founders of Sane Solutions.
Company: Sane Solutions
Location: 35 Belver Ave., North Kingstown
Wed address: www.sane.com
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Owners: David Ceprano, Frank Faubert, James V. Rose
Employees: 25
Established: 1996
Annual sales: WND
Where did they get that name? In an industry where so many companies are hyphenated, squished together or otherwise altered, software developer Sane Solutions wanted a name that was, well, normal. And in fact, that was their second choice.
"When we started the business (in 1996), things were totally crazy," said James V. Rose, chief executive officer and one of the company’s founders. "You’d call a software company and nobody would return your call. You’d go to a trade show and nobody understood what you did. We wanted to be the normal company."
Rose and his partners, Chief Operations Officer David Ceprano and Chief Technology Officer Frank Faubert, purchased the domain names to both "normal.com" and "sane.com," but ultimately decided to go with Sane.
The name has proved an asset at trade shows – "It always starts a conversation," said Rose – for the software development firm whose product, NetTracker, has sold to Federal Express, AOL Time Warner, Goldman Sachs & Co., among others, as well as a host of government agencies and colleges and universities.
NetTracker is designed for use by marketing professionals, Web masters or companies with e-commerce sites to help determine who is visiting a Web page. The program lists the search engine that refers the visitor, the number of pages visitors’ access and the length of the visit, among other details. Sane also provides ongoing technical support for their product.
"NetTracker allows you to figure out what keywords are being used, where the traffic is coming from," Rose said. "If (users) have ever typed in a profile on your site, you can access that information."
Web designers can use NetTracker to trace the browsers most frequently used by site visitors, to determine how they should develop a site. The software also enables users to construct visuals, such as graphs, and Excel spreadsheets based on Web user statistics.
Customer feedback has been a huge part of the development process for this product, Rose said, and Sane releases an updated version of NetTracker about every six months.
"We have over 2,000 customers," he said. "The majority of the features we have in our software came from customer feedback. We have our support people log these things, and if they hear something over and over and it sounds logical, they’ll talk to the developers."
The latest, released last October, is even "more marketing-friendly," according to Rose, and allows users to view a summary of Web user statistics on a single page. NetTracker is also available in Japanese, German, French and Spanish language versions, and Rose said that Europe is his company’s next big push.
"In the past we’ve let it go a little bit, but we feel that’s a great opportunity," he said. "The software is translated in those languages, so now we’re just going to work hard to sell it."
Rose, Ceprano and Faubert started the company when Rose was working as a marketing executive for a hardware company and Ceprano and Faubert worked at another technology firm. Rose was also building Web sites on the side. The three joined forces, as Web developers at first, eventually shifting to software. After about a year and a half of working from Rose’s home, they moved Sane to its current location at Quonset Point.
Rose said the company tries not to spend a lot of money on marketing.
"Print ads can be $50,000 in a magazine," Rose said. "We have to do things that are low-cost or no-cost to get our name out."
Instead, Sane relies primarily on product reviews in trade magazines, trade shows, banner ads and "Webinars." Rose described a Webinar as a conference call over the computer. A member of the Sane sales team runs a product demonstration, which can be accessed through the company’s Web site. Because it gives potential clients the opportunity to get an overview of NetTracker from disparate locations, it is inexpensive and, Rose said, "easier for everyone."
In a niche with a field of few competitors – Rose said difficult economic times have forced many of Sane’s competitors out of business – "it really comes down to budgets" in terms of factors that drive business.
"Now, people tend to scrutinize purchases more than they did before," he said. "When we started, nobody had this type of software. It was an easy sell. It’s a different market now."
Rose said Sane recruits primarily through Monster.com and unsolicited resumes, and that with Rhode Island’s combination of scenic beaches, a growing capital city and easy access to Boston, he can usually find the necessary talent within the state.
"A lot of people who live in Rhode Island commute to Boston, and we offer the best of both worlds," he said. "This is a good place to be if you want to be a leading-edge technology company. We really haven’t had a hard time attracting people."
Sane experienced a significant growth spurt two years ago, when the company added eight new employees, most of them in the sales and marketing departments, to its predominately technical staff.
"It was highly concentrated tech people," said Marketing Manager C. Decker Marquis, who was hired at that time and went through the shift first-hand.
"The tech people, they’ve got their headphones on and the lights off, and the sales people are playing basketball in the hallway," said Rose.
"It was a culture change," agreed Marquis.
Rose expressed admiration for his team most of whom range in age between 25 and 35 years old, and said he was relieved the company could make it through the terror attacks of last September and subsequent worsening economy without a layoff.
"You don’t want to do that and it’s hard to replace people," he said. "We had been able to save money for a rainy day, and that was a rainy day."
Rose said the company is still weighing its next moves: "It’s tough. We want to stay profitable, but we’re waiting to ramp up again."
Sane had its best month ever last December, when it signed clients including the American Red Cross, Avon Cosmetics, Royal Bank of Scotland, GE – ERC (Employers Reinsurance Corporation), GEICO Direct, Hartford Life, Lockheed Martin, and the University of California at San Diego.
"(I think the plan is to) stay the course," Marquis said. "Do more, better than what we’ve been doing."
"It’s like survival – you keep moving forward," said Rose.
