PAS Musings

User Conference

But now, we’re finally about the business of waking up a marketing machine and I must say it will make a big difference in bringing solutions to markets heretofore not reached through word of mouth. 

The marketing machine ramps up this week with an array of announcements, emails, web pages and the like to get the word out.  And that’s good, even if word-of-mouth has worked well so far…

Most customers that we’ve talked to about this are keen to get on with the meeting – they arguably have a certain right to see a clearer vision of where PAS is headed, to meet with our developers and product specialists, and to share success stories (and challenges!) with other customers.

So there you have it – an initial agenda is out the door, a good number of slots are already filled with commitments for customer presentation, and the selected keynotes are considering…

Now that the marketing machine has creaked to life maybe I can also get the beast to also spit out a re-launch of the Alarm Management product line…

Soon… I hope!

PAS has recently announced its 2006 User Conference.  This is a big deal, and a first for the company – remember, until now, there has been a real shortage of marketing at PAS and the company has been a pretty well-kept secret.

Blog or else!

Some days are like this:

Blogging is not for the faint-hearted or those that always hated essay-type questions!

I mean to put out 2 posts per week, but some weeks just seem harder to get to than others.  Anyway, it's quality not quanity that counts. (a rationalization of sorts).

I'll be back...

Business Success IV

Previously, I wrote about three key elements that can make a company like PAS successful.  These were:

>> Ideas = “fuel” for company growth

>> Focus = “efficiency” for best use that fuel

>> Partners = “infrastructure” to maximize the engine’s speed

To these I want to add the obvious:  Simplicity …and… Clarity.

For any company to succeed – with its customers, its employees or any other group – all the ideas, focus and partnering will fall far short of its potential without a good strong dose of simplicity and clarity.

Products must be simple to use.  Application of these products must be obvious.  There should be clarity in how the various products fit together.

Product roadmaps must fit the coming needs in the customer base, and involve both sides – customer and company – to set the balance right.

Marketing and presentation of the company and its products and services should likewise follow the rule of simplicity and clarity.  (ouch!)

Customer agreements should be clear in their objective and well-matched to joint corporate intentions.

And finally, within the company itself, processes must be simple and straightforward, with every person pulling toward the same objective – bringing benefit to the customer through the products and services offered.

Obviously, no company gets it all right.

Including us.

Simplicity “makes the road straight”, and the straighter the road is, the faster and more efficiently the engine that is our company can run and the easier it is to bring benefit to customers.

Likewise, clarity shows where the road is going.   And the more clearly we can see the road ahead, the better we can work together – customers and company – to define improvements that allow our engine to bring even better and more reliable benefits to all.

May we see a long straight road ahead…

Advanced Control

Multivariable Control.  Real-time Optimization.  Model Identification.  First-Principles Modeling. 

Collectively, Advanced Process Control & Optimization. 

A case study, if ever there was one.

Launched in 1980’s by innovations such as the constrained multivariable control patent by our very own super-genius.  A wondrous invention with the promise of increased production, tighter qualities and safer, more reliable operations.

And deliver it did.

A handful of companies set up shop to deliver the benefits of this great technology.  Engineers with an aptitude for linear algebra, computers and real-time process insights grew into experts to deliver premium projects the world over.

The combination of good technology and super-smart people proved very profitable as well.  Typical projects were priced at $500,000+, just for the advanced control part, with real-time optimization as an additional and pricier option over and above that. 

Soon enough the big bucks drew in the imitators.  And, over the years prices eroded by some 75%.  Despite increases delivery efficiencies, vendor profitability slowly decreased while labor costs continued to rise.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, customers started discovering that the once-wonderful control schemes required ever more maintenance as processes were upgraded, operating points moved and computer infrastructure enhanced.

The result?  Some 20 years after introduction, the technology has more or less fallen out of favor on many fronts.

What next?  Will it just die a slow death, or is there some next-generation innovation to rejuvenate the early successes?

I advocate that the latter is true.

There is a next-generation technology now being birthed.  And it's happening right here at PAS, led by the same super-genius who helped launch advanced control into the limelight.  Now, he's about to come back in a big way with another breakthrough invention to reclaim the market.

This time, the invention – code-named Galaxy – is set to deliver value without the  requirements for step-testing the process, without the need for ongoing maintenance as conditions change, and with the benefit of first-principles intelligence for optimization.

But that’s the subject of another blog at another time.  Just be encouraged that change is in the winds.

Partners

I recently wrote about the importance of focus to a company’s success.  In that posting, I cited OSIsoft as a really great example of how focus can bring about fantastic business results.

Although the folks over at OSIsoft have worked wonders without extensive partnering, I believe that effective partnering is an ideal and sometimes necessary complement to the results that focus can bring. 

By way of analogy, if focus is the engine for company growth, then partnering is the infrastructure to allow that engine to run faster and faster.  Partnering lays a ready-made infrastructure for the distribution, implementation and even support of great software products that a company like PAS might produce.

But like everything else, partnerships are no guarantee of success…. There is no shortage of failed partnerships that litter the landscape in our industry either. Maybe it s the lure of growth by swallowing others that bring about these situations...

The right approach to partnering is not about getting to an acquisition or even short-term value.  Instead it’s all about finding long-term value for both parties independent of any exit strategy or acquisitional targeting.

Not that I’m against making acquisitions, of course.  It’s just that focus on what a company does best is generally a better and a stronger way to grow. Both for the company and for customers. 

But maybe its the past commitments to shareholders that necessitates a public company to shift management focus away from what’s best for the customer…. just one more advantage of being privately-held, then isn't it?

To recap:

>> Ideas = “fuel” for company growth

>> Focus = “efficiency” for best use that fuel

>> Partners = “infrastructure” to maximize the engine’s speed

Get them all right, and enormous business success is just around the corner. I just need to remember that some corners are bigger to turn than others.

Stay tuned…

 

Email Overload?

What a great innovation email is. Instant communications, virtual conversations, document collaboration, and more. It’s all wonderful until there is too much of a good thing – which we painfully obvious on return from vacation or even some days off.

Just look at where we spend our time in the average day – a huge piece of it is spent reading and replying to emails. Unlike the rest of our day, email doesn’t care if I’m in the office or not – the virtual conversations and meetings steam forward.

The trick is to stay on top of it all.

Junk mails are the easy one – delete, delete, delete… At least most of them get caught by the spam filter, so at least I am done with refinancing my house, buying prescription meds, and changing the size of my body parts…

The rest of the mail needs at least a quick look to keep up with what’s happening, to stay involved in the conversations and decision-making, and to take action where needed.

Most of us try to handle new emails as they come in. That’s good. It’s a way of staying on top of our jobs. Personally, I try to keep my Inbox of items still to be handled down below 100 or so. If it gets much bigger than that and I start to feel behind.

There’s a danger of keeping up with all the email traffic, though. If I let it become my primary focus, then I find myself following various trails and paths which may or may not help me achieve my overall objectives.

So it’s a question of balance – keeping focused on what I really want to achieve versus handling issues of the minute.

I guess how we handle email traffic is a lot like how managers of the past handled their office door – except that they often had an assistant to give out the excuses…

As for my Inbox?? I shouldn’t feel too bad – I’m only 71% over my target of 100 items, and I’ve only been back from vacation since Monday…

Feel like you have something to contribute??   Send me an email! 

 

Focus

New ideas may be where it all begins, but focus is what transforms those ideas into business success.  Growing companies like PAS need both a steady stream of new ideas and a good dose of focus to concentrate on those that best fit customer needs and business goals.

One of the best examples of this combination of ideas and focus is OSIsoft – the provider of the PI System.  By incorporating the best ideas and maintaining an almost singular focus on their PI System, OSIsoft has become the world’s leading provider of a real-time performance management infrastructure to the process industries.  Their $100 million business is proof to that.

So what does this mean for PAS? 

It means that we will work diligently to understand customer needs, carefully evaluating their ideas as well as our own. 

It means that we will intentionally choose to put more energy into some products than others. 

It means that we will be selective as to what commitments we make to customers for new products.

And it means that we will realize that we cannot be all things to all people, and we will clearly define and follow where our focus lies.

These things all sound wonderful and even dangerously close to what I call “vision- itis” (for companies with a lack of focus).  But for a growing and energized company like PAS, it sounds a lot more like success….

Beach Time

As suggested in my posting on taking vacation, I’m following my own advice and staying ahead of my accumulated vacation days by taking the first week of the year off.

A busy guy like me needs some serious downtime to get recharged and to do that, I go to the beach.

I love the beach. It’s away from all the hustle and bustle of daily life. It’s a grand equalizer of people.  And the scenery is always good.

I suppose a mountain wilderness vacation can be just as good, but I’ve got the beach gene instead.  (In a moment of weakness, though, I recently promised my wife a mountain vacation sometime soon…) 

As I recharge this week, I will clear my head and think through the growth strategies for PAS in 2006.  There are some tremendous opportunities ahead and the challenge will be deciding where to put the focus and when.

This week is also a time of reflection, and looking back on 2005, I see no better decision than to join PAS.  The team at PAS has a lot to be proud of – strong business growth, great products, and superb technologies.  And this year, I’m proud to be a part of PAS.

Together, we’re going to make 2006 the best year ever for adding value – both to customers and PAS itself!

Now it’s time to get back to my towel at the beach…

J

Get the Ideas Out

Recently, I wrote a posting about how good ideas help make a company great. It’s easy enough to say that, but quite another to actually have ideas flowing within a company…

Along the lines of getting staff, customers and anyone else involved in the company future to share their ideas, I want to share two thoughts that I have preached to each of my children for years. 

1)     There is no such thing as a stupid question.  You may not always be the smartest person in the room, but if you have a question about something, almost certainly someone else will also have the same question.  So be curious and ask.

2)     Good ideas line up behind bad ones.  Your good ideas can only come out if the bad ones are let out first.  It may take 25, 50 or even 100 “bad” ideas before the good one comes out.  So never be afraid to make a suggestion; it’s the only way to bring the good idea to the front of the line.

To me, it sounds like a good idea to weave these two principles into the fabric of the PAS culture.  Even if putting out these principles is a bad idea, I’m sure that a better one is coming just behind it.

Besides, it sure beats just copying the other guy - there’s enough of those types of companies out there already!  J