1
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
CEO’s Desk Welcome to The Kopis Edge!
This is the first edition of our new quarterly magazine and part of our company mission to support our clients, sharing ideas, insights and opportunities for meaningful connection. My vision for this magazine is to serve as a regular point of connection for you in rapid-growth organizations and their respective leadership teams, and a place for you to learn about the exciting strides other companies are making to disrupt their market spaces, grow market share and — of course — use technology to drive profitability and efficiency in the process. The companies we’ve partnered with are doing amazing work, and we think everyone can learn something from what they’re doing. In addition to insights from some of the forward-thinking leaders of clients we get to work with, Kevin and Adam from our leadership team plan on sharing thoughts on future trends in technology, as well as resources and events that might benefit you. At Kopis, we believe that good things happen when you bring the right people into a room and work together to solve complex problems. Getting the right information into the hands of the right people at the right time is the common thread that runs through every technology consultation and every custom development project we take on, and we’ll share that here with every edition of The Kopis Edge. Finally, this inaugural issue is the perfect time to announce something we’ve been working on for a while, to continue to serve our clients and expand our service offerings. Last month, Kopis formally acquired the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) division of Acumen IT, the Leading Dynamic Great Plains (GP) and NAV solutions provider in our region. Business runs on ERP—which forms the foundation for all operations and infrastructure. This major, strategic acquisition includes the addition of several key senior staff, and will provide more solution opportunities for business process improvement. We will also be able to offer deeper Business Intelligence integration for our clients, as the acquisition makes us the region’s largest Dynamics GP and NAV solutions provider and custom software development team. It’s been a joy spending almost two decades working alongside some of the major players in our region and throughout the U.S., but in some ways it feels like after 18 years, we’ve only just begun. With every step forward, we look for opportunities to bolster support and open new doors for our clients.
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
2
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
N E W S
&
E V E N T S
news •
K O P I S
Kopis Acquires Acumen IT’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Division
Addition of four senior Microsoft Dynamics GP experts expands capacity to deliver solutions. For almost two decades, at our core, our business has been about getting the right data into the hands of the right people at the right time—whether we’re developing a custom mobile app for a startup tech company or updating legacy systems for a rapidgrowth organization. That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest acquisition that significantly impacts our service offerings to our clients and the marketplace. Recently, we expanded our business and acquired Acumen IT’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Division to provide our clients with senior-level ERP services. Over the past 20 years, Kopis has become the largest custom software development firm in our region. With this merger, we are now the largest Dynamics Great Plains (GP) solution provider as well.
As a leading consultant for custom software, we have to bring a strong team of insightful business process analysts to the client-consultant partnership. When we take the time to truly understand your business—what you do, how you do it, and who needs access to which pieces of business-critical information—we develop solutions that better meet the needs of all of the stakeholders in your custom build. Our acquisition of Acumen IT's ERP division combines our team’s finely-honed skillset with another strong team of business process analysts, giving us heightened expertise and more opportunities to help you rethink your processes and grow your business.
To find out more about this new service, visit our website at kopisusa.com/erp
3
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
LAG2LEAD: J U N E 6-16
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
JUNE
•
6 15 16 •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
ASHEVILLE •
•
C O•LU M B•I A •
•
In case you missed it...
events
CHARLESTON
E V E N T S
•
&
•
N E W S
•
K O P I S
•
You’re done with your Business Intelligence project. It’s rolled out. You created some excellent reports and dashboards and they are paying off. The flood gates erupt and everyone wants to measure their respective areas. Have you set yourself up to continue to add and maintain a pace that adequately supports the business? Or are you building a mountain of technical debt and planting the seeds of future support nightmares?
In June, Kevin Wentzel, COO of Kopis, hosted a series of events, walking through some best practices of rolling out (or improving) an entire Business Intelligence platform, including setting a company up for postproject success. In fact, Kevin and the team’s success with clients stems from doing the work on Kopis as a client, and the results for us as a company helped us realize first-hand the power of BI on an organization. To learn more, visit kopisusa.com/bi-at-work
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
4
Lucas Systems, Inc. When it comes to the restaurant industry, speed is critical for a great customer experience.
is a multi-generational, family-owned business that has been providing quick service and fast casual restaurants with comprehensive point-of-sale solutions since 1992. In addition to selling POS hardware and software, Lucas Systems offers its clients professional services such as network wiring, installation, end-user training, help desk and technical support and custom software development. The company maintains a state-of-the-art repair lab and handles all break-fix, exchange and repair services on hardware it represents. In addition, the company offers an array of security services designed to help the restauranteur in areas of security and compliance as it relates to payment card security standards.
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
6
The Challenge Brad Lucas, the president of Lucas Systems, contacted Kopis for help developing a real-time reporting solution for their end-user base. While Lucas has always offered reporting solutions, they recognized their current reporting system relied heavily on legacy reporting applications to view, print and send daily reports. The process worked well, but the team wanted to overhaul the user experience. "We wanted to enhance our offering and provide our longstanding customers with cloud-based solutions so they could remain competitive and view data in real-time via mobile devices, tablets or from anywhere they can access the Internet. Our goal was not only to catch but also surpass our competitors in the marketplace," explained Brad. Initially, Brad and his team looked into developing their new product internally, but soon decided to outsource the project, due to a host of other custom development projects already underway. "We looked at a couple different options, but when we met with Kopis, we hit it off with Andy and his team right out of the gate," Brad said. "We didn’t have the development resources available at the time, and did not want to take our team away from what they do best, which is taking care of the customer. I wanted to partner with a professional company—people who do this kind of thing every day and really know the industry. I immediately had a lot of confidence in Kopis because of their historical knowledge of the POS space. Their body of work, and their deep experience with distributed applications, including their own software, Vigilix, was a major deciding factor for us."
7
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
The Solution Brad wanted a solution they could control and build on in the future. Lucas Systems partnered with Kopis to create a real-time reporting solution called Pivot, which is now hosted in a cloud-based environment as part of their total POS solution. "Kopis brought our vision to life. Since they’ve created similar systems before, they were able to give us design advice about agent technology, what the portal could look like, which features we would need and which may be less important. They took the project from a fairly basic idea to a fully thought out, user-friendly application," said Brad. In addition to the customer-facing portal, Kopis also created an agent technology (appropriately named "Burst" by Lucas) that sits at the end user level, pushing data to the portal and monitoring the health of the system. Burst sweeps for data every few seconds and populates Pivot with the most up-to-date information.
Our team was impressed with how quickly and accurately Kopis was able to merge our current processes and historical data into our new solution," – B R A D LU C A S
"With the addition of the agent technology—it’s a proactive, predictive technology that we have wanted to offer our customers, and we are excited to see how it will help them better control and manage their businesses in real-time."
The Results In late 2016, Lucas decided to soft launch the Pivot solution to about 100 select locations so they could solicit feedback from users and perform the final tweaks before taking the product system wide. So far, they are receiving strongly positive feedback. The solution was officially released in early 2017. "Our customers are already seeing how this new product will help them grow their business," Brad said. "The project has been an iterative process where we met milestones, gave feedback, made revisions. At this point, we’re in a phase of getting real-time feedback from endusers and fine-tuning the product. Restaurant owners are matter-of-fact and have little time to spare, so I know we’re hearing the truth." The Lucas Systems team is not only pleased with the feedback they’re receiving from their customers, but also with what the software launch means for their business and for their corporate culture. "When we started this project, our leadership team wanted two things to happen: We wanted our software offering to surpass the industry standard, and we wanted to find a complementary company we could partner with to bring new ideas to market," Brad said. "Both of these objectives were met. Most of our competitors provide reporting at 24-hour intervals, while we now provide real-time reporting and an agent technology that prevents downtime in an always-on industry. We also found a software company that helped us grow as an organization. This project taught us how we can operate and outsource going forward, and I see it as the beginning of a long-term, meaningful, and prosperous relationship."
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
8
Is Your Organization Ready for SelfService Business Intelligence? BY KEVIN WENTZEL
There’s been a lot written and discussed recently about the democratization of Business Intelligence—a magical world where IT isn’t slaving over writing reports. But when presented with the idea of this for an organization, we’ve heard many IT leadership teams say that their users don’t want to create their own reports and dashboards.
Lag to Lead
Sound crazy? I know; it’s the difference between waiting on someone to create that report for you in six months, and completing it when you need it, the way you need it. While self-service BI is an incredibly impactful tool for your business, there is a learning curve. And let’s face it, we’re all busy.
9
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
L A G
•
T O L E A D
Regardless of which tool you’re evaluating, most of the goals and preparations are the same, so let’s take a look at both: What does it offer your organization?
4. Plan ingestion of data into BI engine. Many ERP systems aren’t built for reporting, and you may need to use advanced techniques to get the data out in a timely manner without jeopardizing the ERP system. After all, that BI query is not more important than getting the production floor the data it needs to produce product. To plan how your data needs to flow into the BI system, ask the following questions.
If thought through and structured correctly, you should experience:
Reduced load on IT resources to create reports and dashboards
Significantly easier creation of dashboards, metrics and reports; a shift that puts data and powerful analytics tools into the hands that need it
What is the pace of change of our data? What are the needs of our business customers?
In short, you’re putting a research tool in the hands of a researcher, so they can answer the ‘why’ question consistently.
How flexible and stable are our data sources? 5. Determine an adoption strategy. If you build it, they won’t always come. In fact, given a blank slate, sometimes you might find resistance. Growing by data source or by subsection of the user community might make more sense—rom there you might find that some demand and some training spreads via users.
What do you need to do to prepare? 1. Decide on a security model. If you are pulling data from a variety of sources, you need to decide how to secure that data in such a way that users who are creating ad-hoc reports, dashboards, etc. are only pulling the data they are permitted to see and not burdened and inundated by regular invasive security barriers.
One final thought to consider in the decision process: Even if your user base is not ready for self-service BI, don’t discount a tool because it offers it as a feature. You may find that it saves IT resources an incredible amount of time in fulfilling the requests from your business customers. You can simplify the security model to start and grow into a more complex security model as you release to more users.
2. Assess data quality. Can we actually produce the reports we need with the data in our source systems? Or do we need to massage it into better formats? 3. Simplify complex data structures. Some data sources may have data structures that import as-is into your data model, and users struggle to make any sense of it. Many times, it makes sense to aggregate and simplify the data into more manageable secondary sources to ease the training time with the ability to grow the complexity with advanced adopters.
In fact, instead of releasing the system to everyone at the beginning, releasing to a select group of early adopters within the organization is a great way to "socially engineer" your way to the IT utopia of self-service. If you choose a tool that isn’t self-service capable, you may find that as you mature, you outgrow your existing tool as your user base becomes ready for self-service.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
10
With projects of extreme magnitude, a proper estimating process can mean the difference between building for success or planning for failure. Metromont, a Southern precast concrete construction company, knew that all too well. To remain the region’s precast concrete leader, they needed to make a move to guarantee success.
Metromont was founded in 1925 by Captain J. Roy Pennell, to build roads and bridges in South Carolina. Since that time, the business has transitioned into the precast industry, providing precast concrete for everything from schools, office buildings and parking decks to industrial plants and stadiums. The company has completed more than 50 stadiums, including seven for the NFL, 15 sports arenas and more than 1,000 parking decks. While the business remains family-owned, it has expanded greatly, now operating six manufacturing facilities in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia.
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
12
The Challenge Tony Smith, the Vice President of Preconstruction and Marketing for the Metromont Corporation, noticed a need for a more efficient estimating software. Metromont had an estimating software package that had worked for them over the years, but it didn’t have much ability to grow with their business, creating issues within their company. As a result, the system produced: 1. An inefficient, overly-complicated estimating and sales process. Metromont’s basic estimating and sales process had three steps. First, the salesperson entered project information into a specialized software. Then, the estimator manually entered the same information into two separate programs to determine the cost. Finally, both the individual takeoffs and the project estimates were manually reentered into the first program, which created proposals for the sales team.
"This process would have been a ton of work if the projects were priced just once," said Tony. "But that wasn’t usually the case. Design-build customers would come to us with these shopping lists of requests. What if we do this but not that? How much would it cost to do these eight additional things? So we had to go back to the estimator, back to the sales representative, creating all kinds of document management problems." So, Tony and his team spent a year looking at all of the off-the-shelf estimating software.
The problem we ran into was that precast is a niche industry, less than one percent of construction. The solutions we found were for general contractors. " –TONY SMITH
2. No automatic updates or transparency across sites. When Metromont first started using their original software systems, they had two plants. Now, they have six plants and estimators in Greenville, Charlotte, and Atlanta. In order to update their data and takeoffs, they had to update it at their headquarters in Greenville first, then copy the information to each site. 3. A high chance for human error. Since Metromont’s estimators and sales representatives had to manually enter information up to three times, and since they couldn’t see updates from other locations in real-time, their system created a lot of opportunity for costly human error as well as inefficient, unnecessary back-and-forth between departments.
13
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
"They would do one or two things we needed, but not everything. I felt choosing an out-of-the-box software would be like starting from scratch only to settle again." After their year-long search for the perfect software solution, Metromont reached out to Kopis. "All of our information was in a SQL Server database, so we wanted a team that had experience with SQL Server environments," said Tony. "We also knew it would be a complicated project with a significant custom software development component, so we wanted a multi-talented team that could develop a cross-platform solution."
The Solution First, Kopis spent a couple weeks with Metromont to understand their business and create a fluid process that could change and adapt as we learned more. Next, Kopis and Metromont kicked off the Agile process by collaborating on the highest priority interface designs. The project became even more interesting as we dove into their business and realized the opportunity to release this as a product to their peer group.
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
14
Results Results
“We were impressed with the open communication between us, Andy, and the Kopis team," said Tony. "We knew it was going to be complicated— but combining three software products into one ended up being a lot more complicated and detailed than even we could have imagined.”
15
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
C O M P A N Y
B R E A K T H R O U G H
s
Since the project was over a year long, the agile process, which utilizes two- to threeweek sprints, was essential to preventing Metromont from ending up where they started. In addition to merging the three aging software solutions that Metromont was using into one streamlined, modern software product that mimicked the natural workflow of the precast concrete industry, Kopis made other recommendations. For example, Kopis created additional reports that combined multiple data sources outside of Precast Evolution. Kopis also recommended a document management solution for their new process using tools Metromont already owned.
Kopis dug deep. They talked to us and took a tour of the plant to fully understand what we do before developing the software.” –TONY SMITH
Metromont wanted to launch a complete software product that would work equally well for estimators and sales representatives at Metromont as well as within their peer group, that would give everyone on the team easier access to the correct information, and that would provide real-time updates to multiple locations. Metromont also needed a software that would accurately and completely relay the sold information to project management, engineering and accounting. This is precisely what Kopis delivered—a product that Metromont can use internally and market to other, noncompeting companies in their industry. Internally, the custom software solution built has been in use at Metromont for
over a year, and the project team has seen both some expected and some surprising results. With easier access to information, and access to the correct information, the sales team has been able to produce more accurate proposals. One problem that Metromont had been running into before launching their product was the sales team quoting something that wasn’t included in the project estimate any longer—and then being on the hook for it, costing the company money. "Of course, it’s all about the bottom line, so this was the main problem I was trying to solve," said Tony. "We could lose $20-, $40-, or even $100 thousand, on a misquote. It’s hard to calculate the exact value of the software, because I can’t tell you how many mistakes didn’t happen this year as a result of the new system, but a conservative guess? We have nine estimators; if this software saves each estimator one $20,000 mistake a year, then the software saves us $180,000 annually." A few of the other results include more transparency, estimators who feel empowered and more confident in their job, greater productivity, and greater efficiency. After this initial year, Metromont has discovered several benefits of the software that they weren’t expecting. Their estimates have become more consistent internally, resulting in fewer delays due to sick days or vacations, as estimators can easily step in for each other and share work. Finally, the real-time access to information has made the estimators better at their jobs since they are able to see the full process in one glance rather than just their discrete piece of the puzzle. "The software has changed the way our estimators, and all of our employees, think about their jobs," said Tony. "They’re thinking about the big picture more...now that they can see it."
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
16
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
• •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Beyon Techn Boom •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Beyond the Technology Boom:
THE AGE OF RE-PERSONALIZATION
BY ADAM DREWES
17
/
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
Technology’s transformative impact on the last two generations is undeniable. However, few would dispute the existence of what I call “pockets of de-personalization” that have crept in over time, to both the family unit and most business organizations.
In 2017, we find ourselves immersed in an age where we’re over-messaged but under-communicated to; we move information regularly to people through depersonalized processes. We have more barriers to human interaction than ever.
Short and abbreviation-laden channels like texting, Facebook & LinkedIn scrolling, posting & commenting are the new norm. We’ve arrived at an ironic place: Innovative technology designed to make human interactions better experiences has become a dehumanizing barrier to relationships. Our heads are down looking at phones throughout the day. In business, the result has been a redefining of personal interactions. Rather than talking to Jill in Accounting, you open a ticket. The ticket gets re-routed until ultimately it’s closed. The short-term problem is solved…but what’s the long-term effect? From erosion of culture to retention challenges, the impact began subtly and now is pervasive. What’s next? Well, I believe there’s hope and help on the way. Just as innovations in technology are born out of the pain and opportunity voiced by people and processes, there’s an interesting trend emerging because of pain voiced collectively in the workspace but also, I believe, in our culture as a whole:
A shift from de-personalization to re-personalization, especially in the consumer space.
What if that ticketing system had the best of all scenarios? Instead of providing a great way to track and measure requests, what if it facilitated communication as if people were in the same room despite distance that separated them?
B O O M
Both circumstances offer very different levels of consequence to how we communicate our needs or pains. Driving, by nature, isolates us from others, offers anonymity, and limits communication to gestures, horns, and swerves.
More and more as we improve the ability of machines to perform, systematized work will become more and more automated. The creativity, intuition and intelligence of humans will be in higher demand alongside automatons of speed, data, and strength. In short: Human-to-Human collaboration, and Human-to-Computer collaboration.
T E C H N O L O G Y
Think about how angry you get when someone in traffic cuts you off. Often times (not me, but from what I’ve heard) the violation leads to verbal or physical demonstration of anger. Yet, when someone— intentionally or inadvertently—cuts in front of us in line at the register, do we have the same outer rush of anger?
Improved cameras are capturing 2D images of greater quality, resulting in more lifelike shots of key moments. 3D Image capture allows us to see images and video closer to how we would in real life. Virtual reality, enabled by 3D imaging, is poised to immerse us in a visual and auditory replica of a location.
T H E
First, I have some observations about how, in today’s culture, we tend to treat one another. Generally, the more personal, intimate and frequent the interactions we have, the more we typically value the interactions. It’s a truth that we see in friendships, at work, and certainly with the deepest of personal relationships between spouses, parent-child relationships, and close friendships. Time spent in person, communicating and interacting breeds a deeper understanding of perspective and circumstances, and over time develops a natural, healthy empathy for how actions and words communicated impact the other person.
B E Y O N D
nd the nology m
Efficiency and profitability of processes can, in fact, go hand-in-hand with building culture, and capture the power of human interaction. In the consumer space, we are on the cusp of an unprecedented innovation era. For example, this incredible technology collectively called Augmented Reality (AR) offers opportunities to re-personalize interactions with each other. It, and adjacent technologies like chatbots and natural language processing, may even create personalization working with the systems themselves. Those technologies are laying groundwork to interact with systems much like we do with our peers. Don’t get me wrong; there are definitely places where the ubiquitous AR would also further disrupt our interactions. Just think if we were in a room together talking and I received an incoming call, took the call, and could have the call with the inbound caller without you actually knowing, aside from the pauses in response we already see with people reading text messages. (A recent YouTube Sci-fi video series exhibited this: people received an implant that functioned as their AR; when they called each other they could interact without actually having to speak. When looking at someone, characters would experience the pause I mentioned above—just like the feeling you get texting where someone is focused on something else simultaneously). The good news? Some of the most innovative people and companies in the world are recognizing the dilemma and focusing on developing technologies that impact efficiency and workflow while repersonalize the experience to satisfy the basic need we all have—to interact, collaborate and experience human interaction.
T H E
K O P I S
E D G E
/
18
411 University Ridge, Suite 230 • Greenville, SC 29601 kopisusa.com
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
01 • •
•
•