What do you use to manage and track everyday jobs?

[AF]

This is getting interesting...

 

[SignVOX]

Rao (Rav) and Kevin,

It has taken me a week to cool off and talk to an attorney, but it is clear that you signed up for a free trial of Sign Tracker, hired one of our former employees, and now you come out with a job flow board that is exactly like our software.

You have an army of developers in India, and the resources to research and develop whatever solution your clients need. You do not have to steal from us. It is completely unprofessional and dishonest.

I am requesting that this situation be resolved amicably by either: A. remove the job flow board from your system, or B. compensate us for the IP.

Your prompt response is of the utmost importance. We are trying to help sign shops with the most affordable solution, and I have even recommended SignVox when SignTracker was not a fit for some shops. I have had open and friendly conversations with you both, and see this as very unethical move on the part of your company and leadership.

Please let me know how you intend to rectify the situation.

Respectfully,

Joe Arenella / Sign Tracker

Joe, I am sorry to hear this from you. I have always treated you very friendly and was happy to talk to you any time. I also talked to you and got reference from you for the employee who worked before I hired him for this very same reason so that you dont think we are trying to do something wrong. And you said it was ok to go ahead and hire him. And I am sure you know that it did not work out with this person for both of our own reasons for more than 5 days and we parted ways. And during those 5 days I told him not to share any info from any of our competitors if he has conflicting info and he never shared that info.

And as part of the employment with that employee, this is the email I sent him after I talked to you and got your OK, here for you reference:

"
Welcome to techVOX Inc, makers of signVOX and shopVOX.
Since you come from our direct competitors and you have lot of confidential information and I do not want you to use any of the confidential info that is not in public domain to use for our advantage.
We can do our product/service and we have done that for past 4 yrs and have been very successful, so please use your prior knowledge of your previous companies very diligently and be very very discreet. Any breach of this will make our company to terminate your employment immediately the day we know about this. Again this is the right way to do things and we like your experience and that is very useful for us and hopefully you will find working for techVOX inc enjoyable and furthers your career goals.


Again, welcome to techVOX Inc."




Also just to give you some background about my previous work, I am fundamentally an Industrial Engineer whose major was in Manufacturing Engineering where I studied all the work flow process, TQM and implemented time studies at factories like Intel. I then worked for a software company which made configurable workflow software for Chip Manufacturing and I implemented them at several fabs like Intel and LSI logic. Also next I worked for a dot com startup which did a market place for print and graphics industry and I implemented SAAS based back end software at RRDonnely, Oracle Print shop in the SF Bay Area. So it is not like I am new to this industry. Then I worked at Siebel and Oracle and implemented systems at Toyota and HP. The point is I am not doing this by copying your software or any one else's cause if I copy I have to wait for them to come up with new stuff. And as of today in the sign industry we come up with new stuff and more and more tools for our customers and this industry. I have the education and the work experience for me to do this. It just happens to be sign industry is the classic example of a custom manufacturing process. No one can survive too long by copying. signVOX is the new kid on the block, and how can it be the most popular software and I am not even a sign guy. I am a software person with Master's in Industrial Engineering.

From what I know and what people have said you have is a basic Kanban system with cards, any Industrial/Manufacturing Engineer can implement a simple card based Kanban system. And there are a few hundred software companies which have implemented Kanban Systems as software. So a few cards in few columns is not IP. Search for visual project management software ( or visual kanban and I am attaching google image results for you to see, does it show any resemblance ???)
View attachment 101484

) to see bigger image of this right click and open in new tab.


online and see how many hits you get. And what we have implemented is a lot more than what you have and now shopVOX is not specific to sign industry, it can support and custom manufacturing industry, and hence the name also shopVOX (collaborative shop software) with custom workflow including job costing and resource management and machine allocation and scheduling and lot more things to come. Pretty soon we are going to implement a software implementation of "Quick Response Manufacturing" into shopVOX.

I wish you called me and gave me a benefit of doubt about this issue, just like I gave the courtesy to call you and made sure you were ok with me hiring your previous employee, to discuss any thing if it was bothering you. But you had to bring this to a public forum, so be it, since I have to defend myself in front of the Industry. I have always been friendly with all the software vendors and during any trade show go to all the booths of the competition and meet the owners to say hi and be friendly. This industry in USA has about 40000+ businesses and so far only 5000 use any real software so this industry is big enough to go around for the top 3-5 players so I am sure it is not like dog eat dog, we all have our software to offer and our value for our customers.

So you got to do what you have to do, if you want to talk to me, please feel free to call me, if you need to talk to me through the lawyers so be it and we will do what ever we have to do.

This will be my last response about this topic since you wanted to make this a legal matter. Hence I have to protect myself , my company, employees and customers. And any more blame you put on us we will have to defend it legally.

Just remember no one can survive by copying anything for too long, cause if that is the case I have to wait for you to do new stuff to copy and you have been in the industry for far longer than me and I am not even a sign guy. I thought you were a reasonable person and a friendly competitor. And if you think I don't have enough stuff to back my self then you are wrong. signVOX have about 1000 customers in 15 countries in 5 languages giving me feedback on a daily basis what to build, so please stop this and work towards your offering to your customers and let me work too.

I am sorry Joe, I thought you were a reasonable person, but I am disappointed and sorry to see this coming from you.

Good luck.

*** And to all of our customers and the rest of the Industry, please tune in for the new technologies coming in the next few weeks and the a big announcement at the SGIA show. And to all of our customers, you all know how we add new tools and features and if you have any questions to me, please feel free to contact me directly about this or any other issue.

 

[John Butto]

new software

I don't know who's in the wrong here but I have to say airing this out in an open forum isn't very professional and probably wouldn't be advised by your attorney.

Regardless, hope you guys get this mess sorted out.

I just develope some new software, SignArgument, $20 a month and it takes care of things like this and customers who said you made it wrong. I have 1452 Nashville catalogers working on it right now.

 

[Joe Arenella]

Reasonable!

Joe, I am sorry to hear this from you. I have always treated you very friendly and was happy to talk to you any time. I also talked to you and got reference from you for the employee who worked before I hired him for this very same reason so that you dont think we are trying to do something wrong. And you said it was ok to go ahead and hire him. And I am sure you know that it did not work out with this person for both of our own reasons for more than 5 days and we parted ways. And during those 5 days I told him not to share any info from any of our competitors if he has conflicting info and he never shared that info.

And as part of the employment with that employee, this is the email I sent him after I talked to you and got your OK, here for you reference:

"
Welcome to techVOX Inc, makers of signVOX and shopVOX.
Since you come from our direct competitors and you have lot of confidential information and I do not want you to use any of the confidential info that is not in public domain to use for our advantage.
We can do our product/service and we have done that for past 4 yrs and have been very successful, so please use your prior knowledge of your previous companies very diligently and be very very discreet. Any breach of this will make our company to terminate your employment immediately the day we know about this. Again this is the right way to do things and we like your experience and that is very useful for us and hopefully you will find working for techVOX inc enjoyable and furthers your career goals.


Again, welcome to techVOX Inc."




Also just to give you some background about my previous work, I am fundamentally an Industrial Engineer whose major was in Manufacturing Engineering where I studied all the work flow process, TQM and implemented time studies at factories like Intel. I then worked for a software company which made configurable workflow software for Chip Manufacturing and I implemented them at several fabs like Intel and LSI logic. Also next I worked for a dot com startup which did a market place for print and graphics industry and I implemented SAAS based back end software at RRDonnely, Oracle Print shop in the SF Bay Area. So it is not like I am new to this industry. Then I worked at Siebel and Oracle and implemented systems at Toyota and HP. The point is I am not doing this by copying your software or any one else's cause if I copy I have to wait for them to come up with new stuff. And as of today in the sign industry we come up with new stuff and more and more tools for our customers and this industry. I have the education and the work experience for me to do this. It just happens to be sign industry is the classic example of a custom manufacturing process. No one can survive too long by copying. signVOX is the new kid on the block, and how can it be the most popular software and I am not even a sign guy. I am a software person with Master's in Industrial Engineering.

From what I know and what people have said you have is a basic Kanban system with cards, any Industrial/Manufacturing Engineer can implement a simple card based Kanban system. And there are a few hundred software companies which have implemented Kanban Systems as software. So a few cards in few columns is not IP. Search for visual project management software ( or visual kanban and I am attaching google image results for you to see, does it show any resemblance ???)
View attachment 101484

) to see bigger image of this right click and open in new tab.


online and see how many hits you get. And what we have implemented is a lot more than what you have and now shopVOX is not specific to sign industry, it can support and custom manufacturing industry, and hence the name also shopVOX (collaborative shop software) with custom workflow including job costing and resource management and machine allocation and scheduling and lot more things to come. Pretty soon we are going to implement a software implementation of "Quick Response Manufacturing" into shopVOX.

I wish you called me and gave me a benefit of doubt about this issue, just like I gave the courtesy to call you and made sure you were ok with me hiring your previous employee, to discuss any thing if it was bothering you. But you had to bring this to a public forum, so be it, since I have to defend myself in front of the Industry. I have always been friendly with all the software vendors and during any trade show go to all the booths of the competition and meet the owners to say hi and be friendly. This industry in USA has about 40000+ businesses and so far only 5000 use any real software so this industry is big enough to go around for the top 3-5 players so I am sure it is not like dog eat dog, we all have our software to offer and our value for our customers.

So you got to do what you have to do, if you want to talk to me, please feel free to call me, if you need to talk to me through the lawyers so be it and we will do what ever we have to do.

This will be my last response about this topic since you wanted to make this a legal matter. Hence I have to protect myself , my company, employees and customers. And any more blame you put on us we will have to defend it legally.

Just remember no one can survive by copying anything for too long, cause if that is the case I have to wait for you to do new stuff to copy and you have been in the industry for far longer than me and I am not even a sign guy. I thought you were a reasonable person and a friendly competitor. And if you think I don't have enough stuff to back my self then you are wrong. signVOX have about 1000 customers in 15 countries in 5 languages giving me feedback on a daily basis what to build, so please stop this and work towards your offering to your customers and let me work too.

I am sorry Joe, I thought you were a reasonable person, but I am disappointed and sorry to see this coming from you.

Good luck.

*** And to all of our customers and the rest of the Industry, please tune in for the new technologies coming in the next few weeks and the a big announcement at the SGIA show. And to all of our customers, you all know how we add new tools and features and if you have any questions to me, please feel free to contact me directly about this or any other issue.

Hi Roa and Kevin,

I agree that Kanban has been around for quite along time, I was just very disappointed to see that you even titles the stage columns are virtually the same as Sign Tracker. I agree that we have had friendly discourse, it was just upsetting to see your screen shots looking so much like Sign Tracker.

I have always said, and still feel the same way, that if you are not going to use Sign Tracker than the second best choice for your sign shop is SV. Like you, I have spent my entire career running small businesses, learning to manage workflow, and developing systems to run production (primarily large sign shops). I hope that translates well into the application.

Anyway, good luck to you and your team. We are continuing to push forward with our product and customers. We to have several thousand sign ups and conversions, and hopefully both products will continue to serve the needs of the sign community.

Take care,

Joe

 

[SignVOX]

Hi Roa and Kevin,

I agree that Kanban has been around for quite along time, I was just very disappointed to see that you even titles the stage columns are virtually the same as Sign Tracker. I agree that we have had friendly discourse, it was just upsetting to see your screen shots looking so much like Sign Tracker.

I have always said, and still feel the same way, that if you are not going to use Sign Tracker than the second best choice for your sign shop is SV. Like you, I have spent my entire career running small businesses, learning to manage workflow, and developing systems to run production (primarily large sign shops). I hope that translates well into the application.

Anyway, good luck to you and your team. We are continuing to push forward with our product and customers. We to have several thousand sign ups and conversions, and hopefully both products will continue to serve the needs of the sign community.

Take care,

Joe

Hi Joe,
I am really happy you posted this and I really feel that there is enough for all of us to go around and we just need to concentrate on our strengths and serve our customers. Pre-Production/Production/Post-Production is what every one calls the stages and we used them and the steps inside are completely configurable which we dont even control. And soon, some customer sent us feedback saying they don't want those stages, either remove them or make it configurable, so we are going to do that soon.

We at signVOX (Ravi and I ) think that you are a very nice guy and we can be friends. Life is too short for this and please come by our booth or I will come by your booth at the next show and let's have a beer (or coffee).

Let's put our energy to serve the industry by providing the best software and service which pays our bills and livelihood.

Good luck and I am glad you posted this and let's move on to serve our customers.

Regards
Rao and the VOX team.

 

[JJM7288]

Cyrious Control.

 

[nate]

Cyrious Control.

+1

 

[jtinker]

dramz...

AAAAnyway. Using custom software I built myself starting from last year still in pre alpha testing but works fine aside from a few bugs and design changes.

 

[Joe Arenella]

Give Sign Tracker a try.

We have been pushing to keep Sign Tracker very simple to use. The Job Flow and Job List are a simple way to manage all your jobs, tasks, due dates and deliveries. Also, it is great for organizing all your job documents, notes and forms. The quoting is easy, easy, easy! No matter what type of projects or product you do.

Joe
joe@sign-tracker.com
512-554-7202

 

[trimitbyrich]

trying Sign tracker

I was looking at sign trackers 1-3 package. Does anyone have experience with this?

I was looking at signvox, but I can't justify paying for 10 users when we don't have that many that would be logging into it. I would love to try it and see if we can justify it.

This Vujade software looks very low budget. There website looks low budget. I would not pay $1320 for initial setup, then $385 a month, then have to pay for support. If I pay you $1320 and $385 a month you better be giving me premium support. Looking at their website, what is a "4GB CPU"??????? Maybe 4GB of ram, or 4core CPU? Sorry guys, a side from a lot lacking from your site, trying to advertise somewhere people are looking for information is irritating.

Cyrious looks like a great software. I've spoken to them and they were very nice. It just looks very windows 95 to me.

So guys, for me right now it's sign tracker or signvox... signvox is a stretch but I love the vehicle wrap add-on and that it's really pushing me that way. I just emailed them about a free account.

very frustrated by it.

 

[HonosCorp]

New Workflow Production Software! Honos Corp

Honoscorp.com
The Honos Corp P3 Workflow Software was developed for the industry by people in the industry......
Get a free demo to run around in and test it out...
From start to finish every step from customer ordering, customer proofing, Quoting, invoicing, to status changes and customer payments....
everything is integrated in to the software!

Hi! We are a small shop growing quickly, we have 16 employees and have been using a paper ticket system. As we grow, we have come across problems tracking jobs and are looking at integrating software to solve these problems. While being able to easily price jobs is a plus, we are more concerned about the order tracking and being able to see exactly where the order is in our shop.

We have looked into SignVox, Cyrious, and Estimate so far. SignVox didn't sees to really meet our needs. Cyrious seems like a great fit, but it is quite an investment. We would love some advice and input from companies who have used or are using some of these programs!

 

[SignVOX]

very frustrated by it.

Hi
You dont need to get 10 users now. Now we have Express/Pro versions starting at $49+$10/$99+$20.
Checkout the website www.shopvox.com

Also you can move to shopVOX in stages, first get Express - Manage your production and then once that is all set, you can move to Pro and get the CRM/Order Mgmt/Pricing and other features with it.

Shoot me an email we can answer any of the questions you ahve.

 

[iSign]

feels like there's a bunch of annoying flies in here