Happy Birthday Sospes!

Sospes turns five years old next week and what a remarkable experience it has been.

It is humbling to consider our team’s progress since we delivered our first products:

There are thousands of employee users in our system,

working over 1.5 million hours per month,

in 280 facilities around the country.

Each month they submit 8,100 reports of observations, close calls, incidents, inspections and other forms.

Those reports lead to 270 preventative/corrective actions each month, that result in safer and more productive workplaces.

Our customers have a combined TRIR of 1.8%.

They have experienced an average IRR from their investment in Sospes of 70%, and the average time to payback has been 9 months.

I recently read a J.P. Morgan study that said over half of new businesses fail in their first five years of life.  That is hardly a surprise to anyone who has started a company, which is a lot like starting a family: while planning, we have very specific expectations of where we are going and how we will get there, and a high level of confidence that our plans matter.  Then you start the project, and the only phrase that comes to mind is the old Yiddish saying, “Man plans and God laughs”.

So how has Sospes beaten the odds?  The old-fashioned way: our passionate and committed team built a great product and provides customer service second to none in our industry.  And as we have grown, the members of our user community provide each other value by contributing ideas and suggestions to the continuous development of product enhancements and usability.

What will the next five years look like for Sospes?  I would like to say more of the same, but we all know that the future is unlikely to look like the recent past.  Even before COVID-19, there were forces at work driving modernization of safety systems and the way forward-thinking companies think about their processes.  One clear trend is the deeper integration of safety with operations, which means that safety systems must directly support continual improvement activities across the organization.  Another is the probable need to maintain remote workers, support new workflows and reduce direct worker contact.

In any case, the role of flexible and agile software systems has never been more important, and we are excited to be emerging as a leader with those skills.   So with appreciation to our Sospes user community and all the Sospes Team: Thank you all and Happy Birthday Sospes!