No one questions the value of the web for disseminating information to friends, users, customers and partners. Whether it’s personal information or business information, the medium has proven to be the dominant one for communication, certainly beyond fax and courier services, but also supplanting the phone and apparently for some people, even email (replaced by Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).
As I write this blog, RIM suffering its worst network failure in its history is still a recent memory. Given the firm’s market challenges with the iPhone and the Droid phone makers, will its leadership vanish like Motorola and Nokia? A week ago, Bank of America experienced a mysterious slowdown that affected them for 5 days. A few months ago, a major airline cancelled hundreds of flights and lost untold millions because its reservation system failed. Even the DOD drone operations center has been attacked by viruses.
We keep getting asked why anyone would need our universal viewer for PDF or Word when there are free viewers or free web-based solutions available. Free is better than not-free, correct? Well, the corporate world isn’t naive or indiscriminate. If an organization spends money to replace a free product, there must be a reason.
What got you started in the imaging business?
I’ve been involved in a number of technological businesses over my career. Over and over again, I’ve been drawn to imaging related businesses because there is something interesting to see. When dealing with databases or compilers, the products serve a useful purpose but it’s actually hard to “see” what the products do. When dealing with display computers, CAD software, pre-press software or the imaging tools that Snowbound offers, you can literally see their output. It’s easier to verify that it’s working correctly, it’s easier to show to people and it’s easier to explain – and all of us deal with images and documents every day.
With so many companies processing color documents today in a client/server configuration, the burden of conversion or rendering documents has moved from the client to the server. In many ways, this is a good thing. It allows for greater security, the easier ability to connect to repositories, greater reliability because there are fewer concerns if a client station fails (automatic backup on the server with greater redundancy) and the ability to spread the workload world-wide through high speed networks.
In the software library business, including open source libraries, a software developer can often find a software plug-in or library that enhances his or her application without building that piece from scratch. You can enjoy the fruits of someone else’s effort in a specialty that you may not know or enjoy working with. That’s what open source is really all about. Why should everyone re-invent the wheel when someone else has already put the thought, creativity, research, development and debugging effort in to create something others can readily use?
Over the 15 years we’ve been in this quite highly specialized area of imaging technology, we have found that though many of our customers are experts in their own technology , they’re not necessarily experts in ours. But that’s not very surprising – we live in a very specialized world. What is surprising is how many of the capable engineers we sell to underestimate the knowledge and skills required to implement technology such as ours to obtain the greatest possible benefit and therefore try to do it without assistance.
Question, what’s more important to you – features or benefits? Is that like asking you what is more important – air or water? As a techy kind of guy, I like gadgets and I like using, playing with and creating new technology. I buy gadgets I like even if I don’t have a use for them. Sometimes there’s a little guilt involved. I also feel guilty buying the latest Blu-Ray DVD player or digital camera or other such device and not using all its features. I actually read the entire owner’s manual when I got my latest car and tried to use every feature (until I found out how poor BMW documentation is – but that’s another story). Fortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to try the one where the emergency full force braking is activated, the seat-belts pre-tension and the doors automatically unlock if you’re in an accident.
Being in the software tools and libraries business is a funny thing. There aren’t too many of us in comparison to application software creators and so people’s expectations about our products are colored by their experiences with applications.
Windows 7 is gaining wide acceptance in commerce (unlike Vista) and is viewed as the logical upgrade path for the huge number of Windows XP systems that are rapidly aging. There is also a growing need for client applications to have access to more than 4 gigabytes of memory for optimum performance. Since this can’t be supported by any 32-bit Operating System, there is growing momentum towards 64-bit OS (Windows 7) and software.
Reviewing my last year’s December message, it was all about survival and learning from our experiences. I am happy to report that things are better now. No one will say that we’re out of the economic downturn quite yet but the indications are there.
One of my poker buddies just noted a welcome harbinger – he said divorces are up. Is that a positive sign? Well he’s a divorce lawyer, so that’s one reason he thinks so. But secondly, when the downturn hit, he noted people didn’t have the resources to divorce. They may have hated each other but they didn’t have the money to solve the problem. Now they can do something about it.
We’re moving in the next few days. Why, you ask? Because we are bucking the trend in business today. We need to grow and our present facility just doesn’t make that possible. Our carpets are worn out, parking is tough and most importantly, we don’t have enough room to add people. So we searched for months (surprisingly hard given the commercial space situation) and found new space to build to our specs, giving us room to move, room to grow and as a bonus – plenty of free parking.
It’s a tough economy. Everyone has down-sized, people are asked to do more tasks, your purchasing department drags out all your requests, and you want to update your document management and retrieval system. You want to upgrade to a new web-based system with more flexibility and accessibility. What are your chances of bringing in a new big system that usually takes 2-3 years to fully implement?
An alternative many companies are adopting today is bolt-on upgrade technology to quickly and less expensively provide powerful new capabilities without the drama of installing a whole new system. For example, thin client web-access technology can provide a new look, an easier interface, lower installation and support costs, and secure access across the web. This kind of bolt-on leverages your existing Enterprise Content Management system and repository while providing utility and flexibility that your users will appreciate and enjoy.
If your ECM is adequate in its storage and retrieval capability, it’s very hard to justify a full replacement. The challenge can be enormous if documents have to be converted or workflow processes redone. So a front-end replacement that your users can immediately appreciate through increased usability and much greater access, while your support costs go down, is hard to beat.
A few words of caution:
CEO/President’s Corner – August 2010
As a Customer, do I need to look Under the Hood?
If you’re buying a toaster, I submit that most of us don’t care what’s inside as long as it toasts bread and doesn’t catch on fire. When buying flat panel TV’s, there’s so much complexity that it’s easy to be overwhelmed with the feature list, when perhaps all you care about is that you get the channels you want. However, some of us do buy based on resolution, on number of HDMI ports, on the contrast level and the speed of the refresh rate.
Adding more workers to increase productivity is no longer an acceptable business model
Successful companies face the challenge of growing demand for their products and services, and happily ours is no different. However I’d like to focus on one aspect of our business – forms processing. No matter the forms processed, whether for insurance claims, mortgage applications or patient records, the tools and workflow processes are quite similar.
Let’s take a look at two growth scenarios:
Steve Jobs in his April 2010 blog on Adobe Flash technology versus Javascript, CSS and HTML5 (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/) makes many good points about the pros and cons of Flash. These points include open standards (Flash is proprietary to Adobe), Web accessibility, reliability and security, and touch UI compatibility.
Rebounding Economy and Customer-Inspired Products Drive Revenues Higher
I’m very pleased to announce that the resurgent economy, as well as the development of new document viewing and conversion products designed to meet customer needs, has resulted in the best first quarter ever for Snowbound Software, and the best March in our fourteen year history.
Specifically, our Q1 2010 sales exceeded Q1 2009 by 18% and exceeded the previous Q1 record (2008) by 14%.
March 2010 sales figures were 63% higher than March 2009 and 42% higher than the next highest March (2007).
There are many reasons for the push towards Electronic Medical Records (EMR) by our current administration, among these, to reduce health care expenses via technology that utilizes electronic document imaging. While there are many that support this concept and effort, there are almost as many cautioning us that this is not a simple process and even five years is not long enough to rectify the situation
Our customers tell us that many of the internal document imaging projects they’re developing are driven by their corporate need for compliance to the various audit requests they receive from industry and governmental agencies. But the cost can be high. As much as compliance verification is a necessary part of doing business in today’s world to protect us from major expenses related to compliance violations, it won’t increase our sales. It will always be an expense item.
I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. I prefer to create a list and knock off the projects one by one. Working this way gives me a great sense of accomplishment. Steering the company in the same way, I’d like to ask your help in creating the 2010 Snowbound list.
I firmly believe that we serve our customers best by always understanding what they want and need. So help us help you. Let’s start off the New Year this way: click on the email below and tell me what you need (or what you want changed) from Snowbound this year and I’ll respond with what we think we can do to fulfill your needs.
