Listen to this articleGolden Software is a software development company creating stable and useful visualization software along with free technical support. Golden Software products are used in 185 countries and on all seven continents. Below is our interview with Golden Software’s CEO, Blakelee Mills:
Q: How would you describe Golden Software in your own words?
A: Established in 1983, Golden Software’s longevity is a testament to our continued focus on creating stable and useful visualization software along with superior, and free, technical support. We are a lean company with fewer than 30 employees, yet our influence spans the globe as our products are used in 185 countries and on all seven continents. I attribute this success to our team of highly intelligent and dedicated individuals who are all independent thinkers, but who come together to make great things happen for our customers. Hard work is the center of the Golden Software culture, and I am thoroughly amazed by the output of such a lean team.
From the onset, co-founder Pat Madison instilled within the company the utmost respect for customers. As such, we take great pride in our customer-driven feature development and the level of technical support we provide. We go to great lengths to ensure all feature and improvement suggestions are recorded in our customer request database. Support inquiries, whether by phone, email, or live chat, are all quickly and thoroughly answered by our competent technical support crew. By maintaining such a focus on our users, a number of our customers have been with us since the beginning. The below customer quotes summarize this sentiment better than I:
“I’ve never dealt with customer support as responsive, thorough, and friendly as Golden’s. It means a lot and we’re all very happy with your product and service.” Craig Ebersole, Project Scientist, Liberty Environmental, Inc., United States
“I am very satisfied with my Golden Software products which I have used for several years. What I like most is the service you have provided. Golden Software is one of the few software companies I have and will in the future recommend to people. The support staff and the company seam to place an emphasis on customer satisfaction.” Dr. John Moverley, Environmental Consultant, Australia
Q: Could you explain the function and advantages of your Surfer software solution?
A: Surfer®, our contouring, gridding, and 3D mapping program, is our flagship product. Introduced in 1985, Surfer is the product with which most individuals are familiar. Surfer’s lead developer, Dan Smith, works very hard to ensure the user gets all the features and flexibility of a high-end software with an easy-to-use and intuitive user interface. In addition to ease-of-use, Surfer’s gridding abilities are top notch. Surfer is well-known in the industry for the unbeatable quality of its 12 different gridding methods, including Kriging. Other powerful gridding features include data filtering, data transforms, and controls over the final gridded dataset. Thereafter, grids can be manipulated for further analysis. Finally, users are given complete control over the final display of their map with Surfer’s extensive map customization options. And file compatibility is never a problem as Surfer can import and export to a variety of other file types. Surfer is renowned for creating attractive, high-quality maps and images. When we say publication-ready, we mean it!
Many software solutions come with a hefty price tag both in terms of initial purchase price and ongoing maintenance and support, but our philosophy is different. We provide the same high value to our customers for a much lower price. As a lean company, we work efficiently, and we’re able to pass those savings on to customers with affordable price points for Surfer and our other products. Currently, a new Surfer 13 license can be purchased for $849US with available quantity discounts. Included in this price are free updates, free technical support, and upgrade pricing for future versions (a 60% discount on the full version). Our goal is to get our product into the hands of users at a price point they can afford. And we provide technical support for previous versions of our software. We do occasionally receive a question about a DOS version!
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Q: Tell us something more about Grapher and its features.
A: When asked to describe Grapher®, I typically tell people it’s Excel’s® graphing component on steroids. But Grapher, our 2D and 3D graphing solution, is more than a juiced up version of Excel. Grapher features over 60 unique graph types including specialty and statistical graphs. Grapher offers an assortment of statistical tools including fit curves and error bars for data analysis and provides customization abilities over virtually every aspect of the graph. Beyond those features, Grapher gives users a variety of workflow enhancing tools including template creation and automation of repetitive tasks. While the majority of Golden Software’s customer-base lies in the geoscience realm, Grapher has a much wider application that includes anyone needing to graphically display data. This entails scientists and engineers along with business professionals, researchers, and analysts. Just like Surfer, Grapher’s final output is publication-ready.
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Q: What’s the ideal company that would benefit from your scientific graphics software?
A: The people that utilize our software range from one-man-show consultants to individuals within multi-billion dollar enterprises. They are commonly geoscientists in industries such as oil and gas or mineral exploration, environmental remediation, or engineering consulting. However, the uses for our software are not limited to these groups. The Golden Software product line is beneficial for anyone needing to display two-, three-, or four-dimensional data. There is immense value in visualizing and analyzing spatial data in many fields and industries. Some examples include analyzing trends geographically in the medical or social sciences, or visualizing how sales are affected by location. In one of our newsletter articles, we showcase Surfer’s use as a quality control tool in gym floor construction. In another article, we highlight a Surfer user who analyzes streamflow and salmon migration trends temporally by substituting time for location data. Our low price points provide an easy entry point for smaller businesses, and make it easy for larger corporations to provide our software to a number of their employees. Our products are currently single-user licenses; however, we are actively developing a network license model to better serve customers who require a more flexible licensing scheme. Again, we’re listening to our customer requests and responding accordingly.
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Q: What can we expect from Golden Software in the future?
A: By actively listening to customer requests, we have a variety of projects in the works. In addition to the network license, we are investigating other licensing options that include time- and feature-limited licenses. We are also actively exploring the integration of our products within other software solutions in order to enhance these other programs and to expand the reach of our products. Finally, just last month we released a new service, a free online file conversion tool. This tool came about as a way to share Golden Software’s extensive import and export functionality for anyone, not just current customers, needing to convert one file type to another.
Beyond these immediate endeavors, we will stay true to the legacy that was established in 1983 by providing high-quality software and diligently focusing on customer needs. We will continuously search out ways to improve internal workflows, thereby ensuring we remain lean and responsive to industry changes. By doing so, we can continue offering great value to our customers. We are, and will remain, a team of individuals working hard for those who need to visualize data.
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