1. Why did you join SmartSights?
I have spent most of my life working with great software- and data-focused companies in the energy and industrial world. It has fascinated me to see the way technology and data have changed how we produce the energy and products we need to live great lives. I have seen entire operations flipped around when somebody pulled different pieces of data together to create views of the world that were previously impossible.
Early in my career, our biggest problem was collecting data. I spent a crazy amount of time putting together teams of people to collect and enter data from paper, microfiche, spreadsheets,and any other source we could get our hands on.
At some point in the early 2010s, that world started to flip. We no longer had trouble getting access to data, we were drowning in it. I think most people still have this problem.
This is when things became really interesting. Instead of working on gathering data, we were able to really double-down on our efforts in creating connections between all of this data to drive faster and more useful decisions than before. I was able to see tiny, startup energy companies out-compete global giants by making the fastest use of new technologies and ideas. It is pretty cool to think back on some of those meetings and see customers I knew who had at one time talked to me about a new production plan they were developing and then a few short years later see entire news segments about how they changed the industry.
SmartSights is positioned in an incredibly important era of industrial transition. Being with a company that is focused on building great products to help other people build great companies is energizing to me.
The fact that we are executing on our vision to not just create an investment return but to actually develop products that can be at the heart of this change was a key reason I was interested in joining the company. Success will be when nearly every industrial operations team on the planet has stories about how we helped them work smarter and faster as we all transform the world’s industrial capabilities.
Add in the fact that SmartSights has a talented team of people who are passionate about the same things as I am, and it was an easy decision. Our teams building and selling these products debate fanatically over whether or not what we are doing is really in-line with what our customers need now and in the future. It is a lot of fun.
2. Why do you feel our new subscription initiative is beneficial to our customers / partners?
There are a number of reasons. First, however, I’d like to reiterate that while we’re building out a more common subscription business model, we still have the old perpetual license and support model available. There seems to be some confusion on this point.
By now, most people have seen many software companies moving to a Software-as-a-Service business model. As the world changes more rapidly, the days of installing and then forgetting about a piece of software for years are coming to an end.
Take for example security upgrades. As cybersecurity incidents become more common and attack tactics become more creative, the need for increased security measures has become more important. These circumstances require constant upgrading of our infrastructure and code.
Currently, a number of our customers have only on-premise installations and often their OT infrastructure is not accessible from the internet. However, as we get more feedback from customers about how they are advancing their operations, we see that this is changing (albeit slowly) or is morphing into a hybrid implementation. We want to be on top of this with the latest technologies so that we can be there to support our customers as they advance their expectations over time.
Again, we are not doing away with on-premises installations or installations that work without internet connectivity, just like we are not doing away with perpetual licensing for customers where it makes sense. However, we are preparing ourselves as the industry continues to change, so we can meet our customers’ requirements.
Moving to a subscription model makes this more predictable for everyone. Instead of bouncing around and debating between major releases, minor releases, and constant patches, we are changing our infrastructure to better address these issues. With the subscription model, the latest updates for our customers are just there. We have intentionally worked so that the subscription pricing costs less in most cases than the older model when compared to upgrades every few years and maintenance in the middle. The predictability makes it easier for us to manage and easier for our customers to plan around. Additionally, the subscription model gives our customers continual access to our world-class technical support team.
3. Would you like to add anything about where we are headed as an organization that would be of interest to our readers?
SmartSights started from the foundation of WIN-911 for reliable alerting and notifications. With the acquisition of SyTech/XLReporter, we added capabilities around reporting and analysis.
Those are great foundations, but we are working to go much further. We believe that while industrial operations will become increasingly automated, the other idea of facilities running “dark,” without human intervention, is not in the cards. We want to help the teams that keep these operations functioning to do it as easily as possible and with innovative ideas around how to do these things even better and more simply.
By closely connecting our product lines to other systems, we can make this possible. By leveraging the incredible leaps in AI for data analysis, we can start making suggestions instead of just throwing more data at people. But, in the end, we will continue to be a company that focuses on the people in the facilities, not simply the devices.
4. Any personal anecdotes you would like to share?
I have so many. One of my favorites, though, is from when I was running a much smaller data processing team a long time ago. We ran data updates that took 10+ hours on servers at the office. If one of those computers stopped working in the middle of the night, we found out the next morning, had to do some work, and then start it back up and hope it ran through to the next day. If it broke on a Friday night, we either drove back up there to check it on the weekend or waited until Monday and lost days of production time.
When text messaging became a thing, we recoded the computers to text the database operators if things broke at night. Someone could drive up there and fix it and we would save hours, sometimes days of work. It was a huge change for the company and our customers. We could service them better, from that point forward.
The real change came when remote desktop connections became standard. It was life-changing for the team. Instead of driving around town or having people on call, the person could take a few minutes to log in from home and fix the issue from there. It made all of our lives easier and made our delivery to our customers the best it had ever been.
This was a long time ago and all of that technology is almost taken for granted now, but I will never forget what the right application of technology did for the quality of life of our team and for our service to our customers. I am still friends with that team from back then and we still talk about that first weekend we installed and were able to use all of those tools and what it meant to us.
That is the impact we want to make on our customers.
