Customer CARE- Going the Extra Mile!

Canary Labs has been known for its notable customer care since the start-up of the company. Being a software developer, Canary Labs understands dealing with other software companies and what makes Customer Care exceptional. No one likes hearing the message that someone will get back to you sometime in the next 3 days, discreetly meaning that they may believe it's not their problem and it will resolve itself in the next 3 days. No one likes having someone from a different country take you through the basic steps of reinstalling your original software, maybe because the person behind the phone believes that will fix your problem or at least make you go away. No one likes having to jump through hoops; it's inconvenient to be transferred from one department to the next before finally talking to someone who can even comprehend what you are talking about.

There are many frustrations that we have all encountered when working with a customer support department. At Canary Labs, we strive to make your Customer Care experience different. When talking with Canary Labs Customer Care, you are talking with experienced people that can quickly solve your problem, sometimes within minutes. If the problem is intermittent or requires more investigation, our support people have direct access to our developers. Problems are typically solved on the spot or within hours, in worst case scenarios it may take a day or two. Our longest outstanding item over the last 30 years took 3 days to solve, it was a difficult intermittent problem that was found to be a problem within a Microsoft operating system module. Our support team has a CRM database to track past problems and help our support team learn from previous experiences. Many times users will call Canary Labs first even though it may be another software’s problem, maybe because the user knows Canary Labs will talk with them and help confirm the problem. We treat our customers the way we would like to be treated. Sometimes the problem is not our problem, but if it affects the operation of the Canary Software, our Customer Care team is diligent to check it out!

"Nobody raves about average." -Bill Quiseng

Canary Labs builds diagnostic tools into certain software modules and provides more tools for data management and analysis such as network communications and where your data is between Canary modules such as the sender and receiver module when connected to satellites or networks that are not consistently running. We know how valuable your historical data is, we want to provide reliable data and tools to notify users of what is happening within their system or if configuration changes are made unexpectedly.

Canary Labs is not out to gouge you on customer support costs. Our objective is to provide extreme value to our clients while exceeding their expectations. We have had customers report an excess of a 10-fold return on their Canary 20K investment within months. We do our best to live out the phrase, "Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you". At the end of the day, as a company, are we giving more than we take? Canary Labs Customer Care strives to be excellent in its services and do what is right!

You Have No Need for a Historian

There are a good many reasons why you wouldn't use a historian, but we believe them to all be inaccurate reasons. Having a historian is an investment, a long term investment.

Think about this: When you're looking for a place to live, are you planning on renting where you live all of your life? Or are you going to buy something to own it? In the first case, you are putting out money each month and gaining nothing. In the second case, you're also putting out money but gaining something in the end. In the long run, wouldn't it be better to find something that was a bigger payment, but you knew would give you what you needed? It's the same when it comes to your business, especially when the product that you are buying will prove your company to be more efficient, leading you to an increase of profits.

When management is worried about controlling monthly maintenance costs (short term thinking) instead of getting to the root of the problems, they must change their focus to an investment of a historian which will show them what is really happening within their process. Instead of constantly putting out fires, correct the reoccurring problems that are costing money. Long term thinking is not for impatient people, you must be a visionary leader. If you choose to continually play it safe, you will get nowhere, and this thinking will only hinder you from acting on things that have potential to make you a better business. Business is all about taking calculated risks."Get-rich-quick" schemes won't work. Don't be a short term thinker! It will hinder you from seeing better results.

"My own view is that every company requires a long-term view." - Jeff Bezos (Founder, Chairman and CEO of Amazon)

Can you think of the problems that are holding you back from being a better company? If you are not aware of your trouble areas, how will they become fixed? Is your company working at its maximum speed and efficiency? Knowing where your specific problems are will be more helpful than seeing that you have problems without solutions.

Don't be afraid of change. It is more productive to have a historian logging your data rather than the "guess and check" method. New, better inventions would not have been created had it not been for forward-thinkers willing to take a risk.

In the end, our point is to say that a historian is only going to help you. Yes, it is an investment, but an investment that will help increase profits in the long run and overall make your company more efficient! 

Is Customer Support Really Necessary?

You may be thinking: Do I really need Customer Support? Or is this something I can skip to save money? You may believe it to be unnecessary, but in the long run, you are only hurting yourself and costing yourself more money. Protect your investment in our product by renewing your annual Canary Labs Customer Support subscription!

Let's say, for example, that our latest version of product was released and you saw a feature you wished to have, but your company is not under support. The only way to get that new version is to buy the product again. If you had been under support, you would have received the newest features at no additional cost. The cheapest way isn't always the best way, especially when your company is depending on the information provided by our products.

Like a life insurance policy, are you able to buy one after you are dead? Or a health insurance policy after you have become ill? Don't wait until it's too late to be covered by our Customer Support. Do you expect your outdated software to work when it was written years before the operating system was released?

The Canary Support team hard at work

Some customers only buy support from the companies they don’t fully trust or when they believe that their product won’t have a long-lasting life. They feel since Canary Labs is very reliable, they don’t want to waste money on product support for a product that will never need supported. This is the wrong way to look at our customer support, it is more than just product support, it is more like “upgrade insurance”. Without an active Customer Support subscription any help needed will be routed to your account manager rather than our professionals.

There are many benefits to keeping up to date on your support. Outdated software means trouble. With support, you receive all the new version releases, minor updates, fixes and enhancements. Need immediate help? You have access to technical email or live help desk support from our team of highly experienced support professionals.When a problem is too difficult to describe or has not been reproduced, we even use a remote web screen sharing session so that we can solve the issue with you directly on your computer.

If you are NOT a member of our Customer Support program, you will no longer receive updates, upgrades, or technical support. If and when you find that you need these essentials, you will regret not having kept your subscription up to date.

Here's the gamble: not renewing your Customer Support. You would have to hope that our software would last 7 years without needing any support or having become outdated to stretch your money to the furthest point. But in this day and age, technology is moving quickly. Imagine something technological created 7 years ago, it may work, but is it working as well as the things created just within the last year or two. You could make it work, but how efficient is it? 

Here is the real question: Can you risk NOT collecting data?

Trend Analysis Client- the Most Important Tool

Your historical data is highly valuable. The questions to ask is: how does one get the value from their historical data? The first step is making sure that you are collecting all the data you may possibly need in the future and collecting it at the correct frequency or resolution, depending on the type of data. For instance, temperature change does not typically change very rapidly meaning that a 10 second frequency would be fine. Pressures or values should be collected more often, around 1 time per second or faster depending on the application. Collection rates can be another detail discussion. The goal is to collect data without missing the key transitions within the data stream. This old saying speaks exactly what we are trying to portray: “How do you know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been?”.

The quickest way to make a return on your investment is utilizing a great trending application. The main purpose of the trend client is to empower those who use it, by providing easy access to the data and supplying information to allow good decisions to be made. Ed Stern states that early comments from customers are, “I am starting to understand what is really happening in my process based on what the data is telling me, not how I thought it was working.” Many people make assumptions on how the system may be working, but the data doesn't lie, it provides additional insight and discovery of nuances. A quality trending component displays whether equipment has been installed properly and is running at its fullest efficiency. Additional data is needed during start-ups to verify correct processes and expectations and to enable quick troubleshooting to make corrections.

Data analysis tools answer questions that had been unsolved before. What you thought was an equipment failure may have been an operator error. What measures can be put in place to keep it from happening again? How do we achieve better efficiency without harming the equipment? These should be questions you are asking. If plant personnel is provided with easy to use tools and access to the data, they can be a great asset to a company’s success. If the data is dependent on someone else or not readily available, productivity is lost.

The trend tool needs to be intuitive, easy to use, and have the ability to make ad-hoc changes. Predefined charts don’t cut it, they could be a good starting point but the user needs the ability to add additional tags or trends quickly. You should also have the capability to easily scroll back in time or look at different time intervals from minutes, weeks, or months of data. When these capabilities are present, the user will start asking questions and investigating the process for efficiency, long-term trends, and can come to intelligent conclusions based on data and not hearsay. This will lead to the next level of questions and may require utilizing additional capabilities such as calculated trends and alarm notifications as the user becomes more dependent on the data and its value. Ease of use means these trending tools can be learned within an hour or so via short training videos. The money saved on the purchase is wasted when time is lost at a week or more of training classes at the supplier's facility. 

Everything comes down to empowering the user with the data and tools needed to be productive. The monitoring of valuable assets and processes along with the investment of historian and trending tools will pay for itself many times over because of the operational information provided to the owners. When dealing with government agencies, a better trust relationship will be developed when the authorities know that the data is consistent and provides all the facts. The ability to allow user annotations contained within the data is also very helpful to explain data anomalies such as re-calibration of equipment to explain what happen in the data reports. When your data management is under control, offering you the answers you need, good decisions can be made to increase your business productivity instead of being in firefighting mode to keep the business running. Don't toil in vain, which is meaningless and striving after the wind. Choose tools that will improve your company's processes and productivity!

The 800 Pound Gorilla vs the Canary

This is a story about two companies, each sell similar products and services. Both companies have been around for many years and address a specific market niche. Each company has good products, loyal clients, and a high retention rate for repeat sales. The gorilla has an aggressive marketing department. The canary is singing a song of warning.

The gorilla is pushing company leaders to standardize on their products. The gorilla states they are a very successful company that collects, stores, archives, analyzes, and displays time series data. One person within the gorilla company claims they only make profit by having little to no competition. They also shared that they have a decrepit code base, poor communication, no innovation, and overall the company is flat. This is proof that the gorilla will tell others, even inside their company, inaccurate information to make it seem like they are the only company in the market. 

In the great free enterprise system we are in, sometimes the gorilla wins and sometimes the canary wins, all depending on which company best fits the needs of the client. The canary gets frustrated on projects when existing clients are blindsided with corporate standardization that has chosen the gorilla over the canary. The client is upset because they had not been notified, by their corporate management, of any evaluation or were allowed input, but were told to accept the results after the fact. Now the client needs to move many years of data from the existing canary system to the new mandated gorilla system. Being under support, the process can be done quickly with the canary tools at a minimal charge. When the roles are reversed, the gorilla needs to be fed with a lot of lettuce to use his tools.

Many companies are taking shortcuts and are not doing the proper evaluation process to determine what is the best long-term solution. The decision determines direction for 10 years. Once it is made, it is hard to reverse or admit it was a mistake. When a company decides to collect and utilize the value of historical data, do a full evaluation and focus on the important needs that are used daily. Don’t be distracted by the minor one-time decisions or listen to misinformation, do your research. For instance, the gorilla claims to have many direct connections that are more efficient than standard protocols. This may or may not be true. Has anyone challenged this? The gorilla claims they have many analysis tools, but in reality, it is their third-party partners that own these tools. These partners are not treated as partners, as pricing information is withheld from them. The partner is forced to only sell their part of the solution and not get anything for the total solution.

Don’t complain about the lettuce to feed the gorilla if you are not willing to make a change. Some companies make the canary fly through hoops and the gorilla may come back with pricing concessions. If you want competition in the market place, it is there. Do the proper evaluation; there are better companies and solutions available. Don’t believe everything the gorilla tells you. Make the long-term decisions that are best for your company, not what is comfortable for you for a short time.

In conclusion, bigger is not always better. The flexibility and personalized support of smaller organizations can provide a lot of value. It comes down to what your preferences really are: the grunting of the gorilla demanding lots of lettuce or the sound of the canary singing a sweet melody of valuable solutions. The choice is up to you: let those who have ears hear.

Success Is the Journey, Not the Destination

Ed Stern, the Vice President at Canary Labs, gives us some insight on his past experiences and how they have effected his work ethic and productivity in starting Canary Labs, with his brother Gary. While travelling across the United States by bike, Ed learned some tremendous, yet simple lessons that would play into his future career. You can read the full article on Ed’s blog.  

“I had just graduated from College with a degree in business administration and decided that I wanted to see the USA up-close before starting my business career. I joined a group called 'Wandering Wheels' and signed up for a Coast to Coast trip on a bicycle... yes, a bicycle! The trip was to last 6 weeks. 

The trip started in the Pacific Ocean, by dipping the back tire of the bike in the water. There were 5 or 6 people in about 10 groups that traveled together at a group pace. We tried to average about 100 miles per day, except for Sundays which was a light day, typically 50-75 miles.   

I chose the 2^nd fastest group to travel with. The support team checked between the teams and provided two meals a day and found places for us to stay at night. We slept in community centers, gyms, churches, and in the open west, camping in several large tents. We were responsible for one meal a day. 

I remember riding through and stopping at several great landmarks in downtown Washington, DC. Our group of 50 bikers would draw a crowd when we stopped and many people would inquire about what we were doing. It was always a great opportunity to interact with the people of America, being an encouragement while finding that we were encouraged at the same time.    

What I learned from this trip was something that I would use for the rest of my life, the encouraging fact that big things and hard tasks can be accomplished. It took consistency to climb on the bike seat every morning, but soon it became routine. Likewise in business, when you keep doing the right things, be consistent and disciplined and soon enough, your goal will be accomplished. It was a reminder to not be overwhelmed by the weight of the task, but dividing it up daily to complete your goal. I have also learned that the important thing in life is the journey and experience, enjoy the moments and hard work that life demands instead of wishing life away to get to the end goal. Success is the journey, not the destination. It is nice looking back on the overall accomplishment for a little while, but then it’s time to move on to your next goal!"

How Long is a Nanosecond?

Grace Murray Hopper was born in December 9, 1906. Grace became a very important part of the computer industry and had many accomplishments due to her uncommon way of thinking.

Grace completed a degree in mathematics at Vassar College and became a college professor, but continued to study at Yale. She later earned a PhD in Mathematics and was one of the very few women to gain that accomplishment.

When World War II came around, Grace felt compelled to join the Navy. Specifically the Navy because it had been the branch that her grandfather served in. Because of Grace's mathematical background, she was assigned to program the first computer in the United States, the Mark I. Even after the war, when she continued in the Navy, she was assigned to work with the Mark II and Mark III computers. In 1952, Grace helped create the first compiler which led to a common language for computers to understand, called COBOL. This language is still used today.

Hopper retired from the service in 1966, but was recalled to active duty because of her pioneering computer experience. Grace worked another 19 years, but then retired again as a rear admiral and was the oldest serving officer.

"Google Doodle" Image for Grace's 107th Birthday

As a professor, Grace would teach her students that they must learn how to communicate math to others and thus made her students write essays on mathematical formulas. Because she had learned how to communicate things so well, Grace was given the task of writing the manual for the Mark I.

Grace popularized the term "bug" and "debugging". A moth had been smashed in the electromechanical relay in the Mark II machine. When the bug was found, it was taken out and taped to the log book, written beside it, "first actual case of a bug being found".

Making terms easily understood was something Grace found highly important. She wanted a concrete way for others to understand how fast a nanosecond(a billionth of a second) was. The maximum speed that electricity can travel in a billionth of a second is almost 1 foot, 11.8 inches to be exact. When an admiral would complain that it took long to send a message by satellite, Grace would explain that there were a very large amount of nanoseconds between that place and the satellite. Although Grace Murray Hopper died in 1992, she is still an inspiration to many women in computing.

 She was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. 

Gary Stern, the President of Canary Labs and our most experienced engineer, had the opportunity to be an intern for Grace Hopper in the summer of 1976. He wrote code for mini-computers which were "cheaper" at that time, around $200,000 rather than a million for a regular computer. The mini computer was the size of a single equipment rack. Gary worked on a COBOL compiler for these mini computers. "She was a forward thinker and claimed that mini computers would be short-term. Grace had already moved on to microcomputers and networking. This was something that was 10 years ahead of us." said Stern, "Grace knew that things needed to get smaller and faster."

While working in the Pentagon, Grace would have office workers call her when there was open time on their mainframe. Gary Stern said, "Grace thought there was so many things wasted in the Pentagon, so she told us to find stuff that wasn't being used."

Something that Gary found odd while working for Grace was the type of questions that she would ask, she wouldn't ask how a project was going. She would ask how you were, followed by, 'have you done a crossword puzzle today?' "I don't think that I had ever done a crossword puzzle before in my life until I started working for Grace. A bunch of us would all work on a crossword puzzle together with Grace at lunch." Gary told me. He never knew why the crossword puzzles were so important to her. That goes to show that Grace was one-of-a-kind, she had a unique and rare mind.

"That summer I valued getting to know Grace and it opened many doors for me in the future."

“People have an enormous tendency to resist change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that.” -Grace Murray Hopper

Citations:
1. McCann, Allison. "The Queen of Code." FiveThirtyEightLife. 28 Jan. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-queen-of-code.
2. Isaacson, Walter. "Grace Hopper, computing pioneer." Harvard Gazette. 3 Dec. 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/12/grace-hopper-computing-pioneer.
3. "Grace Hopper ." Biography.com. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. http://www.biography.com/people/grace-hopper-21406809.
4. "Grace Hopper." Wikipedia. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper.