ADD Systems’ President Bruce Bott & Senior Vice President / COO Rob Culbertson recap ADD’s 2023 product enhancements & highlights; outline the challenges and opportunities that our industries could face in the coming year; the impact that AI might have on the industry; why face-to-face time with our customers is so important; and the AUG’s accomplishments throughout 2023 plus what members can look forward to this year.
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Brian Cohen: Welcome to ADDcast. I’m Multimedia Specialist Brian Cohen. And I’m joined today by ADD Systems President Bruce Bott, along with Senior Vice President and COO Rob Culbertson. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today.
Bruce Bott: Hi, Brian. Thank you.
Rob Culbertson: Hello, Brian.
Brian: Rob, let’s start with you. 2023 was an extremely busy year at ADD Systems between both the company’s 50th anniversary, as well as the latest iteration of the Business Tech Conference. Can you start by talking about that, along with some other 2023 highlights for the company?
Rob: I sure can, Brian, and thank you. So yes, this was the 50th anniversary of ADD Systems. So that was a major, major milestone. Not a whole lot of software companies that have been in business for 50 years. So, it’s quite an achievement, and one that we’re most proud of. And back in May, we had our Business Tech Conference, or the BTC, as we usually call it. And it was a fantastic event. We had record attendance, we had a record number of partners that attended, customers that attended, and ADD staff that all attended. Now one of the nice things about the BTC is that we get a chance to kind of show off what we’ve been working on for the past year or so. We had a number of presentations, where we talked about our software products, our software services. Our partners had some chances to do some presentations. And then we had the ADD User Group who had some meetings during the conference. It was a great mix. Overall, customers seem to really, really like the mix between the educational sessions, the networking opportunities, and the social. So overall, great time, record attendance. And really looking forward to our next BTC. A few of the other things that we had going on this year is, you know, our sales team was extremely busy signing up new customers, talking to existing customers on their projects, whether they be upgrades or acquisitions, or just further training on the use of our software in our systems. We did a lot of consulting opportunities, scores and scores of upgrades, new customer installations. It’s been a really, really busy year. And I’m really proud of the ADD team for all the efforts that they put in, and really happy about the sales team and the work that they were able to do to sign up all these new customers.
Brian: I couldn’t agree more, Rob. There was a constant buzz of activity throughout the whole year, both on the positive end, and, unfortunately, sadder end of the spectrum – which, Bruce, I’d like to loop you in on now. In 2023, ADD Systems sadly lost your father, the company’s founder. It goes without saying the profound influence that he had on the company. But can you share some of the values he instilled and how that continues to impact the company day-to-day today?
Bruce: Sure. Dad had a profound impact on the company for sure. I think we all felt the loss at the earlier part of this year. I think if you think about the values that you instill in the company, in the business, in the family really, really focused on your own family. The extended family, the employees that we consider family, our customer base, we consider family. We do like to kind of wrap it all into one big package. If you treat people well, honestly, fairly, you’ll do right in life. A couple of those long-standing values he instilled are honesty and fairness. We do collaborate a lot. I think our people get together and talk quite often about how to make the product better. We invite our customers to have input on that with our ADD User Group. I think the last couple of years with obviously the pandemic, we’ve allowed our people to kind of work from home. And so, they’ve been very accountable. They’ve been professional in what they do. They’re able to do it remotely. So, we’re excited about that. And it’s just continued. We had the sadness of the beginning of the year. I think humor is another value that he instilled. I think I laugh more than I don’t laugh. I try to make people laugh. I think we enjoy our job here. So, it’s fun coming to work.
Brian: I want to touch on something you just mentioned there, Bruce. Can you talk about how 2023 compared to recent years for the company in this post-pandemic landscape?
Bruce: Yeah, so 2023 was kind of another unique year. Started off with a lot of excitement that we were excited about the BTC. And obviously, we’re coming out of a couple of years of COVID and uncertainty. So, we weren’t sure how it was going to shake up. We thought things were going the right direction. Obviously, again, losing my dad early in the year, kind of put a little twist on that. But again, when we just think about where we are in the post-pandemic landscape, so to speak, we’re in a position as a company where we empower our employees. We let them work from home. They’re able to work from pretty much anywhere, and we trust them. So, it’s worked out well for the last three years. I don’t see any reason why that’s going to change. We have a bunch of professional people that just want to get the job done and do the right job for our customers.
Brian: So, Rob, bringing you back into the conversation. Can you give an overview of some of the product enhancements and highlights that took place across the ADD suite throughout 2023?
Rob: Yeah, I sure can, Brian. We had a lot of releases that came out this year. Every one of our products had multiple releases, all told, it was, you know, somewhere close to 75 releases of products. And they really spanned all types of different aspects of the business. So, you know, a couple of major themes that I would put out there. And these are themes that really, we’ve been following for a number of years. The major input source for our development process is our customers. What are our customers asking us for? And what they asked for, you know, maybe three years ago, four years ago, five years ago was different than what it is today, you know, times have changed. So, we’re really happy to be working directly with our customers, and especially the ADD User Group to try to prioritize the work that we do when the development that we do. So, kind of in general, I would say that the major thrust of a lot of the development the last year has been to empower the users, finding ways to change the software to make it easier for the users to do their job to be more efficient, and, therefore, the customers to be more profitable. And it could be something really simple, or it could be something that’s extremely complex. Another area that we do a lot of development on is just to stay in touch with the latest technologies. So, whether that be, you know, databases, or whether that be operating systems, or that be hardware platforms for our mobile devices, we’re always out there looking at what’s coming up, what’s out there, what’s supported, what are we going to be able to offer to our customers to keep them so that they’re maybe not on the bleeding edge, but on the cutting edge of technology, because it’s really important to make sure that what we’re offering to people is something that’s going to last. We have certain products that our customers run, you know, some of our mobile products, those hardware platforms are running for 8-10 years. And that’s a long time period. I mean, we’ll do many, many software upgrades in that time period. But we’re working on platforms, whether they be hardware, or we’re, let’s say, operating systems or other platforms that we want to make sure that the customers get the biggest value for.
Brian: Now, Bruce, I know you make it a priority to visit ADD clients throughout the year. Could you share some of the highlights of your travels and why you feel that actual face-to-face time with our customers is so important?
Bruce: Well, I sure can share some information about the client visits this year. The high point is certainly not staying in hotel rooms. I don’t enjoy staying at a hotel too often. To go see the customers I think is really important in the year. The last several months, I saw about two dozen clients from Missouri on down to Florida up into Maine and up into Canada. So, it’s exciting to go see the clients. But even more exciting is when you go on a customer site. And you get to learn about what they’ve been doing the last several months or years since I was there last, and you get a chance to talk about how we’re doing; they give us a scorecard so to speak. And the bunch of clients I’ve seen this last four months have given me nothing but positive ratings on our group. There are always things we can do better. We chat about the software; we chat about functionality; we chat about the user group; we chat about things they want to see specifically. But nobody has given us a negative mark. So, I’m very happy with that. I do think one of the things that I can note mostly was that I saw one client, in particular, this year, and I sat down with them, we had lunch, and up 20 minutes in the lunch, he said, You know what I like best about ADD Systems? He said, I like the fact that I can call you up, have you come down for lunch, and you’ll actually come see me. And so, I thought that was a pretty good statement as to the health of our company. And what we think is important to our customers is that we do want to hear what they have to say. We do want to meet them. We don’t want them thinking that they can’t call us and have a conversation about any of their needs. So, it was pretty good. At the end of that conversation, that one customer said to me, That’s why I recommend you to so many different competitors of ours and people in our share group. So, I thought that was super powerful. So again, to be out in front of people, you get to hear about the things you’re doing right, you get to hear about things that maybe you have missed the market on. But you also get to get a real sense that if you’re doing things right, how the community of our clients and our extended family are really enjoying ADD Systems.
Brian: Now, Rob, Bruce mentioned talking about the ADD User Group. So, let’s pivot to that now. Can you talk about some of the user groups’ accomplishments throughout 2023? And what AUG members can look forward to this year?
Rob: I sure can right, Brian. Now, one of the things that the ADD User Group does offer our customers is the chance to talk to their peers and to learn about maybe how they are running the ADD software, how they’re using it, what features they’re using, how they’ve configured it to best work in their business. But they also talk to the other members of the user group about just general business items, and whether that be HR items or, you know, difficulty hiring drivers. It could be really anything. This year was really a big year for the user group. And I think that a lot of that was because this is the first time we’ve had an in-person annual meeting. And we did that down at our BTC, down in Orlando, had a great time. We had record attendance for that session. And the number of people that signed up to join the user group was a double-digit increase in number of people. It was a big event; a lot of people joined the user group. And we had a chance this year to set up some new committees. So, the user group in the past was broken into different areas. But because of the number of people that are attending, and some of the focus that people have on different aspects of the business, two more committees were set up. Those committees focused on specific areas. Many people join multiple committees because many of our customers are diversified energy distributors. So, what they’re trying to do is to learn more about how everybody else runs the system. And the challenges that they may have, in that aspect of the business. User Group always undergoes some leadership change every few years. The format of the user group is that there’s a leadership team. And there’s a president of the leadership team and the retiring president stepped down at the user conference and the new president began this year. And she’s very engaged and making sure that the committees are running as smoothly as possible and making sure that people are getting out of the user group what they want to get out of the user group. ADD Systems has a philosophy that the user group is something that we want to promote, and that we want to help in any way possible. But it is truly a user group. So, the bylaws are the bylaws, as set by the user group and the membership are ADD users. And we’re really happy that they’re able to provide us with this constant feedback about how we’re doing, what we could do differently. They annually vote on development items and rank them for us. Which really, really helps us in trying to focus in on what’s most important to people right now. Each of the committees that are part of the user group are typically meeting on a monthly basis. They pick their own topics, you know, the Delivery Committee topics and Service Committee topics, the Lube Committee topics, the Wholesale Committee topics, they’re all slightly different. They all want to focus on a certain aspect of what’s important to them, and what’s part of their current challenge list. And we’re there to help out. Sometimes we’ll do sessions with those committees. And we’re there to make the process as smooth and as easy as possible, so that everybody can get great value out of them.
Brian: Bruce, even though it feels like we just wrapped up the 2023 BTC, there’s already been inquiries about the next one. So, I guess a lot of people are wondering, are there any plans underway?
Bruce: Well, there absolutely are plans underway. We’re actually in the planning stage. Still, we’re meeting with the people at Disney. We believe we’re going to have it back in Disney in May of 2026. So, there’s a lot to do behind the scenes. It’s sometimes overlooked. But we probably spend three or four months working with Disney on the venue and the event itself. And then we sit back a little bit and let the programmers do all their things in our company. And then we have to tally all the information and get it ready for a presentation. So that’s why we do it every three years, so that we have a breather in there somewhere. So, I’m thinking probably the next couple of months, we’ll have something to announce. We certainly have, you know, a date of May of this year to announce it is two years out. But stay tuned.
Brian: Now, Rob, can you talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that the industries we serve could face throughout 2024?
Rob: I sure can. So, Brian, I look at ADD Systems as being a software company that provides solutions to the energy industry. And the challenges and the opportunities in the software industry right now are multifold. And number one is the whole challenge of security. Cybersecurity being a huge concern not only to us, but also to all of our customers. We see companies that are being compromised on almost a weekly basis. And most of those compromises come through via email. So, our customers have a challenge which is to make sure that their employees are instructed and educated on how to look for compromising emails, and some of the other things that come through the networks whether it be poor firewall setup, or other types of viruses that can enter the network through wireless means or other means. It’s really, really a major challenge, not only for us, but also for our customers. I think the other thing that I would mention, as far as the software industry is concerned, is there’s a lot of consolidation going on right now in the industry, especially in the software area that relates to energy marketers. And anytime there’s consolidation going on, there’s always a lot of opportunity and a lot of disruption. So that’s a big piece of where we’re focused from a sales and marketing standpoint is to look for those diversified energy companies, and try to find ways that we can put our solutions into their organizations so that they can have a stable software platform going forward. One of the other buzzwords that probably everybody’s heard about is AI, artificial intelligence. AI is ultimately going to have massive, massive change in the world. And it’s starting already in the software industry, especially in some of the software design and the development process. And I see that going much quicker in the future, as some of the systems get faster, as some of the software gets better. Artificial Intelligence is going to really be a game changer. And it’s starting right now. But it’s going to take a little bit of time. But once it starts to ramp up, I think that there’s going to be some major, major changes. It’s going to make everybody’s lives different, hopefully easier in most cases, but certainly different. We’re seeing it already in some of the areas that people have used AI, like marketing, fleet optimization, route optimization, just to name a few. So, the other industry that I think is important to talk about is the energy industry, you know, our customers. And they span all types of areas of the energy industry. But one of the big things that’s going on right now in the industry is the whole push from the government for electrification. I mean, it’s real, and it’s causing a lot of concerns. And most of the impact is right now in individual states, where the legislative bodies have taken steps to either incent or force the movement to electricity and away from the traditional fuels. And these laws have caused a real big disruption in this industry. And it’s going to likely end up in many, many years of litigation going forward. But that’s not going away. That’s just going to continue and more states are going to adopt it based upon what is going on right now and the government. Other things, we’re seeing many, many customers who are starting to diversify, whether that be going with green alternatives or low carbon energy alternatives. People are looking at related markets; they’re trying to find out what is the best way to sustain their business as the whole push away from fossil fuels and toward electrification occurs. And part of that is, you know why we’re also seeing consolidation in the energy market. Our customers are buying people all the time, you know, whether it’s, one or two purchases a year of a small company, or 15-25 purchases of companies, it’s all over the place. And I don’t see that abating at all, especially with the generations that are getting to the point now where they look at the future, and they see electrification coming up. And, you know, they’re looking for something to retain that investment. Probably on a more broad basis, companies are really looking at labor shortages, you know, the inflation and wage growth that have occurred over the last year, and is predicted to occur for at least until mid-24. I mean, that’s forced companies to really leverage their systems with technology. So, we’ve seen an uptick in sales of our automation suite. Companies are trying to find ways to be more efficient and do more, with fewer back-office resources, because finding labor and retaining that labor is very, very difficult. So, automation is one of the key ways to address that.
Brian: Now, Bruce, I’d like to take what Rob was talking about that was outward facing and turn it inward. What’s your overall outlook for ADD Systems in 2024 and beyond?
Bruce: I think I’m always optimistic, right? I mean, the future is always uncertain. But I think being optimistic is always better than being pessimistic. I do see the next several years at ADD Systems being both great for both ADD Systems and our client base. I think my father used to use the term of critical mass. Ultimately, there are times where we had to make changes in our organization and we had to attain critical mass; we had to have the resources and people. I think you can look at ADD Systems today, we have the right combination of people, the right companies, the resources, the right combination and know how to move our clients forward in the future. So, I do think we’re well positioned. We have lots of products; you’re going to see more enhancements of the products; you’re going to see new features added; you’re going to see a better user interface, browser based; you’ll see database upgrades and a ton of new functionality just thrown into the product that people have today. I think it’s worth mentioning that much like Rob was saying that our customers are faced with the issues, that we’re here in a position to kind of help them through those issues. We are going to upgrade clients at their pace. We think they should upgrade semi-regularly. But we’re here to help them upgrade and take advantage of new functionality. We’re here to help them train new people, if they are able to find some new hires to put into place. We’re here to handle the acquisitions if they need us to help on a conversion basis. So as their business evolves and grows and changes, I think we’re going to be probably the best company for them to position with to help them with that growth and that change. So, I think 2024 and beyond is exciting, and we’re well positioned.
Brian: Well, it certainly seems like 2024 is going to be an extremely exciting year. Gentlemen, thank you both for taking the time to speak with me today, and I look forward to catching up with you next year to see how 2024 all played out.
Rob: Well, thank you very much, Brian.
Bruce: Thank you, Brian.
Brian: To keep up with the latest happenings at ADD Systems, visit addsys.com/blog or connect with us on social media by following ADD Systems on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X. If you have any questions about ADDcast, feel free to reach out to us at addcast@addsys.com. Thanks for listening and have a great day!
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