How Scriptel Captures Forensic Data in Every Signature

0:00 · Electronic signature pads and core markets

Carl Holden:0:11
Welcome to What's Made in the USA, the podcast that celebrates the people, companies, and ideas behind American manufacturing. I'm your host, Carl Holden, and on each episode we meet the entrepreneurs, engineers, and skilled professionals who are building real products right here in the United States. Today I'm pleased to have John Powers of Scripto, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Let's get started. Welcome, John.

John Powers:0:34
thanks, Carl.

Carl Holden:0:36
Thanks for coming on. Well let's just jump straight in. John, could you give us a top level overview of what you make at Scriptel?

John Powers:0:43
Yeah, Scriptel today focuses exclusively on signature pads. So these are the kinds of pads you'd see in in hospitals, maybe tax preparers' offices, occasionally places like lumber yards and pawn shops even. So here's an example of one of our our medical units. And yeah, I'm sure everybody that's been to a doctor's office or hospital has used that type of device.

Carl Holden:1:14
Okay, so these are point of sale or more like signature for legal reasons or both?

John Powers:1:22
Yeah, it's usually in in the healthcare environment it's consent, and and and that type of thing. It is ex expressly not point of sale. th that that's not one of the markets we we play in.

Carl Holden:1:40
Okay. So if you're at a doctor's office and signing your consent to them using your medical information for study purposes of other nurses, et cetera, that potentially could be signed on a scriptel device.

John Powers:1:56
Sure, yeah, sure. When you r register you're signing a hippo hippo waiver or whatever. That that type of thing. Yeah, legal documents.

Carl Holden:2:05
And you said medical was the main one. What were the other industries?

John Powers:2:09
we're in all kinds of industries, but medical is by far our largest vertical. So whether it's a clinic or a hospital, even veterinary we're into. so pe pet health.

Carl Holden:2:23
So you're the hardware and I'm guessing there's some software where this device can send the signature elsewhere.

John Powers:2:32
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So we help independent software vendors integrate our our libraries and such into their software if they need it. Some of them just just do it using the documentation. I imagine these days some people just vibe code it. it's pretty easy. but

Carl Holden:2:52
What is the file? Is it like a a PNG? What what is scriptel saving this signature as?

3:00 · Forensic data in digital signatures

John Powers:3:00
We don't generally save the signature. We let the ISV save the signature. it's

Carl Holden:3:05
Okay.

John Powers:3:05
usually not a PNG, although some do save it as an image. And the reason we don't want to save it as an image is because the speed of each stroke, or even in between each point, matters forensically.

Carl Holden:3:22
I didn't know they were recording that, but that makes sense. Because if you could kind of see what seems to be a more normal signature pattern, then you know it's not being forged.

John Powers:3:32
Right. A an especially slow signature would probably indicate an attempt at forgery.

Carl Holden:3:40
So that's kind of the layer if for scriptel of cybersecurity is you're storing more than just literally the drawing, but also the the in input it's in in its entirety of what data you collect.

John Powers:3:55
Yes, that's right. And we have a plug-in for like a a Adobe Acrobat and reader. And those go into signature fields that are secured with a certificate as well. Now we don't supply the certificate, so it's either a default certificate, a self-created certificate, or one that the customer's gone out to purchase themselves.

Carl Holden:4:24
Is very interesting. That is didn't ever really even think about when I was signing those things that that amount of data was being recorded, but it totally makes sense. Hmm. what got you you're the the owner of Script L, so kind of what brought

John Powers:4:40
Yes.

Carl Holden:4:40
you this journey of signature devices?

John Powers:4:44
I just kind of fell into it actually. So I was I was with Xerox for twenty-seven years. twenty-eight years, including some contract time on either side. and shortly after that, I was made an offer as a software developer at Scripto. Their their previous software developer left, so there was a gap. So I came in and we quickly decided that we needed a software team. I hired a few people.

And the the tech techno the the guy leading the it's all all of the technical development ended up leaving in twenty sixteen so I took that over. and in twenty twenty one the investors decided they wanted to sell the company, so after a couple of failed offers and failed deals I stepped in and they they accepted my deal. So that's how I became the owner and CEO of Screptel. So so yeah.

5:55 · Taking over and right-sizing Scriptel

Carl Holden:5:55
Cool. That you kinda worked internally in it and saw the value of it and like that being said, you kinda take over. were there things that you changed as far as the direction of the company or kind of just maintained course? What

John Powers:6:10
W well to tell you the truth, the re reason the investors wanted to sell the company is because they had been losing money. and so being from the inside, th they kind of trusted me more to yeah, t to turn that around, which I did. I did that through right sizing mainly.

Which was which was difficult. It's still difficult. I mean we're still trying to get back to the company we were. but it was totally necessary. So

Carl Holden:6:48
Yeah, sometimes in the air of growth you can kind of put too many people in and as as Bill Bo Baggin said, spread too little too much too little butter over too much bread. and

John Powers:7:06
Yeah. That's a good analogy, yeah.

Carl Holden:7:09
and that's what's happening. So it's just not very tasty bread to anybody. so you reduce the amount of pieces of bread. now as far as like The team you have currently is a relatively small, kind of scrappy team then as far as like how you provide okay. How many people work at Scriptel?

John Powers:7:27
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we we right now only have seven people.

Carl Holden:7:31
Okay.

John Powers:7:32
So four of those people are production and th the three of us do everything else. So

Carl Holden:7:38
Gotcha.

Well, honestly, that's not that small because most of the people that I'm interviewing are twenty to forty. so it's not comparatively Okay.

John Powers:7:49
Well that's where we were. We were at about twenty. Yeah.

Carl Holden:7:54
Yeah, and and a lot of that will come down, especially if you're making things to the volume of what you're making, you can scale that up. But as far as the software or administratively, like that doesn't need to flex too much, so That's things you can grow into. now as far as finding those people, I'm guessing not a whole lot of people like yourself have per se signature industry experience. So is that something previously that was hard to find, or is this just something that people can generally figure out once they come into the organization?

John Powers:8:34
Yeah, the thing is when you're trying to integrate with so many different people and in different industries, it's really important to have people that are just flexible.

Carl Holden:8:42
Gotcha.

John Powers:8:42
more more than it is signature specific. That that can be learned relatively quickly. But yeah, that w that was one of the th there was a couple a couple of selling points for for hiring people. and one of them was, hey, if you come here, you we're gonna we're gonna increase your resume. because you know, we're gonna have a customer that's gonna call up and want an integration in Go. Have you ever done Go? No? Well, you probably will. You know you know, w w whatever it is. we we have a lot of JavaScript, we have Java, we we've done a lot of things in dot net. so you know, you're gonna get a breadth of experience working here.

And the other one is being a small company is w that we give a lot of flexibility in terms of personal work life balance. So

Carl Holden:9:39
That that is a benefit that even at my own company we're able to as long as you can get the stuff done and the things that people are paying us for, if you need to take a day off 'cause you're sick, then just take it off. I'm

John Powers:9:51
Right.

Carl Holden:9:51
not gonna like babysit you kind of thing and say, Well, you only have three more days left. I don't have an HR person to chase around and tell that person they have three days left. So I'm sure you

John Powers:10:02
That's right.

Carl Holden:10:03
know the feeling. now, you said that you have how like medical is a lot of your clients help me understand are you in some kind of support contract in that you are supporting their signature like these devices sitting there you're on some kind of contract also make sure those work updating software like what is what is a transaction look like

10:31 · Citrix and Epic EHR software integration

John Powers:10:31
we actually don't currently have any per se contracts with anybody other than our standard terms of service agreement. so yeah, we have an integration with Epic, which is the biggest EHR I think in the world, certainly in the country. and yeah, that's something we we developed back in twenty sixteen and we've continued to update and maintain that. we were surprised once we had that done. nobody could use it. And that was because we found out that very, very few hospitals actually have the software running on you know local systems, but they usually virtualize it generally through Citrix. So at that time Citrix didn't forward USB, so we had to make some software to use a virtual Citrix channel, which Citrix did provide, but does not document well. so that's been that that was a big seller at first. It was a complete enabler for us. and then they they ended up coming out a couple years later with USB forty. But that doesn't put us on a prior prioritized channel. So it works in general, but sometimes we can get deprioritized. So we've had a number of customers that still use this remote software. So sin as so Epic is one of eClinical works is another, and then there's a lot of smaller ones that clinics use. and we're always looking to get into others as well.

12:09 · Hardware durability in healthcare environments

Carl Holden:12:09
Now eventually I think I'm guessing there's wear and tear because someone's bearing down a signature on these that you eventually have to replace panels for offices 'cause they stop working.

John Powers:12:21
So we have a three year warranty where we do advanced replacement. Customer calls us up, says this isn't working. we we overnight if they request it, a new signature pad and they use that box to send the old one back. far as wear and tear it all depends on the environment. The very worst environment that we've seen is dental schools. We don't know why. We

Carl Holden:12:48
Hmm.

John Powers:12:49
we think students are just like throwing like frisbees or something.

Carl Holden:12:52
Okay.

John Powers:12:54
But yeah, we we see a lot of a lot of stress on our units in dental schools. other places where we see a moderate amount of stress is on workstations on wheels. You know, where nurses are pushing around the workstations and the units are being handed to patients and I'm sure they hit the floor a lot of times. We actually have one unit that that goes inside of a rubber case like this and that that helps a lot. And hang hang it up on the workstation on wheels. It takes some of the impact. and just a aids a lot into durability.

If it's sitting on a registration desk it it doesn't wear on our our our glass is is scratch pretty much scratch proof. The only time we've ever seen etching in the glass is we we had a couple of units in a machine shop and the iron filings would get under the pen and that would ac e etch the g etch the glass, but in nor normal environments we don't see any anywhere.

Carl Holden:14:05
Now as far as made in the USA, it sounds like you're creating the software and and at least assembling the stuff. you're actually where are the parts for all this coming from? Are you also molding those somewhere?

14:18 · Midwest sourcing and domestic assembly

John Powers:14:18
So obviously the the electronic parts obviously we can't source we we source all in the US, but they don't all come from the US, the chips and such.

Carl Holden:14:26
Gotcha.

John Powers:14:27
But everything else is from the US. Our our plastics are shot either in Ohio or Erie, Pennsylvania. our cables are made in Indiana. the the circuit boards are assembled in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

And the final assembly testing and and packaging is done at our our factory in Columbus.

Carl Holden:14:54
Okay. Well and all of our guests have not had everything made in the US. Sometimes logistically it can't make sense cost wise, et cetera. But but it sounds like a fair portion of it.

John Powers:15:03
No, it's im it's im it's impossible to source all the you know, chips in the US. Some some

Carl Holden:15:07
Yeah. For sure.

John Powers:15:09
chips maybe, but not all.

Carl Holden:15:13
No, I th I think they've talked about trying to do that, but I think we're still a ways away from doing those kinds of things. that being said, do you sell any international customers or is it all within the US?

John Powers:15:28
we sell most of our most of it's in the US. we do have a fair amount of sales into Canada and then occasionally to other parts in the world. We have two health systems in Abu Dhabi that buy from us. And th yeah, occasionally we've got we've got one in Italy. it it's it's kind of an exceptional basis, but Because it is kinda hard to service. The the the ones in the United Arab Emirates, it's not too bad because we've got a distributor there that works with us and they supply us they they maintain a spares pool. but in other places like in Italy or something, you know, w anything that needs to be serviced it's it's kinda difficult. we're on a lot of cruise ships, as well.

Originally when we did that we were trying to forward, you know, a replacement pad to their next port of call. that was tough. They ended up taking that over. now we send them all to I think it's to Fort Lauderdale and they take care of getting them out to the ships.

Carl Holden:16:42
Gotcha.

John Powers:16:43
Not Disney, but most of the other cruise ships in their s and only in their sick base.

Carl Holden:16:51
that makes sense. I was like, what are they signing for? But yeah, they've got nurses and stuff too. That makes sense. So I'm guessing because a lot of it's made in the US and you have some customers, the tariffs haven't been a huge headache, or has that kind of caused logistic issues for you?

John Powers:17:07
well going back a little further than that, COVID was a huge logistic issue. But the tariffs, yeah, we're paying tariffs, it hurts. and being that they're inconsistent, we never know what we're gonna be paying and when. yeah. So

Carl Holden:17:28
Yeah, no, there's there's been some that we've interviewed where it's been actually positive and that it's moved some of the pipeline to the US and allowed them more business, and others just kind of insulated from that those external costs and it just has caused cost increase. So don't try to get too political about that, but we just wonder kind of where in that effort to make more things in the US where things are actually falling.

John Powers:17:55
Mm-hmm.

Carl Holden:17:56
As far as growing the company, is it more adding additional devices or the thoughts are just getting more market share?

John Powers:18:05
More market share for sure. Yeah.

Carl Holden:18:08
'Cause I mean, human signatures aren't gonna really change much. We're all gonna be fr so

John Powers:18:12
Yes.

Carl Holden:18:13
you just gotta find more places that need you to go fr.

18:17 · Why handwritten signatures remain relevant

John Powers:18:17
Well, I think looking down the road, and I've been saying this for thirteen years now, I don't see that that handwritten signatures are the future. However, I've been saying that for thirteen years and the market's still growing. not very quickly, but you know, yeah, how often do you sign for a credit card anymore? Still some but not very much.

So that's that's on the point of sale side. I I've gotta imagine that there's gonna be other ways eventually coming down the line. But

Carl Holden:18:53
Well, and I think I think part of it is a signature, in my opinion, a signature is something that I voluntarily opt to give. Any kind of thumbprint or eye scan or other things could be taken without me knowing it, and therefore I didn't voluntarily give it. And so

John Powers:19:14
Hmm.

Carl Holden:19:14
a signature feels like something that it's hard, like you said, the the speed at which I did it.

I had to have done that myself. I had to also be like alert and awake to do so. So maybe that's why. Maybe it's just that it is our way as humans to verify that I am doing something.

John Powers:19:38
Yeah, we're certainly comfortable as a society with signatures. And I'll tell you I was having a conversation a number of years ago with a European bank. And this European bank was a a I guess I'd call it a boutique bank. They were very small and they catered only to very wealthy individuals and they were looking for a way to secure their safety their theirs safety deposit boxes. And look so they were looking at different biometrics, and of course signature is a form of biometric. fingerprints w came into the conversation and she told me that she would love to do fingerprints but her client wouldn't put her clients wouldn't put up with it. Her wealthy clients felt like criminals if they had to give a fingerprint.

Carl Holden:20:35
Hmm.

John Powers:20:35
So

Carl Holden:20:36
Interesting. Yeah, signature feels again more personal and more voluntary. speaking of, now that makes me think if this stuff is being recorded, sometimes when I make a purchase at a store, I just make a smiley face. And maybe I should take my signature a little more seriously in this log that they're probably keeping of well, if somebody else somewhere else uses my card and makes a smiley face and they're like, Well, you make smiley faces all the time, Carl.

John Powers:21:06
Well, y your smiley face

Carl Holden:21:07
So maybe I I need to pay more attention.

John Powers:21:09
might be unique to you too.

Carl Holden:21:11
Yeah, who knows? Who knows?

Didn't ever really think about that. Well that's that's very interesting. Well, thank you so much for sharing about your journey thus far at scripto. We wish you the best as far as continuing to grow and get more market share. let's pivot a little bit and get to know you, John, a little bit more. what is a favorite place in the United States that you like to visit?

John Powers:21:36
I don't have a consistent place that I go back to visit. The place I had the most fun as an adult was San Francisco. I'd never been there and I went there and I just had a blast. I I was there for actually for a DocuSign conference. but in my off time I just had a blast going around looking at looking at the different sites and eating the seafood and all that. But my my favorite place is my hometown, which is R Rochester, New York.

And you know, when

Carl Holden:22:06
Okay.

John Powers:22:07
when I'm flying in I'm like, yeah, that's home. I just look down and go, Yeah, I I recognize all the places and go, Yeah, that that's that's my home. And yeah, a lot of memories here and and the

Carl Holden:22:18
Yeah, it's funny.

John Powers:22:19
older I get, the more I like it.

Carl Holden:22:22
It's funny when you fly over your hometown, and when you fly over over place other places, you don't understand it, but like as you're flying over your hometown and the plane is leaning and you can look down in, like you get the map. You can see, like, I know all those places. Whereas you fly over something else, it just looks like

John Powers:22:34
Yeah. I bend all those places, yeah.

Carl Holden:22:39
a foreign language to you. It's it's funny how spatially we get used to a place.

John Powers:22:44
Yeah.

Carl Holden:22:46
That's cool. as far as younger, maybe Memory as a kid, is there anything as far as like the United States things you did as a kid that have a special place in your heart?

John Powers:22:57
Some you know, some of my earliest memories are a road trip that I took with my parents and my grandfather and you know, we went we drove from Rochester in his old rambler station wagon to to the southern border of Texas and

Carl Holden:23:13
Mm.

John Powers:23:13
back. So yeah, that that that was very memorable. Yeah. Yeah, for a four year old and ri riding in the way back most of the time. That's what we used to call it. yeah.

Carl Holden:23:27
Road trips are often quoted as a yeah.

John Powers:23:28
yeah, we'll six legs over Texas and

Carl Holden:23:31
Road trips are often quoted as a as a memory and honestly it's partly because America is so big. We sometimes forget living here. When you go overseas and like some of these European countries are the size of some of our states, you forget how big the United States is. for sure. Well

John Powers:23:52
Yeah, absolutely. I've seen I've seen Europeans comment on that.

Like, what, it takes three days to get there? That's crazy.

Carl Holden:23:57
Yeah, yeah, I've s especially with the World Cup recently. Yeah.

Yeah, well, and it we're not the biggest one, but as far as like climates and diversity of climates, et cetera, we're one of the biggest. But a last question, for the future upcoming generations of the working professionals, young people in college, do you if all of them could hear you, what advice would you give?

24:29 · Career advice for the next generation

John Powers:24:29
boy, things are changing so rapidly right now. You know, I had a wonderful career in software. I I was maybe in the later part of the of the golden era. I I certainly wasn't there at the beginning, but I would advise not going into that right now. Yeah,

Carl Holden:24:50
Yeah.

John Powers:24:51
the the the the golden era is definitely definitely done. in software, at least at least as far as I can s see going into the future. I think the humanities are never gonna be replaced. my youngest child is right now going to school to become a music teacher. He's a s a senior Nazareth University. And you know, I I think that's wonderful. But te tech tech is still good, but Software maybe not so much anymore.

Carl Holden:25:28
Well and I think a lot of people have been taught to not be a jack of all trades. but that phrase is sometimes misinterpreted. in that I I think having multiple different types of skills and being useful across a broad swath of of skills will probably help the yu future workforce and you've seen that yourself in that You didn't just do programming, you also did

John Powers:26:02
Yeah, I am kind of a jack of all trades and it served me pretty well 'cause I've done electronics as well.

Carl Holden:26:03
You also did yeah, all kinds of things.

John Powers:26:10
yeah, and now business. so yeah. I I think I think being a jack be being w well rounded is definitely valuable.

Carl Holden:26:21
For sure. Well, John, thanks so much for coming on today. We really appreciate it and wish ScriptL the best as you continue to grow. Thank you for coming on.

John Powers:26:30
thank you. It's been a pleasure.