It may not conform to the rules of writing, however to not define the term “eating your own dog food” at the beginning of this post may confuse the reader to think that this blog is about the nutritional benefits of our new dog food Yummy Puppy Munch provided by our Canadian subsidiary New Dog Technologies. Therefore, if you believe the self-definition community of Wilkopedia the term “eating your own dog food” is described as;

“Eating your own dog food originated from television commercials for Alpo brand dog food actor Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it’s so good that he feeds it to his own dogs.”

“In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled “Eating our own Dogfood” challenging him to increase internal usage of the product; from there, the usage of the term spread through Microsoft, as chronicled in the book Inside Out: Microsoft€”In Our Own Words. The phrase became slang during the dot-com craze of the late ’90s, and is used most commonly in reference to technology companies.”

So how does this apply to New Dawn Technologies? Let’s start at the beginning and hopefully I can keep the history short.

Since the foundation of the company we have internally believed in the principals that we preach to our customers; the legacy of any agency, court, or company resides in the data stored in their case management system or CRM (customer relationship management) software.

Since 1996, commercial CRM software was implemented at New Dawn to track all customer, prospect and partner contact, to detail and document support cases, and served as a repository for all customer and prospect documents and files. This information was the collection point where customer metrics, resource accountability and project tracking was delivered to staff, department managers and to C-level executives.

As we have evolved and migrated from one commercial CRM programs (Goldmine) to the next (Sage CRM) we have been conscious to spend sufficient planning time to ensure that this important data asset was migrated to each new system.

In 2006, we were proud (or at least I was, more on that later) of the fact that every department in the company from sales, marketing, development, quality assurance, accounting and services utilized the same CRM for all functions. A customer record provided a global view of contact information and daily transactions from an accounting, support, project management or sales perspective.

The core values of New Dawn Technologies have led our team members to some amazing initiatives. New Dawn’s core value on Individualism encourages employees to passionately share and implement new and innovative ideas, even if those ideas cut against the grain.

This ideal is typically the catalyst for many brilliant and market changing ideas at New Dawn, however free thinking and innovative initiatives that swell from the floor can be divergent from the vision of the executive leaders. However, emotionally intelligent leaders quickly realize the sooner they embrace the passion and innovation of their team members, the quicker that these ideas can actually be the accelerator of their original vision. If you hire smart and autonomous talent, let them be smart and autonomous.

Shortly after the start of 2007 one of New Dawn’s most passionate team members orchestrated a positively motivated coup in the development department. Led by former Microsoft employee Glenn Thimmes, the development and quality assurance department succeeded from the Sage CRM union and began using our very own JustWare (dubbed internally Evolution) for all development and quality assurance case tracking based on the following justifications;

• JustWare exceeded Sage CRM in case and customer relationship tracking.
• Any enhancements that Glenn and his team made would be conducted after hours in order to not delay customer development projects.
• In order to benefit all JustWare customers any enhancements that we needed in Sage CRM would be more logical to be made in JustWare.
• By “eating our own dog food” we would experience all of the benefits and items for improvement in JustWare thus allowing us to increase our overall knowledge of JustWare, provide relevant improvements and ultimately attest these benefits to prospects and customers.

Glenn described the “eating your own dog food” era during his tenure at Microsoft and how it allowed for employees to evangelize the Microsoft products that they create and ultimately use on a daily basis.

Upon further discussion with President and CEO, Thomas P. Higgins, we thought that this friendly coup may be a great opportunity to get more benefits than drawbacks. We decided to encourage the use of JustWare under a few guidelines;

• One code base. New Dawn has an amazing track record of providing a highly focused and personalized per-market case management solution by using one powerful and flexible code base. It is our strength in the market and the techniques and strategy that we manage this single code base is envied by partners and competitors alike. If we were going to take advantage of enhancements that the team made, they had to add value to the entire code base, not split off and become its own code base. One upgrade script had to not only accommodate our entire customer code base; it had to accommodate our internal system. At the core of case management software the features and benefits of any great program are quite similar to a commercial CRM product. Our customers have the same requirements that we have for relationship tracking, document generation, batch printing, calendar and event management, report and metric creation, powerful business rules, statistical dashboards, document scanning and routing and much more. Evolving our use and requirements of our internal JustWare solution would naturally evolve the functionality of JustWare for our customers.
• Hosted in our data center. We allowed JustWare to be used internally only on the condition that it was hosted in our secure, off-site data center in Salt Lake City and used externally over the web. If features and functionality were needed to benefit New Dawn and our customers, everything had to be designed to operate efficiently over the web. We would experience firsthand, a hosted solution.

Under this direction New Dawn followed the path of many of our customers. We conducted several data conversions, per department screens and dashboards were constructed. Usability enhancements were made that benefited all JustWare customers, and those employees who traditionally were removed from JustWare such as accounting and front office staff were able to experience the software program that pays the bills.

A sense of ownership and pride has occurred that allows everyone to rally around the software product that is used by thousands. A peer relationship to our customers has allowed for some amazing improvements, advancements and usability modifications.

Under these conditions Glenn and his team embraced the use of JustWare internally, and has spread the evangelism of JustWare to other departments. Currently all departments are using JustWare for internal functions, with the Sales and Marketing department slated for implementation next year.

Under most conditions I would traditionally counsel against an “eating your own dog food” initiative when implementing software. I typically recommend leaving it up to the professionals and use your development resources to focus on revenue generating tasks, however under the guidelines that have been put into place, we are those professionals, and now can personally attest to the full body taste of JustWare.

My last blog on competition and the value of strong competitors received many positive comments in support; however one response from a competitor was worth posting a clarification.

The spirit of the original post stated how it is vital for government software providers to not only deliver software but to provide exceptional service, otherwise the failure of the implementation will push agencies to open source initiatives, to internally developed systems and to have a disdain for vendors in general.

My original reference to the City of Houston Court implementation deserves an update on the project. It was brought to my attention by the vendor and the City of Houston that now “under new management”, not only from the vendor, but also at the City of Houston, the project has moved from failure to back on the track to success within a relatively short time frame.

Automation success benefits vendors and our customers. A competitor’s success is a success to the industry. Thanks for the update and we are glad to have another great case management software vendor treat a customer like a partner.

With six months of the year gone in 2009 and one of the most difficult fiscal years for state and local government almost behind us, how is everyone fairing? For LinkedIn competitor or partner members feel free to take my poll and let me know.

New Dawn has already had an amazing year; we have added eleven new customers this year, have been selected by an additional seven and have already had an amazing number of successful JustWare go-lives this year. We are on track to exceed our sales and revenue plans for the fifth year in a row. Not only do I need to thank New Dawn’s amazing employees but I want to personally thank our competitors.

Our competitors you ask? Absolutely. The most powerful barrier against a market downturn is not only product and market diversity but competition.

Our broad market diversity has been a stabilizing force for New Dawn by offering solutions to prosecutors, courts, public defenders, probation, pretrial service in not only state and local but also tribal government, federal government and now international. Another stabilizing force is our competition.

Unfettered competition is a foundation of capitalism and breeds diversity, growth, and innovation. Let me give you a simple personal example. Flying back from California on a recent business trip I decided to use the local shuttle company to drop me off at my house rather than my typical mode of transportation. After waiting for an uncomfortable amount of time I contacted the gruff driver asking for status. I was surprised by the rude nature of his tone, his unprofessional manner his employer’s unprofessionalism and immediately began drafting a business plan for a shuttle service business for Logan, Utah.

Upon discussing with our travel agent if the shuttle service had any local competitors she notified me that they did not. It is amazing what competition can do for customer service. Our travel agent with not only a group of local competitors, a vastly different business landscape from previous years, an online ticketing offering by all major airlines, and hotels, Orbitz, Priceline, and Hotels.com, she continues to outshine all of her competitors simply by focusing on customer service; and our shuttle service prospers due to lack of competition.

So, if anyone is interested in starting a shuttle service in Logan, Utah, you have amazing business potential and maybe it will encourage your only competitor to focus on customer service.

New Dawn’s focus on customer service is a core value of the company, it is engrained into our employees, echoed by our customers and I see examples of it every day at the office. It differentiates us in the market and among our competitors and has led to our amazing customer retention record. Our employees stay late to assist customers in a bind and stay late at the customer site to ensure that a project is successful; simply put, New Dawn’s customer retention is a reflection of amazing employees and I am honored to work with the best people in world.

So why thank our competitors? It is easy to highlight those competitors that don’t live up to these ideals; however, I will keep it positive. In our market sector, successful and prosperous competitors are great for the criminal justice and public safety industry; New Dawn can’t win all the deals so thanks to those competitors that follow these ideals;

Delivering Success
With each failed project in our industry the market becomes more weary of a vendor delivered solution. Failed vendor implementations like the State of Georgia Prosecutors and the State of Utah Prosecutors has shifted replacement initiatives to in-house development and open source technology rather than off-the-shelf software. In addition to New Dawn’s numerous successful projects where we have converted in-house developed applications to JustWare, our competitors continue to deliver happy and successful customers. Each success is great for the industry and benefits any vendor that writes, installs, trains, and supports criminal justice and public safety software.

On Time and On Budget Project Delivery
Vendors in this space that do not like performance bonds, outrageous payment terms and biased liability requirements can thank your nearest failed competitor. I ran across the most recent egregious industry example yesterday. Granted I do not know the specifics of this project, however, any press such as this is not good for the industry. Competitors that deliver on time, and on budget, benefit the industry and instill confidence to our customers that our contracts are on scope and on budget.

Realistic Costs and Timelines
Every successful vendor has an example of the competitor that “buys” the business and promises outrageous and unrealistic implementation expectations. We have all been beat out by one of these vendors and unfortunately with tight government budgets, making a compelling business case against these vendors is difficult and sometimes impossible. Free data conversions, giving software away, not providing enough service to ensure success and delivering unprofitable support and maintenance fees is a disservice to the industry and will eventually lead to the demise of these firms. New Dawn and our successful competitors and partners have been in the business long enough to witness the remnants of these companies who are nothing more than business cards saved from tradeshow past.

Innovation
Innovation breads longevity. Competitors that come up with great products, innovative service and deployment models are a value to the industry. A vendor like Appriss, Inc. has created blue-ocean technology for years and has laid the groundwork for criminal justice agencies to consider a hosted data integration solution. As an option to our customers New Dawn can offer not only a hosted JustWare | Solution Suite for our case management software solution but also provide a cost effective hosted data exchange solution (JusticeBroker); a service based GJXDM/NIEM solution that allows information to flow in and out of JustWare via a New Dawn maintained data exchange software platform, even for on-premise deployments of JustWare. Appriss was one of the first vendors to offer a hosted data integration solution, setting the path for partners and competitors to follow.

So at your next trade show when your respected competitor walks by, turn your monitor back on, un-block your screen, give them a demonstration of your software, relax and buy them a drink. We are in this fight together.

I am a consummate optimist and in today’s current market, optimists are an endangered species. In my fifteen years of working with state and local government in delivering software solutions that increase productivity, now more than ever, government is being forced to make some tough decisions and I am ecstatic for the future of government.

Judicial and public safety agencies are cutting back employees and being forced to exhibit private sector behavior; and I am excited to witness the change.

Before the posts start flooding in on how the services offered by government and running more like a business are conflicting principals, or critics to the brutally honest nature of this message, or the argument about the negative aspects of the private sector (the banking industry? Bernie Madoff? AIG?), just hear me out.

I am obviously biased in my recommendation that introducing technology to government can reduce long term cost, reduce personnel, and even increase revenue; but government moving towards business principles is a good thing.

For those opponents that believe that government moving toward private sector principals will lead to a path of corporate greed, I simply cite that the overwhelming majority of small and medium private companies that our economy is based upon are like New Dawn Technologies; ethical and make up the framework of our economy. They reinvest back into their overall operations, retain employees based on performance and are not providing grossly inflated executive compensation packages.

Ask my wife about our grossly inflated executive compensation package, I am sure that she will agree that we have to budget like everyone else, have no access to a private corporate jet and the greatest testament… has anyone seen my commuter car that I drive every day to work?

Without mentioning the specific customer, I was asked, “How quickly can we implement JustWare, because we are going to start letting employees go?”

The customer is implementing arrest filing interfaces that would eliminate all manual data entry. Data entry currently manually performed will now be completed with an electronic interface and data entry errors will be eliminated. In the past with a project like this, those employees would be shifted to different responsibilities, now they face the possibility of losing their jobs. They also justified the purchase of JustWare because it was less expensive than paying in-house development staff to re-write their mainframe software program. What is wrong with this picture? I say nothing.

The harsh reality is that technology and innovation is good for government in reducing expense, reducing payroll dollars, reducing benefits and retirement costs. Kiosks are replacing airline employees, same principle. Although using the airlines as the pinnacle of innovation and a model of capitalism isn’t the best example, another post on that later.

SaaS (software as a service) is quickly becoming a mechanism for the private sector to reduce hardware and software costs. It is eliminating the requirement to have additional IT resources to manage software. Sounds great right?

JustWare, New Dawn’s flagship case management software solution is not only available as an on-premise solution (installed on local servers) it is now available as a SaaS solution. This allows criminal justice agencies to eliminate the need for additional servers, eliminates database software purchases and even reduces resources that manage the infrastructure. However, nine times out of ten, JustWare is being installed on local servers for the following reasons (and yes, I am paraphrasing);

1. “Although I conduct my personal banking online, I don’t trust technology or the Internet to securely store case information, so I would prefer that our case data is stored on our local servers that are located in an unventilated closet, that sporadically gets backed up, and by the way, numerous and potentially unknown employees have the server password. Yes, I am really paraphrasing, and no offense to the vast majority of government IT departments who don’t operate in this environment; there are however those criminal justice agencies that operate as described.”

2. “I can’t have you maintain my server, what will my IT resources do?”

The private sector is rapidly adopting SaaS in comparison to government. In time, government will follow, but now is the opportune time for SaaS in government to reduce expense.

During the post 9/11 economic slowdown, one of New Dawn’s customers commented that because staff was being let go due to county budget cutbacks, there was no way that they could operate with the same level of service without technology; specifically JustWare. This is good for government, and ultimately the economy.

Small business and technology companies have to closely watch the bottom line, keep payroll dollars in-check and drive revenue and profitability upward; now government is being forced to follow the same model.

I have provided just a few of many examples of how technology in government reduces the expense side of the balance sheet, what about the revenue side?

I recently was onsite at a prospect demonstration and the decision maker was asking a series of questions regarding the company, how long we have been in business, company stability, and how many employees we had and then the administrator asked a question I had never been asked. “What is your budget?”

“What is New Dawn’s budget?” I replied. I was actually speechless, and didn’t know how to initially answer.

I quickly realized that the administrator has never had to think about how much money they are bringing into the office, they have always just spent money. So his equivalent to total sales, revenue, or net income is his budget.

No fault to the administrator, they have an annual budget of what they can spend and that is what they do, they spend, they don’t earn. They do provide a valuable service, but don’t charge for any of the services provided. They have always looked at one side of the accounting equation, and the revenue side is likely handled at the very top of the county.

A wave in government is occurring where revenue mechanisms are being implemented with solutions provided by vendors like New Dawn. The San Antonio Municipal Court charges private attorneys for FTP access to moving violation records. The court has valuable data worth purchasing by private attorneys, who then cold-call those cited to provide legal services. It is a win-win scenario, and allows the court to act more like a business.

New Dawn’s JustWare and JusticeWeb solutions provide revenue enhancement capabilities for criminal justice agencies allowing online web payments that charge an additional convenience fee to the payee. This allows payments to occur online rather than at a cashier window. Other solutions charge credit card fees to attorneys for access to e-discovery via the web instead of paper or discs that traditionally would be picked up in person. Other revenue tools include participant fees for diversion, integrated accounting solutions that allow fees to be allocated directly to the hot-check diversion division, or court technology fees for each offender citation.

All of these technical innovations put more money in the pockets of the justice agencies, at the expense of the offender or the interested party. What is wrong with that? Again, I say nothing. It is all about convenience and saving time, both guiding principles of capitalism and innovation.

So with some innovative shifts in governmental thinking, technology infusion, and smart administrative navigation through this slowdown I look forward to answering questions such as “What was your EBITDA in 2012?” from future decision makers with a smile.

Several years ago (actually going on almost 15) two friends began a venture in a one-room office. We stared at each other across the desk and brainstormed on everything from marketing and sales tactics to new features and functionality for the software product we were developing. Our conversations ranged from what we should name the product (JustWare becoming the ultimate winner) to when we should hire another person to lighten our load. The closeness, the conversations, and agility our small company developed during that time made us realize that we would always need to be close to our employees if we were going to make this company work. With that in mind, we made it a policy that, no matter what, executives would sit in and work out of the same cubicles as our employees. We have also tried to not tie employees’ seating arrangements to their departments. Sales resources sit by project managers and marketing staff sit by support staff. The accidental conversations that form from these mixed up arrangements have led to many marketing campaigns and product enhancements. It has also created a team mentality among everyone.

And, here we are back at the beginning. New Dawn now has over 60 employees and we are in an amazing office space. The problem? We ran out of cubicles. Now while we wait for our new cubicle order to arrive, the two of us (Thomas P. Higgins, President and CEO) and myself (Frank A. Felice, VP of Sales and Marketing) share a cubicle. Tom works out of our office in Denver and travels to Utah every other week. While he is here, we share a cubicle, stare at each other across the space, and brainstorm about running our no longer fledgling company.

It is fun to remember where we came from and realize that out of necessary closeness great ideas and innovation blossom.