TiPS as a company is a PURIST in two aspects.

1. We focus 100% on software development and deployment.

2. We focus 100% on alarm management.

Why is this valuable to you?

Using your own software to do project work is somewhat like drinking your own bathwater. You probably can do it occasionally to let you know how bad it is, but you don't want to make a habit of it for fear that you begin to think its not all that bad.

Software by its nature is like a child to those who develop it. When the first person makes the first remark about the lack of inherent beauty, you are ready to take them to battle. However, it is only those who are willing to listen to the voices of others who ultimately win the war and actually make battle-hardened software. If I'm willing or employed to use it myself, I simply elbow the naysayer aside, and go to work.

Let's examine the difference. If I always use my own software, then I don't really care about its inherent lack of usability. In fact, those of us who have ever used command-line programs know that they are the best. Once you learn to speak the language - you can bypass a whole level of manipulations and go directly to the point of solution you desire. This is great for those of us who want to immerse ourselves in one program, and live with it day-in and day-out. But what about those who have more things to do than just run one program all day long? That portion of society needs software that is designed with ease of use in mind. And for that, there is nothing more telling than having to sit NEXT to somebody else who is using your software, and finding where they get trapped. There's a goal in the software purist side of the industry for "two-click resolution". That means you strive for no more than two clicks to the next drill-down the user needs in any given situation. We're not fully there (nobody is) but it is our goal.

As a software company, think about the trouble we would get into if we just made our software hard enough that they had to hire us to use it. Or scared them into the "don't try this at home" model.

At TiPS, we instead try to make a practice of working elbow-to-elbow with our users. In fact, for many years, that was probably our biggest weakness. Rather than convincing the managers to buy our stuff (i.e. in volumes and based on a good PowerPoint presentation), we were convincing the users to buy it. And they did. In fact, we have more alarm management customers than any two of our closest competitors. And that says something. Our software is the clear choice of the end user. That is because of this closeness we've shared with them and our ongoing attempts to be certain that somebody else besides us could use our software.

It is TiPS' continued goal to make our software more automated, easier to use, and more adaptable with every line of code we write. Its not good enough to just perform a function, and add that to the laundry list. It's only good if the end user can easily access that function, and it fits with every thing else he has to use the product to do (i.e. he doesn't have to load up another application to do it. Does this sound like anybody you know??).

Don’t get me wrong. We use our own software, we just don’t solicit project work with it. But we do run through terabytes of data, and set up demos for people on our servers with their data, so they can see how easy it works. And we do come up with new and easier ways to analyze data by the continuous analysis we perform on data sets.

That leads to the second point. Because we focus 100% on alarm management, its what we do best. It means the conversations in our halls always revolve around how we can do something better for our clients. And we don't worry about how well that fits with our latest driver sales or advanced controller, or whatever. It simply has to be able to resolve your alarm management issues, and do that task better than anybody else.

Two recent major corporate contracts signed with companies who did extensive product analysis (both were approximately 6 months in duration) tell us that we're doing something right. We intend to continue to do those things right, and continue to do them better than anybody else.

If anybody asks you if TiPS will come out and perform a job with their software, just tell them, "No. They automated the task for me, and I was able to do it myself. And I used less effort than if they came on site, and I had to teach them all the ins and outs of my plant." If you do need extra manpower to perform a full rationalization, there are others who provide that service, and do it quite well.

Oh - one last point. We will NOT take your data and share it with the world. Though we've reviewed more alarm data than any other company, I don’t know ten customers who want us showing ANYBODY how bad their alarm system used to be.