Vol XI No. 24 - Suntower Systems

Nollaigh Shona Dhuibshe!

An Irish Wish For A Happy New Year

May the new year bring you and yours every success and happiness.

Address Change!

A reminder. And a last minute alteration. For the past month we’ve been announcing our administrative office has moved to northern Seattle. What we’ve since learned is that there has been a bit of a re-shuffle in the Seattle postal system, so we’re now forced to give out a slight change to our change of address or risk getting your letters returned.

Suntower Systems

PO Box 1643
Mukilteo, WA 98275

Note that it is no longer acceptable to use ‘Seattle’ for the city. Apparently, ‘Mukilteo’ (a northern bit of town) is now considered an independent entity as far as the postmaster is concerned. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Through the magic of VOIP, the phone and fax numbers remain, respectively, (206)878-0578 and (206)428-6035.

Ciaran’s Corner: Out With The Old (The New Year Rant!)

Another year another… what? We’ve been at this game now for twenty five years. Twenty five years. Amazing. The ‘brokerage’ industry we started providing software for back in 1988 no longer exists, having been replaced by ‘forms management’ then ‘document management’ then ‘print services’ and now… Who knows what’s next.

We’ve all been hearing about paperless offices and form workflows for so long now that many of us are inured to it. The business world has definitely changed and many fortunes risen and fallen. Many of our customers have merged, many of our competitors’ customers are now our customers and many really large customers of yours decided to cut out the middle man entirely and become their own ‘providers’ of print management.

The thing that has struck me is how wrong has been virtually every initial prediction of the future. The survivors have been those who guessed wrong… and then kept on guessing wrong (in new ways) until they hit on something that worked. Many have also done pretty well by sticking to the same traditional model, but those of you that are doing that are largely marking time, realizing that it isn’t a business that can be ‘passed on’. Coming into 2010, I don’t know that anyone has a clearer view of a future direction for this industry than in 1988. It seems that change has been the name of the game in this business since we started writing SAFE and will continue to be so. That makes it very challenging for us to make a system that continues to meet your ongoing needs.

OK, So What Is It This Year?

What I hope you will do as part of your New Year’s Resolutions and business planning is to take ten minutes and think about what you’d like us to do for you. If it’s something new that you’ve only vaguely considered, pass it on anyway. We’d love to hear it! If it’s some detailed idea for improving workflow, that’s great too. If it’s the same stuff we’ve been doing, but you just need it done better in some way, also great.

Like you with your customers, we have to plan our development months and sometimes years ahead of time. We have to anticipate your needs, even when you aren’t in a position to quite articulate them. But the more feedback we get from you, the higher the percentage of hits vs. misses.

I hope you’ll give us that ten minutes this year amid all the other things you have to do to make your business successful in the next few weeks. I promise you that if you do that for us, we’ll make sure it is the best ten minutes of business planning you’ll spend all year. Even after twenty five years, we’re still just as excited to help our customers succeed and with your help this year will be the best ever… for all of us.

Ciaràn Marron

Technical Support Manager

cm@suntowersystems.com