Environmental, Health & Safety Compliance | Page 17 of 32

Can your EHS software vendor share SaaS system performance statistics in real time? Across all customers?

EHS SaaS Multitenancy explained and why it matters.

There is a considerable degree of (intended) confusion in the EHS software space when it comes to cloud computing and multitenancy. If your software vendor cannot share statistics in real time like shown in the figure nearby, most likely they do not run on a multitenant SaaS platform.

The real-time information on system performance and security of SaaS cloud platform is the most important element that frequently gets overlooked during EHS software selection process. Success in the cloud is built on trust. Trust starts with transparency.
Our real time status monitoring (ran by an independent provider of web monitoring services) provide transparency around service availability and performance for Locus’ EHS SaaS products.
Just as with airlines that fly through clouds, our entire business is built on trust and security of our cloud offerings. Over 700,000 locations around the globe trust Locus to safeguard their data in the cloud.

Cloud Computing
Since the turn of the millennium, cloud computing has revolutionized the landscape of the computing world because it provides enterprise-grade computing resources that are affordable and instantly available. Clouds provide straightforward access to IT resources—you just access as many resources as you need when you need them, and never have to deal with the complexities of managing all of the underlying infrastructures that provide those resources. EHS manager job is suddenly a lot simpler and easier with cloud computing. You don’t even need help from IT department (if you don’t want it).

Multitenancy

Multitenancy is the fundamental technology that clouds use to share computing resources cost-efficiently and securely. Just like a bank—in which many tenants cost-efficiently share a hidden, common infrastructure, yet utilize a defined set of highly secure services, with complete privacy from other tenants—a cloud uses multitenancy technology to share IT resources securely among multiple applications and tenants (businesses, organizations, etc.) that use the cloud. Some clouds use virtualization-based architectures to isolate tenants; others use custom software architectures to get the job done. The multitenant design of a cloud service can have a dramatic impact on the application delivery and productivity of an IT organization, yet most CIOs, CTOs, system architects, and developers who use clouds don’t give it a second thought because it’s all magic that transparently happens behind the scenes.

Locus Platform is the proven cloud application development platform that powers popular Locus cloud EHS and Sustainability applications as well as custom applications that customers build to satisfy their specific EHS+S requirements.

Carollo Engineers selects Locus SaaS for water quality management

Locus SaaS will streamline entire continuum of water activities for one of the largest water firms in the US that specializes in the planning, design, and construction of water and wastewater facilities

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 24 October 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in multi-tenant SaaS EHS and water quality management software, is pleased to announce that Carollo Engineers (Carollo), one of the largest firms in the country focused exclusively on water projects, selected Locus EIM SaaS as its water quality management software. Carollo also subscribed to the Locus Platform SaaS for mobile-enabled asset management.

“Managing water quality data is critical to our clients’ projects,” said Justin Sutherland, Manager of Carollo’s Water Applied Research Center (Water ARC). “Water ARC is a new service provided by Carollo that integrates and enhances our capabilities to collect this data through field analytical, pilot testing, and laboratory-based treatability testing services. Key parts of this new service will be our improved management of field analytical and pilot testing equipment, nationwide, with Locus Platform and streamlined collection and analysis of various data sources with Locus EIM. Incorporating these innovative tools in our project work will help us achieve a higher level of efficiency in managing quality data for our clients.”

Locus EIM is a comprehensive water quality management software, designed to manage mission-critical water quality and related subsurface and surface data by helping organizations gather, organize, manage, report, and visualize sampling, analytical, and subsurface data for compliance and assurance reporting. Locus’ software serves a variety of vertical markets including water, oil and gas, power-generating utilities, and food and beverage. Locus EIM and Locus Mobile pair together to create a viable modern cloud platform that is particularly well suited for water markets.

“Our mission is to help organizations like Carollo achieve their water quality management and environmental stewardship goals, by providing them the centralized software and tools to control and manage data and complex workflow process for water-related projects,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus. “Our EIM cloud-based software for water quality management provides our customers with a highly scalable and a feature-rich application. It gives water companies strong analytical power, streamlined field sampling capabilities, and mobile collection tools, as well as compliance management and reporting. We are pleased Carollo will be utilizing EIM, Locus Mobile, and Locus Platform to ensure that their customers are provided with the highest quality water projects possible.”

“Corporations today want to invest into one environmental and sustainability solution that offers scalability, system flexibility, and user friendliness, while at the same time, achieve operational cost reductions and improve their environmental stewardship,” said Jennifer Peterson, Vice President of Commercial Accounts at Locus. “Our mission is to help organizations like Carollo advance their innovative technology desires for streamlining data collection and reporting goals by providing them with the software tools that help control overall environmental compliance activities and yet provide efficient, easy-to-use, scalable solutions that will grow with Carollo.”

ABOUT CAROLLO ENGINEERS

At Carollo Engineers, water is our focus, our business, and our passion. For more than 80 years, Carollo has provided a full range of innovative planning, design, and construction management services to meet the water and wastewater needs of municipalities, public agencies, private developers, and industrial firms. To learn more about how Carollo is “Working Wonders With Water®,” visit www.carollo.com.

From the foundations of Rome to global carbon emissions reduction

Does the solution for over 5% of world CO2 emissions lie in the 2000-year-old concrete-making technology from ancient Rome?

Concrete is the second most consumed substance on Earth after water. Overall, humanity produces more than 10 billion tons (about 4 billion cubic meters) of concrete and cement per year. That’s about 1.3 tons for every person on the planet— more than any other material, including oil and coal. The consumption of concrete exceeds that of all other construction materials combined. The process of making modern cement and concrete has a heavy environmental penalty, being responsible for roughly 5% of global emissions of CO2.

Scientists explain ancient Rome’s long-lasting concrete

So could the greater understanding of the ancient Roman concrete mixture lead to greener building materials? That is what scientists may have discovered and published in a 2017 study, led by Marie Jackson of the University of Utah. Their study uncovered the Roman secrets for formulating some of the most long-lasting concrete yet discovered. Our ability to unlock the secrets of ancient concrete formulas is dependent upon interdisciplinary analytical approaches utilized by the Jackson heat group and could lead to further discoveries that would reduce cement-based carbon emissions.

Unlike the modern concrete mixture which erodes over time, the Roman concrete-like substance seemed to gain strength, particularly from exposure to sea water. And most importantly, the process generates fewer CO2 emissions and uses less energy and water than “modern”, Portland cement-based concrete.

[sc_icon icon=”chevron-right” shape=”circle” color=”#52a6ea” size=”small” link_target=”_self”] Read the full article here.

Locus Technologies adds XML export capability to Locus Platform

The new XML export capability in Locus’ GHG application simplifies submissions of reports to EPA and CARB

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 6 June 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and sustainability management software, is excited to announce the addition of XML exports to the greenhouse gases (GHG) application in its Locus Platform software.

As the only software vendor that is an approved GHG verifier under the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and having performed the highest number of GHG verifications in California in 2015, Locus has prioritized enhancing its GHG application to make it easier for customers to manage greenhouse gas emission inventory tracking and reporting requirements. Locus’ GHG application is fully integrated with compliance tracking, asset management, and automation (including remote sensing). The ability to generate XML reports will further streamline customers’ report submission process to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB).

The newly developed XML report generation capability allows facilities to upload their greenhouse gas data directly, instead of having to complete the complex web forms in the EPA Electronic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Tool (e-GGRT) and CARB reporting worksheets (Cal e-GGRT).

Data entry for EPA and CARB is consolidated in the GHG application, eliminating the need to maintain separate agency spreadsheets and software. This supports robust trend tracking and reporting, also reducing data entry and reporting time and opportunities for error. XML reports can be generated for many greenhouse gas subparts, including Subparts C,D, W, and NN, and they can be easily configured for any greenhouse gas industry segment.

“Many of our customers have experienced frustration with the speed and difficulty of entering their data into the state and federal GHG reporting tools. Our new XML reporting tool lets you bypass those clumsy interfaces completely,” said J. Wesley Hawthorne, President of Locus. “This not only saves time, but also helps you avoid transcription errors and ensures consistency with GHG data submitted to multiple reporting programs. As more and more regulatory programs embrace automated report submittal through the XML format, Locus will continue to expand this functionality to simplify reporting for our customers.”

ABOUT LOCUS TECHNOLOGIES
Locus Technologies is a leading sustainability software company that has been helping companies achieve environmental and compliance business excellence since 1997. Public and private companies, such as Chevron, Honeywell, Monsanto, DuPont, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, rely on Locus to manage their water quality, air, and soil data to calculate emissions including greenhouse gases, discharges, and environmental impacts. Locus provides mobile and multi-tenant SaaS and PaaS (Software as a Service/Platform-as-a-service) software solutions to build end-user configurable solutions.

For more information, email info@locustec.com.

Top 10 cool features in Locus Platform (that you probably didn’t know about)

1. Create a custom view of any data with the click of a mouse

Users can create their own views to filter their data the way they need to without impacting others. Just click on “Settings” on the main app screen to create custom views for yourself or your team.

Pick which columns to display and how to filter or order the data. This is an easy way to see all the records that you need to address and filter out other users’ records, or look at records from a certain date or location.

2. Quick exports from the application view screens

Export your view data to Excel to share with colleagues who may not have access to the system, or if you or someone else might need to review or analyze the data offline.

3. Easy edit tracking

Track user edits to any record based on a workflow process in the transaction log. Users can see which person edited the workflow of a record or made updates, and exactly what they edited. Now you won’t ever need to ask “who made that change?!”

4. Bookmark anything in Locus Platform

You can bookmark any page in the system— an app, a dashboard, etc. Now when you log in, you go directly to the app you want without needing to navigate.

5. Search really works across all applications

The Applications > Search Records function works across all applications. For example, you can do a single search for any records added within the past week, and you can see incidents, tasks, permits, waste containers, etc.

6. Use intelligently auto-named records to make searching and reporting very easy

Ask your configurator to auto-name records. This makes it incredibly easy to find records in search and saves the time of creating record names. You can use any of the fields in the entity to create a unique, yet meaningful auto-name without any additional work on your part.

Then, if you want to search for “all equipment purchased in 2016”, for example, it’s very easy to grab the data and download a report.

7. You really don’t need Locus to create special apps for you— you can do it yourself!

Yes, it’s true— you can build your own apps if you have access to the Configuration Workbench tools in Locus Platform.

Locus provides tools, documentation and training to let you access the Workbench, make dashboards, create entire custom apps, build forms and rules, and make edits to existing apps. It takes a bit of learning, but for those that like to dabble in software configuration, it’s a great set of tools to build exactly what you want at your own pace and schedule.

8. Any form in any application can be mobile-enabled

That’s right— any form can be mobile-enabled. So all your custom or off-the-shelf forms can be instantly sent to your mobile device for mobile data collection, then sent back directly to the Locus Platform with the push of a “sync” button.

9. Integration with other databases is built-in

When Locus built the Platform, we included into the base product a quick and easy way to link to other data systems (either ours or someone else’s). This means we can hook into your SAP system with our incident data, or we can grab regulatory updates from other service providers.

10. Get notifications when scheduled reports are automatically generated

You can schedule reports and get notified with a report link once the report is run, so it’s easy to keep up to date on your information without manually running reports every time. You can send reports to yourself or to groups of users, which makes keeping your team up to date a simple as a one-time setup.

Locus celebrates 20 years of innovation in EHS cloud software

Silicon Valley’s oldest EHS cloud software company reaches a major milestone

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 11 April 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) environmental compliance and sustainability management company, today celebrates the 20-year anniversary of its founding and, with it, 20 years of customer success. Two decades ago, Locus was founded with a bold vision to lead the EHS software space. Today, the company’s cloud computing model has enabled new levels of success. Locus has more net paying subscribers in its single instance multi-tenant SaaS platform than any competitor and has over 600,000 locations around the world.

Locus was founded in 1997 with a vision for three new revolutionary models: a new technology model where customers access EHS services via the cloud rather than buying and installing software; a new subscription-based business model where customers pay as they go; and integrating mobile technology in its cloud offering from the get-go.

As a result, Locus is largely responsible for the creation of the emerging technical sector of EHS&S management software at the intersection of two major trends at the time of the company’s creation: the rise of the Internet and corporate attention to environmental compliance management. Locus not only defined and pioneered the new space of environmental information management in the cloud, but it also became a leader, leaving many well-funded startups with borrowed ideas and established ERP software companies behind. The company introduced many industry firsts, including: first cloud-based EHS system in 1999; first EHS mobile application in 2000; first integrated EHS portal in 2001; first web-based GIS in 2003; first user-configurable, drag-and-drop platform (Locus Platform) in 2013, and first IoT (Internet of Things) integration in 1999, before it was called “IoT”.

Locus’ distinction comes both from harnessing the cloud and from a unique perspective on how to address the complex issues of environmental compliance and information management. Multi-tenant SaaS technology offers Locus’ customers numerous advantages such as improved data collection, aggregation, visualization, business analytics, advanced analysis, and the cost reduction inherent in multi-tenant web-based software. These features translate into a competitive advantage and increased profitability for customers.

As the industry continues to evolve, competitors merge or disappear, and new markets emerge and grow, Locus continues to stay independent and lead innovation in a space littered with failures.
“Twenty years is a major milestone for Locus,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus Technologies. “I have watched our software evolve and expand to cover all aspects of environmental information management— from our latest configurable platform where customers can design any application, to integrated mobile apps that truly streamline field data collection. I can’t predict the next 20 years of technological innovation, but I am sure Locus will continue to innovate and push the envelope to serve a market we understand so well.”

“I’d like to thank our customers, who have created an unprecedented record of success and inspired our best innovations, and our employees to making it all possible,” said Neno Duplan, founder and CEO at Locus. “As we look forward to the next decade, we see not only applications, but integrated platforms, powered by AI and running in the cloud. The age of enterprise multi-tenant cloud EHS computing is here.”

Locus Technologies releases new Waste Management in Locus Platform

The Locus waste management application is fully integrated with the dynamic Locus Platform and will automate waste management for small and large enterprises.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 28 February 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and sustainability management software, introduces a powerful waste management application to Locus Platform. Our new waste management app redefines how companies organize and manage their waste profiles and support EPA reporting requirements for hazardous and non-hazardous waste. With the click of a button the platform will be able to generate waste manifests, shipping labels or other documents populated with data from your records. The Locus Platform, a true multi-tenant SaaS, presents a highly flexible, user-friendly interface to meet individual organizations’ environmental management needs.

Nearly everything that doesn’t leave your facility as a product eventually becomes waste that needs to be tracked, managed, disposed of, and reported. Regardless of hazardous, universal or recycling waste stream, Locus Platform is ready. Locus’ waste module brings an organized approach and workflow process to schedule, sample, and analyze results.

One of the standout features that Locus Platform offers is the ability to generate new waste profiles. The flexibility of the platform allows users to create these manually, link to Locus’ EIM system or a third party’s testing results. You will be able to quickly reuse existing profile sheets, only updating the changed information. The platform will help consolidate your profiles in containers or whole areas, and features built in maps to help your transporter know exactly where to go to pick up the ready waste. Users are able to manage the composition of profiles through adding multiple chemical components to the profiles and accounting for their make-up of the whole profile.

Locus Platform is ready out of the box to track waste at any number of locations. You are able to add or remove waste containers, storage locations, etc. from your generating facilities, and allow any user to create their own way of organizing their data by generating filtered dashboards. At the enterprise level powerful dashboards will help you understand how each facility is generating waste, and how it is being handled. With the platform’s flexibility, facility information can be automatically populated based on the user credentials, saving your team time and frustration.

With Locus Platform’s waste management module you will also have real-time insight into your generator status. If your facility is expecting growth we can help you understand when you may reach small quantity generator status, setting up notifications when you approach the threshold limit. Forms will also automatically adapt to a change in status, prompting users to provide different data points when your generator status has changed. The new waste application is fully mobile-enabled to track container location and ensure storage compatibility in satellite accumulation areas. When paired with Locus’ EIM system, the tool can also track all of the waste sampling and characterization processes, and use that information directly to generate waste profiles.

“Waste management processes require coordination between EHS managers, field staff, laboratories, TSD facilities, and other parties. For compliance purposes, it is critical to make sure that information is exchanged correctly and comprehensively between all of these entities in a timely manner. The Locus Platform gives you the notifications, mobile tools, and reporting tools to make waste management processes seamless for any organization. For companies that need to characterize hazardous waste and track detailed analytical data for profiling, this solution integrates directly with the Locus EIM system, giving an expanded toolset for validating and reviewing laboratory data.” said J. Wesley Hawthorne, President of Locus.

Locus Technologies performs a record number of GHG verifications in California

Locus takes the lead in GHG verification services for California Air Resources Board AB32 Program

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 8 February 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in multi-tenant SaaS environmental compliance and information management software, performed 74 verifications for the reporting year 2015 for the California Air Resources Board AB32 Program — more than any other accredited verification body. With six full-time accredited verifiers, Locus has been providing verification services since 2010 for reporting entities across California. Even more notably, after completing hundreds of these verifications and complying with several routine audits by ARB, Locus has never had a single verification statement overturned. This means that facility operators using Locus’ verification services have high confidence that their participation in the cap and trade program will not be affected by potential delays related to questions on their verification statement.

The GHG verification services cover facilities in California that are regulated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) under the Mandatory Reporting Rule (AB32). Locus is accredited as a verification body through CARB and has Lead Verifiers certified in all reporting sectors, including process emissions, oil and gas, and transactions. Over the past eight years, Locus staff have completed verifications for several industries and have become experts on reporting for most covered product types which translate into emission allowances under the cap and trade program.

GHG emission reports are coming under increased scrutiny from regulators, stakeholders, and financial auditors. Choosing the right verifier plays a critical part in remaining compliant with these rapidly evolving requirements and regulations. Locus verifiers have noticed that many companies struggle with complex GHG calculations. Some ‘black box’ calculation tools in the market have not been sufficiently stress-tested and are generating errors that cause enterprises to fail their GHG verifications. Locus’ calculation engine addresses these deficiencies and capitalizes on the architecture of the highly scalable Locus platform. All calculations performed by Locus SaaS are viewable and traceable through the tool to the original data inputs.

“We are very pleased to lead the California verification program and that so many Fortune 500 firms selected Locus for verification services. Locus continues to expand its carbon practice at a rapid pace. Coupled with our software services and domain expertise in all three key AB32 reporting sectors, Locus is becoming a partner of choice for all companies wishing to be credible in their carbon reporting needs,” said J. Wesley Hawthorne, President of Locus. “Our growth in this market has been largely fueled by referrals from existing customers, and it speaks volumes about the quality of our service that so many of our customers speak highly of Locus to their colleagues.”

EHS SaaS explained: Multi-tenancy is a difference that makes a difference

There is a considerable degree of (intended) confusion in the EHS software space when it comes to multi-tenancy. Companies that are considering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hear all sorts of things from EHS software vendors hoping to tap into the momentum of cloud computing. Among the most common is that multi-tenancy is a “techie” thing that doesn’t need to be part of the conversation. Many go as far as saying “sure, we can do multi-tenant, single-tenant, whatever you need!”— anything to win the job.

Unfortunately, those vendors simply do not understand what they are talking about. Multi-tenancy is a major shift in computing and requires all new approach to software architecture and delivery model. It is transformational, and customers who intend to buy the next generation of EHS software should spend the time to understand differences.

Multi-tenancy is the core foundation of modern SaaS and shouldn’t be taken lightly, generalized, or massaged into something that suits a vendor’s self-serving interpretation of SaaS. Having experienced first-hand the true benefits of multi-tenant SaaS, I can’t conceptualize how SaaS would have delivered those benefits if it wasn’t multi-tenant. Can anyone imagine companies like Salesforce, NetSuite, Google, or Amazon offering a “single-tenant” solution side by side to their multi-tenant clouds? I will go as far as say that any company offering a single-tenant solution cannot be a serious contender in offering multi-tenant SaaS.

I would also add that single-tenant (hybrid) cloud applications are worse than on-premise installment. Why? Because they are fake clouds. In these instances, a customer is, in fact, outsourcing maintenance of their application to a vendor that is not equipped for that maintenance. No single vendor in the EHS software industry is large enough to undertake maintenance of the single-tenant infrastructure on behalf of their customers, regardless how inexpensive hardware may be.

There are many ways to take the functions of on-premise installed software model of the 1980s and package them as services. Some of these service delivery modes– such as ASP, single-tenant hosting, and hybrid clouds– merely relocate and reassign long-standing problems and potentially make them worse. In a single-tenant model, user customizations may infiltrate throughout the stack, in a way that makes it difficult to upgrade the performance of the stack. The true SaaS models confront and mitigate– or even eliminate– some of the most vexing elements of software installation and maintenance: configurability on the fly, software maintenance, and upgrades. It is “a tyranny of software upgrades” that kills the single-tenant model.

Let me offer a simple analogy to drive home the point as to why multi-tenancy matters: Tesla vs. Edison– War of Currents.

The War of Currents was a series of events surrounding the introduction of competing electric power transmission systems in the late 1880s and early 1890s that pitted companies against one another and involved a debate over cost and convenience of electricity generation and distribution systems, electrical safety, and a media/propaganda campaign, with the main players being the direct current (DC) based on the Thomas Edison Electric Light Company and the supporters of alternating current (AC) based on Nikola Tesla’s inventions backed by Westinghouse.

With electricity supplies in their infancy, much depended on choosing the right technology to power homes and businesses across the country. The Edison-led group argued for DC current that required a power generating station every few city blocks (single-tenant model), whereas the AC group advocated for a centralized generation with transmission lines that could move electricity great distances with minimal loss (multi-tenant model).

The lower cost of AC power distribution and fewer generating stations eventually prevailed. Multi-tenancy is equivalent of AC when it comes to cost, convenience, and network effect. You can read more about how this analogy relates to SaaS in the book by Nicholas Carr, “Big Switch,” a Wall Street Journal bestseller. It’s “the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing,” said Financial Times. The EHS software industry has been a laggard in adopting multi-tenancy.

Given these fundamental differences between different modes of delivering software as a service, it is clear that the future lies with the multi-tenant model.

Whether all customer data is put onto one database or onto multiple databases is of no consequence to the customer. For those arguing against it, it is like an assertion that companies “do not want to put all their money into the same bank account as their competitors,” when what those companies are doing is putting their money into different accounts at the same bank.

When customers of a financial institution share what does not need to be partitioned—for example, the transactional logic and the database maintenance tools, security, and physical infrastructure and insurance offered by a major financial institution—then they enjoy advantages of security, capacity, consistency, and reliability that would not be affordably deliverable in isolated parallel systems.

In enterprise cloud applications and cloud application platforms, multi-tenancy yields a compelling the combination of efficiency and capability without sacrificing flexibility or governance.

When a software provider seeks to blur the distinctions between one technology and another, there’s usually just one reason: because they are unable to offer the superior technology to their customers, and hope to persuade their customers that real differences are not relevant to their needs. Multi-tenant platforms for enterprise on-demand applications represent genuine opportunities for customer advantage. The reality of multi-tenant differentiation is acknowledged by authoritative industry analysts such as Gartner, whose March 2007 announcement¹ of its Outsourcing Summit that month included this definition of Software as a Service:

“Hosted software based on a single set of common code and data definitions that are consumed in a one-to-many model.”

In other words, hosting models that do not offer the leverage of multi-tenancy don’t belong in the same discussion as the value proposition implied by the term, “SaaS”. Multi-tenancy is a difference that makes a difference.

—

References

¹Gartner Inc., “SaaS will have significant impact on IT services and outsourcing providers,” Tekrati, 7 March 2007

Different is good—How to find your unique strengths for success in R&D

Periodically, our CEO Blog will host blog contributions from Locus employees, who will be blogging about environmental data, compliance, sustainability, or other topics of interest to our customers and partners. We hope you will enjoy these different perspectives, and we invite you to join in the conversation, either in the comments field below, or on our social media channels:

[sc_icon icon=”facebook” shape=”circle” color=”#ffffff” background_color=”#52a6ea” size=”mdsmall” link=”https://facebook.com/locustechnologies” link_target=”_blank”] [sc_icon icon=”twitter” shape=”circle” color=”#ffffff” background_color=”#52a6ea” size=”mdsmall” link=”https://twitter.com/Locustec” link_target=”_blank”] [sc_icon icon=”linked-in” shape=”circle” color=”#ffffff” background_color=”#52a6ea” size=”mdsmall” link=”https://www.linkedin.com/company/locus-technologies” link_target=”_blank”]

Finding a differentiator for R&D success in cloud SaaS applications

Finding a differentiator for your organization is the key to success in a competitive marketplace.

Anyone in the tech industry will tell you that building software can be a costly endeavor.

On top of the overhead expenses, selling enterprise software means long sales cycles and competing in a crowded field of vendors.

To succeed in this cutthroat environment, you need a differentiator—somewhere your company excels compared to the other players in the field. This differentiator will be your main focus in every aspect of the business. It allows you to effectively prioritize and execute your tasks, maintaining an edge on the competition.

Working at Locus, a question I often hear is, “How do you hire and retain top engineering talent, when you’re competing with the big tech titans in Silicon Valley?”

My answer is simple and straightforward: our environmental focus. Ever since Locus started as a company, our vision has been to deliver technologies that optimize the management of environmental data for our customers. Our goal is to be the best technology partner for helping our customers manage their environmental footprint.

Locus environmental engineers collaborating with software designers

At Locus, environmental engineers with high domain expertise work closely with software engineers to build solutions that very effectively fulfill our customers’ needs.

To work on Locus’ product development team, you must either be exceptional in cloud/SaaS technologies or in environmental engineering. Our ability to integrate these two specialties is our differentiator. Other vendors may have capability in one area, but very few can claim both.

At Locus, these two types of engineers work side by side, collaborating to deliver new software. This dynamic creates incredible opportunities for engineers to learn new things and experience the satisfaction of being challenged at work. At the same time, it creates an ideal team to deliver the best products to address the environmental health & safety market.

Recently, our engineering team was working on our vapor intrusion and indoor air management application, built for our customers for compliance and regulatory reporting. Environmental engineers were best suited for this project because they thoroughly understand the regulatory compliance process. Having environmental engineers collaborating directly with software designers on the team, rather than relying on consultants, allowed us to quickly design a reliable system for automating GHG tracking. This is just one example of how we integrate a unique set of skills and expertise in our company.

Projects such as this one help reaffirm my belief that finding a unique differentiator is the key to success. Find what makes you stand out in the market, and pride yourself on that quality.

—

Still looking for the right EHS software to revolutionize your environmental and compliance initiatives? Book a demo with us today!

About guest blogger— Sandeep Khabiya, Locus Technologies

Sandeep Khabiya is responsible for driving software development at Locus Technologies in alignment with the company objectives. In his role, he directs the work of a broad range of technical personnel and is a coach and mentor for team members across multiple and diverse projects.

Before joining Locus as the Director of Software Engineering, he spent over 14 year with HP Software leading development of products like IT Governance, Project Management and Cloud Service Automation while working with teams across the globe in US, Czech Republic, India, and China.