Incubator graduate offers software to help incubators

Cybergroup Inc., itself a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County incubator, techcenter@UMBC, has developed a software program for incubators.

Called incuTrack, the tracking and reporting system helps incubators and technology centers manage administrative data such as lease, insurance, investment, and employee and business information about the companies they house — the kind of information necessary to measure a center's performance.

“There is a need for tracking, whether it's via software or not,” said Meredith Erlewine, director of publications for the National Business Incubation Association in Ohio.

“The reason that it is critical, regardless of how you track it, is because most incubators receive some type of public funding. In order for funding to continue, incubators have to show that they are creating jobs and increasing the tax base. Without it, they can't discern what their impact is.”

In the absence of sophisticated programs, many incubator administrators have managed to collect data and generate reports by piecing together tools from different software applications already on their computers.

Cybergroup's program, which is most popular in its Web-based format though it can be bought as an application, allows incubator managers to collect data on companies, generate reports and share information with its tenants.

When Cybergroup created the program — at the behest of a client — they saw “immediately how incuTrack took care of a lot of tedium,” said Tom Terenyi, Web-base developer for Cybergroup. “And there wasn't another product out there that served that need specifically.”

The 10-year-old company also saw a niche market that is growing by leaps and bounds.

There are about 950 incubators in North America today, up from 587 in 1998 and just 12 in 1980, according to the National Business Incubation Association.

Those incubators assisted more than 35,000 startup companies providing about 82,000 jobs and generating $7 billion in annual earnings in 2001 alone.

More than a dozen incubator clients are using the system, which costs about $100 per month.

Most recently, the homeland security-focused Chesapeake Innovation Center in Annapolis signed on, but clients come from as far away as Hawaii.

Erlewine said that while Cybergroup is the most established company developing programs for incubators, competition from other developers may be on the horizon.

“I've heard very informal rumblings, but who knows how long it will take to get it together?” she said.