Talk about harmony in data.
Plehn Analytics is the first company of its kind to produce financial reports with information sourced directly from a range of government agencies including IRS tax returns. The data remains confidential.
Jose Plehn-Dujowich, co-founder of Plehn Analytics, comes from an academic background, and is still a professor at Temple's
Fox School of Business.
"I have a long history of doing academic research and consulting," says Plehn-Dujowich. "There's great value in a lot of the data collected by the federal government, but there is very little in digestible format." With every agency collecting data in its own way, it was a challenge to be able to make sense out of all the data.
Plehn-Dujowich won first place at the 2011
Be Your Own Boss competition at Fox; the fledgling company was the recipient of a cash prize, software and services from which Plehn Analytics continues to benefit. It was out of that competition that Plehn-Dujowich met co-founders Dr. Ivan Ruzic, who now serves as President & CEO; and Kevin Sheetz, Plehn's Managing Director of Banking.
This is Plehn-Dujowich's last semester at Temple. He is leaving his tenure-track position to focus full time on the company, which recently received a $150,000 grant from
Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA and also received $220,000 from a combination of angel investors and company management.
Sheetz says that the proprietary software is in beta test mode with three accounting and auditing companies, and in the next month or two will enter full force into the marketplace. "One of the main areas of focus for Plehn is benchmarking, understanding client performance in relation to its peer group," says Sheetz. "Our data allows you to get very granular, comparing your company to those of comparable size in the marketplace."
Plehn, with a total of 30 full and part time employees, has just begun its next investment found, seeking to raise $500,000.
Source: Jose Plehn-Dujowich, Kevin Sheetz, Plehn Analytics
Writer: Sue Spolan