August 2024

As the summer winds down (Happy Labor Day, America!) and my family close out the season at the cabin, it’s clear that while I’ve been indulging in some much-needed downtime, the wheels at Authentise have kept turning at full speed. 

You might have caught the news—Authentise was among 67 companies awarded a U.S. Air Force Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with a ceiling of up to $1 billion. This is a significant milestone for us, and I know it raises some questions about our next steps. Let me shed some light on that.

About a year ago, we embarked on a significant journey with the Air Force by securing a production award. It was a first for us, and as far as we know, we’re the first software company in history to take on such a role. While we’re not the ones doing the designing or the physical production, we are responsible for ensuring that everything runs smoothly—managing subcontractors and delivering on our promise of better performance through data. 

These experiences first led us to integrate Large Language Models into Threads and are now leading us to integrate Threads and Flows. That’s a major milestone for Authentise – our tools now cover the entire idea to part spectrum. That’s exactly what the DOD wants: Transparency and data 

along the entire process. 

With this feature you can jump into a detailed conversation about an order, tie in additional stakeholders and resolve key issues before you go to production. As part of this improvement, also expanded the comment feature to runs, and added the ability to assign users to specific tasks.  

This is just one of a series of improvements we’re making to Flows driven by feedback from customers. Others include:  

• My Action Assignments for Downtimes and Line Items: Task assignments, which you’ve seen in the chat features, are now available for Downtime scheduling too.

• Custom Fields Expansion to Runs and Downtimes: Tailor data capture to your needs by adding custom fields to your Runs and Downtime events, ensuring the right information gets to the right people.

• Hyperlinks on Piece QR Traveler: A small but mighty update—quickly access orders or traceability reports directly from the traveler (when viewed digitally, of course). 

These and a whole host of smaller updates prove that I can happily step away from the business for a while, and still succeed. I’m extremely proud of what the team’s done in the last month. It’s super exciting not only to see the vision come to fruition, but see the smaller, customer centric changes happen too. 

Speaking of vision: Since I have to be in the US for DOD related work the week after IMTS, I’m skipping the event this year. I’m also meant to be cycling across the alps the weekend after, so I think it might be the right decisions – though all the prep notes on LinkedIn are giving me FOMO. I’ll be in Ohio and possibly DC in late Sept though, so let me know if you will be too. In the meantime, come to London or let’s meet on LinkedIn. I’ve been spending a bunch of time on the platform since my colleagues convinced me to give it more attention. It’s paid off – I’ve have a bunch of very interesting conversations there lately; even learning a lot about management. 

See you there or IRL soon.