Schiller Associates was an energy consulting company in Oakland, California that wanted to create a relational database to manage all of their projects more efficiently and effectively.

They had massive amounts of project data: people, products, applications, sites and statistics to manage and we’re overwhelmed by the workload and trying to keep everything running smoothly.

I sat down with them several times, listened to their problems and empathized with their situation since I had been doing the exact same projects for the last few years in my small startup.

I had learned how to put all the different tables of information together in a way that allowed us to see everything on a dashboard in real time and be able to update things on the fly as needed.

I showed them how to gather all the information, put it into meaningful critical paths and then organize it into a system that allowed everybody to have access at whatever level they needed.

I worked with their chief engineer to develop the database over a series of 6 months and we managed to get a working template that could then be copied, prototyped and sold to various power utilities to manage their energy efficiency projects as well.

They paid me well as a consultant and I enjoyed the group immensely. I then showed them how to customize it for each utility that was interested and we managed to sell it to PG&E, Southern California Edison, Northern States Power, Texas Power & Light and New York Power Authority (to name a few).

Over the dozen or so clients that they managed to sell it to, they created over $40 Million in revenue and were able to cash out and retire on the earnings. That was more than they had earned in the previous decade.

The system ultimately saved them thousands of hours of useless work, wasted time and allowed them to really bring their unique abilities fully to serve their clients optimally.

They were able to transform from spending hours doing useless number crunching and data management to actually being able to architect and design systems that increased value for all their clients tremendously.