News

Who's Who: Dave Gonsiorowski

The head of WebRaiser is a competitor, and his drive is intense to win "the marathon" in the kiosk software market.

November 6, 2003

Dave Gonsiorowski, co-founder, president and CEO of WebRaiser, has always been a competitor, and his drive is intense to win what he calls "the marathon" in the kiosk software market.

Gonsiorowski had big-league dreams growing up. He played baseball through school and had a desire to play professionally, but found himself working during the week and playing on a series of amateur teams at night and the weekends. One of his greatest thrills came from this experience. In 1995, his team beat Team Puerto Rico for an Amateur World Series title.

"I happened to get the opportunity to throw the last pitch with bases loaded and two outs to beat the heavily favored team. It was such a thrill to win something that hundreds of teams from around the world competed for. To finish number one at anything is a great goal and accomplishment. I have some similar visions for WebRaiser," he said.

It was during his college years playing ball for Appalachian State University in North Carolina in 1991-'93 that he grew interested in the possibilities of self-service technology.

During baseball season the team traveled a lot, so he had to hit the books hard to keep up.

"There was a coffee shop I used to study at that had some PCs with modems on them that connected us to the school via the information superhighway. They were free to use as long as we purchased beverages and turned over a driver's license," he explained. "As part of a class assignment, I wrote a paper on the coffee shop's demand outpacing supply for the computer access. I theorized that the coffee shop should make the computers like vending machines."

He tried building the concept in 1994 using Macromedia Authorware. "I got pretty far along on the application and choked on the peripheral integration and the price of the hardware."

Dave Gonsiorowski

The real world

Gonsiorowski's work career began in the medical device manufacturing industry working with Baxter Microscan, where he served as a database administrator for human resource and compliance tracking systems.

His next opportunity was with Hewlett Packard performing similar database management roles When his former boss with Baxter took a position with US Computer Services (now part of the DST family of companies), he went along.

He focused there on HR workforce automation. "This offered tremendous experience in developing and integrating with enterprise-level database management systems," he said.

Gonsiorowski took another position running multiple projects across the USCS family of companies as it prepared for IPO and sale. The projects included formalizing and automating product development processes, strategic planning processes and performance management systems.

In 1997, he left US Computer Services to start Strategic Resource Integrators. SRI was a consulting firm devoted to workforce automation. SRI's clients included Intel, California State Franchise Tax Board, California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, Save Mart Supermarkets, Department of Justice, Del Norte and Ceres Unified School Districts.

By mid-1997, Gary DeBlaquiere joined SRI to lead a venture called WebRaiser into kiosks as a division of SRI. By 1999, they had spun off SRI and were 100 percent committed to the kiosk space. DeBlaquiere is a vice president and board member of WebRaiser today.

Corporate challenges

"We work in an industry where the opportunities are limitless," said Gonsiorowski. "We have created a platform and accompanying toolset that enables us to develop, deploy and manage virtually any self-serving application." He said his biggest challenge is keeping focused on core strategies. It's easy to get distracted by all of the opportunities that are available."

He said he believes in rules before tools -- that good technology is the result of good processes. "It's our company (experience, talent, culture, and focus on process) that sets our technology apart."

Prior to writing WebRaiser's flagship product, TSS Enterprise, the company spent three years performing integration services. "Through this process, we gained firsthand experience on all aspects of developing, deploying and managing networks of kiosk systems across multiple vertical markets," Gonsiorowski said.

Youthful glow

Gonsiorowski said that the kiosk industry is shaping up nicely. He said it's still fairly young, and in sprint mode.

"There are a few providers, who have taken some early leads in the vertical races that are about to experience some challenges as customers move into their second and third generation self-service technologies," he explained.

"It's typically in these rounds that the customer really knows what they want and need the self-service technology to do. They start placing a higher importance on the technologies' robustness, flexibility, security, ease of use, and total cost of ownership. This is where we make up ground quickly."

He noted that early on in the industry, it seemed as though anyone with a little PC or software experience thought they could be a kiosk developer, manufacturer or integrator.

"The dot-com bust and down economy in some ways has been a good thing. It has removed some of the players who didn't really have much to offer. It has forced us all to be more focused and forge better relationships with each other," he said.

And he knows the industry still has some work to do to break the stigma that kiosks don't work.

"Almost every time I hear, `We have tried kiosks and they don't work,' I have to ask when he or she implemented one. It's almost always a pre-2000 implementation. A lot has changed in the last three years."