Dice Users' Group Conference 2014

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich.—Dice Corp. released a selection of new products at its most recent annual users' group conference, where 30 percent of its client base was present.

Approximately 95 percent of those attendees were from North America, according to Carol Enman, senior VP of strategic business development and communications for Dice, a producer of central station software,

One of the precipitating factors to this lineup of releases was the recent growth of the company. “We've grown quite a bit in 2014,” Cliff Dice, company president and CEO, told Security Systems News. “Over the past five years we've been growing very rapidly.”

Dice pointed to new customers as a large factor of this growth. Enman estimated an overall growth in the company of at least 30 percent across all departments in the past year and a half.

“One of the things we spent a good deal of time talking about [at the November conference] was the difference between apps and applications and what they provided the customer,” Enman told SSN. She described the root difference between the two as apps being for phones while applications are web-based.

Dice discussed the innovation of two new web portals that were introduced, one for commercial accounts and one for residential. These are the products among this line of releases that could have the biggest impact, Dice said.

Enman listed numerous other examples of new products, including a system for mobile sales management; a new data entry system assisting users step-by-step; a scheduling app; and a fire inspection app allowing service technicians to inspect fire systems on sites and fill out required forms.

One of the main ideas driving these products is creating efficiency for monitoring companies. “A lot of the Dice customers have anywhere from 30 percent to as much as 50 percent fewer employees … [than] alarm companies with other software packages,” Dice said.