Businessmodel of Neo Technology

Customer Segments

Neo has a segmented market business model, with customers that have slightly different business needs. The company targets its offerings at two groups: Community (consumers) and Enterprise (businesses and other organizations).

Value Proposition

Neo offers two primary value propositions: performance and brand/status.

The company’s solution demonstrates strong performance through the following characteristics:

• It is a native graph database, so it can process and store graphs from the ground up
• It manages and stores interconnected data, resulting in significant speed and scale

• Its native graph processing enables evaluation of results at a rate of millions of hops per second High-profile examples of specific positive outcomes include the following:

• Telenor Norway used Neo’s solution to reduce query and response times from several minutes to seconds, and even milliseconds in certain cases
• Cerved used Neo’s solution to double the level of service for identification of business owners from 12 seconds to 67 milliseconds
• eBay used Neo’s solution to create queries that require 10-100 times less code and add functionality that was not previously possible The company has established a strong brand due to its performance. It bills its Neo4J solution as the first and leading graph database in the world. The product is used by thousands of organizations, including more than 50 members of the Global 2000. These clients include Adidas Group, Wal-Mart, and Pitney Bowes. It has also won many honors, including InfoWorld Technology of the Year (2013-2014), the IDG InfoWorld Bossie award (2013-2014), and placement in the SD Times 100 (2014)

Channels

Neo’s main channel is its website, though it also maintains a direct salesforce. The company promotes its offering through its social media pages, webinars, and participation in conferences.

Customer Relationships

Neo’s customer relationship is primarily of a personal assistance nature. The company assists customers in the following ways:

• Training Services – The company offers a program called GraphAcademy, through which it offers online training and classroom training (public and private/onsite). It also provides a certification program through which students can become a Neo4J Certified Professional.
• Professional Services – The company maintains a professional services team that offers a “technical boot camp” featuring a mix of consulting and training services designed to help projects get off the ground. The camp lasts for four days. Despite this orientation, there is also a self-service component. The company’s website features a “Resources” section that includes self-help tools such as white papers, data sheets, eBooks, case studies, and podcasts. There is also a community element in the form of a forum.

Key Activities

Neo’s business model entails maintaining a robust software platform for its customers.

Key Partners

Neo maintains the following types of partnerships:

• Neo4J Membership - An entry-level program for partners with a focus on services and technology. There are no qualifying criteria and it is free of charge.
• Neo4J Solution Partner – A program for authorized resellers of Neo4J subscriptions, who also provide clients with any assistance they may need with implementation. They have built their own successful Neo4J practice and have exhibited expertise through certified staff.
• Neo4J OEM Partner – A program for original equipment manufacturers who incorporate and embed Neo4J into their existing solutions and platforms to create new software applications. Specific partners across these programs include Amazon Web Services, Big Data Tech, Cisco, GrayMatter, HP, Pondera, Quantum, Setia, Talend, UnifyLabs, Windows Azure, and Zenoss. Benefits for partners include sales materials and tools, training discounts, priority support, invitations to Neo events, participation in co-marketing events, and access to partner enablement materials.

Key Resources

Neo’s main resource is its proprietary software platform, which serves thousands of organizations.

It also depends on its human resources in the form of engineering employees to maintain and update the platform, training/consulting staff to provide education/advisory services, and customer service staff to provide support.

Lastly, as startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $44.1 million from five investors as of January 2015.

Cost Structure

Neo has a value-driven structure, aiming to provide a premium proposition through significant personal service and frequent product enhancements.

Its biggest cost driver is likely marketing expenses, a fixed expense. Other major drivers are in the areas of customer support/operations and sales, both fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

Neo has one revenue stream: the subscription fees it charges annually for access to its software platform.

There are two subscription plans – Community and Enterprise. Sales staff must be contacted directly for pricing quotes.