This article originally appeared on Silicon Prairie News.
“We saw a 37 percent growth in online sales for March,” said Ryan Downs, President and CEO of Proxibid. “There is a no more indicative measure of how well this business is doing than that growth number.”
Numbers provided in a press release also detail:
The company also saw a dramatic increases in online-only, timed auction participation in Proxibid’s B2B categories, which helped to fuel growth in the first quarter.
Downs said for the 17-year-old company to continue down such a high-growth path, they have to maintain their flexibility and range of offerings.
“We’re in a digital space and we have to be very flexible, very agile and we have to adjust all the time,” said Downs. “The health of our business is really determined by one thing, and that’s the health of online sales.”
Downs said Proxibid is all about taking historically non-digital markets where trends used to occur offline, and bringing them online. Their ability to bring efficiency and a larger audience to new industries is what leads to the company’s growth.
“We’ve added a lot of clients into the marketplace [in the last 18 to 24 months],” said Downs. “There are some really high-quality clients in that mix, and they’re hitting their stride and growing their businesses, especially with the online portions of their businesses.”
Proxibid has seen high-growth with their international sellers (particularly those in the UK), industrial categories, collector cars and online-only auctions.
“Robust results in B2B categories like heavy equipment, industrial machinery, and farm machinery, as well as the sale of collector cars and other high-end goods, were central to Proxibid’s success in the first quarter,” said Downs. “Proxibid’s online-only, timed auction solution continues to attract new buyers and sellers to the platform, which has pushed online sales and GMV to new heights for the company.”
Downs said tailored marketing strategies and additions to the marketing department are helping to push growth in those areas.
“We hired a new Chief Marketing Officer about a year ago, and he took the good work that was already happening and brought some great industry experience and great processes and approaches to the marketing group,” said Downs. “They’re doing a tremendous job of driving these very targeted demands.”
Downs said Proxibid’s marketing department is doing a great job of bringing in buyers, but the sales department is also successful at attracting sellers.
“We’re much more targeted with who we’re going after, and we’re bringing in really high-quality performing clients on the sales side,” said Downs. “Both of those functions are working extremely well for us and have been now for a while. We’re seeing that pay off in the growth.”
The success of those two departments goes back to Proxibid’s focus on flexibility. Downs said everyone is a continual learner and stays on top of trends, whether it be new algorithms or affiliate marketing programs, and when something doesn’t yield a desired result, they adjust.
“That’s a discipline that we’ve [built] over the years,” said Downs. They’re adjusting all the time, to literally intraday adjustments sometimes. That’s exciting to see.”
Downs said he’s excited about what the business is doing and is confident that they’ll continue seeing growth moving forward.
“We have no intention of going anywhere else other than Omaha,” said Downs. “We love it here, we’re finding great people here, and we hope to continue to impact this community for a long time.”
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Christine McGuigan is the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
Ask-a-Dev is a meetup where developers can come meet one-on-one with more experienced programmers.
The Omaha meetup will take place Sunday, May 6, at Urban Abbey in downtown Omaha.
Ask-a-Dev has meetups across the country and around the world — but until now, not in Omaha.
Organizer Christian Burk says he came across the idea in a blog post.
“I was immediately sure this was something that Omaha needed to do, too,” he says.
The format of the meetup is open-ended: programmers meeting and talking with other programmers.
“I’ve been there, just starting out on a project or programming language and not sure what to do next, what tutorial was right, what repo to fork,” said Burk. “In fact, I’m in that same headspace regularly, needing answers from people who have encountered the same thing I have.”
The meetup is free, and open to anyone seeking clarity in their coding projects.
“I would expect participants to range from relative tech novices to a junior or even mid-level programmer trying something out for the first time and looking for some guidance, direction or just reassurance that they are not crazy,” said Burk. “The key is that it is just easier and more fun to work through problems with someone.”
Burk says he hopes the meetup is a positive experience for both the mentors and the mentees.
“I believe that the mentees will come away with renewed excitement and confidence about their own projects,” said Burk. “I want them to feel more connected to the larger community, too. If they’re not programmers themselves though, the mentees may also come away with contacts made for further help if they need it.”
The Omaha meetup’s mentors include Ben Stevinson, Nick Stankus, Kikki Beltz, Naomi See and Kent Smotherman — all representing a wide range of programming and development specialties.
“The bench is deep with web developer talent and knowledge across the stack — back-end, front-end, and data — and across languages like JavaScript, Java, Ruby, Python, SQL, and PHP,” said Burk. “There is Drupal and WordPress talent in the group. Data visualization, microservices, CI/CD, MVC, Django, and Node are also represented.”
The first Omaha meetup will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. Another is planned for June 10.
For more information: http://www.skyriter.com/2018/03/30/ask-a-dev-omaha-starts-may-6/
RSVP for the Omaha meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Ask-A-Dev/events/249243709/
AIM Giglink will debut May 1.
The platform enables project managers to work quickly and easily with specialized provider groups.
The result is a drastic reduction in hard and soft project costs, faster completion of projects, and high success rates.
Giglink is a Vendor Project Management System (VPMS). It is the first all-in-one vendor management software that combines traditional vendor management tools with project collaboration software.
Giglink offers access to hundreds of technology consultants, engineers and project managers in multiple categories, searchable by both skill type and brand.
Experts are organized in the following areas:
-Applications
-Cloud/SaaS
-Compliance
-Data and Business Intelligence
-Database Administration
-DevOps
-Development
-Infrastructure
-Marketing
-Networking
-Quality Assurance/Testing
-Security
-Spend Analysis
-Storage
The platform streamlines project scoping and estimating, standardizes legal, provides project collaboration features, and offers administrative controls for managing multiple users and projects from an easy to use dashboard.
The Giglink website will debut May 1. For more information, contact Jon White at jwhite@nullaimsite1.wpenginepowered.com.
Scott Campbell, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of informatics for the Public Health Laboratory and the Pathology Laboratory at the Buffett Cancer Center, said the new system already has gone live in the Buffett Cancer Center’s research database and is being tuned to go live in its EHR system.
HL7 (Health Level Seven International) is the most common communication method to move healthcare data between systems and is used by essentially every hospital in the U.S. and Canada to communicate laboratory test results between electronic health record (EHR) systems.
Campbell said that because of common international technologies, the new system will be compatible with any health system in the country.
“Clinicians need concise, relevant information returned quickly so that they can treat their patients with the best options available,” said Campbell. “By providing easy-to-interpret genomic results to clinicians as rapidly and accurately as possible, we strive to support the highest level of oncology patient care.”
To accelerate the development of the technology, GenomOncology, working in collaboration with the Buffett Cancer Center, developed a proprietary software program called GO-Connect. The program converts complex genetic testing results into a format that is easily incorporated into EHR systems for ongoing patient care.
“This solution addresses one of the most common challenges in healthcare today – streamlining patient information into a manageable, digestible format,” said Manuel J. Glynias, founder and CEO of GenomOncology. Oncologists today often need to open several PDFs and go to multiple portals to obtain the information required to make a treatment decision or assess trial eligibility.”
“We want everybody to use this technology,” Dr. Scott Campbell said. “It’s available free of charge for non-commercial use if you have a license with the National Library of Medicine.”
OMAHA – Elections Systems and Software announced it has hired Christopher Wlaschin as Vice President of Systems Security.
Wlaschin was formerly chief information security officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Elections Systems and Software is an Omaha-based company that provides voting machines, election management systems, and services.
In his role, Wlaschin will be responsible for company-wide security efforts, including product, operational and infrastructure security.
Wlaschin has held other senior cybersecurity leadership positions in both the public and private sector, including the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Research Corporation, and the University of Nebraska, according to an ES&S media release.
PAPILLION – Infogroup, a Papillion-based company that provides data and data-driven marketing solutions, has named a new chief digital officer.
Tom Zawacki will oversee development, planning and execution of digital strategy expansion and lead new product development and sales enablement programs, according to a media release.
Prior to joining Infogroup, Zawacki was SVP of corporate strategy and innovation at Rocket Fuel.
Zawacki will oversee development, planning and execution of digital strategy expansion and lead new product development and sales enablement programs, according to the media release.
