Software Advice is a company that provides advisory services, research, and user reviews on software applications for businesses in over 300 market categories including medical, CRM, HR,

construction Construction are processes involved in delivering buildings, infrastructure, industrial facilities, and associated activities through to the end of their life. It typically starts with planning, financing, and design that continues until the a ...

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

and

marketing automation Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks and consolidate multi-channel (email, SMS, chatbot, social media) interactions, tracking and ...

. Co-founded in 2005 by CEO Don Fornes and Austin Merritt, it has been a subsidiary of

Gartner Gartner, Inc. is an American research and advisory firm focusing on business and technology topics. Gartner provides its products and services through research reports, conferences, and consulting. Its clients include large corporations, gover ...

since 2014.

History

Software Advice, Inc., formerly known as River Guide, Inc., was co-founded in 2005 in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

by CEO Don Fornes and Austin Merritt, the company's former general manager and COO. The company provides advice on different software for buyers in several verticals: construction, medical, retail, property, manufacturing, distribution, electronic health record, CRM, applicant tracking systems, and more. In 2009, the company's headquarters moved to its current location in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

. In March 2014, Software Advice was acquired by Gartner, Inc., a global

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

research and advisory company. The company announced Blake Clark as its new general manager in November 2018.

Product

The company advises buyers on software products via free telephone consultations with software analysts. The Software Advice website gives pricing and demo information on individual systems, as well as market reports based on buyer interactions, and detailed reviews and comparisons. The company's reports have been used as a source of expertise in ''Forbes'', ''Entrepreneur'', ''Huffington Post'', ''Business Insider'', ''Yelp'', ''Inc.'', and the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' among others. Software Advice releases biannual reports to highlight top software products in different categories. Its ''FrontRunners for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), April 2019'' report analyzed the software that companies use to track information such as inventory management, accounting, and customer relationship management. In the report, Software Advice used analyzed data to plot the market’s top ERP products graphically, based on Usability and User Recommended. The other FrontRunners reports also base scores on Usability and User Recommended.

References

{{Reflist Information technology consulting firms of the United States Companies based in Austin, Texas Software companies established in 2005