Startup Targets Business Users With iPhone Graphics App

By some estimates, some 40,000 software applications have been developed for the Apple iPhone. But with a few notable exceptions, such as Apperian, the Boston startup that Wade profiled earlier this year, not many companies are working on business apps for the versatile mobile phone.

So today’s introduction of a new iPhone app by MeLLmo, a startup based in Del Mar, CA, is more noteworthy than the run-of-the-mill apps that enable iPhone users to toss a figurative coin or to visualize guzzling a mug of beer. MeLLmo says its RoamBi application enables users to transform data from spreadsheets, tables, and other business software into interactive graphics that can be displayed on the iPhone. Users can view, analyze, and share the information.

The iPhone application is free, although the company says it plans to introduce a premium version in 90 days. MeLLmo says it also is offering a Software-as-a-Service version of RoamBi online so that new data can be transformed into a pie chart, for example, and transmitted to a company’s entire sales force. In fact, MeLLmo says it is working with San Francisco-based SaaS provider Salesforce.com to provide such enhanced mobile access to information stored by Salesforce users.

roambi_view“It would be very useful for sales reps,” but they are not the only business user MeLLmo is targeting, co-founder, chairman, and CEO Santiago Becerra says. The goal is to provide a quick and easy way of presenting any kind of business information in a graphical display, including financial, production, and human resources data.

As part of today’s announcement, MeLLmo also unveiled RoamBi Enterprise, a server that allows both small and large organizations to transform business data and reports into visual analytics delivered to the iPhone. “We  give them the option of licensing the software and loading it on their own enterprise server behind a firewall,” Becerra says.

MeLLmo says RoamBi offers four views, or user interface templates, that have been formatted for the iPhone. The templates are specialized for viewing tabular data, catalog data, pie charts, and in a card-like format.

Becerra previously founded two software companies (he sold one to Oracle and the other to Business Objects) and is a former Booz Allen consultant and Harvard MBA. In a statement, Becerra says, “With RoamBi, we have introduced an entirely new format that unlocks the true value of accessing content on mobile devices and empowers users to publish dynamic and interactive information directly to their iPhones.”

Oh, and what does MeLLmo stand for? A spokeswoman for the company says it has no specific meaning. It’s just a name that Becerra’s grandson provided.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.