Founder's Blog

I admire companies that are leaders. Common traits they have include understanding and qualifying risks, not accepting the status quo, listening to customers and understanding the difference between features and benefits.

Even though I am a stauch PC proponent, I have become a big user of APPLE’s itune service. They broke out of the pack of companies trying to commercialize music downloads for money. I am very impressed with how Netflix seems to stay one step ahead of Blockbuster for online movie rentals.

One of TRADITION SOFTWARE’s 10 Core Business Values is leadership. “As a company, we will set the standard in our markets by having the best product, at the best price with the best customer service and technical support.”

This daily commitment has resulted in a significant new feature in PreLien2Lien which will benefit all users in 2009. The Lien Reminder (LR) system, co-developed by myself and Miriam Liskin, is a new part of the PROJECT tab, helping guide users towards significant state lien deadlines.

The first phase of the system will focus exclusively on private (Commercial and Residential) deadlines. As the year progresses, reminder capability will be added for Public jobs.

All PreLien2Lien2Lien users can benefit from using the Lien Reminder system. States with first notice deadlines like CA, AZ, MI (20 days), OH (21 days) NV (31 days), and FL (45 days) allow zero forgiveness to file a lien later on if the first notice is not delivered. The lien reminder system will calculate how many days you to deliver the notice from the first date equipment, labor, materials or services are provided to the jobiste.

Owners and General\Prime Contractors can shorten the lien timeframe by filing a Notice Of Completion. AZ, CA, NV and MA are just a few of the states that the Lien Reminder system will calculate the revised lien deadline when a Notice Of Completion recording date is entered.

Also, deadlines often are shorter for Existing\New Residential projects compared to Commercial projects. Several states, including AL, MO, NY, OH, TX and VA fall into this category.

There is always a business challenge when faced with picking a technology company that will become the branded partner for your company and its products. An example is our use of the industry standard Installshield Windows installer for PreLien2Lien. It is well respected by the majority of professional IT people who either use it by default when installing software or like TRADITION SOFTWARE licenses it for use in their products.

Our company reached a decision recently to add a licensed GOOGLE custom search button to all 600+ pages of the TraditionSoftware.com website.  After paying the yearly Annual Subscripton fee, it took a half day of myself and Miriam Liskin playing around with the HTML that exists for the search button and finding the right permanent home on our website so that it could appear in the same location across our 600+ content pages that currently comprise the site.

I have test the results, and will say the accuracy has been very solid. Perhaps the greatest benefit lies in the fact that you articulate what sites you would like queried. For us, it is our main site, the ecommerce section that has 200+ products for purchase and this blog.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday break I got on my computer more than I would have liked to. I tasked Miriam Liskin, Software Development Manager for TRADITION SOFTWARE, the project of adding the capability of PreLien2Lien to print to DYMO desktop label printers. I drafted a goal of January 2009 for this new feature to be both developed and implemented successfully.

To my pleasant surprise she got done in two days a fully functioning DYMO print button on each of the legal party tabs to print a individual label. She also designed a DYMO mass print option from the LABELS drop down menu, and a DYMO print menu in the CURRENT JOBS view that prints labels for only those legal parties entered for the current PROJECT being viewed.

DYMO’s printers can be purchased from most office supply retailers for around $200. TraditionInk.com, a Division of TRADITION SOFTWARE, has the LabelWriter Twin Turbo available for online purchase for only $184.99. Easy postage and mailing label print capability is included via a USB connection to your PC.

I can’t say enough good things about Miriam and what she has meant for the development and subsequent improvement of PreLien2Lien. Smart people like her can be tough to find sometimes, but if you surround yourself with as many of them as you can find, success will often result.

I met with twenty-two (22) customers in three days on my recent customer onsite training trip to the following metro areas in Southern California (Irvine, San Diego, Riverside).

Two of my customers had some form of visual impairment.  I realized that PreLien2Lien needed to be improved for those users, so I asked Miriam Liskin, Software Development Manager, to make the software open up maximized in large type by default.

This can happen automatically in two ways.  First, if you maximize the CURRENT JOBS FILE the type will appear in 12-16 point type font.  The program will remember to reopen maximized the next time it is opened by the user.  Secondly, the setting to set PreLien2Lien to open all windows maximized can be found in the SETUP<SETUP DEFAULTS screen by selecting the ”Open Forms Maximized” checkbox.

Simple change, but for those users who need it, it helps them do their jobs more effectively. I doubt we would have made this the priority it became if we did not make an effort to visit our customers.