Transparency Pays – the Power of Information

On a plane trip back home from Omaha last night, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal called “The Summer to Go on a Power Diet” discussing products and techniques for reducing power usage.  In the body of the article, they talk about the impact of  just making cost information available:

“A study by the Envirnmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford showed a 5% to 15% reduction in power consumption just by providing energy information to users.”

( Article link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704009804575308791120750332.html)

Kevin Cushing talks about a similar benefit from sharing financial information with employees. 

In a recent video testimonial, he explains:

“And something I think that’s understated in SurvivalWare, and in sharing financial information as a whole, is how can you keep your employees informed about the financial health of your business?  A lot of small business owners think that their employees don’t know, or don’t care, or it’s way over their head.  Other ones want to hold it all in, because they feel like that’s private information for them and they shouldn’t be sharing that with their franchisees.”

“Well, whatever a person’s philosophy is, that’s fine.  But, SurvivalWare gives you the opportunity, to the person who would have a perspective like mine, that the more your employees can know about the health of your business, the more that they can do to improve the performance of the business.”

(see his remarks at  http://www.survivalware.com/videos.php under Testimonials – the 5:53 one)

It reminded me of my early days as an industrial engineering student when I learned about the Hawthorne Effect.  Look it up on Wikipedia if you want the details – but in a nutshell some industrial engineers were trying to improve productivity at this huge GE Plant in the early 1900’s, and kept meticulous production records to help them study the impact of certain things.  They turned up the lights – and sure enough productivity increased.  They turned the lights back down – and guess what – productivity increased again!  They concluded it was the attention from management, knowing what was being watched, that led to the improved performance. 

My advice is to shine the spotlight on those metrics and measures that are most important to your business, and share the information with employees so they know how they can best imrpove the performance of the business.  And I guess now I’ll have to practice what I preach!

Customer Interview: Gregg Moore, CEO Workplace Integra

The thing I love about Gregg Moore is his enthusiasm for what he does.  As he says,  “I’m a blessed man.  I get to get up and go to work every day and do something I thoroughly enjoy doing.” 

That’s not the only thing we share in common.  Gregg also feels like it is critical for him to systematically analyze his financial performance and manage his cash flow.  Kelly “sat down” with Gregg via telephone a few weeks ago to get his perspective on running a small business, and where SurvivalWare fits in.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  So, why don’t you tell us about your company and your specific role in the company?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Sure.  Well, I’m the President of a company called Workplace Integra, and we deal with occupational safety and health.  We provide onsite consulting, mostly in the area of occupational hearing conservation, but some other areas as well. 

And we also provide this really nice software package called Workplace Applications, which is used primarily by occupational health nurses and people responsible for safety in manufacturing environments.  So, that’s pretty much what we do. 

I guess the company has been around in its present form since the year 2000, although several of us in the company were with a predecessor company that actually went back to the early 1980s.  So, we’ve all been doing this stuff a long time and just love it.  I tell people I am a–I’m a blessed man.  I get to get up and go to work every day and do something I thoroughly enjoy doing.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And so, what kind of got you started with this?  What other industries do you maybe have experience in? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, sure.  Well, my training is an audiologist.  I have a master’s degree in audiology from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.  I graduated in 1988, and from there went into the United States Army and was an Army officer.  And about half of the job of an Army officer is hearing conservation, because the Army has some very loud toys and hearing loss is a big deal in the military. 

So, that’s kind of where I got my start in hearing conservation, and just liked it so much that decided to try to make a career out of it.  And that’s pretty much been the great majority of my career since graduating, oh, gosh, how many years ago has it been?  You know, 1988, a nice long time that I’ve been doing this.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay.

And so, for example, what would be a safety measure precaution that you would advise a company to take that would kind of help with hearing conservation? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Ah.  Well, it all starts with a good thorough noise survey, that is, we actually go out and measure how much noise there is in the environment and how much of that workers are actually exposed to.  And then, based upon that, we make certain recommendations. 

Now, there’s this thing called the OSHA Noise Exposure Standard which all manufacturing companies have to comply with if their noise levels are above a certain amount.  And so, we help companies to comply with those requirements, but also to go really well beyond them, particularly in the area of hearing protection, that is, the actual wearing of earplugs and earmuffs.  And training is extremely important.

So, we help companies to develop really effective hearing conservation programs that will go well beyond just the sort of minimal regulations that you have to comply with. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay. 

And so, you said the majority of your customers are the big manufacturing plants that have a lot of noise. 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, yes.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Do you have smaller customers as well?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Um-hmm, we do.  Gosh, I guess the customer size ranges anywhere from very small companies with maybe only about 40, 50 people up to companies with–you know, multistate type companies, really multinational companies, with tens of thousands of employees.  So–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Okay–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –It’s a very wide spectrum that we cover. 

And geographically–of course, the vast majority of our customers are in the continental United States.  But, we also have clients as far away as Hawaii and American Samoa, and actually went to Saudi Arabia last year.  You know, very far-flung. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm.  Okay. 

And then, how did you find out about SurvivalWare?  And what made you decide to buy it? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Well, I initially found out about SurvivalWare through Philip Campbell. 

I had–well, going back a step, I earned my master’s degree in business administration, my MBA, a good many years ago in the early ’90s.  And I remember, you know, going through the accounting classes and really struggling with the cash flow, you know, statement.  It really didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at the time.  I understood what it was for and sort of basically how to do it, but it never really made much intuitive sense to me.

Well, you know, all these years later and I’m out here running my own business and here I am having to deal with cash flow issues again.  And I was using a–of course, our company uses Peachtree, you know, to do our books, but I really did not like the cash flow piece of it.  You know, it was kind of your basic accounting model cash flow statement.

So, I was out there searching for something that would help me do things more intuitively.  And I just sort of stumbled, really, upon Phillip Campbell and upon his book on cash flow principles, and that really intrigued me.  And so, I read the book.  I talked with Philip.  And that’s when I really learned about SurvivalWare, was through him.  But, very quickly after that I purchased the software, and Philip was quite instrumental in helping me get things set up.

He did a lot of legwork to get the program set up to where I could use it.  And have thoroughly enjoyed it since then, I can tell you that.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And so, besides Peachtree, have you used any other kinds of accounting software in the past?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Yes.  When I had a much smaller private practice, I used QuickBooks.  And for my own personal use, I use Quicken software. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay.

And then, you said that you were looking to find a program that could help you analyze your cash flow more intuitively.  Do you care–?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –That’s right–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –To elaborate on that?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Well, of course Philip, you know, developed this peace of mind cash flow model, and that made a lot of sense.  And, you know, of course there were two ways that I could go about trying to implement that peace of mind model, which is a more intuitive way of looking at cash flow.  One was I could sit down and try to do it on a spreadsheet.  And, you know, that I can do but, of course, it’s extremely labor intensive. 

But, then the other is to go out and buy somebody’s software that already had that model built into it.  And fortunately, SurvivalWare did.  And so, that’s really what led me to purchase this particular software package was because it already incorporated that peace of mind cash flow model in it.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay.

And how important is it for you as the President of your company to keep track of your cash flow?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, extremely.  We are a small consulting firm, about one and a half million in sales.  And in just sort of the nature of consulting, you really have to watch the cash because it’s a little unpredictable, you know, what’s going to come in from month to month. 

So, we really have to be careful not to overspend and to make sure that we have adequate cash flow to meet our needs on a month-to-month basis.  Yeah, critical.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm.  Um-hmm.

And what is your user experience with Excel and what are some of its limitations? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Well, I like Excel tremendously, and probably would be considered a power user of Excel.  But, you know, there are limitations with its graphing capability.  Virtual anything you do in it, you have to manually set up.  If there are minor changes, then you might have to go back and make those changes across lots of different spreadsheets. 

You know, it can be a real pain to use if you’re doing really complex things like looking at data over a long time period.  And you can think of these monthly imports coming in from Peachtree, if you will, you know, profit and loss statements and balance sheets.  You know, those things really add up over years and year and years.  And it can be a bit difficult to go back and make a change and have that change carry back into all those various columns, if you will.

Well, the way Rusty has set up SurvivalWare, gosh, it’s just so much easier to implement even minor changes.  And, you know, you do it and you go on.  It’s extremely quick and simple to do, much easier to do than dealing with Excel. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay.

And so, was it easy to learn how to use SurvivalWare? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Pretty easy, yeah.  The software’s quite intuitive.  You know, I probably don’t use it to its fullest potential.  I use it for what I need to use it for.  It will certainly do a good bit more than what I need it for, and I probably need to sit down with it, particularly with the new version coming out. 

But, yeah, it’s–it was easy to set up, very easy to use, and I think you’ll get out of it just as much you put into it. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm. 

And so, how often do you use it? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, gosh.  Hmm.  At least monthly, because usually I’m importing data on a monthly basis.  You know, for instance, when April is done, about a week or so thereafter, I’ll import the profit and loss and the balance sheets from Peachtree, and that’s when I look at it.  And then, I may come back to it, you know, two or three times over the course of the month just if I want to look at something in particular.

So–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Um-hmm–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –At least on a monthly basis. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  How long have you been using it?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  I think, what, three years now?  Yeah, three years.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Great. 

And were you able to learn how to use it on your own, or with help from Learning SurvivalWare?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Actually, Philip.  When all this was set up, I paid Philip to do a little consulting work with me and he showed me some things.  But, of course, I had already kind of dived into it. 

So, it did not take long to pick it up at all.  Although I will say that if you can get at Philip or Rusty or, you know, just somebody to kind of help out right at the beginning, I think the learning curve is greatly reduced by having somebody kind of walk you through a few things who has done it and who knows that software well. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm.  Of course.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  I–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –And–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –Know that in our own company–and, of course, we are software producers as well.  We generally just don’t let that software out the door at all unless the client commits to some pretty extensive training, because otherwise we’re setting them up for failure. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm.  Okay.

How easy is it to load data and do projections?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  It was a bit of a struggle at first to learn how to load the data.  But, I think that’s mostly because there’s no kind of direct import into SurvivalWare from Peachtree.  So, it took Philip a little while to figure out how to do that.

But, once that was done, then from that point it was a piece of cake.  I mean, I can do it–you know, it takes all of about three minutes these days.  And I can’t remember the last time that I had a problem with it.  So, it’s a very smooth process once it was worked out.

It’s probably a lot easier coming from QuickBooks than it is from Peachtree.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm.

And what do you like best about SurvivalWare? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  What I like best about it, its ease of use, certainly that peace of mind cash flow analysis that’s built into it. 

I like the fact, too, that Rusty’s very responsive.  If there’s an issue, you’re not sure about something, you know, you pick up the phone, you send an e-mail in, you’re pretty much going to get him.  And I have found him to just be very, very responsive to my needs and concerns.  And I’m not even close to being his largest client, by any means.  I’m a pretty, you know, small potato in that field. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay.

And have you seen the new version?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Yes, I have, and it’s sitting on my computer.  And actually went through a little webinar yesterday with Rusty, and I like it.  It looks to be some pretty significant improvements.

The neat thing I like about the software–and, you know, of course it’s designed for really a small company like myself.  But then, you know, it can also be really scaled up to really, really big companies with people who will take the time to start customizing it. 

And I think that’s one of the things that I saw on the webinar yesterday is that it’s actually far more customizable than I though that it was.  And if somebody’s willing to take the time to sit down and learn how to do it, that’s an extremely powerful feature in that software. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Yes.  I saw that, too. 

And so, another good thing is you’re able to save your customization so that once you have set it up for, you know, the first go-round, you can come back to it and use that same model to do what you need every month following. 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Yes, it is very powerful. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And so, what could you not do without  SurvivalWare that you can do now? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Well, probably nothing.  I mean, you know, most everything that it does I could do, but I would have to take the time to sit down and really sink a lot of effort into developing spreadsheets, and then, you know, try to keep the graphs up to date.  I think I could probably do just about everything with spreadsheets that I do with SurvivalWare, but the time savings, you know, and just not having to sit down and actually design all that stuff and support it, that’s what makes it attractive to me. 

It’s pretty–it’s an off the shelf software package that was easily customized to my needs.  And basically, all I have to do is just push a button and it does its thing.  It just saves me an awful lot of time and therefore money and headache involved in doing it another way.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  If you were to estimate a percentage how much time you think it saves you within a month, what would you say?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, gosh.  It’s probably reduced–yeah, easily 90 percent, because there again all I have to do is go into it, load the data, which takes, you know, two to three minutes, and then it just sort of unfolds before me.  And what it allows me to do is to concentrate on the metrics rather than the process.  Because if I’m having to do this stuff with spreadsheets, that’s an awful lot of process involved before I can ever get to the metrics. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm. 

And in your opinion, what feature has become the most indispensible or critical for your business?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Well, I like that peace of mind cash flow model that’s built into it an awful lot. 

What I also like is the Comparanator, which, again, very, very easily allows you just to pick this or that and just start, you know, trending things and comparing things.  That’s something else that would be much more difficult to do in Excel, for instance. 

But, those two things really stand out for me as being extremely important, being able to quickly compare things and being able to very quickly see what my cash flow is doing.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay. 

And how has SurvivalWare enhanced your focus on analysis and projections?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  It has certainly helped.  You know, there again, is it something I could have done in Excel?  You know, do cash flow projections using Excel?  Sure, that’s pretty standard MBA stuff.  But, SurvivalWare, again, just makes the process so much easier because it already had some models built into it that you can pick and choose from. 

Again, why in the world would I go invest that amount of time in a spreadsheet when, you know, here it is just kind of laid out in front of me?  And if I want to choose this model, I can and see what it does.  And if–you know, if I want to choose another model, I can choose it and see what it projects and then go from there.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And what are some of the differences that you notice between models that are in there?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Well, you know, you can get different results depending upon whether you’re doing–whether you’re trending things, say, seasonally or whether you’re trending things based upon an assumption of a 5 percent growth. 

Or, you know, the neat thing is is that you can apply all of these different models to see which one you think kind of best fits reality.  It doesn’t force you down one road of projecting cash flow.

And again, that’s–that process is far easier in SurvivalWare than it would be in using Excel, for instance. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  So, it allows you more flexibility.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Um-hmm, yeah.  Flexibility and speed, yes. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay. 

And what types of businesses do you think would benefit from SurvivalWare? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, gosh.  Be pretty tough to imagine one that would not benefit from it, really.  You know, any kind of business is going to have cash flow to deal with.  And so, any–you know, any business that’s in business is going to benefit from this.  If they’re not doing cash flow analysis, they’re probably not going to be around. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And then, also just one, do you have perhaps a real life example of where SurvivalWare kind of helped your business in a way, or avoided disaster, maybe? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  I think probably not in the avoiding disaster area, because we’re pretty conservative in how we do things. 

What it did help me to do was just kind of see what cash flow had looked like over the past several years, and so I can see bumps in the road.  For instance, if there’s a month or two or a particular season of the year that’s been kind of slow for us, then it helps me to prepare for that, to see it coming, as it were, and, you know, maybe try to put a little bit more cash away during the immediate few months prior to that so that we can weather the little storm that comes up over the slow period.  We can see those coming. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Um-hmm.  Okay.

And would you recommend SurvivalWare to a friend or a colleague? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, sure, without reservation.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Well, great. 

Do you have any questions or last minute comments?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  No, not really, it’s–well, other than that it’s a great software package.  Rusty’s done a fantastic job with it. 

And I’ll tell you, for a small business to be able to have this kind of a capability at its fingertips, there’s just no reason not to do it. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay, Gregg.  Well, thank you so much for your time today, this afternoon.  Well, afternoon, nighttime.

And also, I just wanted to make sure that we have your permission to use any of your comments or any of the content of this interview for commercial purposes. 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Yeah.  Go right ahead.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Okay, great.

Well, thank you so much, and you have a great day.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  All right.  Pleasure talking with you, Kelly. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Thank you.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Bye-bye. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Bye-bye. 

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Outtakes

For those of you interest in Paris or Europe, here’s Kelly talking about the weather while warming up for the interview.

Interview with Mr. Gregg Moore

May 7, 2010; 4:00 p.m.

 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Hi there.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Hello.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And so, you’re in Greensboro, North Carolina? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Yes, I am, and it’s a beautiful day.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  It’s actually been quite chilly up here in Paris. 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Uh-huh.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  But, it’s a little bit warmer today.  We’ve got some sunshine. 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, very nice.  Very nice.

So, you are in Paris, huh?

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Yeah.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, very nice.  Are you selling SurvivalWare over there?    

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  No, actually we’re kind of investigating the market.  And I had previously moved here in September of 2007 working as a nanny.  So–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –Well, it’s a beautiful place.  I haven’t been to Paris in quite a long time, but–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Oh, okay–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –It’s just a gorgeous city. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  And so, when was the last time you were there?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Oh, gosh.  Twenty years ago, easily. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Oh, wow.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Long, long time.  Long time. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Cool.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  And growing up, my dad was in the Army.  So, we actually lived in Germany when I was young and got to travel a good bit throughout Europe.  And I don’t–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Cool–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –Remember Paris at that time.  But, I do remember going into the northern part of France and, of course, all over Germany and the Swiss Alps and such.  So–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Oh, nice.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Yeah.  I have some good memories of Europe. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  I haven’t quite made it over to Germany, but I’ve been to Madrid and to Amsterdam and Rotterdam. 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Amsterdam’s great.  Get up to Copenhagen, too–. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Yeah–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –If you can do it.  I lived in Saudi Arabia for a while and spent a Christmas in Copenhagen. 

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Oh, okay.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  There’s not a whole lot of daylight hours up there that time of the year.  It’s a little bit on the gray side.  But–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Uh-huh–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –It is an absolutely beautiful place to be around the Christmas season.  So–.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  –Oh, wow–.

Mr. Gregg Moore:  –I would highly recommend Copenhagen.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  Cool. 

Well, why don’t we go ahead and get started? 

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Certainly.

Ms. Kelly Luhring:  So, why don’t you tell us about your company and your specific role in the company?

Mr. Gregg Moore:  Sure.  Well, I’m the President of a company called Workplace Integra, and we deal with occupational safety and health.  We provide onsite consulting, mostly in the area of occupational hearing conservation, but some other areas as well.

Work on SurvivalWare 3.1 is well underway

Sometimes the development cycle moves faster than others.   SurvivalWare Pro 3.0 was driven by our desire to put customization tools in the hands of power users in preparation for a ramping up of demand.  Version 3.1 is customer driven.  A customer (AlphaGraphics, Inc.)  is paying us to make the Budgeting module simpler to use, while at the same time extending the budget to the Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statements from just the Income Statement.  It’s a big deal, but it sure is going to be nice.  I’m doing the work for the AlphaGraphics model, and at the same time making the changes to our generic Fort Knox model so that the new feature is available to the rest of the customer base.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at this brand new video of Kevin Cushing, CEO of AlphaGraphics, explaining why SurvivalWare has become a system standard for AlphaGraphics.   He also lays down a challenge to improve SurvivalWare to make it more integrated with their business planning process.

Kevin Cushing on SurvivalWare as System Standard for AlphaGraphics

One of the nice things about the new budgeting module  will be that you can work on the current year budget or next year budget at any time.  Previously it was tough to make changes to the current year budget.

The user interface has been improved, with numbers and checkmarks to help you keep track of your progress.  Here is a sample screen:

It should be ready for beta testing in a week to 10 days.  We’re hoping to get it released in time for the annual AlphaGraphics conference in early July. 

In addition to the new Budgeting Module, there will be other enhancements, such as the ability to enter notes in a company file that can be displayed to help the user remember how to load data or do something else.

Don’t worry – anyone who purchased version 3.0 will be upgraded to 3.1 automatically.  We plan on an upgrade to the technical documentation with version 3.1 as well.

Most AlphaGraphics users are waiting for 3.1 before upgrading from 2.0 so they have to do it just once.

Please leave comments if you have suggestions for improvements to SurvivalWare.  And don’t worry Kirk, we’ll get better looking icons for Balance Sheet and Cash Flow reports before final release.