Cronycle, from the company of the same name in London, is a SaaS application that provides an end-to-end collaborative information workflow for content curation, monitoring, organization, and publishing, for knowledge workers.
$49
per month per user
Precisely Spectrum Spatial Insights
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Spectrum Spatial Insights by Precisely (based on the former GeoInsight by Pitney Bowes) helps users to test strategies, taking into consideration key market and competitive drivers. Detailed forecasts and financial impact assessments can be created for every scenario, to provide an actionable, defensible plan of action. Ultimately, this enables users to know a projected Internal Rate of Return (IRR) before making capital decisions.
Prior to adopting Cronycle, our research team had a variety of different ways in which they would discover, store and share information. These methods were often inconsistent, with many smaller teams or sub-groups of researchers operating independently of others. In many cases, content that was potentially useful to more than one colleague was not being shared at all. We had thousands of different sources, accessed through varying methods and stored in different locations/systems, and very few colleagues would have had an idea of which sources other team members were using. Furthermore, we became aware as a team that while between us we were pulling in a lot of information, much of what was being discovered was not necessarily being acted upon, or indeed being read by the colleague to whom it was most relevant. We also needed to become more targeted, and indeed more selective, in the information we were seeing, and Cronycle -specifically through the Sources Library, the Feeds, and the tagging and notification functionality - has enabled us to do just this. There has been a genuinely transformative outcome to our information gathering ability, borne out by specific metrics, which Cronycle has also provided us with via the Enterprise account.
As previously mentioned, as long as the web platform works, the software is quite useful. However in places or areas where the platform operates with low standards (poor reception signal), the versatility and usefulness of the program decreases considerably. This type of problem in developed countries probably does not occur, or if it occurs it does very infrequently. But in non-developed countries, the frequency of occurrence can be a factor to take into consideration when choosing an program based exclusively on a web platform.
It allows us to visualize data with extreme ease, through maps and graphs, patterns and tendencies.
This visualization allows, in turn, to make decisions more quickly and with a greater amount of information than what a good part of software of the same nature allows.
For some reason logging on for a few months does not go as easy as usual, because nowadays I need a least two attempts to log in.
I think I do only use the core functionality of Cronycle: getting indication info by keywords via multiple sites.
Vice versa: if people come to me with a suspected issue, I double-check via Cronycle by entering that issue as search in found results. A low occurrence often indicates the suspected issue likely is not so severe.
Being a web-based platform can, in some cases, be counterproductive, especially in areas where internet and satellite coverage are of low quality or are not available, such as jungle areas.
The results obtained, in most cases, need to be interpolated, in order to completely characterize the study area.
The interpolation functions are those that are typically used in commercial software used in this area of study, and have the same limitations. When using it I have not found any novelty regarding this.
Any issues with the platform have always been resolved quickly. I have never previously worked with a third party software provider whose support team is as responsive.
Hootsuite publication prep and scheduling is great, better than Cronycl (a manual process) Cronycl management of feeds, filtering creation of topical boards are excellent, Hootsuite doesn't offer this. Cronycle I find it easier, more attractive, and better filtering than Buffer, though Buffer was slightly better at the publication prep.
In comparing GeoInsight to other products, I will not be of much help since this software is, as far as I know, almost exclusively used in activities related to the financial world, rather than geographical. That is why it is usually included in software of the AML (Anti-Money-Laundering) type. My interest in the program was to see its capacity for data storage and practical utility to facilitate decisions, compared to other software but more linked to geographic information (GIS software).
The use of the software allowed the minimization of activities associated with logistical support to field staff. That reduced the time associated with these activities by about 15% of the initially estimated time.
The aforementioned reduction translated into decreases in expenditures in the order of $ 2000 / day.
