PAS Musings

Name-Calling!

Name-calling is easy. 

Kids are especially good at mastering this skill early.  And they do it so well. 

Effective name-calling must be both appropriate and “sticky”.  Think of the last time your kids gave someone or something a label…. “that old man up the street” sticks a lot easier than “Mr. Bourgeouis at 22 Canary Lane”, doesn’t it? 

We might not like it, but “that old man” – fits our criteria for effective name calling quite well.  It’s descriptive, easy to remember and even easy to say.

So here’s the conundrum – if name-calling is so easy, why is product naming so hard?

I’ve been in rooms with many smart people poring and puzzling over product and business naming – from “Uniformance” and “Hi-Spec Solutions” (remember those?) to “Industrial Evolution” and now this… what to name the PAS Alarm Management solution set?

You see, when we intentionally set out to do something that should just be obvious, the trivial suddenly becomes very complex.  And so it is today… what to name the PAS Alarm Management solution set?

I can come up with many ideas… How about AlarmOne or AlarmRx?  No, this is too much like some other guys’ stuff…  What about rejuvenating AMO Suite? Nope, we’ve been there, done that... Or how about OptAlarm?  It’s simple, appropriate and maybe even sticky, but not everyone likes it.  Well, then what about PASalarm?  Catchy, short, but….

See what I mean?

I’m sure I’ve got an idea for a better name somewhere… I guess I just need to noodle some more before it wants to jump out.  Maybe a couple of beers and some relaxation will help… J

In the end, I know it’s the people, the product, the service and not the name that makes business succeed, although the wrong name can make it fail – which rules out LEMMEO, since it sounds like a failure from the get-go, even though it may be technically superb: Less Alarms Makes More Effective Operators!

You have any ideas?  email me and maybe I can buy you lunch!

Raise the Alarm!

It’s been about 6 weeks now since I started at PAS, and I have to say that I’m still very much impressed… lots of great people, superb technologies and a wonderful culture.  In fact, this is a pretty fun place to be with a lot of great opportunities.

I met one of those “opportunities” the other day.  Twice in fact.  A challenge disguised as opportunity.  And it’s name is MARKETING.

Our friend Luke here is a tip as to what the problem is - read on and find out....

Turns out that with all the other great things going on around here, someone more or less forgot to feed the marketing machine.  Duh!

I guess that’s pretty obvious, but it really hit me last week when two customers pointed out that their “Google” of “alarm management” didn’t even turn up PAS until page 3. Ugh!

To make matters worse, the customers pointed out that it looked like our web site hadn’t been updated in a while… It turns out they were being kind – our web site hasn’t been updated in over two years. Ouch!

All this is against the background of PAS as industry leader…

You see, PAS pretty much invented the concept of commercial alarm management software back in 1994, with a first product release of an Alarm Analysis, Documentation and Rationalization tool back in ’96.  Well before Alarm Management became the topic of interest that it is today. 

Since then others have jumped on the Alarm Management software bandwagon, and have been quite effective at marketing, promoting and selling their me-too solutions.  Clever marketing sure does make printer port or OPC software look pretty good… but no matter how you disguise it, it’s just not the same thing. 

PAS has retained its leadership position alright – but only by virtue of the addition of more and more enhancements and new functionalities each year.  After all, we do have a reputation to uphold as The Original Alarm Management Company – even without the clever marketing.

So now when customers tell me that a less-functional solution looks almost as good as ours – it’s time to crank up some marketing to set the record straight.  If I thought I had lots to do before… well, my list just got longer.

There’s surely no shortage of places to start – the website is out of date, the product has no name, branding is virtually non-existent, packaging is not obvious, and on and on…

The movie Cool Hand Luke sums it up pretty well:

           What we have here is… failure to communicate 

Yikes!

Arm-wrestling

Arm-Wrestling

The simple things in life can teach us the best lessons.

After exhausting the usual topics out at the pub yesterday, the talk ended up to the theories of arm-wrestling.

Strength vs. Length – which is better? 

Being tall, and a fan of good leverage, I opted for the length side of the argument.  Some of my shorter colleagues with the larger arms [ and girth, I might add ] argued for strength as the key advantage.

Just as one beer leads to another, so does idle chatter lead to actual experimentation – among engineers anyway!  To conduct our tests, the group pitted me against one of the finest from sales to test the theories. 

I won’t share any conclusions now, but let’s just say that our experimentation dictated that we do some more organized testing.  A more formal arm-wrestling competition has been set for 3pm on December 9^th!

After the initial experimentation, I still favor the length advantage, while most of the sales team is still on the side of strength.  Our IT analyst/bookie puts the odds strongly in favor of length.  I hope he’s right.

So why blog about arm-wrestling?  Because success is all about leverage.

A small-but-focused company like PAS can and will make a difference in the industry.  Our people and technologies are our “length” to bring that leverage.  Other companies may have more people, better marketing, more revenue or other measures of more “girth”, but do not achieve the same result.

Customers validate my view.

In the last 2 weeks, we’ve had more customers compliment our products and vision for technology application in their plants than I’ve ever seen in any 2-week span in my career.  And I’ve seen plenty…

The specifics of our plans will become obvious over time, but to customers I say, call us or email me.  To others, I say “watch this space”.

Vroom! Vroom!

Web or Windows?

Innovations are great, but there are so many coming at us so fast that it’s hard for customers to stay on top of them all.  This is especially true where innovations overlap between technologies.

Take the examples of a web-based vs. a windows-based approach to a user interface.

The Web approach has almost no deployment issues, and is well-accepted.  On the downside, it lags behind a Windows interface in terms of functionality richness, and is also somewhat slower to work with.  And may have certain security issues for external use.

The Windows approach to a user interface is available to almost every user, is very fast, and comes with a very rich set of features.  But the Windows approach requires deployment to each user – although Microsoft .NET’s No-touch deployment is making this almost as easy as the Web approach.

As a vendor, we find ourselves asking “What do customers want?”… Surely they care more about features & functionality and less about deployment details… or not?

Of course, different groups have conflicting points of view.  So we find ourselves in discussions – talking about the technical and market advantages of one approach versus the other.

Now for certain applications, the Web approach is a no-brainer – like booking plane tickets, or reserving a hotel room.  But what about for a full-blown application like Microsoft Word or Excel?  Are these better delivered in a Web or Windows client? 

So it’s a bet.

We want to do what’s best – which means picking the option with least cost, the most functionality, and the happiest customers.  But the answers change so fast.  Today’s answer will surely be obsolete in 5 years.  But without the right answer today… well, you get the point.

Right now, it looks like the Web approach is getting better every day from a usability point of view, but yet Windows client deployment is also getting easier every day – especially with Microsoft and their .NET V2 ClickOnce technology behind it.

Note to self:  Think Hard…. and be sure to talk to customers!

Innovation

Even more interesting than flying on Southwest is innovation.

Yesterday, I read about some guys who invented a better way to draw draft beer out of a keg. 

Better in this context means faster, more even pulls (regardless of skill level), a perfect head every time, and less waste (from all the foam that is usually left over at the end). 

An innovation that could have happened years ago but didn’t until just now.  Less waiting in lines at the ballpark, and maybe even a lower cost per glass of beer.  Not just interesting, but good too.

And the day before yesterday, I read about some guy who invented a surf machine. 

This thing simulates an ocean wave, giving the perfect curl every time.  $700,000 each.  And they’re selling like hotcakes to amusement centers the world over. 

Interesting innovation, although it might not be so good for the serious beer drinker.

And last week, we had a cross-sectional group of customers from one the world’s largest oil companies tell us how excited they were about PAS and its products.  Innovation, they said, is what drove their excitement. 

This group was so excited that they were interrupting each other to uncover the best way to get this PAS software into their plants.  [ And, remember we’re talking about the rather traditional oil refining business here – excitement like this just doesn’t happen every day!  ]

Sometimes we are so close to our own products, or so caught up in how we think people should be using our products, that we fail to see the innovation appeal to outsiders.  The customers last week reminded us that PAS is full of innovations – from its first product to its newest.

At PAS, we want innovation to be a way of life – even if it costs more or is more difficult to achieve.  From building graphics to deploying dynamic model-based optimizers, we don’t want to improve upon other’s innovations – we allow the “me-too” companies do that – rather, we want to lead.  We want to intentionally be in the business of creating new technologies to solve our customers’ problems of tomorrow. 

To paraphrase the Great One in our context, “While everybody else is rushing to where the puck is, we at PAS position ourselves strategically to where the puck will be.”

Hard work, for sure, but nobody promised us that our desire to be leader would be easy.  We just need to make sure that our hard work doesn’t become someone else’s gold mine… we have enough wanna-be innovators copying us already…

Mostly, these copycats are easy to spot, but sometimes, they almost look like the real thing.  Argh!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Flying on Southwest is interesting.  On the way home yesterday, I ended up next to a motorcycle “toughie” and his motorcycle mama. 

This guy had all the accessories… tattoos, facial hair, wallet on a chain, jeans and boots.  Well, he had just one boot actually, since his other leg was in a cast.  Turns out he fell off of a roof or something.  I suppose it may have had something to do with drinking, since he had 5 beers and a shot of liquor on the 2 hour flight from Houston to Phoenix.

His mama looked the part too, but seemed much more genteel and civilized than her man. Almost like she longed for a better life, but didn’t know where to find it.

What got me about the tough guy was his attitude – no respect for anyone.  Even before we were off the ground, he had already threatened to drag his mama by the hair up and down the length of the plane, all while kicking her with his good leg.  All this while professing his love for her and nuzzling her neck. I found myself wishing for the good ol’ days of “let’s get dressed up and proper to go flying…”

Our man’s behavior and attitude didn’t improve much throughout the flight, either. Ugh – as in “ugly”.

Finally, just after we landed, our man calls up his local contact to tell them that he and his mama had arrived and that they would soon be meeting with the recipient of his call at the usual restaurant for dinner.  When the recipient indicated some confusion as to where they would meet, Mr. Tough Guy responded with a stream of expletives we usually don’t hear on the plane and threats to break the @%$&!* legs if he didn’t get smart.  Then he closed out with “I love you son.” 

HUH???  That really got me – how can this guy who threatens his son, his girlfriend (who was now his caretaker, given that he was on crutches and just recovered from a 12-day coma in which he nearly died) be so abusive and claim to love someone all at the same time.

Where is the R-E-S-P-E-C-T?  In any business setting, we all behave much more civilized than this.  How does a guy – who was probably a regular kid like me and you get this way anyway?

I look around the workforce at PAS and I see RESPECT and DIVERSITY – I mean, we probably have 1 country represented per 2 or 3 employees.  Each with different value systems, beliefs and ethics.  But all with a common sense of respect.  I’m glad for that, because differences make life interesting.

And I think differences also make for more creativity, better customer service, healthier attitudes and generally make the world a better place to live.

Long live our differences!!!

May the best come out from all of us – at PAS anyway – as we go forth to serve our customers and bring value to the process industries!

Powerpoint School

Going to a meeting with another customer tomorrow.  Proposal clarification on a key job we’re pursuing. Can’t share details as they are super-secret for now…

Since tomorrow’s meeting is a big deal to us, we had a pre-meeting today.  Need to be organized and be sure we can put our best foot forward, right?

Most interesting – read on and you’ll see why…

Our meeting tomorrow is with a mix of the customer’s commercial and technical people.  Intention is to review & clarify commercial details of our proposal so that there is no misunderstanding on either side. 

Come prepared, they say, but don’t go all technical on us.  [ Engineers have strong tendencies to fall back on technology, so we consider ourselves warned ]

The slide review was my first real involvement in such a thing here at PAS.  Wow!

It is no secret that PAS has been rather heavy on technology and pretty light on marketing for some years, but even so I was surprised. 

You see the school of Powerpoint that I went to says that each slide carries its own value statement and stands alone so that even those not paying attention (like managers playing with their Blackberries) can still get the idea. 

I talked about helping to bring out all the hidden gems from inside the company to market in an earlier post.  Well, after today’s meeting with my marketing hat on, it’s clear how I can add value to all the Super-Gee’s around here…

Next action… align our thinking on Powerpoint school – or I’ll end up re-writing more slides than I care to think…L

However, it seems like there are also other schools of Powerpoint design that say put as much as you can on a slide and obfuscate the real meaning of the bullet points as much as possible so that if a competitor ever gets a hold of it, they won’t be able to gain a single farthing of value from it.  I guess this assumes that customers don’t ever go back to read what you leave behind?!?  Hmmm…

Show me the money!

Had lunch with a key customer recently – “Mr. Digitzation” for a leading chemical company.  His job is to review and recommend technologies and strategies for investment at over 30 plants around the world.

So what does he see as most important to his decision process?  The answer was obvious – measurable return to the bottom line. 

Company engineers bring propositions to him for great applications that claim wonderful benefits – many of which have a proven track record – but if they can’t articulate the expected return and how to measure that, it doesn’t make the cut. 

Show me the money, he says, and then we’ll talk.  Maybe.

Our problem… both as vendors and customers, is that we often get excited about new technology applications without working the details – the real hard numbers – of the value proposition. 

We’re pretty good at quantifying financial returns for those applications that directly impact process operations – like advanced control and real-time optimization. 

But for applications that reduce alarm overload, improve critical situation handling, tighten cybersecurity, enable disaster recovery, etc. – this is much harder to do and we often fall short. 

Nice benefits, but like our gatekeeper says – show me the money, then we’ll talk.   

I want us to be the gatekeeper’s counterpart – release no application without the details.  Now that’s worth doing!

Rocket Bike

It always surprises me how small the world is.  Turns out that the brother of a PAS employee had a hand in the rocket design for Rutan’s SpaceShip One.

And the other day, I met a guy who went to elementary school with Bill Gates.

But what really made the world small was when my sister-in-law told me that her sister’s brother-in-law is Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom fame.  Yuck.  That is one milkman too close to me.

Back to the rocket scientist.  As I see it,

1. All rocket scientists are Super-Gee’s

2. All Super-Gee’s are different than the rest of us

3. Different people do strange & wonderful things

With that background, how about this?  Here’s a picture of a PAS employee’s brother riding a rocket bike!  Zero 60 mph in seconds flat.  Look out Lance!

Turns out that this guy even created a rocket bike for his daughter.  Lower thrust of course and no flames.  Top speed 30mph.  Safe even for kids of regular folks.  So…. if you’re looking for that special Christmas gift start you better start checking out eBay now!!

Seriously though, Mr. Pickens is a for-real rocket scientist - the founder of Orion Propulsion. 

These Super-Gee’s are all over the place - really!  I know for a fact that there are more than one of them at PAS, and they are probably in your company too!

Super-Gee's

At our house, we all admire the Super-Gee, as in Super-Genius.

Our society needs to pay more attention to the Super-Gee.  The Super-Gee’s make the world a better place with their wild and wonderful inventions and discoveries.

An example of a Super-Gee that is high on my list is Burt Rutan (2004 Entrepreneur of the Year, and winner of the x-prize for the first private space flight - isn’t that cool?).  Trouble is that too much of our spare time is consumed by being entertained – by sports, movies, TV, etc., etc.    

And entertainment warps our sense of what is cool and how real people should look. I mean, check out these two photos and any kid can tell you which one is the Super-Gee.

Well, we have our very own certified and recognized Super-Gee right here at PAS, and this is him...

This guy was certified as a Super-Gee by being awarded the AIChE’s Computing Practice Award at their 2005 annual meeting in Cincinnati today.

And the best part is that he works right here at PAS, cranking out the scientific marvels that end up in some of our best products – like the STAR multivariable controller, the Polymers NonLinear Controller, the NOVA process modeling and optimization system, and the newest GALAXY unified nonlinear control and optimization solution – all of which contain his mental marvels and all of which are out there running in customer plants, making their operations more efficient.

Yip, Super-Gee’s like our own Dr. Mike Morshedi are making the world a better place.

Isn’t that great?