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Kerry Gilger has a phenomenal attitude about life and business that comes across even over a phone line from his home office.

Gilger, who founded Identitech in 1987 and later sold it to form FYI Corporation, has been recovering from an unsusual jet skiing accident since the middle of May. His leg was broken in five places when a friend crashed into him and a rescue boat later ran him over.

“I know they were afraid I was going to sue them,” he said laughing about the ordeal. “But all I could do was laugh about it. I figure those things happen and they were trying to save me.”

Gilger’s optimism was unshaken by the news that he would need six months of rehabilitation to walk again.

“I keep thinking I will be back in a few weeks but they say it will take months,” he said. “The physical therapists are worth their weight in gold though.”

If Gilger’s constant look toward the bright side is any indication, his employees are facing a bright future.

“I believe you could have the best product in the world but it is the people that make a company good or bad.”

Gilger has put his money where his mouth is. Since selling his old company and starting the new one, he has hired on a top notch staff and showered them with all the affections a business place can offer.

“Most of these people spend more time at work than at home so I wanted to make our offices a place they would love coming to,” he says. “We have a huge break room, moving segueways, a grand piano and we turned our lunchroom into a coffee shop type atmosphere to support a concept of collaboration and creativity.”

Gilger said his efforts to “ooze creativity” include everything from a more casual dress code to several $1200 chairs to make employees more comfortable while they are dreaming about KEGS.

The company’s flagship product, FYI Visual™, is advanced data visualization software that converts large amounts of information into an intuitive visual representation, or knowledge enhanced graphical symbols (KEGS) so that users can make better decisions faster.

The patented technology leverages the brain’s natural ability to recognize colors and shapes in much greater volume and detail than numbers and text. An FYI Visual display accelerates and simplifies data analysis.

The display can be equated to a weather map, where conditions are understood at a glance because millions of underlying data points are displayed in standardized colors and symbols.

FYI Visual converts raw business intelligence into actionable information by creating KEG sets that are transforming the way many large companies track and distribute large quantities of data down to their entire workforce.

“It is a language that takes us about five minutes to teach but then they are able to process a huge quantity of information quickly,” says Gilger. “You can see 20,000 to 30,000 values on a screen.”

The technology is so groundbreaking that Central Michigan University is already building classes around it in a program called “Business Intelligence.”

A simplistic example of a data visualization symbol, Gilger explained, is a green rectangle with a circle in it denoting whether the referenced item succeeded, met its expectations and by how much.

“The entire technology was incubated here in Brevard,” he says proudly.
The KEG technology was the brainchild of an ICU doctor at Holmes Regional Medical Center in the 1980’s.

“Dr. Michael Lesser created the symbology to allow better tracking of patients,” Gilger said. “He designed it so you could see up to 750 things about the patient on a screen.”

Lesser partnered with Gilger in 1999 to bring the technology to Identitech. When Gilger sold the business to Global 360, he retained the technology rights. Lesser remains on the board of directors.

“Just before I sold Identitech, I started expanding rapidly in the Atlanta area,” Gilger, who originally moved to the Space Coast in 1969, said. “But then I was on a plane talking to Congressman Dave Weldon and he told me we had to keep the company here.”

Gilger said that the Space Coast office of Economic Development (EDC) offered him a set of incentives to stay, and that tipped the scales in favor of Brevard. Incentives included tax abatements and assistance with funding training for new employees.

Gilger explained that Brevard County also offers a wealth of highly skilled individuals.

“Brevard County is a great place to be to capitalize on that,” he said. “It is a great place to live and work.”

Gilger resides in Indialantic currently. He has set up something of a command post home office to stay involved in the company while he recovers.

During the interim, he has appointed Vice President Lisa Dallas to oversee the management team in his absence.

There is a special need for someone keeping a watchful eye since Gilger has set a hefty goal for sales in this, his company’s first year of sales.

“We seem to be pretty much on track to make our sales goal of $15 million this year,” he explained. Meeting goals is something Gilger seems to have a knack for.
After studying computer science and mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University, Gilger worked for Harris Corporation on the semiconductor. He eventually was hired by Interactive Service Corporation where he continued to work on Harris computers.

“I convinced them to pay my salary for a year while I got my first business off the ground,” he said. “In exchange, I gave them a stake in the business.”

Gilger founded Identitech with the development of the company's first product, the Instant Signature Verification System (ISVS), a digitized storage system and instant, on-demand display system for signatures. He grew the company through both periods of astronomical growth and tough economic times.

Identitech offered electronic document management software that had evolved to business process management (BPM) software for the government and financial markets. Later, Identitech's product suite further evolved to include software for business intelligence management.

“Everything except my initial investors and the data visualization technology was sold with that company,” Gilger said. “I took the money I made from selling Identitech to form FYI in 2004.”

The technology has been picked up by many large corporations already.

“ADP (Automatic Data Processing Dealer Services) now resells our technology to the automobile industry,” Gilger said. “They have 15 to 18,000 locations around the world where they put up six screens on the wall that allow their entire staff to look at up to a half million pieces of data at a time including information on sales, staff, financials, etc. and they see the information in real time.”

Gilger noted that Goodrich has also now installed the technology in a number of Blackhawk helicopters as a way to track maintenance in more than 10,000 measurements and Northrop Grumman is using it in battlefield management.

“It can tell you what is going on with just about every component involved in war,” Gilger added.

FYI Corporation was also just named a 2006 “Cool Vendor” by Gartner Research in their Emerging Technologies Report, according to Jennifer Jackson, Gilger’s executive assistant.

“This is an honor granted to only 100 companies every year,” she stated.

FYI won Forrester’s Emerging Technologies Showcase Award in 2003. The award was based on quality of demonstration, level of innovation and best business potential.