Remember the sign for the resort where you stayed in Las Vegas? Okay, maybe not. But you weren’t the only one on the Las Vegas Strip with South Carolina ties. That sign was made by Young Electric Sign Company out of Salt Lake City, a manufacturer that uses software produced by Greenville’s Jobscope Inc. to track production, billing, and cash flow.
For 30 years, Jobscope has quietly built a customer base that extends across the United States, Canada and into many European countries plus Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Beijing and Singapore. Jobscope grew out of manufacturing when Hunter Park, who operated M.P. Husky and Engineered Products in Greenville, saw a need in the late seventies for an application to help the companies with business processes. Hunter and those who collaborated with him knew that if they had a need, there were probably others out there in the marketplace needing the same thing. Jobscope was founded out of that need, selling software to companies with a niche in engineer to order and make to order manufacturing.
Today, the same parent company owns Jobscope, M.P. Husky, and Engineered Products, and though Jobscope is firmly committed to its Upstate home, most of its customers are located far from its Woodruff Road headquarters. That doesn’t mean that customers don’t visit once in a while. Every year, Jobscope invites clients to Greenville for a two-day advisory council. The company presents what’s been done over the previous year along with plans for the future, but clients do more than listen. Their role is to give feedback, and their ideas are heard. “We give them about 50 percent of our development roadmap,” says Hank Sanders, Jobscope’s president since 2007. “We feel that those who use the system every day have very good ideas about how to enhance it, and so we give a lot of our development roadmap to our client suggestions.”
One of the ideas to grow out of the annual advisory council was unveiled internally recently. On October 20, Jobscope employees met over lunch, and Jobscope Mobile was introduced. Then, rather than sit through training in the office, employees were divided into teams, equipped with iPads, and sent downtown, where they went on a scavenger hunt, completing steps that required them to use the company’s latest tool. The first task took teams to The Graphic Cow, where they answered questions, filled out a form, and had it signed by a Graphic Cow employee. Once that task was complete, members received a Jobscope Mobile T-shirt. At each stop along the way, they accessed data directly from the iPad, just as their clients will when they use it for CRM, reports, field services, and inspections. The day of team building and hands-on training ended with ice cream and a review of the new tool’s capabilities at Spill the Beans.
Jobscope Mobile came about when customers said they want to get access to the data they need, they want it quickly, and they want it no matter where they are. American Crane & Equipment Corporation, for example, wants project managers to be able to walk through the plant with nothing but an iPad and be able to tell where their jobs are in production. “Pushing data out to users through the web through better user interface and better reporting tools is something that was a collaboration between our own view of where things needed to go and our clients asking for things from us, too,” Sanders says.
Sanders spent 10 years at Datastream (now Infor) before his search for a small company dedicated to customer service led him to the opportunity at Jobscope. He likes the fact that the company sells software but considers that just the first step. “We put a lot of focus on the implementation and the ongoing support,” he says. “When somebody calls in for support, they don’t get sent to a queue or call center. They get a real person on the phone who can answer the question on the spot. It’s not the cheapest way for us to do business, but we feel that it provides the value that customers want.”
As a result, Jobscope has retained many clients for decades. Among its longest running client relationships is Par Systems, an automation equipment manufacturer based in Minnesota, and Mayfran International, a material handling equipment manufacturer based in Cleveland, OH. Employees have a tendency to stick around, too. Though the norm in technology-related firms is to move from job to job, Jobscope has employees who’ve worked with the firm for decades. They have personal ties to the company, Sanders says, and they want to see it succeed. And succeed it has, even in tough economic times. Jobscope recently reached its 112th straight month of profitability, a difficult feat when you sell to manufacturing, and the sector is suffering.
During the roughest period of the recession, some sales jobs were shifted to partners throughout the country, while Jobscope was able to retain its support and services staff. Over the past 12 to 18 months, the company has seen things pick back up, and currently Jobscope is in a hiring mode, expecting to add ten to twenty employees over the next couple of years in sales, development, support and consulting services positions.
Technology has taken the company in new directions. Moving from HP 3000 to AS400 to the Windows environment, the company’s evolution has been through the platform and product enhancement. Jobscope Mobile adds mobile web based technology to expand the total solution offering.
Jobscope Mobile’s internal introduction was a team exercise because the company operates with a team-based culture. And it was a different take on training that fits the company’s focus. “I describe us as a start-up company with 30 years of experience,” Sanders says. “We’re growing, we’ve doubled our new client additions year after year, and we’ve been very fortunate. In addition, we have retained our existing clients – a true measuring stick of our customer service. That’s absolutely a result of the people who work here.”