Daly.Commerce Celebrates 25 Years of Continued Growth
In an era when longevity in technology is sometimes measured in months, not years, it is a phenomenon to find a company that not only has survived 25 years, but continues to grow substantially every year.
Initially located in the city of Providence, the company moved its headquarters to 1351 South County Trail in East Greenwich, Rhode Island this year. It also operates offices in Oak Brook IL, just outside of Chicago; Atlanta, GA; Addison, TX, just outside of Dallas; and Santa Ana, CA., near Los Angeles.
While the company has undergone considerable change since opening as a consulting and custom software development firm focusing primarily on implementation of IBM's MAPICS and DMAS products, it has never lost its core values.
"What always made us the company that we were was our reputation and our people," says Company President Jim Moody. Moody was the fourth person to join Daly & Wolcott in its infancy and has witnessed firsthand its development technologically, but also its continuing commitment to maintaining a quality and loyal workforce.
"To recruit new employees we went to college campuses in September, always looking for students with a 3.4 GPA or better, and more importantly for people who helped finance their college education," Moody says. "These are the people who would fit into the culture at Daly.
"People genuinely care about the company, about themselves, about the customers, and about each other. We are a people company."
That's evident by the number of daly.commerce employees who have remained with the company for five, 10 or 15 years or more. They bring a sense of purpose and commitment, and have been the strength that has helped grow the firm into an important distribution software development company.
Since Moody helped develop the company's first software product in the early 1980s, daly.commerce has become a leading producer of supply chain management software that fully integrates solutions to enable a unified flow of information across all the major distribution processes. The company currently has some 1,200 customers worldwide.
daly.commerce has succeeded by embracing the fundamentals that make any business successful – developing a distinct company culture that attracts quality employees and fosters loyalty; an understanding that products must change to meet the marketplace; strong bonds between the company and its customers; strong support from vendors and business partners; and a clear vision that is consistently articulated by its founder and Chief Executive Officer, Terrance J. Daly, and by Company President Jim Moody.
"Never put limits on what people can do," says Tim Lyford, the company's director of product management, reflecting both the company's business philosophy and its approach at Lighthouse for Youth, a group home for teenager girls that the company founded 10 years ago. Lyford, like most Daly employees, believes there is nothing that can't be achieved without the proper attitude, support and effort.
"Everyone feels they are making a difference," says Lyford, 39, who joined the company 17 years ago, just after graduation from Bryant College in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He is among 24 percent of the company's more than 130 employees who have remained with daly.commerce for more than a decade.
"There is a big, core group of employees who have remained committed to the daly.commerce ideals," Lyford says. "There is an atmosphere for growth, and a culture that fosters new ideas."
That atmosphere led the company to develop its first software product in 1988 with the introduction of Application Plus for the AS/400.
"We came out with our first really full-fledged software product in 1988, with the advent of the AS/400," Moody says. "At that time we knew that IBM was coming out with a machine without distribution software. We recognized the window of opportunity and we wanted to get into the software business.
"In the spring of that year we went to Alton Jones (a rural campus run by the University of Rhode Island) -- a few people spent a week designing what we thought the product should have. We needed to have something we could ship in September of 1988, which was when the first shipment of the machine was coming out. That's when we really started the transition from a consulting company to a software company."
Over the years that enterprise software package expanded beyond order management to include sales analysis, inventory control, and accounts payable.
Application Plus has since grown to a suite of products that encompasses more than 26 enterprise-wide modules enabling all the sales and order management, warehouse logistics, purchasing and inventory management, e-commerce, and financial processes of a distribution enterprise.
Five years ago, the company introduced commerce@work, which allows the company to serve customers on multiple platforms, including Windows NT and UNIX. That same year, the company introduced web@work as its entry into the world of Internet commerce.
These products continue to expand, providing real-time distribution solutions for companies that recognize that the best way to be profitable in these times is developing efficiencies through technology, and improving service to differentiate them from the competition.
Lighthouse for Youth
While daly.commerce was growing as a company it never lost site of the need to give back to the community.
About a decade ago, the company founded Lighthouse for Youth, a group home for troubled teenage girls who had no way out of the state system, the Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF).
"Once you're in that system (DCYF) it is so difficult to get out," says Moody. "There are a lot of agencies that deal with children, but very few that deal with teenagers."
Terry Daly, whose vision established daly.commerce became the visionary behind the founding of Lighthouse for Youth. A foster parent himself, Daly recognized the need to help teenage girls who had no way out of the system, no one to mentor them.
With Daly's inspiration, the company hired a social worker from DCYF to develop Lighthouse for Youth, a home for four to five troubled teenage girls. Since then, two more homes have opened, all supported financially by the company, along with state and other corporate funds.
The homes provide the girls with a safe haven, counseling, and hope.
daly.commerce employees continue their involvement and support of the homes, and some, like Moody, have actually become foster parents to girls who have been placed there. The reward can be measured by a young woman finishing college, joining the Peace Corps, joining the U.S. Navy, and establishing her own family. These are only a few of the many successes.
"We can't save them all," says Moody. "We can make a difference in some of their lives. If we are able to save just one, it has all been worthwhile"