Technically Speaking With jIT Solutions
Dan Stolts, CEO and Chief Innovation Officer of jIT (Just in Time) Solutions (jITSolutionsIT.com), likes to stay behind the scenes for the most part. Dan comes from the technical side and started out as a program engineer. “More of a Bill Gates than a Steve Ballmer kind of guy,” he says, referring to Gates running the technology side and Ballmer running the business.
jIT Solutions, based in Lakeville, Massachusetts, is an innovation company that launched in 1995 and later became incorporated under Bay State Integrated Technology in 2002. A veteran-owned business, Dan served in the U.S. Army for four years, from 1987 to 1991. “I went into military because I wanted to serve my country,” he shares. The experience helped him narrow his focus and his thought process: Creating solutions and applying technology to the challenges businesses face.
“We take a different approach with how we do things,” says Dan. “We understand the challenges of the business and take a holistic approach to creating whatever solutions are needed. Xerox (his past client) needed to get their products out faster, as well as improve employee morale. We showed them how they could use innovation to save time and money while drastically improving employee morale.”
Throughout his career Dan has written in-depth certification books on architecting Microsoft Azure solutions, Cloud migrations, and Security. For the first 25 years of his life, he used his gifts for creating technical solutions for other people, as a consultant, trading dollars for hours. “Three years ago, I realized we needed to do this to scale. Instead of focusing on one problem, we needed to think about problems for the entire industry.”
jIT Solutions, says Dan, is not a products company, it is an innovation company. Enter one of his newest innovations, a time management POS system called aBitNow (aBitNow.com) which has been in development a little over a year and a half. “We’re rolling it out now,” he says. Consider this scenario. A customer goes into a busy, crowded restaurant to have a meal with their dining companion. The hostess lets them know there is a 20-minute wait. In 20 minutes, they are ushered to their table where they wait for the server to greet them. They place drink orders and wait for the drinks. They then place their meal order and then wait for the meal. They then wait for their check, wait for their server to come pick up the credit card, and then wait for their receipt to come back.
“Our technology saves people and businesses time, energy, money and aggravation,” says Dan. With aBitNow technology, customers will view a dynamic menu on their own device (a smart phone, iPad or PC), pre-order their meal, and pre-pay. Once they arrive at the restaurant the hostess gets them seated without waiting in line – the rest of the dining experience flows. This cuts out all the wait for the customer and makes it possible for them to enjoy a nice, sit-down meal even if they have a finite amount of time – like a lunch break. On the restaurant side, the server can take on many more tables because of all the time they are saving.
“Whenever we optimize, we optimate everything around that entire business,” explains Dan. “We think through the whole process. Restaurants and other businesses need dynamic menus and need to be able to change the menu on the fly. Restaurants are being slammed now with large POS fees – sometimes 30% or more. With our product, they’ll only pay a max of 1% for all of our tech and innovation. Restaurants deal with food theft and need to know if a consumer is in good standing or not. We will have the ability to let the server or bartender rate the customer and put notes on the customer so they can develop relationships. This program provides a massive improvement in customer service.”
Another component is JiT Meals, a program for the restaurant’s kitchen staff whereby pre-cooked meals are cooked in advance. “This can be anything,” says Dan. “Baked catfish, shrimp scampi, spaghetti and meatballs. We have all these recipes that the restaurant can adopt and have high quality meals out in two minutes.”
Dan is passionate about teaching and sharing his knowledge – it’s what drives him. “It’s about taking something I’ve been doing my whole life that helps other people, and share” he says, explaining that he developed this thought process from his mother. “I’ve been gifted with being technical-savvy and the ability to innovate and think outside the box,” he says. “I want to use this to help make the world a better place.”
