8/2/2002 6:00:00 PM
By Tony Monterastelli
for Front Range Tech Biz

A small Boulder software company that garnered wartime attention last year has just landed its first two sales partnerships.

Warrior Solutions will combine its software with upcoming products from Co-mark, a large electronics re-seller based in Bloomingdale, Ill., and Franklin Covey, a maker of time-management materials based in Salt Lake City (NYSE: FC).

Until now, the 15-employee company has sold its software, which helps unit leaders in the U.S. Army manage their personnel records, mostly through word-of-mouth, said CEO Catherine Lawrence. Most of its sales involve Army personnel who download the software onto their digital devices from the company’s Web site.

During the first months of the war in Afghanistan last fall, the company appeared in articles in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

“It had an impact on sales,” Lawrence said. “We get e-mails from our customers saying they saw us there.”

Now the partnerships promise to bring the company’s software to a wider military audience and to shelves at Army supply stores.

“The software has been selling and it’s coming along, but not as fast as we think it will be with these channel partners,” Lawrence said.
Comark, which sells Palm handheld electronic devices to the military, now will offer Warrior Solutions’ Platoon Personnel software with the Palm devices it sells to the Army, Lawrence said.

Franklin Covey plans this week to begin shipping the first of 3,500 units of its Franklin Covey Palm System with a new Department of Defense bonus CD. The CD includes a free, 30-day trial for the Warrior Solutions Software as well as software from two other partners, all geared toward helping Army personnel manage their paperwork, said retired Brig. Gen. Peter Tosi, managing director for the government products group at Franklin Covey.

“We wanted to offer something that’s unique to the military,” said Tosi, who spent 39 years in the Army. “The (Warrior Solutions) software had the biggest part in making this a military product.”

Warrior Solutions offers an organizational software program specifically tailored to the military, he said.

“When you’ve got people under your command, you have to know whether each of your people has taken their regular physical, and they’ve got to have the ‘World Series’ of shots before they go overseas. It’s got to be detailed and you’ve got to get it quickly. The Warrior Solutions software does that,” he said.

The Palm device also comes with Franklin Covey’s organizational software, which is designed for general users, not just the military. It’s intended for Army personnel who want to use the Franklin Covey system on their device, and also try out bonus software programs tailored for the military, Tosi said.

“The Franklin Covey part is a little bit different. It’s about helping people manage their lives, to making sure you take time for the family, the job and time to relax,” he said.

The product will go out to supply stores at Army bases. It’s the first time Warrior Solutions software will appear on store shelves at military bases. The company has done little marketing and no advertising, Lawrence said.

But its marketing has generated word-of-mouth sales, she said. Warrior Solutions has shown its products at military-only educational conferences, such as the Sergeant Majors Academy conference at Fort Bliss in Texas and the Armor School conference at Fort Knox in Kentucky.

“People are there training from all over the world, and we get information technology people from all over to come and talk to us. It puts us right in front of the people who talk about our products,” Lawrence said.

Co-founded by Lawrence and retired Lt. Col. Charles Stibrany in 1999, Warrior Solutions has added new software developers to its staff since launching Platoon Personnel in the summer of 2001. They are working on the company’s next move, which involves selling new software products tailored to the personnel records systems of the Navy and the Marine Corps.

Their most vexing problem: terminology, said retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oke Johnson, the company’s director of Marine Corps and Navy products.

“Believe it or not, each of the services have their own unique way of saying the same thing,” Johnson said.

August 2, 2002