PAS Musings

Growth by Focus

Some days, you work all day and nothing seems to get done.   

Other days, many things seem to finish themselves in rapid succession.

Today was a day of completions.

Among other things, our negotiations for the sale of our Advanced Control business came to a conclusion. 

This means increased focus for PAS.  And increased focus means more growth.

You may recall that PAS had four business areas of interest:

>> Advanced Control & Optimization

>> Critical Condition / Alarm Management

>> Automation Asset Management

>> DCS Configuration Services

Now we have three.

It’s all about focus.  As PAS Founder & CEO stated in the press release discussing the deal:

"…we have made a strategic move that will sharpen our focus and strengthen our growth…. and our focus is to repeat our 2006 growth rate of 100%+ in the businesses where we hold significant first-to-market advantages."

So this is great news for PAS and its customers. 

For where there is focus, the success is even greater…  In fact, I wrote a blog about that about a year ago – just when we were going through our strategic thinking for 2006.

A co-worker once told me that “the execution time for any idea is directly proportional to the square of the number of people involved”. 

He was right.

It’s just too bad for us that the crowd was so big on this deal…

No matter… the deal is done, the money in the bank, and 2007 kicked off.

It is now surely going to be a good year all around.

Stay tuned, or better yet, join us!

© Copyright PAS 2007.  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!

2007 Plan = +67%

As I wrote last, 2006 was a great year for PAS: +44% growth, and that following a year of +39% growth!

And now, as we enter 2007, we anticipate +67% growth.

Yes, that’s right sixty-seven percent!

 

Talk about making the 100,000 mile commute worthwhile!  PAS, its people and its technologies are on a roll….

There is a very palpable and tangible energy all around the company, and this was especially visible at the all-staff meeting last week.

Moving forward in 2007, we see special and significant opportunity in those areas where we clearly stand alone as leader:

Ø      Alarm Management – where we stand alone as leaders in a software and services business unrivalled by anyone

Ø      Automation Configuration Management – where we are the ONLY company with a solution spanning instrumentation, distributed control systems, real-time historians and advanced applications

Back this up with our control system configuration services business where customers come to us (in spite of our relative lack of sales & marketing effort!!!), and we have a powerful basis on which to achieve our +67% growth target.

So how can PAS grow at year-on-year rates of 40-70% while others are languishing with significantly lower growth rates?

It’s pretty simple actually.

Our technology is better.

Our people are stronger.

And for years our sales and marketing machine has been weaker.

But no more.

Recognizing our product and services superiorities, the company is flexing its full financial muscle to raise up a sales and marketing machine second to none.

We started this in mid-2006 and are now only just kicking into high gear.

Already we have invaded the power industry; pushing out others who have reaped the benefit of our absence for far too long.

Already we are expanding internationally; again pushing out those who have lived the good life in our absence.

So what’s ahead in 2007?

No general with a military on the move would give out strategy details, and neither will I.

Just stay tuned and watch this space – or watch the others start making excuses…

Go PAS Go!!!  See PAS Go!!!

One last note – with growth rates like these, we’re always looking for people to join us – check out www.pas.com/careers.aspx and join the winning team.

There’s no better place to be – even if it is 100,000 miles a year to get there!

© Copyright PAS 2007.  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!

2006 = +44%

The results are in… and looking pretty good.

Last year we recorded 39% growth to the end of 2005 – read the press release.

Following that result, we set an even more ambitious goal of +52% growth for 2006 – read the blog entry about that.

The shining star powering most of the growth last year was the PAS Alarm Management / Critical Condition Management business where:

- software sales grew by over 150%

- overall business was up by 124% (see prior post)

Overall, we saw 44% growth for the company – reflecting growth across all business segments except one (more on that later).

Going forward the future looks bright.  Very bright, indeed!

We’re still setting the overall plan for the year, but I think our target will lie between 46-51%.  A growth rate higher than last year, and the year before that - how great is that! 

Should be plenty to retain our #1 Alarm Management position and firmly entrench our Integrity business in the market.

Stay tuned…

** For those of you who read the blog religiously, you will notice that I made some small adjustments to the 2006 growth data to align with the final data from our business ops dept.  Sorry for any confusion along the way!!

© Copyright PAS 2007.  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!

Former Aspen Execs Indicted...

By now, most of you have heard the news that Larry Evans, David McQuillin and Lisa Zappala – all former AspenTech execs – have been indicted by the SEC on charges of accounting fraud, carrying a maximum penalty of $5million and 25 years in prison.

Apparently, the defendants engaged in a scheme to inflate revenue reported in AspenTech's publicly-filed financial statements and in press releases – click here for details.

This is (obviously) not good and the SEC doesn’t think so either.

Most Aspen watchers that I talked to are not surprised though – I guess it was pretty obvious that something was going wrong while Mr. McQuillin was in charge, leading to his dismissal by the board back in late 2004.

So why bring this up?

Because honesty, integrity and sound financial practices are values that are high on the PAS list, even though not all companies in our space may choose these.

I pride myself on our company values and trust that our customers do too.

In fact, if any of you – employees, partners, customers or other blog-readers, ever discover anything untoward in any PAS dealing, I want to hear about it. 

My mission is to run a company that is squeaky clean.

A company where employees of all faiths can hold their heads up high, to build reputations as honest professionals seeking to honor the commitments we make to all our customers and partners.

A place where we have nothing to hide.

A place where our kids may one day work.

May you and your company aspire to like-minded values.

© 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!

Book-Powered Growth Over 100%!

Zowee!!!  This book thing is great!!!

We set off this year to achieve +52% growth across the board at PAS, and now the results are starting to come in…

In the area of Alarm Management, as in the others, we worked towards our goal of 52%, but through the course of the year, we noticed something good – sales were suddenly picking up and growing faster than expected.

At the time, we all did what you might expect – salespeople were smugly patting themselves on the back for winning the “big ones” and management in turn raising the bar for higher goals by year-end.

That’s how it works, right?

Well, the year went even better than anyone expected…

Sure, we had lots of great things going on in the middle of the year – a stronger sales force, a new sales executive, good software, excellent engineers, superb customers… and a book fresh off the presses.

While all of these factors helped us achieve success in 2006, it is the book which really epitomizes the essence of our success – capturing decades of experience, numerous first-mover advantages and the experience with hundreds of customers world-wide.

The book sold out a 1st printing in 2 months.

Then it sold out a 2nd printing 3 months later.

And the third printing should be sold out by the 1 year anniversary date.

Good stuff, this book.  Better stuff, this company.

For by the end of 2006, we not only exceeded our growth plan of +52% for this  business, but achieved a whopping 124% year-on-year growth rate for our Alarm Management business.

124% is a beautiful number.

It’s bigger than we’ve ever done in this area.

Bigger than anything achieved by any other provider.

And much bigger than the rate at which this market is growing.

Best of all, the acceleration in our growth curve is mainly in the second half of the year, so the stage is set of good things in 2007.

Now watch this space to see what happens next!!!

Let the good times roll!!!

© 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!