GroupThinq is a Halifax startup that has been in stealth mode for a few years, and its coyness is surprising when you consider the international traction it’s gained.

The company, which grew out of Ekistics Planning & Design, has created a cloud-based software that helps consultancies with project management and other tasks associated with accounting. The product is now being tested with about 100 consultancies, including some in foreign countries such as Australia and Norway. And GroupThinq is looking at a full launch in the new year.

Ekistics CEO Rob LeBlanc, who presented the company at the recent Volta Cohort funding competition, said the idea for GroupThinq began about five years ago when his consultancy was doubling its headcount in a year. Such rapid growth exposes “cracks in the foundation” of an organization, said LeBlanc in an interview, and he needed a tool to perform various tasks.

“Originally, I thought it was project management . . . but I learned it was two things,” said LeBlanc. “First, there’s a missing step before accounting — it’s called project accounting. It’s a more finely grained level of accounting. And the other thing is overall collective intelligence. If you give the team the information they need to manage the budget, it can revolutionize how you can manage a consulting company.”

LeBlanc said his team spent about a year building out the software, first for internal use and then the Ekistics team began to use the GroupThinq software about two years ago. The goal was to give the entire team the tools they needed to make smart, cost-effective decisions in the projects they were working on.

Volta Labs Seeks Applicants for Academy

“We saw a very significant jump in productivity and profitability at year-end,” said LeBlanc. “I attribute 90 per cent of that to the software. We now have 25 small business owners in here now, rather than 25 staff.”

LeBlanc is now working with a team of four on GroupThinq, and lately they have expanded the functionality to include an educational program that teaches professional processes. In fact, he said seven universities are now using the curriculum to teach professional practice. The plan now is to use the curriculum as a Trojan horse for potential clients — in other words, as consultancies take the courses to improve their operations they will be persuaded to subscribe to GroupThinq to apply what they’ve learned.

LeBlanc said he has so far invested about $300,000 in the product and has taken on no outside investment. He did pitch for the Volta Cohort funding and wouldn’t rule out further attempts to attract investors. An investment of $500,000 would help the company operate over two years, he said.

GroupThinq is now on the cusp of a full release of its first product, and the team is giving some thought to what Version 2 will look like.

“We have some very ambitious plans in Version 2,” said LeBlanc. “We’re looking at artificial intelligence to mine the data the software produces, to give you the equivalent of a CFO to tell you about the company. In 2018, the plan is to work on the AI piece.”