When I was at the Hydraulic Institute’s annual meeting last month, I had the pleasure of once again speaking with Dave Brockway, Co-Founder and President of Intelliquip; a company that specializes in the automation of front-end sales processes for fluid handling equipment manufacturers. As always, Brockway has great insights to share with the pump industry.

Charli: So what are you looking forward to in 2016?

Brockway: There are several things happening over the next couple years, but one I’m very excited about is taking place in my backyard. Not my actual backyard (::chuckles::)…In Orlando, where I live. I’m on the 100^th Anniversary Committee for the Hydraulic Institute, and we are preparing for a celebration in March 2017. We are planning to put together a short video and artwork to illustrate to the public, just how important pumps are for life . Since I’ve been in the pump industry for over three decades, I have a lot of ideas on what might be included – not that I have final say; but my desire is to show how cool pumps really are. Pumps are everywhere behind the scenes. They make snow for the Winter Olympics, they irrigate golf courses, some pumps process peanut butter and molasses, and others handle 700 degree asphalt! Pumps are literally everywhere, and most people don’t know it. It’s really an exciting industry to work in.

Charli: I’m always trying to tell people that! We need to get the word out about how cool it is to work with pumps and pump systems.

Brockway: Yeah, it’s not only about putting your head-down and designing new impellers for pumps. It can be that – if that is what a person is interested in…but it can be so much more. Like what we do – me, and my fellow co-founders, Trygve Dahl and Dave Tress – we combined our knowledge of pumps, – with our varied experience of sales, engineering and programming. We started developing the next generation of SCPQ software [select – configure – price – quote] back in 2000 after we left the pump companies [Ingersoll Dresser Pump—IDP, and Flowtronex). We knew we could compete with larger software companies because we were engineers and we knew the industry. We knew our software would be immediately more relevant to pump companies. And I kind of laugh, because we were actually in the cloud before anyone knew what the cloud was! (::Laughs::)

Charli: Can you share one insight that you’ve learned in your career?

Brockway: Hmmmm…I would say to never stop growing. Keep improving. And I think the pump industry does have this in mind as they move forward. We’ve all seen, or most of us anyway, we know about the Department of Energy’s recent rulings for improving energy efficiency, and so domestic pump companies are going to have to do some work to catch up to their European counterparts. We’re seeing technology push the industry – I mean, look at EDE [Electronic Data Exchange] – look at the IIoT [Industrial Internet of Things]. I was just adjusting my nest thermostat, which I love, and now that I need a new water heater, I’m currently wondering if they have Wi-Fi capability. (::Laughs::)

Charli: So how is Intelliquip improving?

Brockway: Ok, so over the past 15 years, we have built a very robust system that we deploy to what I call “power users”. These “power users” are people who are familiar with pumps – usually inside salesmen or application engineers, and a number of knowledgeable distributors. What we’ve seen over the last 5 years, there’s been a movement where the end user and specifying engineers – people who are not employed by pump companies, but people who are hired by end users to evaluate systems and determine what pumps fit best in those systems – well our software can be a little overwhelming for those users. You can read more about it in “The Ugly Truth“, but essentially we are currently in the process of creating online ‘portals’ to make it easier for end users or specifiers to use. We want to keep the speed and functionality for our “power” users, and also provide portals with more user-friendly interfaces to help others become more comfortable with our SCPQ software.

Charli: If anyone can handle such a big project, I know you can, Dave! Thanks for sharing your insights with the readers at Empowering Pumps.

For more information, visit www.intelliquip.com