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.