Revolutionizing Project Management Software

Full transcript

Welcome back to the podcast guys. Today we're joined by Chris Vandersluis. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, nice to be here. Let's start this, Chris, by you telling us a little bit more about what you are up to. Okay, I started a company called HMS Software back in 1984. So that's been going for a little over 40 years now. We specialize in project management software. And in particular, we publish a timesheet system called Time Control, which we've published as a commercial product since 1994. And that basically runs our life. The company is based in Montreal, Canada. Our clients are well known around the world. uh middle and large size organizations we sell in both the public and private sector. um time control is known because it links to both project management tools like Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project and to finance tools like SAP or Oracle Financials or Dynamics at the same time. And that's quite unusual to have a project oriented system that's also a finance oriented system. So that's our business. and it continues to do well. It's been profitable for a long time.

Thank you for the introduction. So you founded HMS software over 40 years ago. What problem were you trying to solve back then? Well, I was very young back then and full of optimism and we were looking for something in the project management uh domain, which was new to computers. mean, uh personal computers had not been in companies that long. They were still expanding into companies as we started the business. um so I knew a bit about project management. I had some people I knew who were, I knew a bit about project management. There were only three or four project management software products available in the industry. And we came across a client, was Philips, Philips Electronics. And they had a Montreal office and their project management office engaged us to say, we need uh a project management tool. We'd like you to go find one. And when we did the design for them, they also said, well, we like the project management tool you selected. We selected a product called OpenPlan at that time. But we're also going to need a timesheet. And there was no timesheet. There were no timesheets like that available in the computer business. So we wrote one. that's, we spent a lot of time writing it. had people who were, the client had people from both finance and project management in every design meeting. We would come to a design meeting and one side of the table would say, excellent, exactly what we want. And the other side would say, not at all acceptable, not what we want. And so we would come back the next time and now the second team would say yes and the first team would say no. And we realized what we would have to do is to create something very flexible that would be able to accommodate both, be able to accommodate the needs of project management and the demands of finance. And that's really where the idea for time control came. 10 years later, we had done numerous customized time sheets and we said we were going to transform the company from consultation and and deploying other people's project software to a publisher and timesheets is going to be our first product. That's how we ended up where we are.

Okay, and with all the AI stuff going on right now, are you guys using AI at all in what you are doing? Sure, I mean, everyone has to use AI to some degree, but time control is a system of record, right? When you go to create your payroll, somebody's going to have to type in, what kind of time did they spend? We don't say to AI, how much do you think we should pay that person? We say, no, how much time did they actually appear at the office? And so the records in time control are considered system, a system of record, you official record. And so uh time control itself doesn't have AI in the interface for end users. Where we see a demand, well, we see AI in our own use. We're using it for marketing. We use it for communications. We use it in coding. um All of that is part of our internal use. But where we see AI in the future for time control is in analytics. Once the data is in time control, how can we take advantage of it? And some clients have been doing that for quite a while because they've uh used time control for data mining. And then AI can take a look at that data and say, can we find trends? Can we find places where we can be more efficient?

And with all of this 40 years old experience that you've gathered over the years, what are some trends that you are currently seeing inside of your industry? Everything changes. That's the trend. That's the 42 year old trend. When we started, people were starting to put in computers and we were starting to put in networking and networked computers was a new thing and big hard disks was a new thing. And then that grew uh before we got out of the eighties. Suddenly uh there was interlinking between networks. New thing. Then the internet explodes in the nineties. New thing. I'm suddenly everybody wants to use a browser you are first one was mosaic and the next game which came out of it and so then you know new thing we did one of the very first mobile applications and then what no mobile is not ready back off but new thing you know now we're talking about a i this new thing and so i think you know for us the trend is be ready the trend is gonna change you know we don't. We are early adopters in many ways because of what we do. uh Project management has always been one of the very first uh software tools to be adopted on new platforms. It was one of the first things done on mainframes, one of the first things done on mini computers, one of the first things done on small computers, on mobiles. So we've had to stay up with trends all the time, but you can't get caught up in just being an early adopter. You have to understand that nothing is going to stay forever. So we're, you we are innovating all the time. AI, if I fast forward 10 years and we're talking about time controls 50th anniversary, we'll say, yeah, I remember the AI trend. Now it's, don't know. I'm not sure what that trend is going to be yet.

Okay, yeah, I love that answer that you didn't actually pick something specific and yeah, you're totally right. Everything changes. oh If we just, you know, go back one year ago, it was completely different and now it's completely different. So yeah, you've got a point there. And what's been working best in terms of marketing these days? Well, we have a holistic approach to marketing. My view for a very long time has been we have to be everywhere. And so we have very good brand awareness. um We have a website that was one of the earliest websites ever created, the HMS website. It's not going to mean much if you're young, I mean, uh the HMS website was uh about the, I think the 7,000th website listed by Yahoo. And so you go, well, so what? But at the peak, Yahoo was listing long before Google about 15,000 websites a day. So we were at the very, very earliest part of indexing curves. And so the indexing for time control, the search engine optimization, although it's constant work, but it has the history that goes back a really, really long way. We took a perspective that our website should be educational uh instead of a funnel. I'm so many websites now say I don't know you have go to a landing page and then you give me your contact info and then I'll give you a little bit more and then you give me more info and then I'll let you see a bit more. I never I never believed in that I always thought let them have everything let them see whatever we have and and if anybody else in the industry thinks they can keep up with our level of content generation then you know good for them let them try and so when you go to the HMS of time control website. You get access to all our white papers, our videos, all our screenshots, all the things that we know about the product. We also have a blog. We're also very active on social. And so we have to be kind of there all the time. And each thing cross-pollinates to the other. We've tried over the years. We've done everything. We've done direct mail. We've done handwritten letters. We've done uh direct telephone calls. We've done... You know email blasts and um and social media types we've really been every place and we'll continue if you go right now and say You know, what's the best timesheet to use with a project management tool? Like I don't know. Let's say primavera We're gonna be ranked very high because all of our content is visible to the AI engines and Not everybody else's is so I know right now. There's a lot of websites that are scrambling to go we're hurting in search engine optimization because of the shift to AI search engine optimization. I'm like, yes, of course you are because you didn't share everything. So they're now trying to open that up to much more so that people can be found. Right now, that's not my challenge.

Okay. Yeah. I love that approach. you know, sharing everything that you get and not gatekeeping anything. I see this all the time where, you know, people like to uh only give people some kind of snippets of the thing and then they put it under a paywall or something. It's yeah, it's great. now, right now those people are at a disadvantage because AI says, I'll report on it if I can find it, but if I can't find it, I will not. and so em if that was your strategy, you're probably changing that right now. We used to do a lot of in-person things. I mean, not so much of that anymore, but we would do in-person trade shows. We'd fly to Europe. We'd do a show in Paris. We'd fly over and do one in England. I'd go to Australia. We go, we did a lot of that. We used to use a lot of dealer networks where people would go out and shake hands with people that they knew and then promote our product. But things change. And so we have adapted. Just like time control has had to be very flexible, the company has had to be very flexible and nimble to change as the world does.

And Chris, with all this experience, is there anything that you would change about the project management software industry? I don't know if I would. mean, I have a remarkable life. I get calls on a regular basis to say, HMS, 40 years, aren't you tired of it? Can we buy the company? And the answer is no, the company is not for sale because I have a really good life. A lot of people create businesses to get out. They get in to get out. And I'm fine with that. If that's your thing, you're getting in, you're going to make it into a big, super high growth business. um and then sell it to somebody else and take the money and go do what you really want to do. I got in to stay in. I love this business. I, you know, we have people using their time sheets and they're working in companies that, you know, like AMD and Interpol and General Electric and, and people who put things into space and to put things under the sea and who cure disease. mean, the, their time using time control each week, is like five minutes a week. a tiny slice of their day, but we're a part of huge things. I'm not sure when I would be able to do something that would have that immense impact again. So project management is evolving. um know, we're what we watched it evolve in different companies. It's evolving at the big places like Microsoft, um who look at the industry and say, how do we maximize our value for shareholders? That may not mean how do I maximize functionality in project management, but we're keen to provide value when we appear. So that's really our focus.

And what's your vision for HMS software over the next few years? Well, continue. mean, we are continuing to grow. The company is, but we grow organically. We've been offered money numerous times and we're committed to be controlling our own fate. So, um so that gives us a lot of uh power to go in the direction that we want. We are adding more features to the product. I mean, you talked about AI. That's something that we are looking at now in upcoming versions, but it's not the only thing that we're looking at. And so we are looking to see where do we add value. Now you talk about AI and one of the questions I have for my staff. I think we could put it in today. We could do this and my question is great and what value with that at because if we're not adding value, yeah, I'm not interested in adding the cost because there's a real cost to the software publisher of implementing AI, but also I don't want to do it because it's you know it's a check mark because it's a fad. I want to do it because we're delivering something of value and the same with everything else we do. We look at. We look at interesting things to do with the company and with the products. We have now five editions of time control, some for industrial use, some for project management, some for on. Our online service has been going now since 2011. It's going to continue. We have most of our businesses now recurring revenue. There'll be more of that, I think, and we have yet more. mid to large size organizations who need what we have. So there'll be more growth and more product.

And wrapping this up, I would like to ask you like where can people find you? Where can they learn more about HMS software? Yeah, so I mean, the easiest thing is to go to timecontrol.com and uh that is, know, the links from there will go to everything else. There's also links to my blog, which is, you know, maybe harder to remember, epmguidance.com, but timecontrol.com is the starting point. Okay, well, thank you, Chris, for coming on to the podcast and we'll see you in the next one. Okay, thanks.