Spieker Point
Evidence-based decision making is the key to helping Spieker Point‘s customers excel in their market and it is also the cornerstone that the company has successfully built their enterprise software upon. Spieker Point starts with a customer’s current data and uses it to recognize emerging patterns. Using predictive analytics and process automation techniques, they help their customers get early warning of troubles ahead and dodge them while they are still small and inexpensive and steer them towards better financial returns. The team aims for this balance point; the area of highest value that will facilitate the greatest improvement to one’s process, foresight and profitability.
The company’s name derives from inspiration by German mathematician and teacher Theodor Spieker, whose work in the 19th century inspired many of the following centuries’ great thinkers. Spieker Point has created systems and technologies that possess that same high level and theoretical thinking but with real-world applications that will improve a business by integrating business intelligence, analytics and improvement models into customer-focused applications.
DECK DecisionWare
“The last two fiscal years have brought us 72% revenue growth,” says Greg Campbell, CEO. “2016 was a really busy year for us, both in terms of extensions to our platform – DECK DecisionWare and working with new and exciting customers. The past year also saw us continue our expansion in Europe and we’ve begun operations in Brazil as well.”
Recent partnerships for Spieker Point include MSH INTERNATIONAL, a large third-party administrator insurance company. “We’ve built their product, MSH Aviator, on top of our DECK DecisionWare platform,” says Campbell “They sought us out as they were seeking to bring transparency to their customers, providing visualizations of operational data, and improving efficiency of employee benefits management in order to maintain their competitive foothold.”
With DECK DecisionWare, Spieker Point is showing their customers a very different path to establish business systems as they grow; allowing customers to apply a financial plan to solving their problem as it becomes available and becomes acute. This allows DECK DecisionWare to expand as their customer evolves with their business practices. “When we start a project, we often begin with an acute problem that a customer is facing that will yield great business value once resolved,” says Campbell. “After we quickly deliver a solution to that initial problem, we often hear customers tell us how surprised they were with the ease and efficiency of the system. This conversation repeats over-and-over as the customers continue to realize value.”
Their latest project involved a re-write of Registry Connect’s Renewal Reminder Service; the original product they had commissioned had a host of issues. Spieker Point’s DECK DecisionWare platform is providing the stability, scalability and reliable delivery service. It is expanding from 25,000 email and text messages a month for licence and registration reminder throughout the province of Alberta.
DECK Dynamic Case Management may be the most unique and disruptive of the 14 modules available inside DECK DecisionWare. “We developed it because it supports the way people and teams actually work,” says Campbell. “Business Process Management is great for supporting straightforward and highly predictable processes. When the complexity and unpredictability increases, it becomes progressively more difficult for the organization to automate, streamline and measure these activities.” DECK Dynamic Case Management to practically any industry, providing organizations with a flexible, faster and simpler way to manage both the structured and unstructured work to ensure that all aspects of a case is handled as efficiently as possible.
“It’s very exciting times as we’re in the midst of the “postmodern ERP” era,” says Campbell. “Organizations are looking for alternatives to traditional systems of record, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, that have ruled the enterprise software world for 20+ years. The problem with these ERP’s is that they’re not designed to play well with others systems, as they’re often referred to as a mega-suit. Neither do they support multiple user groups, support differentiating business processes, nor work seamlessly across platforms.”
Consequently, ERP projects have left cautionary tales of abandoned projects, massive cost overruns, reduced functionality, incompatibility with other system, etc. As a result, organizations are moving away from this model in favour of a postmodern ERP strategy – a federation of systems that provides more flexibility, agility and departmental specific functionality.
“We find it interesting that when we set upon the course of developing DECK DecisionWare in 2012, we did so because we wanted to solve a problem that we were seeing: medium sized businesses on a growth path were scared off by the big ERP projects,” says Campbell. “In 2014 we moved away from an internal sales force towards a global sales channel based on relationships with (typically) management consultants. This has given us access to customers globally.”
Very few visionary vendors are doing actionable analytics like Spieker Point has done in DECK DecisionWare. “As far as a differentiator goes, it feels like everyone is doing data dashboards, they’re table stakes at this point,” says Campbell. “When an analytics algorithm spots something of interest, it automatically triggers a business process inside of the software that combines automated actions with human actions and tasks for a quick response to an emerging situation.”
This can be as simple as a KPI hitting a high or low water mark, or something more advanced like a predictive forecast. Combining analytics with operational engines, such as Business Process Management, Compliance Monitoring, Dynamic Case Management and Contextual Collaboration is how DECK DecisionWare changes the game for Spieker Point’s customers.
“We’re continuing our expansion into Brazil, Europe and the U.S.,” says Campbell. “Our focus has always been on mid-size businesses as they are in a prime position to get the most out of DECK DecisionWare; as their size requires a large, agile solution while their IT budgets generally aren’t as large as their needs.”
The company is about to begin a remarkable contract out of the US; one that resonates with all of their ideals-the technical as well as social conscience. “It’s no accident that we’re seeing the growth we’ve seen in the last couple of years,” says Campbell. “If 2017 stacks up like our project roster shows us it will, we’ll be in a very interesting position to change people’s thinking on how business systems should be done.”
