Interviews with Software Manufacturers – Any Device, Anywhere

Aug. 12, 2015
RER spoke with BCS Prosoft director of marketing Patrick Haley about mobile availability, protection of data, asset analysis and more.

RER spoke with ARM Software director of marketing Patrick Haley about mobile availability, protection of data, asset analysis and more.

RER: What is new technologically with your company’s software?

Haley: Like most technology products the specific features and capabilities are ever changing. What is new today can be outdated tomorrow. Our mantra is to make ARM available on any device - anywhere. This includes being able to deploy the product on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid of the two. Client Access is available to Windows, IOS, or Android devices. Any software company that wants to be considered as a true player in this space must include mobile as a part of their overall strategy.

Are customers concerned about the safety of their data, protection against hacking or other invasions of privacy and information theft? What is your company doing to protect your customers?

Absolutely, this should be a concern for any technology user. Fortunately, our customers are positioned to be protected in a variety of ways. This includes the fact that our ARM software is built on a fully GAAP compliant system, Sage 100 ERP, that includes robust security options that can assist with first level of hacks. This also includes tight integration with Sage Payment services that is fully compliant with PSS-DSI standards. You know you hear a lot about the big hacking scandals that involve outside parties hacking into a system. The recent Sony and Federal Government hacks are a couple that come to mind. But if you look at security overall - the biggest threats most companies are exposed to occur internally. For example, I talked with a prospect last week that had just uncovered the fact that more than $400k had been stolen by the previous two CFOs. They hid their trail for a couple of years because they were using an accounting system that did not include audit capabilities.

How important is it to be able to integrate with other types of software, for example, integration with SmartEquip and other software-related service providers?

Integration capabilities can be important in a variety of ways. However, integration capabilities are not a one size fits all arrangement. In some cases, there is a need for immediate real time integration points while other times it may be just the need to import or export data between systems at random times. Each scenario must be reviewed on its own to determine the level of integration required as well as the best method of addressing that requirement. The good news for our ARM customers is that the tools to handle integration, whether it be import/export, through ODBC connectors, or handled programmatically, are included with the software. 

How can your software help a rental company better analyze its cost structure and determine which equipment is profitable and which isn’t? How can your software help a rental company determine at what point a piece of equipment becomes unprofitable and should be sold?

Our ARM solution is built on the Sage 100 ERP platform that allows us to evaluate the rental operations of our customers all the way down to the general ledger level. This complete approach allows us to measure asset utilization and overall financial performance in a variety of ways. It is important to be able to address this variety because the analytics for an equipment based rental company can vary greatly from the analytics required by a scaffolding company for example. Much of the needs of an equipment based rental company can be met utilizing the ARA Rental Market metrics.

These metrics are based on analyzing the performance of specific serialized assets or fleet of assets. However, the needs of the scaffolding company are not met by these metrics because their assets include high volumes of non-serialized assets. This is does not present a problem though because our solution includes a variety of reporting tools that allow for us to customize the analytics required by our non-equipment based customers.