Interview with Dean Dorcas, CEO at Easy Metrics

In this interview, Dean Dorcas, CEO at Easy Metrics discusses how technological advances are enabling small businesses to compete with large enterprises, and shares why the cloud is boon that businesses cannot afford to ignore. Dean graduated #1 in Economics and in the top 1% of his class from the US Naval Academy. After spending five years as a Supply Corp Officer in the Navy, Dean founded IMS with his former classmate Dan Keto. Under their leadership, IMS was awarded as one of Washington State’s fastest growing companies in 2007. Dean is recognized as a leading expert in designing effective business intelligence applications for labor-intensive operations. In 2002, he graduated from the Owner/President Management Program (OPM) at the Harvard Business School. In addition to his professional and academic successes, Dean has also been a National Motorcycle Champion and a nationally ranked rower

TDE: Thank you so much for taking our questions! Tell us a little about your business and its history?

Dean Dorcas: Easy Metrics provides employee analytics software for labor intensive industries. The software focuses primarily on providing companies visibility into their Cost to Serve and employee productivity while also enabling Pay for Performance on an individual basis.  We initially developed the software for a company I co-founded which ran Distribution Centers for some of the country’s largest retailers.  The savings that were achieved using the software was so significant, that in 2013 we sold off the outsourcing company, spun off the software into its own company, and secured Venture Capital to fund our growth strategy.

TDE: What are your thoughts on the current pace of digital transformation in your industry? Do you feel overwhelmed with the prospect of introducing technology solutions to manage & streamline parts of your business?

Dean Dorcas: I am excited about the pace of transformation.

Technology has enabled smaller businesses to successfully compete against large competitors on an international basis.

I find cloud-based technologies significantly easier to implement and adopt and therefore the level of effort needed to drive change in an operation is less than it used to be.

TDE: What is the one technology trend within your industry that cannot be ignored?

Dean Dorcas: The Cloud. Our company has employees working seamlessly from all over North America. They are all connected via cloud-based software tools that enable constant communication and collaboration.  Our ability to quickly add new users or new tools is a major improvement over our previous server-based software programs.

TDE: What has been the most significant technology integration/implementation so far, at your organization? Why? (could have impacted your employee efficiency, customer satisfaction, profit margins etc.)

Dean Dorcas: We recently switched our server hosting from Amazon AWS to the Google Cloud Platform. This was a major project, but it came together without a glitch.  The main driver behind the change was the concern many of our distribution customers had of supporting Amazon, which they considered to be a direct competitor.  Additional benefits from the change included a 55% reduction in our server costs and increased speed of our software.

TDE: Do you have a dedicated in-house IT team? What are some of the challenges your IT team and employees faced before, during and after bringing in this solution? How did you resolve them?

Dean Dorcas: We outsource our IT support to a local service provider. In the past their role was more strategic since they managed all our internal servers, but now that everything we do is over the cloud their primary focus is on virus prevention and hardware support.

TDE: What’s the internal technology challenge your organization aims to resolve in the immediate future? (could be internal workflow/workforce automation or having internal operations such as CRM, HR, Inventory powered by front end mobile apps) 

Dean Dorcas: We currently use different systems for Sales & Marketing, Project Management and Software Development. We need to consolidate our workflow into a single system that seamlessly shares the information between our teams.

TDE: From an external viewpoint are you considering using mobility solutions/mobile apps to promote/sell your products online, or to promote/sell your products to your dealers and allow them to order online?

Dean Dorcas: We are an enterprise software solution that requires multiple steps in the sales process.

TDE: How do you keep yourself updated? What are some of the websites or magazines or apps that you subscribe to or read regularly?

Dean Dorcas: Trade magazines and asking a lot of questions when I have an opportunity to talk with a subject matter expert on a topic I am interested in.

TDE: What’s your favorite social network – Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?

Dean Dorcas: LinkedIn

For more insights follow Dean Dorcas on LinkedIn