UC4 software helps companies keep jobs on schedule

BROOMFIELD – Maybe CU’s football team is entertaining, but the school’s information technology capabilities – while perhaps not as winning as an 80-yard touchdown pass – are scoring points with administrators.

The University of Colorado is using software that has added some serious yardage to its behind-the-scenes work flow, according to Andrea Merrill, manager of production services for all of the school’s management systems on all campuses.

And while the new software doesn’t promise to help the football team win more games, it does manage all the school’s human resources, finance and student information. “I wish it did help us win more games, but it does help me, my staff and the school quite a bit,” Merrill says. “The best thing you can say about job-scheduling software is that nobody notices. When everything goes perfectly and smoothly, that’s an indication of success.” The university runs about 25,000 to 30,000 “jobs” a month, everything from banking transactions to class registrations and records management.

Last year the school began looking for software vendors to help it streamline its information. After interviewing “several well-known companies,” Merrill says CU chose UC4 Software Inc., a Broomfield-based IT automation company, because of its sole focus on automation. The lesson for some IT businesses? It’s OK not to offer a bunch of services. UC4:global is the company’s only product

. “We’re a one-product company,” says Mark Loehr, chief operating officer at UC4. “We do one thing, and we do it very well.” And to him and the company’s management, that’s a plus. “It helps us stay focused,” he says. “We have to do it the best because we don’t have anything else to fall back on. We’re a boutique vendor.”

Apparently the strategy is working. The company made $24 million in revenues in 2004 and then jumped to $31 million in 2005. Plus, in the first quarter of 2006, it witnessed 80 percent growth over the first quarter of 2005. “We had nine sizable deals in that first quarter,” Loehr says. “And since then, we’ve closed 14 more deals. We’re doing something right.”

The company began operations in Broomfield in 2003 with just four employees in a 1,200-square-foot office. This December its 23 full-time employees are moving to an 8,000-square-foot office in the same complex in Broomfield.

Loehr says universities, many of which are state run, often seek simple information technology solutions because they lack staff. “I think our product is especially good for universities because they’re always looking for technology that simplifies their work,” Loehr says. “Most are running on as little staff as they can get by with.” Columbia University and the University of Arkansas also use UC4:global. “In the public sector we have limited resources, and this software’s ease of use does help,” Merrill says.

But universities are just one of many kinds of UC4 Software customers – it has more than 750 – and many are well-known Fortune 500 companies including Mattel, Cadbury Schweppes, T-Systems, American Suzuki Motor Corp. and the Mayo Foundation.

Loehr says a good chunk of demand for UC4:global comes from the fact that large corporations, especially when they merge with another company, often find themselves with a fragmented information technology infrastructure littered by several operating systems and platforms. “I’d say it’s a very common problem in business today, especially among the larger corporations when they acquire other companies, and that’s where we can simplify things and offer just one solution for their entire enterprise,” Loehr says. “We support all different platforms and operating systems.”

He says, for example, when Mattel, Fisher Price and American Girl all merged, the company ended up with three different vendors but wanted one solution.

 Loehr categorizes his company’s competitors into two slots: contemporary and legacy. He says contemporary competitors, such as Tidal Software and AppWorks, also focus on job scheduling along with other offerings. Loehr says the legacy competition, IBM and Computer Associates, is not particularly focused on job scheduling.

“We’ve been very impressed with UC4, and we’ve had such a good experience,” Merrill says. “We were looking for some really specific things like a user-friendly interface and proven customer support, and they’ve delivered on both.”

She adds that the UC4 support team can supply scripts that “are pretty basic so you don’t have to be a programmer” to use them. “They’ll write it up with exact details on what to do and send it to you,” Merrill says.

She says CU is about 85 percent converted to UC4. She particularly likes the color-coded, flow-chart applications the best. “It’s easy to see what’s happening in any given application because each job is color-coded – green means an application is running, red means it has stopped and yellow means it has been delayed,” Merrill says.

on Facebook on LinkedIn