(Wakefield, MA) — Last November, Kristen Leavy was at a trade show in Connecticut with her colleagues. The business kept surprising everyone at the show: sales. They couldn’t believe it. Sales were up. The whole time she was there.
There were so many similar stories in other trade shows she attended that Kristen, an associate at Manning Arnold & Sprakoff, wondered, “If we could track it, what is it?”
Suddenly, she came up with a solution: Contract with an artificial intelligence-based solution to help track sales.
Kristen and Manning Arnold & Sprakoff built Accoin. It’s a software tool to help businesses get a better sense of what a particular event is actually doing. Leavy designed Accoin to fill a void that nobody seemed to be interested in: an automated way to track sales and share the data.
Kristen led a co-founding team that includes Shekhar Goswami, a marketing, branding, and visual communications specialist who is excited about using the software for her clients.
“Now, when I plan a marketing event for one of our clients, I have a better understanding of the demographics, and the P&L resulting from it, and I can use that data to develop a deeper and richer experience for them,” she said.
“I feel more empowered to do what’s best for the organization, and I’m more accountable for what we’re doing on behalf of our clients.”
Accoin was at its first big media event earlier this summer when it was on the show floor at the Small Business Marketing Association’s 15th Annual “Your Business Matters” conference in Washington, D.C.
Procter & Gamble marketing executives used Accoin at a workshop in the hotel where P&G was staying, using the software to track revenue. A Shareholder Services representative used it to track event attendance. Even the show host used Accoin: “If people were curious about the power of platform marketing, this event would give them insight to where the hot spots of buzz are in marketing today.”
Accoin launched its free beta version in March 2018 and took shape over months and months as Leavy and Goswami developed the software. Leavy and Goswami developed Accoin in secret until now: on Monday, Ap-Pro published their fully-functional coding while also releasing it to general use.
In addition to Kristin and Shekhar, the Accoin team includes:
— Erin Cozad, group manager of sales engineering
— Ryan Ahey, a third-year software engineering graduate of the University of Connecticut
— Pedro Arestin, a communications specialist
— Todd Wiener, founder of Leos Media
— Marcus Fritz, project lead
In addition to small and midsize businesses, e-commerce companies are another big target for Accoin. “This is an industry that is still emerging,” said Goswami. “We’re looking to have an impact on how businesses do business.”
“Online shopping is burgeoning, and we believe we can support businesses and better support online shoppers with Accoin,” Goswami added.
A free version of Accoin is available and companies can download Accoin software to their iOS and Android devices. Accoin is also available through a business cloud provider.
“When we started, we wanted to make our software free to the public, and hopefully that’s the case,” said Goswami. “Free really is the killer app.”
Most recently, Sentinel Communications was planning a lavish corporate-sponsored trade show in New York. If there were any fears of Accoin not working, Sentinel was able to test the software and validate its worth.
“We were able to get some very high-level insights on the P&L from our event marketing budget,” said Diane Falkenberg, Sentinel Communications’ vice president of brand and content strategies. “The most important part is the feedback we got from participants on the two main questions that businesses have: “Why did we decide to attend and/or what were the main takeaways from the conference?”
They were able to get it completely answered.