Excerpts from a conversation with Marshall Handelsman, President, Cornerstone Systems Inc. and Ray Summers, Freelance Writer, August/2004

Ray: How big is the finishing, heat treating, and coating markets?

Marshall: We serve a small niche market. Across North America, there are about 3000 shops that can use our product.

Ray: Who is your competition?

Marshall: We have two types of competition.
One is the larger Job Shop Manufacturing software companies such as Job Boss, Vista, Visual Manufacturing. Basically, they are not designed for my customers and often create more work instead of making things easier. They are really designed for Contract Manufacturing. My customers are not their primary market. The other type of competitor is small one or two person companies. Often they have developed a package for a Finisher and are now trying to sell it. They tend to sell to the very small shops and come and go based on economic conditions. The last recession eliminated many of these companies. They simply don’t have the economic resources to ride out bad times. Also, being a small conservative market, the turnover rate on new systems is very low. To put it simply, there is no volume.

Ray: So what makes Visual Shop so successful?

Marshall: We do things differently. First off, we have a unique design philosophy. Visual Shop is essentially designed by our customers. It is the sum total of our customers’ ideas.

Ray: Who pays for the development?

Marshall: We have about a third of our customers that are constantly paying us to add new features. Once developed these new features become part of Visual Shop.

Ray: Why do they keep paying you?

Marshall: Because they keep coming up with better ideas as to how they can improve their business and they get results when they make the changes.

Ray: So your software is developed by your customers?

Marshall: Yes and these new features can be turned on and off by all our customers. So if one customer develops a nifty new report, they all can use it and benefit from it. Its like having 300 companies that are all more or less in the same business giving you their best ideas.

Ray: So is this the reason why your successful?

Marshall: Not entirely, but to follow up, the whole purpose of Visual Shop is to improve the overall operation of our customers’ business and to provide them with a Return On Investment. Our development philosophy achieves that goal for our customers. I believe that management software such as Visual Shop must be productive. It must earn its keep.

Ray: So what am I missing?

Marshall: The other side of software is support. Our support center consists of three full time people. Their primary function is keep our customers happy. I learned a long time ago that software is only as good as the support that is behind it. Our staff understands our customers business and knows how best to apply Visual Shop so that it will perform for them.

Ray: So you are saying that great support is the reason for your success.

Marshall: No, it is a combination of software, support, knowledge of what our customers are trying to do, and our ability to provide them with the solutions they are seeking. We make our customers more efficient.
We understand their business, their employees, and the environment they work in. This is what we do. We are here to put their ideas to work.

Ray: And this is something you can prove.

Marshall: Yes, we service a small market. We can’t afford mistakes, so we make it a point to communicate with our customers. We send surveys, hold user conferences, send out quarterly newsletters and generally stay in touch with our customers.

Ray: And you can prove this how?

Marshall: Customers have sent us letters thanking us, they have given us great written references, and even have given us Video references. I go to trade shows and customers continuously come over to me and tell me how great our product and support are.

Ray: What about price?

Marshall: We are not the cheapest. We might be the most expensive, but we are the best. The best is what is important to me.

Ray: Anything else?

Marshall: Yes, a lot of our customers wanted a turnkey package, so we started our technical services division which gives us the ability to provide both hardware and software to our customers.

Ray: One last thing, how big is CSI.

Marshall: We started in January of 1993 and currently have over 12 employees.

By: Ray Summers (August 2004)