• CEPro_logo_blue-new
  • TOPICS
      • News
        • People & Places
        • Product Briefs
      • Projects
      • Events
      • Control
        • Central Vac
        • Energy/Power
        • HVAC/IAQ
        • Interfaces/Devices
        • Lighting
        • Motorized Shades
        • Whole House Systems
      • Audio/Video
        • Audio/Video
        • AV Accessories
        • AV Racks
        • Cabling
        • Displays
        • Furniture
        • Headphones
        • Home Theater
        • Media
        • Mounts/Lifts
        • Multiroom AV
        • Projectors/Screens
        • Speakers/Subwoofers
        • Wireless AV
      • Security
        • Access Control
        • Alarms/Sensors
        • Services/Platforms
        • Surveillance/Cameras
      • Business Support
        • Associations/Buying Groups
        • Cell Phone Boosters
        • Distributors/Reps
        • Operations
        • Recurring Revenue
        • Research
        • Sales/Marketing
        • Software Services
        • Tools/Testers
      • Networking
        • Cellular
        • Devices/Equipment
        • Wireless
        • Wired/Installation
      • Markets
        • Builders
        • Commercial
        • Design
        • Europe
        • Outdoors
        • Resimercial
        • Wellness
      • CE Pro Hub Pages
        • Bose
        • Savant
        • Inside Sound United
  • PRODUCTS
  • RESOURCES
    • Reports/Downloads
    • Buyer’s Guide
    • Webcasts
    • Podcasts
    • Integrator Jobs
    • Digital Edition
    • CE Pro-iQ
  • SUBSCRIBE
    • CEDIA SHOW UPDATES
    • CEPRO PRINT EDITION
    • CEPRO DIGITAL EDITION
    • CEPRO NEWSLETTERS
  • DISCOVER
    • CEDIA Expo
      • September 29 – October 1
        Dallas, TX
      • VISIT SITE
    • KBIS
      • February 8 – 10
        Orlando, FL
      • VISIT SITE
    • Total Tech Summit
      • October 26 – 28
        Orlando, FL
      • VISIT SITE
    • Commercial Integrator
      • VISIT SITE
    • Security Sales
      • VISIT SITE
    • Tech Decisions
      • VISIT SITE
    • Campus Safety
      • VISIT SITE
    • Design Well
      • VISIT SITE
    • KBB Online
      • VISIT SITE
    • AV-iQ
      • VISIT SITE
    • CE Pro-iQ
      • VISIT SITE
  • Search
  • TOPICS
    • News
      • People & Places
      • Product Briefs
    • Projects
    • Events
    • Control
      • Central Vac
      • Energy/Power
      • HVAC/IAQ
      • Interfaces/Devices
      • Lighting
      • Motorized Shades
      • Whole House Systems
    • Audio/Video
      • Audio/Video
      • AV Accessories
      • AV Racks
      • Cabling
      • Displays
      • Furniture
      • Headphones
      • Home Theater
      • Media
      • Mounts/Lifts
      • Multiroom AV
      • Projectors/Screens
      • Speakers/Subwoofers
      • Wireless AV
    • Security
      • Access Control
      • Alarms/Sensors
      • Services/Platforms
      • Surveillance/Cameras
    • Business Support
      • Associations/Buying Groups
      • Cell Phone Boosters
      • Distributors/Reps
      • Operations
      • Recurring Revenue
      • Research
      • Sales/Marketing
      • Software Services
      • Tools/Testers
    • Networking
      • Cellular
      • Devices/Equipment
      • Wireless
      • Wired/Installation
    • Markets
      • Builders
      • Commercial
      • Design
      • Europe
      • Outdoors
      • Resimercial
      • Wellness
    • CE Pro Hub Pages
      • Savant
      • Bose
      • Inside Sound United
  • PRODUCTS
  • RESOURCES
    • Reports/Downloads
    • Buyer’s Guide
    • Webcasts
    • Podcasts
    • Integrator Jobs
    • Digital Edition
    • CE Pro-IQ
  • SUBSCRIBE
    • CEPRO PRINT EDITION
    • CEPRO DIGITAL EDITION
    • CEPRO NEWSLETTERS
    • CEDIA SHOW UPDATES
  • DISCOVER
    • Cedia Expo
      VISIT SITE
    • Commercial Integrator
      VISIT SITE
    • Security Sales
      VISIT SITE
    • Tech Decisions
      VISIT SITE
    • Campus Safety
      VISIT SITE
    • Design Well
      VISIT SITE
    • Total Tech Summit
      VISIT SITE
    • KBB Online
      VISIT SITE
    • AV-iQ
    • CE Pro-iQ
M
POPULAR SEARCHES
News
Projects
Control
Audio Video
Security
Business Support
Markets
SUBSCRIBE CEDIA EXPO CEPro-iQ
Operations | Products
September 13, 2015

Former VIA CEO Randy Stearns Named CEO of D-Tools

D-Tools founder Adam Stone stays involved, while CEDIA veteran Randy Stearns becomes CEO of the custom installation software company, just in time for CEDIA Expo 2015. ‘I’m not only a customer ….”
Julie Jacobson  
D-Tools founder Adam Stone stays involved, while CEDIA veteran Randy Stearns becomes CEO of the custom installation software company, just in time for CEDIA Expo 2015. ‘I’m not only a customer ….”
Article:
Operations | Products
September 13, 2015

Former VIA CEO Randy Stearns Named CEO of D-Tools

Just in time for CEDIA Expo 2015, one of the most highly respected execs in custom electronics, Randy Stearns, has been named CEO of D-Tools, maker of popular system design and project management software for integrators and security dealers.

Stearns founded the integration company Engineered Environments in 1993, growing the firm into a perennial leader of the CE Pro 100. He was a key architect of VIA International, which resulted from the 2013 merger of six top integrators, and he served for eight years on the CEDIA board, eventually as chairman.

He left VIA in 2015, and has since been consulting with SupplyStream (product purchasing and proposal platform) and other custom-oriented organizations. Now he’s full-time at D-Tools in a position that founder Adam Stone wasn’t really seeking.

“It didn’t start out with me looking for a CEO,” says Stone, who founded D-Tools in 1998. “I asked Randy to come see what we are doing, to find hidden value in the company.”

The six-week consulting gig went so well, however, that D-Tools hired Stearns to run the company.

D-Tools is already a well-oil machine – profitable, debt-free and growing by double-digits – and has “always done well in residential,” says Stone. “But I wanted opinions on other markets. Our software scales so well. I wanted to be a software company, not just a residential A/V company.”

To do that, Stone notes, “we need more things that a real CEO does, like strategy and finding people to invest in us. That’s an area I don’t really play with, and Randy has a lot of experience in that area.”

Unlike Stearns’ other consulting clients, D-Tools is a well-established company and a leader in its niche, so “he doesn’t have to spend time fixing things,” Stone says.

What D-Tools needed, he says, is a “more measured” approach to strategic planning and a shorter timeline for growth initiatives.

The residential A/V business “still has ample opportunity for growth,” Stearns says. “We will continue to pursue that, but the majority of growth will be in the commercial integration sector.”

D-Tools already does well in certain commercial verticals such as higher education. Institutions such as MIT, UCLA and Yale use D-Tools. The commercial security space is “growing rapidly” as well, according to Stearns.

D-Tools Lately

D-Tools has been working hard to integrate with NetSuite, SAP and other ERP (enterprise resource planning) platforms.

“I think software is only as good as its integration,” Stearns says. “If you have specialty software like accounting and drawing, we can make it look like a fully integrated solution.”

The big new System Integrator 2015 release last year included a rich new cloud infrastructure that improves QuickBooks integration and mobile connectivity.

Over the past year, “the biggest innovation has been the mobile install capabilities,” says D-Tools VP sales and marketing Tim Bigoness. “It’s helped us to tie in that third area of project management.”

Installers now can track their jobs in the field, ticking off tasks, entering site notes, adding before/after pictures … and have all of that information “thrown back into the project,” Bigoness says. “It takes the ‘last mile’ out of the manual process.”

And with installers better tracking their activities in the field, managers can better determine job costs for any given project and any given task. In turn, this data can be used to create better estimates and eke more profit out of every job.

image
CE Pro @ CEDIA Expo 2015: News, Products, Technology, Opinions, More

Without such tools, dealers are left guessing at actual costs, says Stone: “At the end of the year, they either have money or they don’t.”

Stearns was always one of those dealers that did actually track job costs. In fact, he was D-Tools’ second paying customer ever (“I’m not only a client ….”).

As it happens, the six integration companies that formed VIA were all using D-Tools, just with different accounting software.

A strange thing has happened over the past two years in the home systems integration market: More companies than ever have come out with new software for budgets, proposals, design, management, purchasing, sales, marketing and more.

We should see about a dozen of them at CEDIA Expo 2015, but D-Tools still reigns supreme, with “thousands” of companies and “tens of thousands” of users. Some 50 to 60 new customers are added every month.

Stone says most of these new companies “all want to link into D-tools.”

At CEDIA, for example, the SupplyStream booth will also include D-Tools and SpringDeck. D-Tools announced partnerships last year with with both SpringDeck and SupplyStream for sales sales presentations and data sharing, respectively.

There’s one thing that D-Tools has always had that no other company seems likely to match: product data. Manufacturers submit their products – including specs and shapes—and D-Tools specialists groom the data.

“Let’s say everyone else’s software is equally good,” says Stone. “We have the data. That’s something we had from the start. We have six or seven people that do nothing but that. We have our own content management system for that. That’s the hard part. It’s the data that really powers our platform.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
JULIE JACOBSON
image image image image

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Jacobson
Follow
Julie Jacobson:
Julie Jacobson is founding editor of CE Pro, the leading media brand for the home-technology channel. She has covered the smart-home industry since 1994, long before there was much of an Internet, let alone an Internet of things. Currently she studies, speaks, writes and rabble-rouses in the areas of home automation, security, networked A/V, wellness-related technology, biophilic design, and the business of home technology. Julie majored in Economics at the University of Michigan, spent a year abroad at Cambridge University, and earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a recipient of the annual CTA TechHome Leadership Award, and a CEDIA Fellows honoree. A washed-up Ultimate Frisbee player, Julie currently resides in San Antonio, Texas and sometimes St. Paul, Minn. Follow on Twitter: @juliejacobson
View Julie Jacobson's complete profile

ARTICLE TOPICS

Operations • Products

ARTICLE TAGS

CEDIA • D-Tools • Portal

SHARE

Share On Facebook
Share On Twitter
Share On Linkedin
Share On Whatsapp
Share Via Email
Copy URL
← Previous Article Next Article →
Article ControlLightingMotorized ShadesProjectsWellnessWhole-House Systems

Audio Impact Has Lutron Choreograph the Colorful Lighting of This Ocean View Home

The San Diego integration firm shows how a little change in color goes a long way in this luxurious smart home.
Article Audio/VideoCommercialDesignDisplaysHome TheaterMarketsMultiroom AVNewsProducts

Sony Announces BH and CH Series MicroLED Displays

Sony's latest microLED products provide integrators with a choice of high brightness or wide color gamut customizable display solutions.
Article ControlLightingMotorized ShadesProjectsWellnessWhole-House Systems

Audio Impact Has Lutron Choreograph the Colorful Lighting of This Ocean View Home

The San Diego integration firm shows how a little change in color goes a long way in this luxurious smart home.
Article Audio/VideoBusiness SupportDesignDevices/EquipmentISENetworkingNewsWireless

Origin Acoustics Partners with Netgear

Origin Acoustics will resell and support Netgear’s CI-focused wired and wireless networking products from newly created Netgear AV division.

SHOW NEWSLETTER

Sign Up

CE Pro

Subscribe Sign Up

Content Types

News
Products
Projects
Companies
Downloads
Webcasts
Podcasts
Events

Specials

IntegratorJobs
CEDIA EXPO
CE Pro 100
CE Pro Summit
Awards Programs

Company Info

About
Contact Us
Customer Service
Media Solutions & Advertising

Subscribe

Magazine
Newsletters
Digital Edition

Connect

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
RSS Feed

Categories

AUDIO/VIDEO
AV Accessories
AV Racks
Amplifiers/Receivers
Cabling
Displays
Furniture
Mounts/Lifts
Multiroom AV
Projector Screens
Speakers/Subwoofers
Wireless AV
CONTROL
Central Vac
Energy/Power
Interfaces/Devices
HVAC/IAQ
Lighting
Motorized Shades
Whole-House Systems
NETWORKING
Cellular
Devices/Equipment
Wireless
Wiring/Installation
SECURITY
Access Control
Alarms/Sensors
Services/Platforms
Surveillance Cameras
BUSINESS SUPPORT
Associations/Buying Groups
Distributors/Reps
Operations
Recurring Revenue
Research
Sales/Marketing
Software/Services
Tools/Testers
MARKETS
Builders
Commercial
Design
Europe
Outdoors
Wellness
FOLLOW US ON
  • Follow
  • Follow
  • Follow
  • Follow
  • Follow

© 2023 Emerald X, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  • ABOUT
  • CAREERS
  • TERMS OF USE
  • PRIVACY POLICY