Nov 15, 2022
Agile + Intelligence = Agilence Using Data to Run Your Company & Prevent Loss w/ Russ Hawkins - BRT S03 EP57 (156) 11-13-2022
What We Learned This Week
- Agile + Intelligence = Agilence, bringing great data analysis to companies
- How to Read Data – managers need easy to read and quality data to make quick decisions for multiple locations
- Reports – that provide the data points that show when locations are operating properly, or off the average expectations
- Agilence will continue organic growth, and make acquisitions of adjacent data analytics companies
Guest: Russ Hawkins, CEO Agilence
Agilence is the leader in data analytics and reporting in the retail, restaurant, grocery, convenience, and pharmacy industries. We develop intelligent data analytics and reporting technology that enables organizations to easily connect the dots within their stores or restaurants by automatically collecting and summarizing data to identify anomalies and trends that can improve operations, measure enterprise-wide performance, and boost profits.
Agilence provides users with a complete view of their business, empowering them to make informed decisions faster and improving efficiency across the enterprise.
Bio:
Russ Hawkins is the President and CEO of the leading data technology company, Agilence. Russ has spent over 35-years in the technology industry, helping established organizations and small start-ups reach their full potential by driving change from the "inside."
Russ is responsible for developing the overall strategy and leading the growth of SAAS Analytics & Reporting company Agilence, which helps retailers, grocers, and restaurants improve their operational effectiveness and uncover preventable losses using the data already in their hands.
Before Agilence, he transformed two early-stage technology companies into successful businesses by leading go-to-market strategies focused on product development, re-brands, and customer profile analysis resulting in exponential growth and success.
He was President and CEO of SilverStorm Technologies, a developer and manufacturer of high-performance computer networking equipment, from 2004 until 2006, when he sold the company to QLogic Corporation.
Before SilverStorm, he was the President and CEO of Paragon Networks, a developer of wide-area backhaul solutions for wireless networks, which he sold to Carrier Access Corporation in 2003. Before Paragon, Russ spent 15 years at Lucent Technologies in various management positions.
In his free time, Russ enjoys golfing, reading and is interested in the conservation of water resources. He graduated from Boston College in 1980.
Notes:
Seg 1
Agile + Intelligence = Agilence
Data Analytics
Companies are awash in data and need to determine how to read the data for it to be useful for daily and monthly business decisions.
Agilence was founded in 2006 to deal with the loss prevention space using video technology to monitor. They would look at anomalies in data as well as check transactions using video to watch.
In 2008 Russ Hawkins was hired by the investors. Re-organized the company and the data analytics and shifted the focus of the company to data.
Agilence software is used by customers with multiple locations, for example a client could have 12 to 100+ stores. Some of their biggest clients are CVS and Dollar Tree.
These companies have an HQ that might be across the country that is watching over hundreds or thousands of stores. They need to be able to read the data on all the stores in 1 place. They need easy to use tools to analyze this data.
The data helps them with merchandising, operations, HR, and loss prevention.
Seg 2
Agilence provides at least 6 data fields for customers to review within their company.
- POS or point-of-sale transaction logs
- E Commerce transaction logs
- HR log of employees
- store info for the physical location
- item file for products and
- loyalty information for customer programs
These 6 items or data feeds are going to the cloud.
It is not uncommon that a client could have 20 data sources, other examples could be a P&L for accounting, or supply chain information.
The Pandemic really affected the impact on E-commerce and it is going to grow more in the future.
Angilence provides best practices to clients for review to use the data daily. Questions are set up to ask of the data when things seem off, then the system alerts Managers, usually through email.
Common things they are looking for or fraud or a lost product,
- daily sales performance, performance of a special sale or
- cost dealing with loss prevention.
- Compliance public co - external and internal
Seg 3
Compliance – Agilence is perfect to handle compliance needs
Standard deviation and mean stats, measure data versus normal margins
Example would be comped meals at a restaurant, send notifications based on what normal expectation is, is the Manager comping too many meals, too few?
External Compliance is legal product and laundering or fraud
Example in the pharmacy biz could be doctor shopping and the downside is fraud or even in jail
Internal Compliance strategy and alignment to execute at all the locations what HQ wants
It’s a leadership test as most companies are managed by a professional manager these days and not the Founder anymore
Per Russ, facts are our friends, and companies need facts on the ground to determine if the locations are executing, or is the CEO plan viable?
Alerts and automatic analysis exceeded objectives and give info and advice and orders to managers at stores. It’s like automatic management for each individual store manager. Gives them commands like if this happens then do this.
Managers and store locations are managed with an alert function. Example is Spirit Halloween stores that are open for 4 months out of the year and there are 12 different monitor points per store. Since stores are set up quick it is hard to do fall on management training.
Seg 4
Russ background is in sales and technology. He started his career in Boston selling for a New England bell telephone. In 1990s he shifted to tech and computers.
He was recruited by a VC to Agilence. They worked together to raise money.
Client onboarding usually takes 3 weeks to 2 1/2 months. Agilence has a team of 70 and makes $20 million in recurring revenue a year.
Currently they have 200 customers, with over 4000 companies as possible customers
Agilence has a virtual company with limited offices. On their staff they have 20 developers and 20 customer service reps. They are mature company, that is self sustaining, VC backing is not needed as much now.
There are 3 stages to a tech company with investment, the 1st is the seed stage, then the series a thru D investment rounds, then a sale or IPO. Private Equity acquired Agilence in 2021
Tech companies go through sales steps of $0 to 1 mil, which is extremely difficult, than $1 to 10 mill a year in sales which is also very hard, and then once you reach $10 million it’s almost inevitable that you will get to $100 million a year in sales.
Agilence plan is to continue their organic growth, as well as also do growth by acquisition and acquire adjacent data analytics companies.
They run the company through cloud storage with major companies like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure. Agilence also has its own data center.
Future potential markets for agile wants to work with, are and Insurance and banking
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