MARK MIRCHANDANI: Managing a city
requires lots of infrastructure, both physical and technical.
Join us in historic downtown Austin, Texas,
as we talked to SADA systems about their dotMaps solution
for managing projects.
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John, thanks so much for joining us today.
Tell us a little bit more about SADA.
JOHN BLESAK: Yeah, so SADA kind of
started with a really kind of basic partnership,
with Google--
let's say upwards of 10 years ago,
maybe even a little bit more--
kind of being one of their trusted resellers for Google
Maps and G Suite and then ultimately Google Cloud.
I think we've become one of their kind of go-to services
partners in the space, where they can kind of rely
on SADA to help bring an implementation of, like I said,
kind of Maps, G Suite on Google Cloud from start to finish.
Obviously, Google gives these great tools for companies
to build products and build workflows.
But they don't necessarily get into the services world
with it.
So they need these trusted partners, I think,
that have a lot of experience and developers and engineers
that Google can trust to help bring those projects, again,
from start to finish and allow for a proper rollout
and a proper implementation.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: Tell me a little bit more
about what dotMaps does.
What are the selling points for it?
JOHN BLESAK: Yeah, so dotMaps is focused--
it's kind of a more of a niche product
where it kind of has a specific need within the city.
Most of these cities, what they have is they
need to coordinate capital improvement projects that
are internal to the city.
So those are repairs to streets and roads
and things like that-- signs and signals.
And then they also have to coordinate those internal city
projects with outside utility groups,
such as gas and electric, water, and things like that.
The biggest problem these cities have is basically
aligning with those utility groups that
are on the outside of the coordination
efforts within the city.
And I think giving an application that really
incentivizes these groups to work together and collaborate
on an easy-to-use platform is why we're seeing such great ROI
numbers with dotMaps.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: So what does dotMaps actually do?
Like, what does it involve when people use it?
JOHN BLESAK: So, really, at its core,
dotMaps is going to be conflict resolution.
So really, what you have right now is
you've got a city that needs to dig up First Street,
and they have a major project.
But you also have these other outside groups
that need to do work in the city and the right of way
in addition to the city.
So being able to properly coordinate
that work between the city and share materials and costs
and make sure that you don't have groups showing up
to a construction site at the same day at the same time.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: So this is kind
of like a tool that helps centralize
all of those different things going on at once to communicate
them better.
How has the reception been for the tool besides just ROI?
JOHN BLESAK: Reception has been great.
Again, I think the adoption rates speak volumes.
I think in DOT, your adoption rates are everything.
If you can't get people excited and on board
properly to these softwares, they
tend to end up in kind of the IT graveyard,
I kind of call it, within DOT.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: What makes the DOT and public sector
as a whole different from the rest of, well, private sector?
JOHN BLESAK: I would say just their willingness to take risks
with some software.
Like I was saying, I think that they've
been kind of duped to some extent
by some vendors over the last couple decades
when it comes to software.
And I think that they really want
to mitigate risk as much as possible,
especially when you're using taxpayer money and government
money to be buying these pieces of software.
So if you can get in there and show that you can actually
do what you're saying and prove that out and then
really generate some real ROI numbers,
I don't see there's any reason why the DOT wouldn't
continue to work with you.
But it's all about proving that you
can do what you're saying that your product can
do before the city, I think, trusts you enough to say,
let's go to some of these more robust use cases,
these more high dollar infrastructure projects--
things like that.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: And that's a big reason
that dotMaps has been so successful.
JOHN BLESAK: Absolutely.
I mean, I think, again, it's all about the ease
of use of dotMaps.
It's a very, again, niche product.
And I think there's not a lot of players that are doing it
as well as we are.
And if you can get in there, and you can see big wins in cities,
like Chicago and Seattle, you can prove out
that you can work with any size city at that point--
cities with a lot of one-way streets,
cities with a ton of construction,
cities with tons of cranes and construction management
going on.
Those are big use cases for these cities.
And there's millions of dollars at stake
and then making sure that you get these projects done,
coordinated.
And then really communicate it out to the public,
as well, I think is crucial.
You know, the government always wants
to try and be transparent to some extent with the public
and let them know what's going on.
That's why with dotMaps, we actually rolled out
a public portal as well.
So there's a very easy to use Google-based map type
public portal where anybody that's living in that city
can go in and actually subscribe to their regions,
figure out when construction is going to be happening.
If I'm a business owner, I can also
set up alerts and emails that will come through.
So if roads or the right of way is
going to be shut down in front of my business,
I'd like to know that.
So those are just some of the ways that we're being--
or helping, I guess, the government
be more transparent about what they're doing.
And, again, just kind of keep that flow of information
going from, not only the DOT, but also to the public as well.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: Awesome.
Well, John, thank you so much for coming in and telling us
more about public sector in the cloud.
JOHN BLESAK: Yeah, appreciate your time.
Thanks so much.
MARK MIRCHANDANI: Thanks for watching,
and stay tuned as we continue to talk with SADA
about public sector solutions.
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