Molecule Makes an Impact

For decades, energy and commodity traders have managed investment risk using massive implementations of expensive, monolithic software. Houston-based startup Molecule Software is on a mission to change that.

Molecule’s cloud-based software eliminates the need for costly implementation and gives its customers anywhere, anytime access to market data and analysis in real time. Molecule consolidates data from disparate sources and presents it to clients in a beautiful, easy-to-use application. It’s a breath of fresh air for commodities traders used to complex spreadsheets and manual analysis.

Molecule uses Mode’s White-Label Embeds—embedded analytics that look and feel like the Molecule app—to offer its clients stunning, custom reports and dashboards.

“Our custom reports are one of the ‘wow’ factors when we're demonstrating the Molecule app to customers,” explains Dustin Whipple, VP of Sales at Molecule. “It is something they just don’t get with their legacy systems. Instead of bare-bones graphics and spreadsheets, we're able to provide beautifully illustrated reports that are customized to exactly their needs.”

Figure 1) Mode report embedded in the Molecule application.

From the beginning, Molecule wanted a way to offer users custom reports that were not standard in its application without having to invest the time and resources to develop them in house. It needed to keep its small development team focused on building core software. Molecule evaluated several business intelligence tools, narrowing its search to only platforms with white-label capabilities.

“White-label was a deal-breaker,” explains Kyle Luzny, Software Engineer at Molecule. “Part of what works for Molecule—and really any early startup—is establishing and maintaining a brand identity.”

After deploying and testing several platforms, Molecule chose Mode’s White-Label Embeds. Molecule liked that Mode’s tightly integrated SQL reporting tools make it easy to configure and deploy custom reports to clients.

“There was little to no configuration required to wire up Molecule to Mode. We went from discovering Mode to delivering data to customers in about two weeks,” says Luzny. “Today, getting a custom report in front of clients is almost trivial. If they can whiteboard it, we can build it.”

With Mode, Molecule can now easily offer new levels of customization and encourage additional engagement with the application. Clients can log into Molecule at any point throughout the day to access and refresh their reports with real-time data. Additional features also enable Molecule to deliver an email with the latest analysis to customers’ inboxes every morning—something customers can’t get with their legacy software packages.

“Our clients are most concerned with the precision of their numbers,” adds Whipple. “Our primary focus will always be our core application, but these reports are the secret weapon that help tip deals in our favor.”

Luzny estimates that by using Mode’s White-Label Embeds, Molecule saves a week of development time per report. With three reports in a standard package, that’s three weeks of development time saved per customer. Luzny and his team use that time to work on building out core features for the application.

Mode also enables Molecule’s analysts to use SQL to prototype features much more rapidly than it could develop them internally. Molecule’s analysts build custom reports regardless of where engineers are in the regular development cycle. If they develop a new feature that could work well for a majority of clients, Molecule’s developers can quickly integrate the SQL generated from a single custom report into the Molecule application, instantly adding value to customers.

“White-Label Embeds keep our analysts close to the data and our developers close to the code. Fast prototyping, ease of deployment, and per-client customization keep the overhead low, and let us focus on writing software that rocks,” says Luzny.