Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 7 - John Adams, CEO of Regiscope. The Trials and Successes of Transitioning to a Digital Business Model.
109 Plays6 years ago
PROFILES
SUPPLY CHAIN CONVERSATIONS
—————————————————
EPISODE 7 JOHN ADAMS, CEO OF REGISCOPE THE TRIALS AND SUCCESSES OF TRANSITIONING TO A DIGITAL BUSINESS MODEL—————————————————
Welcome to Episode 7 of Profiles, a podcast centered around supply chain conversations hosted by Brian Glick, founder and CEO of Chain.io.
Our guest is JOHN ADAMS. With a background in business and computer programming, He has an MBA from Rutgers Business School and more than 30 years experience under his belt building Regiscope from the ground up. His current firm offers hardware and software solutions for real time transaction verification and documentation, primarily to the supply chain industry. Their recent clients have included giants such as Coca-Cola, Colgate, and Lufthansa Cargo.
John strives with dedication to keep up-to-date, offering cutting edge services to protect supply chain companies from all types of security risks. He successfully navigated his company through the incoming digital tide with innovation and adaptability.
“….Going from the analogue film business, to a much more modern digital process, was challenging from a business standpoint, not necessarily from a development standpoint — because we knew how to do that — but how to market it and sell it.”
Listen in as Brian and John discuss:
- What the transition from an analogue business model to a digital business model looked like.
- The early issues Regiscope faced and how they worked around them.
- John offers insight into how they dealt with the supply chain during the transition by adapting to the new environment.
- Dealing with customer’s trust issues and expectations.
- Keeping up with the changes in technology. Opening up the doors to progress and sustainability.
- Tips on using remote tools and how they offer real solutions within a new digital business model.
- Keeping up with government regulations whilst in the midst of change.
- John explains how Regiscope set up and configured systems to enable both scaling up or scaling down to meet customer needs.
- The importance of adaptability within today’s rapidly changing tech-driven business arena, and how making good alliances with other companies will help grow success.
“…. You cannot do every part of the supply chain that’s required to be compliant with C-TPAT, or compliant with certified cargo screening facilities. But what you can do is partner with other technology companies. And if each one of you brings a piece of the solution to the game, then you can jointly work together, jointly market, jointly sell your products. ”
Resource mentioned in the show:
Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts so that you’re updated when we post a new episode!
Take care, and until next time,
Brian Glick
Recommended
Transcript
Regiscope's Transition from Analog to Digital
00:00:02
Speaker
going from the analog film business to a much more modern digital process was challenging from a business standpoint, not necessarily from a development standpoint, because we knew how to do that, but how to market it and sell it. Welcome to Profiles by ChainIO. I'm Brian Glick, ChainIO's CEO and founder. Today, we're going to talk to John Adams of Regiscope,
00:00:32
Speaker
Regiscope is a pretty cool company that dates well before many of us were in the industry all the way back to the world of physical film cameras. We're going to learn about how they made the transition from analog to digital and on to mobile and maybe even to the world of blockchain. So hope you enjoy the episode. Thanks for listening. Hey, John. Thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thank you for having me, Brian.
00:01:02
Speaker
So why don't we dive right in. Tell us how you got into the supply chain and logistics space. Well, Regiscope was originally a microfilm camera that was designed and patented a long time ago back in 1957. And what
The 1957 Camera and Legal Proofs
00:01:17
Speaker
was unique about it is it would take a picture of two different subjects, a person's face,
00:01:23
Speaker
and then some documentation, typically their driver's license, and then documents such as a bill of lading. And we had a lot of these cameras at supply chain facilities, distribution centers or cargo facilities around the country. And the cameras would be used when a driver was picking up cargo and they would take a picture of the driver's face and his license and the bill of lading, and they would have a date time stamped and they would have an analog film record of the transaction.
00:01:53
Speaker
And if anything ever happened, if a piece of cargo went missing, they could always go back to that photograph and get the prints and see who was actually there to pick up the cargo. And those pictures, which became known as Regiscope photos, were legally acceptable as proof in court. So
Embracing Digital in the Supply Chain
00:02:12
Speaker
they were quite popular at the time.
00:02:14
Speaker
That's obviously some technology that I think a lot of people listening to this may never even have seen. How did the transition go from that to sort of a digital world? In about 2001, I think it was early 2001, is when Pentel came out with the first Pentium processor. And at the same time, memory started going up and in
00:02:38
Speaker
quantity and down in price. So all of a sudden you could get a computer that had enough power and storage and memory to start recording a lot of digital photos. Or before it was really not nearly enough storage or CPU power, processing power. And that's when we realized that
00:03:00
Speaker
The film was going to go the way of the Dota, which of course it eventually did. It didn't happen overnight. But we decided to start developing a digital version of that old film, microfilm camera, a computer software driven piece of hardware that had cameras, two cameras, and the cameras would take pictures of people's faces and IDs and scan documents and we could scan a fingerprint.
00:03:20
Speaker
And so that was like our first digital version of that old film camera. And there was a
Visitor Management Software Development
00:03:25
Speaker
market for that. Our first systems we sold were actually to a big customer in the supply chain industry. And they were having issues. And they wanted something like the old film camera, which they remembered, but they wanted something new. And we had it. So that's how we got started digitally in this industry, in this field.
00:03:43
Speaker
So explain a little bit more about the product and about how does a company typically use this in their day-to-day life.
00:03:52
Speaker
So what we're doing is really on a 30,000 foot level is visitor management. A visitor, whether it's a person coming in a front door of an office building or a cargo facility or a driver or a contractor coming through the back or going through a welcome center and going into the warehouse, it's all visitor management. But depending on your application,
00:04:19
Speaker
your application can be very different. So for instance, dealing with customers in the supply chain and primarily the drivers that come into a facility is totally different from visitors that go into a hospital and are going in to see a loved one that was admitted in his inner room. So we had to focus on what was special about that industry and come up with
00:04:43
Speaker
versions of our software and configuration options that were geared specifically to that industry. For instance, we would always validate the license that was being presented by the drivers. We could also validate the carriers and verify the driver's identity. So we wanted to make sure that this driver passed a series of tests before he was even allowed into the facility.
00:05:05
Speaker
And
Integrating Industry Knowledge in Tech Development
00:05:06
Speaker
that's how our software is unique to the supply chain industry and how we've developed it over the years, primarily from feedback from existing clients and what they would need. So do you think it's important for somebody who might be getting into the tech space in the supply chain today to have a lot of that industry knowledge going in? Or can they rely on their clients to provide it? Or where do you think that balances?
00:05:30
Speaker
I think you need both. I think if you can get someone who is very knowledgeable about the industry and knows how the industry works, that is very helpful. Otherwise, you probably end up going down some dead ends in your software development, which is just a waste of time and development. And I know from personal experience early on, we did that a bit.
00:05:50
Speaker
But once you get in and you know you've developed a product that is going to satisfy a need, then getting feedback from your customers is a good way to continually develop the software. And early on, we developed relationships with some big corporations that were in the industry.
00:06:09
Speaker
And they were dealing with issues presented to them, compliance issues primarily by the TSA and by CBP. And they were looking for a solution to these issues. So they would be compliant.
Mobile and Cloud Solutions for Scalability
00:06:23
Speaker
And the other thing they wanted to do is not only be compliant, but be able to replicate their process across all facilities. And if they were doing a manual process, not only was it slow and difficult to prove they were being compliant to TSA auditors,
00:06:37
Speaker
but it was difficult to replicate the same process across multiple facilities. So as you sort of started this journey with these physical cameras that we can all sort of picture in our history books at this point and the move to a desktop version, was that transition scary kind of becoming a tech company?
00:06:58
Speaker
We got somebody on board pretty quickly who knew a lot about this. And we were able to develop a basic product. I'd say it was about 10 months, which was really fairly quickly in, I think, development time in the IT world. So we were able to start with that, get some systems in. And of course, originally, the systems were just developing, taking the pictures, which was good for some customers. But then customers started wanting to say, well,
00:07:25
Speaker
have database records of the different visitors coming in. I want their photos on file. I want to pull up a record. I want to track their history. I want to do reports. I want to be able to get data from the system and then export it to my warehouse management system or my yard management system. So over the years, the software just kept growing and growing. It was a little bit scary, but we had a lot of help along the way to develop it. Sounds like you were doing agile development before it was cool, I guess.
00:07:54
Speaker
So one feature at a time. I know you're going through your sort of third generation now. What sort of precipitated the transition to your newer devices?
00:08:05
Speaker
First of all, we realized that as good as the market was, as much as a desire there was for customers to have our product, cost was an issue. And as the software developed, we became more and more reliant on network and then internet connectivity. We had to connect multiple systems across multiple facilities to a centralized server. We changed our license, parsing,
Partnership with Panasonic and Subscription Model
00:08:30
Speaker
and validation to a cloud-based subscription.
00:08:34
Speaker
Initially, we had resistance to IT departments putting our systems on their network. And that actually only just got worse over time as hacking got more and more common. We actually had one of our big clients actually got hacked a couple of years ago. So that became a big issue for them. And also, there has been a move away from desktop to mobile computing.
00:08:59
Speaker
which actually started with the first generation iPhone. So we realized that by going to a mobile device, we were going to be leapfrogging our older technology and going to a much newer technology that everybody wanted to use. And we could bypass
00:09:16
Speaker
the IT department's concerns of any big customer by just skipping going onto their network. We could go directly from one of these handheld devices through a Verizon cellular connection to a cloud server. And then we could access our cloud license parsing, our identity verification, the customer's databases, all that could be done quickly and easily and all remotely and without any hard wiring necessary.
00:09:43
Speaker
So that was the impetus for this. And we were also able, by going to a all-in-one based handheld device that had cameras built in, that had scanners built in, that had a screen, that had a touchscreen keyboard, all this, we could bypass the whole bunch of hardware that was necessary for desktop system.
00:10:04
Speaker
We didn't need USB cameras and a USB license scanner and USB printers and all the other hardware that was needed with the desktop system. We go to a portable, easy to maintain and reliable mobile platform. So I think we've increased our market opportunities, the market share we could develop tenfold probably over the old desktop system by going to this new mobile application, mobile platform. I think it seems you also sort of changed the pricing model around that.
00:10:33
Speaker
How did that
Scaling Cloud Solutions for Diverse Needs
00:10:34
Speaker
affect your sales process? Well, we had started with some handheld devices about three or four years ago. And for the most part, they were adequate. And they were all ruggedized devices. We couldn't put a device like a regular cell phone into a supply chain facility out in the tarmac at a
00:10:56
Speaker
truck welcome center out in the middle of a parking lot, the conditions were just too rough. So we needed a ruggedized device. And so the first ones we had were OK. But then we realized Panasonic was getting into this market big time. Now, Panasonic had been in the ruggedized arena for about 10 years with their
00:11:17
Speaker
line of tough pad laptops, which were military spec. But about two years ago, they came out with a ruggedized line of handheld devices, tablets and true handheld devices that were more the size of a cell phone. And they have very aggressive pricing. We became a partner with them. They also offer three year factory warranty, which includes
00:11:42
Speaker
return to depot to their facility in Memphis overnight via FedEx and they pay for everything, repair of one of their devices. And even if you dropped it and a tractor trailer ran over and smashed it, they would still replace it no charge under this warranty program. It's that great.
00:12:00
Speaker
And they've done a great job in this aspect. So we're able to team with Panasonic, come up with the hardware and the support and the warranty we needed upfront, and then offer our software and applications and cloud servers and updates and everything as a monthly.
00:12:17
Speaker
fee. So instead of having to charge for equipment up front and travel and installation and training, we can set everything up remotely, ship the handhelds, get to them remotely, train remotely, and come up with a solution that is just a modest
00:12:34
Speaker
monthly fee with nothing upfront required. And it goes for 36 months. At the end of 36 months, you want to continue. Your hardware gets replaced with brand new hardware from Panasonic, but everything else just continues as is. So you keep up with the latest technology. Your hardware doesn't get too old. And you eliminate issues with older hardware breaking down and causing problems with your process flows.
00:12:59
Speaker
So it's interesting for me at least coming from running a hosted software company, right? This idea that everything's a subscription and everything is really you're buying the service at the end of the day. To see that translated to the physical world is also sort of an interesting concept, right? That you can provide a service
00:13:21
Speaker
And that device is really just part of the service as opposed to sort of this historical model of I'm buying a thing and I own it. Correct. It's kind of a hybrid because that was the model for quite a while. I mean, even IBM, you'd sell mainframe computers back in the day, and then you'd sell the sport that went with it. And then we transferred recently to software as a subscription. And purely software driven, you don't have to buy a lot of stuff upfront. You can just subscribe to this, pay a monthly fee.
00:13:50
Speaker
You don't have to worry about any of the hardware or any of that. And we kind of made a hybrid of those two models, because our solution does require some hardware. We do have to have something that can capture the images, that can capture the data, that can scan the barcodes. But that's really just the means to the end. Primarily, what we're doing is all the rest of it. It is our software. It is our application. It is our validation. It is our server hosting. It is our reporting functionality.
00:14:14
Speaker
that is really what we're providing. And then the ability then to capture this information and to push it up to a warehouse management system or yard management system or an inventory control system with our APIs is just like the next step. That's how we can really make this an enticing proposition to an end user. So you've been on this journey now for quite a while, going all the way back to those original devices.
00:14:43
Speaker
What do you wish you sort of knew back then at the beginning that you've learned over the years from being in this business? Well, I have two backgrounds. One is in finance. I have my MBA in finance. But I also then get a degree in computer technology. But it was a long time ago. I mean, I learned how to program on LBM mainframes using punch cards in COBOL, which is totally antiquated now. But I had that background. But even then, going from
00:15:13
Speaker
The analog film business to a much more modern digital process was challenging from a business standpoint, not necessarily from a development standpoint, because we knew how to do that, but how to market it and sell it. It was a completely different business model. And that's what we struggled with a bit initially. We finally found our niche there. But I think what we've really done
00:15:41
Speaker
with our new mobile application is almost gone back to that original film model. Whereas, yeah, there's a piece of hardware required. It's cheap upfront. But the real business model is the monthly film usage. In this case, that was the monthly fees. We're providing the old film cameras. What we really provided was that picture of this transaction.
00:16:07
Speaker
when you needed it. OK, the other the rest of it was just the means to the end. So that's kind of we're back almost to that model. And in a way, I feel a lot more comfortable with that model. And I think it's going to work a lot better for us going down, going forward to down the road. It's interesting to hear how you read a lot of things in the press, or at least I do about.
00:16:26
Speaker
sort of solution selling and turning your product into a solution. And how do I frame everything as a solution? I think that's really sort of blindingly obvious in your world, but probably a good lesson for everyone in that, that you really are at the end of the day not selling the device to take the picture or even really the picture yourself. You're selling the peace of mind that when you show up in court, you're going to have the picture.
00:16:55
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And it's more that even now with our mobile application, and even with the desktop to a certain extent, it's more the compliance aspect of it. Not necessarily going to court and proving something, but so much of this industry is regulated now, ever since September 11th, the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of the TSA, CT-PAT, all these
00:17:20
Speaker
things that didn't exist back before 2001. And so our application helps the director of security for a major corporation who's responsible for all their locations across the country, put in a solution that is cost effective, easy to use, and easily replicatable across all our facilities. And because we can tie each device to one centralized server,
00:17:51
Speaker
him, the director of security, and whoever he designates, each facility, the managers, other people in security and the corporate office, can all have access to those reports when they need it. And when the TSA comes calling and says, let me see this and prove to me that you did this, they're just really like a mouse click away at this point. So they really love it from that standpoint. It makes their jobs a lot, lot easier.
00:18:14
Speaker
So now that you're in the cloud and on the mobile device, does this also sort of scale down if I had one facility, I'm just running
Dynamic Business Plans and Partnerships
00:18:21
Speaker
a, you know, an air cargo facility at one airport. Is this something that I can sign up and just have the one copy as opposed to sort of a big global rollout? Sure. It's the initial setup. You pretty much usually starts with one device.
00:18:36
Speaker
We create a cloud server for that client. And of course, because it's a cloud server, geographically, we can locate that server in various parts of the country. So if it was one client with one facility and they were in Miami, let's say, we would set up a cloud server somewhere on the East Coast, preferably the Southeast.
00:18:53
Speaker
So the latency between their facility and where the server is is not that great. But if we know it's a nationwide client with a large customer base, we would set up the server typically in the middle of the country someplace. So none of the facilities is more than halfway across the country away from it. But once we set up that server and get the first client configured, and we get their application configured, because the application is configurable, when we set up
00:19:21
Speaker
Initially, the application for a client will say, well, what is the information you're going to want to capture at that point of sale, so to speak? When the driver shows up, we know you're going to want to capture the driver's information. We know you're going to want to capture the carrier information, so we can create a carrier list for you. But then what other information you want to capture? You want to capture a bill of lady number. You want to capture a seal number. You want to capture a trailer number, license plate number.
00:19:45
Speaker
So we configure all of that, and then we ship it to the facility. And once we've done one of them, creating the next one, or the next 10, or the next 20, is a simple matter of just duplicating the first one. And of course, each handheld doesn't have to be exactly the same. The one in Miami does not have to be the same as the one in Indianapolis, and doesn't have to be the same as the one in San Francisco. They can capture different information. But it all goes to the same database, and the reporting functionality will
00:20:15
Speaker
will show the appropriate reports based on what they're looking for and based on which facility was capturing the data. So yeah, to answer your question, I guess, you can start with just one. And typically, that's how we do start with every customer. If somebody was starting out in the industry today, and you come to this from more of an internet of things, I guess, perspective now than a lot of people who are looking at just raw data, what advice would you give somebody getting into this part of the business today?
00:20:43
Speaker
I'd say have a really good business plan to start with and then update it every six months. I mean, you really get to know what your target market is and have someone who's very familiar with that market. So you're not trying to just develop something and then go to a customer and say, Hey, this is something you're interested in. You know, there's, there's a market for, you know, that there's a need for it. And of course not everybody's going to want it. Not everybody's going to need it, but
00:21:10
Speaker
you're developing a product from a point of strength and you know that you're gonna make sales. No, I think that's really good advice. What we set out to do and then what we're doing a year later is not always being stubborn and pointing in one direction and not updating that business plan or reacting to the changes in the market or the underlying technology is sort of a trap people can fall into.
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, of course, you can't make your software all things to all people. You can't do every part of the supply chain that's required to be compliant with CTPAT or compliant with certified cargo screening facilities. But what you can do is partner with other technology companies. And if each one of you brings a piece of the solution,
00:22:06
Speaker
to the game, then you can jointly work together, jointly market, jointly sell your products. And each one of you can then just focus on what you do best. And that is what I am trying to do now. So we're doing what we do best, but we still realize it's only one piece of the puzzle. And we want to work with other
00:22:27
Speaker
Technology companies,
Future Integrations with Blockchain and Warehouse Management
00:22:29
Speaker
most of these technology companies are small. By small, I mean they're not IBM, they're not Siemens. They're relatively small companies, but they're focused and they're quick to react to market changes and market needs and customer needs. And I think that is the key to, one of the keys to succeeding in this industry we find ourselves in today where technology does change so extremely quickly. Yeah.
00:22:53
Speaker
always a debate when I was in enterprise IT on the 3PL side of sort of, do we buy a number of best of breed solutions and bring them together? Or do we just go try to find the one sort of mega solution to roll them all? The sort of SAP is the classic example there. You know, in my opinion, today,
00:23:18
Speaker
that choice is sort of a false choice, right? The world is so complex that not even the things that do a lot of things, they aren't going to do all the things and the software companies, whether they're, you know, 30 or 40 or 50 year old companies, you know, that reinvent themselves or the startups that are getting funded today that are doing those specific things and are focused, just provide solutions that are so dynamic compared to somebody who's trying to kind of create the plain vanilla for everybody.
00:23:47
Speaker
So I couldn't agree more. So you guys have your mobile app that's rolling out. You've kind of been through this multiple iterations of the technology. What's sort of the biggest thing that you guys see as maybe next for you? I think some of this integration I was just talking about. Once we have our initial
00:24:16
Speaker
solution for the mobile application perfected. Obviously, there's always going to be development work there. There's going to be new features we're going to want to come out with. But I think our next step is going to be to try and partner with other companies like yours and see if we can jointly
00:24:33
Speaker
you know, go to potential clients and offer a more comprehensive solution together. That's my next focus. And some of the things that we've been working on, you know, warehouse management, integrations, yard management, but also, you know, if we are working on integrating your
00:24:52
Speaker
photo proof into our blockchain stamping. So there's the bleeding edge, moving those photos up to the blockchain and really getting that proof of work established. So that's probably a good
Looking Forward: Regiscope's Evolution
00:25:05
Speaker
place to wrap up today. Thanks so much. It was great hearing about how a company can not just start from scratch and appear out of nowhere, but build up from the analog world to the digital to the mobile. So really appreciate your time today.
00:25:20
Speaker
Well, I thank you for the opportunity, Brian, and I look forward to working with you more closely in the future. And that's a wrap. We've included some links down in the show notes to learn more about Regiscope and their products. And thanks again to you for listening and to John for joining us today.