FST: What are the cost savings with using this tool?
Maxon: There are resource savings, which is a soft dollar cost. Many times companies hire people with certain qualifications and background, and they wind up spending all their time filling out paperwork and putting numbers into a spreadsheet. This tool allows you to get rid of the mundane tactical side and allow your people to be free to focus on what matters most. Technology is about making your human resource more efficient, and this tool makes you more efficient.
On the hard dollar side of things (this is where we’re excited about analytics you can reduce waste and rework. If you can catch a problem early enough or prevent a problem from happening, you’ve eliminated a tremendous amount of rework; you can reduce customer complaints because you have a better adherence to your quality standards. You can improve your competitive stance, because you have data that shows how your quality operations work in real time. It’s helpful walking the plant floor to show the real time analytics on a large monitor—[users] can monitor the quality of their operations in real time as opposed to after the fact.
FST: What is the product differentiator?
Maxon: One is the ability to tie together real-time data collection through a mobile device or specific data equipment integration in a real time sense. It’s also the real-time validation and verification of quality and compliance data. Then it’s part of seeing that compliance data into an operational view. Most software companies in this space are focused on compliance because you have to do it, and it matters to the integrity of your business. But it doesn’t make you money. We’re trying to go beyond compliance data and allow someone to manage compliance data to drive operational excellence. The ability to have instant and real-time access to powerful analytical tools allows you to transform quality into a bottom line contribution as opposed to an overhead. It’s the combination of those main points—collection of data, validation of compliance around specific programs and harness compliance to drive in.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that data and analytics can really transform the business. It’s specific to each customer. One of the things we pride ourselves on is that it’s more than just software; it’s also service and how we partner with our clients so they can leverage the tool and get benefit out of it. We help our customers cut through the clutter and keep it simple.
