Ep. 34: Nick Dove of Sycor/Sycor.Back2Work

One of the best aspects of bringing you the 50 Summer Stories of Tech in Pittsburgh has been all about Pittsburgh companies developing technologies to get us back to work during this covid 19 crisis. Lots of that's happening here. And today we're featuring Sycor. We have Nick Dove hanging out with us. And of course, I'm Jonathan Kersting, with the Pittsburgh tech council hanging out with Comcast to make these stories happen. And I think he's the best stories to tell right now, because it really shows you the ingenuity that's going on right here as far as that goes. And so Nick, thanks for hanging out with me today. I know you're a super busy guy. And I'm so excited to talk to you about what all is going on with this because I think we're actually going to do a little slideshow today too. For those of you who are gonna be watching this. If you're listening to this, just go over to our YouTube channel. And you can actually see some slides for you actually see how this application works and everything like that. So Nick, what's your background, man? What do you do at Sycor? Bet you get to have a lot of fun.

Yep, yep. Hello, everybody. My name is Nicholas Dove. I work at Sycor America located here in Pittsburgh, PA. I've been there for about three years now since last June, graduate of Penn State University graduated in 2017. And what I do in Sycor is I am an implementation consultant. So I actually do the implementing. And also I'm doing a little bit of pre sales on the side.

Excellent, man. They got you. They got you spread out a little bit. I like it. Give us the elevator pitch for sidekicks and you guys do a lot of cool stuff.

Yeah, so Sycor Americas. First off, we're proud to call Pittsburgh, home of our North American headquarters. We are actually headquartered in Germany, that's our mother company. We deliver a wide variety of IT services with our core focuses on implementation of D 365, for finance and operations. And also we have implementation services for SAP as well. We also if you have a company that has reoccurring revenue or rental based businesses, yeah, we also have an ISV solution for those businesses as well because we know most our MRP systems, they really don't have that kind of functionality. offer that. Love it. I love it.

So let's jump into this because I think this is so cool. Like I said, I got the news release on this. I was like I'm calling these guys. We got to tell this. It's ours that is. So you guys just came out with this Sycor back to work. It's all about returning to the office safely. Give us the deets on this thing What's going on?

Alrighty, so Yeah, actually it was developed in our Sycor Asia offices over in China since they were the first country to get hit, right. And they started using it, it started working out great for them. They were able to track any possible infections or who was in contact with those people that were infected. And then our HQ over in Germany is like, Oh, that's a cool idea. send that over everybody. We think we want to use this possibly and sell to others.

Yep. So Germany started using it same ordeal. They start using it, they were able to track any possible infections contacts, and they even gave it to a couple customers as well. And then the customers in Europe started using it and then actually then the US or they said They were to the US that we actually started using it and actually have a lot of inquiries about this app already, of course, because everybody is so concerned about this and they see these as being really valuable solutions. especially coming from coming from a company like psycorps I mean, you guys are known as being taught in your game as far as that goes. So the idea that this was developed very quickly, and you're saying that it's working run us through a scenario how this thing works. Tell us tell us like the ABCs and the one two threes of this thing already. I actually prepared a PowerPoint for you guys all right, share my screen here.

So are you finding is it large companies that are benefiting from this or can even down to like smaller companies in order to, you know, provide this, this this level of service, um, for any size company because it's not built for a specific company or a specific size company. You can build it however that you need to. Gotcha.

Very cool.

And as far as like, I know, one of the big concerns people have is making sure that there's some anonymity to this as well, too. I'm assuming that's all built into the to the site core back to work.

Yes. 100%.

Alrighty, so are you able to see the PowerPoint here good to go man, I like it. Nice, bright sky here with your background. I love it. Thank you. Alrighty, so just a little bit about our current situation, especially here in the States, many companies have reduced risk, the risk of infection for their employees through working through home office. And over that time period, they've been easing the measures in public a business environment that are made possible under those certain conditions, like the social distancing, you have to wear a mask wherever you're out in the common areas, so on and so forth. So the psychopath workout that gives you the ability to create like a step by step. lockup is the best word I could find for it so. So companies can actually apply those social distancing, distancing roles during this period to protect their employees and track any kind of possible infections or whoever was close to people that were infected. Again, like I mentioned, I'm sorry, yeah, that's the most important part here as we get back is being able to trace back so if something does happen, we can quash it quickly and for can keep spreading.

Right. And like I mentioned, this app is created in a company neutral way. And it can be used by anyone or any size company. And it's free version. That's what's amazing. So this is free. You can use that. So cool man bringing it out. There's no excuse not to please try it, right? That's right.

All right. So here's just a little look and feel on how the application works out of the box. So this first screen here is what you would see when you log into it. Okay, so, where I'm checking that currently, any upcoming reservations throughout the day, so if I wanted to reserve like a meeting room, or maybe I'm in the marketing department, okay, reservations will be listed in this area here. Okay. or anytime I walk into a certain room in the office, we could set up QR codes for each room in the office, then all you can do is just go into your camera and check in with you immediately. I love it very, very cool. Or if you don't have the cute QR code set up, you can actually manually check into whatever room that you're in at the current time. It's even though you were in that room that certain time, then I guess, when you leave is going to know when you leave as well.

Yep. And then you can check out manually or you can re scan that QR code to check out of the room.

That code again, and it's good to know that you're, you're exiting out of that space.

Yes, sir. And so this will work on all devices, iOS and Android. Yep, absolutely. It's a nice clean, simple to use App like I see this. Like there's, there's no mistaking anything for anything. It's pretty, pretty self efficient here. You can tell exactly what's going on.

Exactly. So if you would have like a little staff meeting for maybe like a customer support meeting, you actually make a reservation for a specific room in the office. Okay, so if your company has more than one branch, you can actually have a drop down or a look up for all your different branches. Nice. So if I want to reserve reserve, excuse me a office in Pittsburgh at our pen center, West location right off the parkway, and I wanted to do a reservation in the meeting room. I can do so. Got the five available spaces in there. And I can click it and then submit my own reservation and reserve those two to three spaces for very cool.

Love it man love it.

And over Oh, sorry, cleaning easy. It's my like about this.

Yeah. And for the finish view would look like is where I'm checked in at the pen center West in the kitchen, I went to go get my coffee, and any reservations that have coming up. So it looks like I have a morning meeting in the marketing room and in the afternoon have a customer support meeting. So just quick and simple ways I could check in and check out and that helps us track Okay, who was where at what time, just in case if someone does come down with a COVID-19 we can see okay, who was close to these people, right.

And so as far as and this means using this app, they're not using it in their name isn't assigned like Michael like a random number of some kind. That way then it knows who was there without actually having to name a name or so forth.

It's actually you can set it With your Azure Active Directory, Ah, okay. Yep. Very.

And just a little bit about the data protection, and is the big deal. I see GDPR. And I know this is this is legit, right?

Right. So we're GDPR compliant. So we store all the data on the customer tenant or on your business's tenant. And regarding your own personal data, we don't do any GPS tracking or any Bluetooth tracking. It's just strictly based off of where you scan that QR code or whether you checked it manually on the app. Very cool. Very cool.

Because those are some of the main concerns I've been hearing from everyone, when it comes to these things is being able to have that anonymity and the privacy and know that you're not being tracked when you're just simply checking it on this device. And it knows that you were in that room at that particular period of time. So yep. And of course, to see the actual data on the back end to view other reports, all that data evaluation is only by selecting people in your tenants, so maybe like manager or HR people, whoever it is, that's gonna be charged this that way, then you know, we certainly eyeballs can see it. Super cool. Exactly.

Alrighty, so how it works. So our first step is to download all the related software. I'll get into that later. So we're going to create our office spaces and their maximum maximum capacities.

Okay, and those capacities are gonna be different now based on social distancing. So like, I know, like, like a, what a conference room that would hold 20 might now only hold 10 or something. And those will be figured out ahead of time by each company, I suppose. Correct? Exactly. Okay.

And then after we create those office spaces, then we can reserve an office space via the application. And then we could log into an office space using a QR code or punching in manually like what you saw in the screenshots. And then of course, the main goal is to protect your employees with social distancing. You can park six feet help Exactly. Alrighty. So need an infrastructure and licenses so like I said, you can use as your as your as your active directory excuse me, office 365 or Microsoft 365 365. Right? I mean, come on. Yeah, SharePoint Online. And since that this application is, in fact a Microsoft power app, you don't need a power app plan.

Okay on this very interesting.

And I cannot stress this enough, this can be used free of charge in the basic version for any company. Nice. You don't have to pay for anything.

I think it's just so cool that you're doing that because it gives people no excuse not to try this, because I think this can make such a huge difference in people's comfort level, coming back to work, knowing that you're gonna know where you are anonymously. And spaces have been set. Like I think it's so cool, right? And then, just to get the app, you can go to our site core America's website and just download it directly from our homepage. It's listed right there.

I'm on there right now, and I can see the download button. Pretty cool.

Yep. And if you want to see on all the backend on how it works, all of our documentation is on our GitHub. Great Fantastic. For all those nerds out there that want to really get into it, I won't go. Because that's beyond me.

That's Alrighty, so your company ABC, you want this application? How does it work? Yeah. So deployment, it's script based on a site collection in your SharePoint, then you can create and store your office spaces and maximum capacities, and you set up your office to have a QR code, set up the office spaces. And then you set the read authorized employees in your organization. So who can see all the data on the back end or all the reports. So you set up those heads or HR, whoever. And then once all of that is set up, then you can distribute the application to all your employees for iOS or Android devices through your company, portal like link or Intune.

And if you don't like you can do this in the course of an afternoon if you really had to your Oh yes. 4050 person organization like this. This is not that big of a deal.

No setups easy self explanatory. I I believe we've done it in less than a day.

See, I know I like that man that's that's another lesson there's no barrier to entry on this thing. It's free it's easy to set up. So what happens if you want to upgrade What does that mean? What are the features you get if you're going to upgrade this you like it you download it you think it's pretty cool weather futures can you get you pay more for it?

Already? conveniently, that's all my very next slide here. Like I'm reading minds or something.

It's kind of crazy.

Alrighty, so in the free version, so you be able to track bookings languages out of the box are German and English. The reservations, the manual infection tracking so who was where at what time, or any message broadcast so you can broadcast messages throughout the app as well through like an admin login. So if that's working fine and dandy for you, but you want more, you can contact us at psycorps Or you can develop your own. It's an open application. So let's just say you contact us to give you more premium features like freely configurable reservation slots. So if you want to actually create slots for certain rooms, I lost my train of thought there.

Oh, automatically create reservations for your outlook.

So if I want to make a meeting appointment in my Outlook calendar, oh, boom, send all the information to the application and create a reservation based off of that.

You can also view Sorry, I love it. And I see also here that you can actually custom brand this as well too. So you can maintain the look and feel of your company identity to really integrate it into your culture a little bit. That's kind of cool.

Yep. You can view heat maps or utilization views of real time throughout your office. You're going to bookmarks or save templates. So okay, I have my weekly staff Meeting. So I can create a template like boom, I have my weekly meeting for three people in the HR office.

Nice, very clean on the heat map. So at any point in time, then you can actually see where all the people are. Yes, exactly. You can see your pencil hotspots, like, I'm staying away from conference room B, there's a lot of people.

And then of course, if you have a customer facing business, like customers walk into your office, we can build an extension for customers as well, wherever they visit.

Very cool. So they come in, they're part of the part of the scene as well, too. They can be checked into conference rooms and so forth.

And I love it. I love it.

Already, I'm actually I'm actually wrapped up the PowerPoint. So I guess I'll open up to you for any questions.

Absolutely. So first and foremost, obviously, you just rolled this out in the US market. How long is it's been out now for just a couple weeks now or what?

This has been out in the US for roughly about a month and a half to two. Okay.

Excellent. Yeah, how's the reaction been to it so far? I'm seeing people are seeing this is a pretty cool solution. Obviously you can start for free. Come on.

Yep. I mean our sales guy, john, he's been getting inquiries left and right for this application. So a lot of questions on how to set it up. And if you need to, you can just give us a call if you need help setting it up, we we can offer that service

got what it's all about at the end of the day, in fact that like I said, bringing this out, I there been any kind of like, any kind of top concerns that people have been bringing up and obviously then seeing that this is alleviating, then a lot of their concerns as they're trying to get people back.

The main concern is what was mentioned earlier is the data protection right so you a lot of people don't want to be tracked wherever they are at all times via GPS and I cannot stress this enough. You are not being tracked not being strictly for that QR code. That's it.

That's the secret sauce to it all. As far as that goes. Do you see yourself adding any more capabilities to this as you move forward?

Um, hopefully down the road. Yes. But at the For a moment, it's free and open source. So we pretty much build this app for you to make it yours.

That's what's so cool. So obviously, you got somebody in your office that wants to kind of geek out on this for a while you said it's open source, you can go in and customize it to exactly your own needs, you're giving them that nice core to kind of start with I think, is just amazing. Exactly. It's really neat stuff. Like I said, this is such a cool story, Nick, and I'm so glad you had to tell me more about this. I think this is something that people need to go to your website, just go to Sitecore Ivan group COMM And there's a whole link to it right there. I'm looking at it on my computer right now. And something I want to tell our HR department about something something we want to put together the tech Council, because if we start thinking about getting back whenever that may be, it might help us want to get back a little bit sooner knowing that as we get in there, we can keep our our conference rooms checked and know that their people are in and out and we can see what's going on. It seems like a very simple solution. And those are always the most powerful ones out there. And that's what psycorps is doing. Very cool. All right. So we'll leave it at that I think for now, like I said, I'm so glad I got to talk to you about this. I got plenty of information. And we're so glad psycorps is here in Pittsburgh doing what you guys do. That's what's making Pittsburgh proud. Oh yeah, we're happy to be good stuff. And thanks for talking to me today. This is why we tell these great stories here. Our Comcast summer at 50 Pittsburgh tech stories. You are one of our stories Nick and cyclorama stories and so glad they got to tell it so glad Comcast is making that happen. This has been Jonathan Kersting with the Pittsburgh tech Council. Nick, you're the best. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai