PAS Musings

Vacation / Blog Map

For those regular readers who may be wondering what happened to my regular postings, here's the update:

 

I'm off to Europe for a 250km biking trip and visiting a couple of my grown children.  Should be back in action towards the end of next week - with renewed energy and focus!

By the way, all of you regular readers come from all over the world - check out this update generated by the blog hosting service on some of the most recent blog readers:

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The 5-Star Service Advantage

Ever since publication of The Book, more and more customers have come forward – publicly and privately – to tell us that they love PAS’ Alarm Management services.

As just one simple example, check out what Basell has to say:

“Having recently completed 3 Alarm Management projects with PAS, I can positively say, “They are at the top of their game.”

Click here to read more details… 

This one example is by no means unique – customers have been telling us for years that they love our services.

And software.

In fact, customers go out of their way to say that our software better meets their needs because it embodies the expertise we document in The Book and practice on our projects.

The message is clear: 

Better software results when it is also used in real-life situations by your own professionals.  That’s logical.

After all, if we never did any projects, how would we really know if our software was meeting the mark, easy to use, generating maximum value, etc etc…

Even so, some our Alarm Management competitors argue its better to be a purist…

Maybe they wish for a service organization, or maybe they just don’t get it.

I think it’s the latter.  I mean, who wants to buy a Ford if all the Ford employees are driving Chevy’s or not driving at all….  and if that were the case, how would Ford know anything about handling, performance and reliability of their cars in the real world??

So how can any company claim leadership in Alarm Management software when they never use it?

Over at PAS, our rule to ensure good software is to get close enough to understand what pains the customer but far enough to think outside the box. 

Only when you leave the design studio and roll up your sleeves to work with the customers, can you really know what works or not.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Summer Reading: America vs the World

Here’s another summer read for those of you looking for recommendations… America Against The World.

This book takes a numeric survey-based approach to uncovering the myths (and truths) as to how America is different and why America is disliked.

Surveys across multiple years from over 50 countries are used as the basis for the book, and it is rich in numbers, charts and trends – all with the aim of uncovering the real truths about how the world views Americans and how Americans see themselves.

Since many of you who read this blog live or have lived in other lands, you might share my interest as a multi-national into cross-border perceptions. 

Perceptions of the population is a lot like marketing results in the customer base – people believe what they perceive to be true, especially in the more complicated areas where truth may require more extensive study to uncover.

A common theme through the book is the exploration of how America and Americans are “exceptional” – not in the sense of being better, but in being different – like an exceptional piece of data in a given dataset.

A couple of the conclusions put forward by the book about how Americans are not exceptional versus other countries include:

·        Americans are not exceptional in their nationalism

·        Americans are not exceptional in their religion

(Interesting to note is that Europeans are exceptional in this area – not because they are religious, but because they are so non-religious!)

And a couple of areas where Americans are identified as being exceptional include:

·        Americans are exceptional in their lack of interest in foreign affairs

·        Americans are exceptional in their optimism for the future

Although the book might have been a bit too numbers-oriented, it was still an interesting read.

And it is the last example of American exceptionalism that attracts immigrants (like myself!) to come to America to find their fortune – a land where all things are possible.

Including 50% year-on-year growth for a company like PAS – where our own staff come from over a dozen countries ranging from South Africa to the UK and China to India – and all started by someone from Iran!

Go team go!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Right Decisions Pay Off!

Seems like our hiring of Cory Engel – erstwhile leader of Matrikon’s US sales & operations – has had some impact…

Check out what Matrikon are saying in their latest filing…

“Revenue in the US segment declined by 28% compared to the second quarter of 2006 as a result of staff turnover and restructuring.”

I suppose they lowered their 2006 earnings expectations by over 40% partly because of this, their new “higher-value” solutions and the prior executive exodus.

Yikes!  Lead balloons really are heavy, I guess!

Here’s something interesting…

If you’ve ever followed AspenTech or other public companies in our space, you know there’s an industry code for saying difficult things.  Around the numerics is generally pretty clear, but when companies lose key deals, assets or people, the spin doctors step right in to make everything sound hunky-dory.

Matrikon is no exception.  Check out their code for “we-lost-our-lead-but-are-working-to-correct-this”:

“Management of the US offices has been restructured to improve efficiency, increase utilization and increase sales.”

Remember how I talked about 52% growth in 2006? 

Well, our mid-year review this week shows that we are ON TRACK to do this.

It sure is looking like a whole bunch of our right decisions are paying off…

It almost sounds like a good thing that he left.  But I would be biased, wouldn’t I?

M a’am?  Excuse me, ma’am…?

I’ll have a couple more right decisions, to go, please!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The Beat Goes On…

The topic of alarm management and its impact on process plant safety and reliability continues to be a top priority for industry.

For example, check out the line-up of industry experts and the level of focus on alarm management at the upcoming Process Upset Management Workshop organized by Mary Kay O’Conner Process Safety Center in

Houston

this week. 

Tour delight, among the expert-level presenters and panel members is none other than our own

Eddie Habibi

, world-famous author and founder of PAS.

Eddie is presenting “The Seven Steps in Creating a Highly Effective Alarm Management System” – covering industry best practices as developed by PAS over  the past decade from over 100-person-years of practical experience and a rigorous Six Sigma DMAIC work process. 

< More details on all that in The Book, by the way…>

Other experts supporting the workshop are representatives from the Chemical Safety Board and OSHA as well as long-time PAS customers Celanese and DOW Chemical Company.  Eddie will certainly be in good company!

Just when I though I had dispensed with the topic of Alarm Management, it keeps coming up in my daily work, and that of many others… must be important.

By the way, on the Man vs. Dog marketing contest, initial email results are in… the Dog beat out the Man by encouraging 33% more people to open their email.  Need to still wait and see on whether dog-respondents sign up for the Workshop more than the man-responders…

More on that in early August.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Engineered with Integrity

In case you missed the press release issued last week, I want to quickly fill you in on an exciting new development around our Integrity software.

Some time ago, I posted a few entries using an iPod as an analogy for how our Integrity software helps bring clarity to the tangled web of databases, system configurations and interconnectivity in most process plants. 

Like the iPod, the Integrity software brings simplicity to complicated plant systems.  And as our customers know, it does this really well.

What we’ve discovered along the way is that the Integrity software is not only useful for simplifying life for engineers of all types in the plant, but that it is an even more perfect fit for project engineers working to migrate a plant from one control system to another.

Migration projects are difficult beasts to manage from beginning to end.  Three big challenges loom ahead of any engineer engaging in such work…

First, knowing what to migrate. Old systems are always loaded up with all kinds of unused configurations, code fragments and the like.

Second, knowing that the important stuff is migrated correctly. Being able to compare like for like and ensure that there aren’t any mess-ups in setting up the new system.

Third, explaining the new configuration to operations, and showing them how to check it out for themselves – but also leaving a management-of-change tool in place to ensure that they’re not changing your hard work out of their good intentions to “make things right”.

So how does Integrity fit into this?

Integrity provides the tool to upload and decipher the old configuration, displaying it in a standard format that’s easy to use as a guide for the new system. First challenge made easy.

Integrity also provides error-checking and the configuration documentation tools to allow old-vs-new comparison across multiple systems in a way that is just not possible using native configuration documentation tools.  Second one done.

Third, Integrity provides a simple web-based interface for operations to go in and “see for themselves” – without having them dig around in the actual system configuration.  And it has built-in change tracking to spot those that cannot go in to “make things right” on their own.

All three challenges met - and the Engineered with Integrity program is born!

As Harry McKinley of ENGlobal Automation Group sums it up best in his quote: “Integrity…reduces software configuration and acceptance testing labor costs by 20-25% and shaving weeks from documentation schedules”.

And even better he says: “There is no other tool available today that can … yield such savings, while helping improve overall job quality…”

Engineers love it, and so do I!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The Lead Balloon Story…

Earlier this year, I posted an entry about Matrikon’s challenge regarding the financials as 4 out of the top 5 of the management team left within 4 months…  leaving us with the question if lead balloons can float...

Now, a short update on that posting.

First, it looks like they’re still struggling to keep execs on board…

In the latest quarterly report, they announced that the VP of Advanced Applications has also left. And, with 5 out of 6 execs have left in recent quarters, the challenge faced by the remaining management team is stronger than we’ve ever seen by any company in this peer group.

Second, they’ve had to back away from prior earnings expectations…

Although they previously cited the second half as traditionally stronger than the first, they are now saying that this will likely not be true in 2006.

Oh, oh….

The company points to two key reasons for the upcoming decline:

          1) Currency rate fluctuations

          2) A shift to higher-value solutions

I can understand the first with the stronger loonie, but I would have expected that a shift to higher-value solutions would bring increases in profit from the accompanying higher-value software sales, not the opposite. 

Presumably, their VP of Advanced Applications was intimately involved in the company’s higher-value product strategy… and now he’s gone.

Third, and what I would consider most interesting for PAS is that Matrikon insists that they have no real competition, saying that there is “only one enemy – that is ourselves” (check out minute 24:30 of the earnings webcast).

    < What did I tell you about the prior lack of marketing at PAS?? >

Well, at least that statement about being their own biggest enemy ties up with their curtailed analyst expectations!

Hmmm…

I’m now intrigued enough to read the entire earnings report this weekend – watch for an update next week.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Marketing: Man vs. Dog

In order to meet the growing demand for more training by our customers, we’re launching a series of workshops on Alarm Management.

The first session is set for August 1/2 in Houston,TX, with others to follow across North America in the months thereafter.  Click here to read more.

To help promote the workshops, we’re the usual marketing things plus also sending out postcards by snail mail.

Marketing offers the opportunity to be creative and analytical at the same time. Creative because the marketing can take various forms, limited only by one’s imagination. Analytical because results can be sliced and diced in any number of ways to help determine campaign effectiveness.

In the snail mail portion of this campaign, we’re trying two different images to attract the reader, as shown below:

with the tagline of:

"Master the seven steps to curing alarm system headaches."

   with the tagline of:

"Master the seven steps to success with your alarm system."

My vote is with the dog, but our marketing professionals like the man.

And, with the right slicing and dicing of the data – we might both be right… but I’ll drop an update as to which actually generated more registrations in a month’s time.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!