the Bournemouth University Trading Competition

Bournemouth University Business School students at the trading competition

Last week the iPushPull founders took a day trip to the seaside for the climax of the Bournemouth University trading competition.

Students from the University Business School have spent the last three months competing against each other to make the biggest pot of virtual money, while trying to stick to prudent trading strategies. The competition has been organised by our friends at Quest Futures and has used iPushPull’s live data distribution platform to give the participants real-time access to their latest portfolio valuations on their mobile phones.

So, on a bright and breezy day we found ourselves crammed into a darkened room for a final hour of frenetic trading. The competitors were really engaged – discussing market events and strategies, and also trying to game the competition rules!

It was great to see iPushPull being used as such an integral part of the competition. At one end of the room a giant screen displayed the live leader board on an iPushPull page. And because the university IT budget doesn’t stretch to the multiple screens found in professional trading rooms, many of the students were using iPushPull on their mobile phones as a second screen to keep an eye on their current portfolio valuations.

At the end of a hectic final session the overall winner was Abdul Odhud, who made a highly-creditable paper profit £162,100 in the three months from January, with a Sharpe ratio of 0.79 – indicating that he had followed relatively low-risk trading strategies. Matthew Haynes from Quest Futures presented Abdul with the £500 prize, which he told us he was going to use to repay a car loan rather than squander in the student union bar!

The competition has been a great experience for iPushPull as well and we’ve had some really useful feedback about the system. We’re already looking forward to the next competition when the new students arrive in the Autumn.

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iPushPull connects student traders with live data during educational trading competition

Quest Futures and Bournemouth University Business School are partnering for the second time in an educational trading competition with a growing number of participants. The competition is open to all Year 4 Finance Masters Students. Starmark Investment Services is providing the trading software and all participants are connected using the iPushPull platform from PushPull Technology, which enables them to access their portfolio data live on their desktop or mobile devices. iPushPull also lets the students check the live leaderboard at any time to see how other student traders are performing.

 

ipushpull_trading_competition

The challenge lasts 3 months and during this period the students are expected to effectively execute multiple trading strategies. The Starmark trading platform creates specific real-time economic scenarios (based on real world events) aimed to challenge the competitors’ decision-making processes. During the course of the contest they have had to face many challenging events, including the removal of the Swiss National Bank’ €/CHF cap and the start of the ECB’s programme of quantitative easing.

Students are trading on a pre-defined set of products and the winner will be based on the best trading profile according to Sharpe ratio. The winner will be announced at the end of the three month period and will receive £500.

The trading competition offers an invaluable opportunity to obtain hands-on experience on professional platforms using the latest technology. This experience will be a great asset in the student’s chosen future professional environment. These competitions give them a real sense of trading in real life and show them how captivating the markets can be.

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Finovate Europe 2015 Fringe Festival – it is time

As iPushPull is at least loosely a Fintech company, it seemed appropriate for me and my co-founder to head to Finovate Europe 2015  this week, when it rolled into London for its annual European bash. The ticket prices almost put us off, but a quick google threw up some discount vouchers which made them seem marginally easier to swallow. So on Tuesday and Wednesday, uncomfortably suited and booted, we pitched up at Old Billingsgate market to check out the competition.

Finovate Europe’s uniqueness lies in its demo-only format. Each of the presenting companies has seven minutes to peddle their wares to an audience of (mostly) big bank employees, without recourse to explicit sales pitches or Powerpoint. The presenters’ responses to this challenge range from cheesy improvs to wooden website run-throughs, but there were a number of gems on display.

So who stood out?

I loved the data visualisations from Misys and Strands Finance, who both took a genuinely innovative approach to simplifying and enriching personal finance data.Five Degrees demonstrated their middle office platform, which seemed to let you build your own bank using a drag-and-drop interface. And Avoka showed how customer experience should be implemented with their incredible frictionless loan application demo, which deservedly won them the best-in-show award. Who knew a loan application could be so gripping? Time to start saving up for some consultancy, I think.

Also memorable was Quisk, with their marriage of mobile and EPOS infrastructure to create a cardless payments system, who surely won the award for the greatest mismatch between apparent frivolouslessness of company name and deadly seriousness of proposition. And the not-sure-it’ll-work-in-the-UK award goes toTivitz, a platform for kids to save money for university by getting their grannies to sponsor them to play (admittedly educational) video games.

So an incredible range of tech on display, with the presenters split between those who wanted to work with the big banks, and those who wanted to destroy them.

Was it worth it to be part of Finovate Europe 2015?

For iPushPull, I think Finovate came too soon. Our fabulous product is not quite mature enough for this event, but maybe next year… If only there was a platform for the ‘ones to watch’?

This set me thinking. Each year I visit the Frieze Art Fair in Regents Park, which brings together the world’s top art galleries and the most active collectors. For the bulk of us punters it’s a brief chance to rub shoulders with the celebrities of the art world. But in the twelve years since it started, a number of simultaneous satellite fairs have sprung up to showcase up-and-coming talents while the big guns are visiting. So why can’t we do this with technology? The start-ups are here. The audience is in town. So who’s up for a Finovate Fringe festival?

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PushPull Technology wins a second SMART Grant!

UK Trade Investment Innovate UK
UK Trade Investment Innovate UK

We seem to be making a habit of this… Following the successful conclusion of our Proof of Market project, InnovateUK (the new name for the Technology Strategy Board) has awarded us a Proof of Concept grant. This award will enable us to start to flesh out our novel encryption and security ideas into full-scale designs and prototype components. Our aim is to integrate them into our existing platform, expand into other product areas and hopefully gain some IP in the process.

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Major Upgrade of the iPushPull Web App

We have just released a major new version of the iPushPull web app. The overall layout should be familiar, but we have modernised the appearance of the site and have made a great many changes under the covers to improve the resilience and extensibility of the platform.

The major changes you should notice are:

  • pages can now be updated from the website, not just from Microsoft Excel or other client applications
  • improved page layouts with much more space available to display your page contents
  • all site functions are now also accessible from the mobile version of the site
  • fully responsive design meaning that the site can be used on all device formats

Please contact support@ipushpull.com with any questions or suggestions.

 

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PushPull Technology wins a TSB SMART Grant!

Technology Strategy Board TSBWe’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded a SMART Proof of Market Grant from the Technology Strategy Board, the branch of the UK Government responsible for funding, supporting and connecting innovative businesses.

The purpose of the grant is to investigate the size of the potential market for some of the cutting-edge developments in networking, encryption and security we’ve been planning here in the Silicon Basement. We’re hoping that when they come to fruition we can integrate them into our existing services and expand our product range into new areas.