For more than two decades, KCI Computing has delivered high-value software that solves the real-world performance management challenges faced by companies of all sizes across a broad spectrum of industries.

KCI Founder, Max Kay, began his career with an internship at Xerox during his graduate studies at Stanford. At the time, Xerox had just divested itself from the computer business and was faced with the inevitable challenges following a re-organization. Kay saw an opportunity to bridge the gaps and cycle times. He began developing his unique vision, a flexible and dynamic closed loop planning and control tool, which met Xerox’s needs and would soon serve as the backbone of his own business endeavor.

Shortly thereafter in 1977, Kay Consulting was launched with its primary focus on custom financial management system development. The vision continued to crystallize. In 1979, the company shifted its strategy to licensed and packaged software with the commercial launch of its hallmark product, CONTROL®. The first version was a mainframe-based application that enabled end-users to dynamically develop integrated plans, automatically consolidate, track, selectively report and analyze performance across different business areas, operating managements, geographic locations, fiscal years and currencies.

As the technology shifted from the mainframe operating system to DOS and later Windows and the client server model of computing, the company took advantage of these new platforms with inspiration and imagination. In 1988, the company changed its name to KCI Computing (KCI) to reinforce its position as a technology company.

In 1992 KCI adopted what was then perceived as the “unthinkable” a relational database to deliver multidimensional analysis and store metadata and data. The following year, KCI introduced the first solution of its kind that had a spreadsheet user interface (choice of either Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel) and provided multi-dimensional data management with real-time dynamic write-back, calculations, consolidations and OLAP capabilities. In the ensuing years, CONTROL’s functionality continued to be enriched for better collaboration and analytical insights.

In this new millennium, KCI continues to push the envelope in ROLAP technology for enhanced performance, scalability, and extensibility, and to perfect its holistic CONTROL solution for corporate performance management. It holds steadfast to its founding premise that only one all encompassing product with a single database can deliver the meta-data, data, and business rules integration along with the maintainability, security, enterprise scalability required for optimal performance management. This is in stark contrast to other industry players that often cobble together discreet solutions and market them as “integrated.”

KCI has earned a reputation for optimizing processes, fueling visibility, improving the quality of decision-making and solving complex business challenges. Since its inception, while other companies invested their time and effort in marketing and increasing market share, KCI remained focused on a business model of quality over quantity. KCI prides itself on maintaining the same commitment to customer service that has set it apart for decades and is unparalleled in today’s software industry.