9 Must-See Enterprise Products From DEMO 2014

Last week in Silicon Valley, some of the world’s most innovative startups pitched new products and services at DEMO Fall 2014. While many of the companies targeted consumers with their quirky wares, a set of startups that cater to enterprises also made waves. The following nine companies stood out from the pack and made a lasting impression on us. While you probably haven’t heard of many (if any) of them, chances are you’ll hear a lot more about at least a few of these startups in the coming months and years.

What it is: Skillpocket is a community marketplace that aims to help you quickly locate and hire the expert professionals you need. Skillpocket provides a platform that allows you to find a variety of talent, on an hourly basis, for onsite or online work.

Why it’s noteworthy: Skillpocket could potentially save organizations significant time and money and help them quickly locate trusted experts in specific fields or niches, including design, development and marketing. The company wants to “put a hire button on every top professional on Twitter.”

What it is: Celect’s Optimization Platform is designed to help retailers understand how and why customers at specific store locations “select” the goods they buy from among all available products. The platform is aimed at merchandisers, retail planners and inventory managers, and it’s a valuable tool to determine “what to put where.”

Why it’s noteworthy: Though store managers and retail designers often consider store windows design and in-store product placement an art, Celect says there’s room for some science. Celect’s platform is meant to personalize individual stores and improve the in-store customer experience.

What it is: AppZen is a new service and mobile app designed to automatically track your expenses, creates reports when you’re ready to submit them, audits the reports for signs of expense fraud, makes sure the claims are all acceptable based on your company’s specific policies and then submits them for payment.

Why it’s noteworthy: AppZen is useful for organizations and their workers who file expenses — unless, of course, those workers are purposely submitting bogus expenses. The app is simple and looks easy to use. The service uses single sign-on with Microsoft Active Directory and integrates with popular ERP systems from Oracle and SAP. (Support for additional ERP systems is also expected.)

What it is: Klink is a sales productivity offering that provides customer intelligence data for the telephone in real-time. It is CRM for your phone, and it’s designed to integrate with a number of the most popular enterprise systems to automatically provide relevant information when salespeople initiate calls with potential customers or return calls from potential leads.

Why it’s noteworthy: Klink says that with more data sources than ever, consumer insights are growing more and more fragmented and difficult to manage and use. The idea of bringing all of this information together isn’t unique, but the industry focus is largely on improving communication via email and websites. Klink aims to provide real-time customer data for what it says is the “most powerful communication channel” — the telephone.

What it is: Designed by an ER doctor, the Healium Google Glass app uses augmented reality, voice control and clinical language understanding to provide an intuitive interface that lets doctors focus on their patients and not their technology, according to the company.

Why it’s noteworthy: Healium’s on-stage DEMO demo didn’t go exactly as planned, but the idea behind its app is an interesting one. The company is one of a number of players in the medical market trying to make Glass work for healthcare, and it’s still unclear if Glass will prove to be reliable enough for real-world medical scenarios. Healium, however, is worth keeping an eye on.