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ULIN21026
UL EA product WERCS kathy 120721
January 12, 2022

Interviewer: You could just give us a little background because I assume I’m correct in saying
that you use the WERCS studio software. Is that correct?

Respondent: That is correct.

Interviewer: So give me just some background as to what you use it for and I don’t know if you
were passive even selecting it or not. Any background would be great just in terms
of your use of it.

Respondent: The background would be I was not involved in selecting it initially. It was selected
back in the early ‘90s. WERCS was selected back in the early ‘90s but was not
implemented until about 2003 and by that time, I was part of the group but had
very little interaction with the integration or the transition, I guess if you will, to
the software. I do know that when we brought WERCS online, the person that was
running the show at the time wanted to mimic the system that they had been using
which was a homegrown system and that was one of the things that they really
liked about WERCS was that we could essentially customize it without really
customizing it. It was flexible enough that we could do what we needed and have
our process but still not affect our upgrades and patches and things of that nature
and we - [Crosstalk]

Interviewer: Sorry, go ahead.

Respondent: Go ahead.

Interviewer: I was just going to say it sounds like one of the plusses is that it was, if you will, set
up or configured in a way that was already good for you but at the same time, it

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 was also flexible enough and customizable where you needed it to have that
flexibility.

Respondent: Correct, I think we got it up and running in 2003 and then, we originally started
with I think it was called Author or something at the time, WERCS Author and
Designer. I think it is called Power Author and Power Designer now but it was just
Author and Designer then. Also, Role Rider at the time and we had somebody from
WERCS come in and write the rules and stuff so we didn’t take it out of the box at
all. We completely did our own thing with it and continued to do our own thing
with it to this day as a matter of fact.

Interviewer: They implemented terms like - [Crosstalk]

Respondent: Yes, there was a small team of people that helped us to implement.

Interviewer: From the sound of it, all of this was predating UL inquiring and it was all with
WERCS, sort of [Crosstalk] with WERCS.

Respondent: Yes.

Interviewer: Have you seen any difference? Did you have any knowledge or awareness, if you
will, before this acquisition? Is it a company you’ve ever paid attention to
particularly or not really?

Respondent: I knew what UL was but just in the sense that we needed that little sticker on the
electronics or whatever but outside of that, I couldn’t - [Crosstalk]

Interviewer: The sort of standard certification piece of it.

Respondent: Yes, since UL purchased WERCS, I think really the only thing I’ve noticed and I
don’t know if it’s attributed to UL but the last two years have been pretty difficult
as far as getting user groups and stuff together and that is one of the things that
we really enjoy and get a lot of benefit from is the in-person user group. It’s a big
network of customers and of course, it was always WERCS employees and stuff that
you got to mingle with and meet face to face, put faces with names, and talk to
other customers about how they’re using it or what they do with a certain module
or whatever and that is missed. That is seriously missed.

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Interviewer: So it’s become much more anonymous and there’s much less of that hands-on –

Respondent: Right.

Interviewer: Is that a capacity issue or is that because per there being acquired and they don’t
seem to focus on the service and support? From your view, what do you ascribe
that to?

Respondent: It’s hard to tell. It could be a COVID thing.

Interviewer: So it’s quite recent, really.

Respondent: It’s been in the last two years that they have not done in-person user groups and I
think it just wasn’t possible.

Interviewer: But they didn’t virtual ones as a replacement for example, I guess for the COVID
thing?

Respondent: They did virtual ones. Not to say they weren’t good but they just weren’t as useful
I guess because it was just a flat this is what we’re talking about whereas the in-
person ones are there are breakout sessions so you pick the sessions that make
most sense to you and you still get a full experience, if you will.

Interviewer: In some ways, as you said, you saw this as potentially related more to COVID but
anyway, it also sounds like they didn’t find a good way of guessing around the fact
that virtual was not as useful as the in-person one.

Respondent: Maybe, I mean both of them have been just really difficult because the technology,
the screen with trees, I would end up missing several minutes while I refreshed or
rebooted.

Interviewer: I’ll write one of those, the Zoom challenges, if you will.

Respondent: Right.

Interviewer: Going forward, how could it improve? What would you be looking for from them
going forward in order to for it to continue to be useful to you but then also, what
would be ways of enhancing it or things that you would be interested in seeing
more of?

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Respondent: I definitely want to go back to the in-person users’ groups but as far as the
software itself, they have been really responsive always to customer suggestions. I
mean the software has evolved so much since we started using it. We’ve added lots
of modules from tracking stuff to orders, interfaces. Let’s see what else. We’ve
just added web viewer recently and things like that. They’re very responsive on
seeking customer suggestions or feedback or if we needed to do a certain thing.
Typically, they needed to do a certain thing too since they’re in the business of
doing the professional services readiness for other companies so that makes it
really useful.

Interviewer: That’s good to hear. Are you aware of any competitors or others? What would you
see as alternatives? I know you weren’t part of sourcing it so maybe that’s not
something you’ve ever attend to but I’m just curious.

Respondent: I think SAP is always a competitor. I know a lot of companies use SAP and every
once in a while, we are forced to look internally at SAP for various solutions if we
can consolidate software and stuff like that but what I’ve seen, it just doesn’t
compare to the flexibility that WERCS has so we’re very happy with the software
and not looking change anything any time soon.

Interviewer: So you plan to continue to implement and use it?

Respondent: Correct.

Interviewer: I guess what’s coming out from a brand standpoint is just understanding and this is
not to say that this is the plan. It’s just really to understand your reaction to
hypothetical scenarios if you will but if instead of being called WERCS, it was called
UL with a descriptor, if you will, UL some type of software, would that lose a lot of
equity in the marketplace? Does everybody know WERCS? What would be the
implications of changing the brand or what would that communicate to you if you
saw them change the brand?

Respondent: First, I can’t speak for Philip 66 but for me, personally, who’s been involved with
the software and the people for 20 some years, I think it would bother me. I think
it would take something away from it maybe.

Interviewer: Is it like PowerPoint or Excel or something like that to you in terms of –

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Respondent: Yes, it’s definitely a tool that we use on a daily basis and it’s something that we’ve
known. We’ve built a lot of stuff around WERCS and our group or our company or
our product stewards, they know WERCS.

Interviewer: So that would also be, I guess, the potential. Is it something if the brand changed,
you would start wondering about or is the product going away or if something
happens to the product that it’s not going to be beneficial or something that would
be a cause for concern?

Respondent: Yes, I would worry that it’s becoming more, I don’t want to say commercialized,
but just more standardized maybe. I don’t know. I don’t even know how to say it
but WERCS is in a league of its own because of how flexible it is. I’ve talked to
people that have left our company and gone to work for another company and
they’re using a different software and they talk about the nightmare that it is and
how hard it is to get something changed or fixed or something and we just don’t
experience that at all.

Interviewer: So that’s a part of actually what you like about it, the fact that you can get
changes made or adapted and have the flexibility to use it in a very custom way
about what you’re trying to do versus what you see others having which are things
that end up potentially being more rigid or more pre-set.

Respondent: That’s a very good way of putting it.

Interviewer: So that would also be the concern if you see signals of change going forward is
going are they going to try to, in some ways, make this more cost-efficient for
themselves by making it less customizable and more fixed and in some ways, less
good from your standpoint.

Respondent: Yes, that would be worrisome.

Interviewer: Obviously, the user groups going back to in-person, any other things they could do
more of from a communication standpoint or from an offering standpoint? Is there
anything that you’d want from further capabilities or integration, any or all of the
above? Is there anything that you’d be particularly looking for or you think would
be good for them to do?

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Respondent: I think they could probably improve their communication. I think they’ve started
getting better in the last year with emails. I think they were forced to and I’ve
started to see newsletters come out with release notes which have been really nice
to see. I think they could probably do a little more of that, explaining the
enhancements or the new modules a little better. They have, not recently but in
the last few years, added the reference manuals to the studio which is really nice
but I think some of them could stand to be updated.

Interviewer: These are PDFs or these are like interactive manuals?

Respondent: No, they’re PDFs.

Interviewer: Would it be personal to training or could that be improved in terms of making those
more navigable or usable?

Respondent: Probably, I think they could certainly do some quarterly training sessions or
something on the different changes that they have made to the studio or to the
interfaces. That’s what’s great about the in-person users’ groups is they have
customers present and you see how somebody else is using a particular module
because sometimes, modules are strictly like a customer needed a particular thing
so they created a new module and then, the rest of us are trying to figure out how
do we make that useful for our environment.

Interviewer: So it’s something where it’s more about sharing, obviously, the user forum but also
having a more proactive best practices sharing and education around modules to
consider for example in what they typically would be used for or things that are
enabling you to get an easier understanding of potentially new things or best in
class ways of doing certain things so you don’t have to invent it from scratch but
could potentially leverage some things that have already been done.

Respondent: Right.

Interviewer: So that’s what was always useful about the user groups were that’s where that
would happen user to user in a way.

Respondent: Right.

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Interviewer: So in some ways, it’s if UL was playing a more active host and convene role in
terms of not just hosting a group but just in terms of that type of information and
sharing that in a way that’s – because I’m assuming obviously, there are some
things that aren’t relevant to you so you don’t want to have to delve into those but
then, there are others where you might want to go further to understand over what
exactly was done. Is this a module I want to adopt or use?

Respondent: Right.

Interviewer: That makes sense. Is that typically by topic area or is that by industry? What are
the main buckets of [Crosstalk] you found?

Respondent: I think it would be by topic so not necessarily industry. I know that there’s a
pesticide group or the flavors and fragrances group and they seem to be doing their
own thing but I think in large part, industry all needs the same thing as far as the
core software goes. The functionality is the same. We all need to write an SDS and
publish an SAS and distribute the SDS and keep the history of the SAS and the
distribution and all the stuff so the core function is the same regardless of industry
so topic would be better. Poison center, reach, [Tosca], just to name a few that I
know that are definitely are on our radar, Prop 65 and stuff like that.

Interviewer: Was there having a look to the future in terms of further regulatory requirements
or things that could be interesting or to track or things where for example, it could
be useful to have an industry or to leverage third party or everybody’s data to
provide some sort of benchmark or things like that?

Respondent: Yes.

Interviewer: It sounds like they could really up the game a bit from a service and consulting
standpoint. Is that fair to say that that’s not as strong as it was?

Respondent: Yes, I think they could definitely enhance that. For us, as an example, we’ve used
it for over 20 years and we’ve continued down the same path that we started
initially and I have actually mentioned a couple of times that I would like a review
to be done and see if we can get back more towards an out of the box what does
that look like type thing if we were to forego all of our process that we’ve built –

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Interviewer: If you were going to replace it with some other best in class process of some kind?

Respondent: Right, what does that look like? Are we using the software or the suite of modules
to the best of their ability? Is there something we can do differently? Anything we
can do to be more efficient, as our manpower goes down and it has over the years,
we were tasked to do so much more and if we’re not using the software like we
should or we’re not getting as much out of it as we should, that’s one of the things
that will trigger us to find something else and I think the software is good. I think
we just get tunnel vision on how we use it and I think a lot of companies do that.
We get to certain space in how we use the software and we don’t want anything to
mess it up because it’s working.

Interviewer: Yes, because it’s working as well as it’s not just software, it’s also the people
process around it and steps and things like that, workflows and obviously, that’s
also where change can be good if it optimizes those or makes them more efficient
or helps on those but then change can be bad if it’s something that is done and
that is not taken to account that people might need to change how they’re doing
things. It sounds like one of the benefits of the software is the fact that it did have
that highly customizable aspect to it that enabled you to really get it to do exactly
what you wanted but then, that opens the door for is what we’re doing exactly the
best way to customize or are there other ways to do things that others have found
that maybe helps in one way or the other? That would be good to know basically.

Respondent: Exactly and I think customize is a really strong word for what we’re talking about
because we haven’t exactly customized the software. We just don’t use it the
same as most companies do.

Interviewer: It’s interesting because lots of people feel that way.

Respondent: Really?

Interviewer: Maybe, that’s the appeal and you’re right. Maybe, customized is too strong a word
[Unintelligible] configure or use or whatever but it does sound like a number of
people do think of it. Anyway, you’re not the first who’s told me that. We use it
but the way we use it is very different than what we expect everybody else uses it
which is maybe true. Maybe, that’s the whole thing is everybody does have a slight
custom way of looking at it and things but at the same as you’re saying, that

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 doesn’t remove the potential benefit of being able to get more sharing or
understanding as to, say, Company A feels like they’ve really implemented the best
practice here and doing X, Y and Z and then, you can look that up and we’re doing
too or otherwise, you could say “That’s actually something I can learn from and
maybe, we want shift ours to doing something like that,” for example. Obviously,
that’s, again, the user group thing but it sounds like there’s also from a
communication standpoint, more that they could do in that type of knowledge
sharing and even showcasing clients or companies that work with it or doing
something a bit more proactive in terms of getting that information out.

Respondent: Yes, I think so.

Interviewer: Going back to UL, obviously you said you knew them from the seal on the
electronics and the things like that, did it make sense to you that UL would acquire
this and do this? Was that logical or when you saw that happen, did that put a
question in your mind or did it seem logical to you?

Respondent: It actually did not seem logical to me. I thought it was extremely strange but I just
attributed to I didn’t know enough about UL and what they did.

Interviewer: You thought it was strange because you thought of them as that seal thing and you
were like “Why are they getting into software?”

Respondent: Yes, I didn’t understand the connection at all but I do think it was probably a good
move. I know when UL came onboard, it was a bit confusing but what we started
seeing pretty quickly was there were a lot more people and a lot more support.
Basically, there was a bigger team.

Interviewer: So they brought the manpower and I guess money or whatever or at least support
from a scale standpoint.

Respondent: Right.

Interviewer: [Unintelligible] It sounds like they could bring even more in the sense that it sounds
like they’re still acting in that.

Respondent: I think so. I definitely think they’re missing the boat on a couple of areas within the
software itself. We’ve grown up with the software. I don’t think it was created too
many years before we purchased it originally so we’ve grown with the software and

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 I think there are a couple of areas that we’ve had to figure out on our own and do
our own thing outside of the software and I think they’re really missing the boat on
the metrics and –

Interviewer: Not staying up to date on what people ultimately need and all the uses that they
potentially are going to need to do out of the data and things like that/

Respondent: Correct.

Interviewer: That’s when you go outside of it because it’s not set up to do it and you need to
calculate some different metric or output of some kind and then, you need to do
that outside. Is that how that works?

Respondent: Yes and not only the metrics. We’ve developed a whole dashboard of metrics
outside of the studio at this point but also, we’ve had to come up with our own as
far as the distribution of SDS. We’re required to keep that history for 30-plus years
and there’s just not a good way to really track that within the system unless you
know the tables and what not. There’s not a good way of getting back to –

Interviewer: They are not Oracle reporting.

Respondent: Right or even seeing that this customer didn’t get it. They rescinded or this went to
a bad email address. I need to resend it and track that. The orders interface and
the tracking of the history is still lacking I think.

Interviewer: So even certain things like that that need to be done and they need to be put into
development but they sound relatively straightforward things that they could do
that they’re not doing.

Respondent: Yes, I’ve always thought that because we’ve developed our own process for
handling when something is returned to sender or went to a bad email address or
whatever. You have to reset that but the only way to reset that to my knowledge
at this point is to go into the orders table and a lot of people don’t have that
experience.

Interviewer: To go into the code, if you will.

Respondent: Exactly but since we’ve grown up with it, yes, we can do that and we have but it’s
crazy to me that that’s not built into the software.

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Interviewer: I’m just curious I guess. Does it feel like they have been constantly improving or
trying to find new things to build into the software or does it feel like it’s static or
has that changed over time?

Respondent: No, I think it has grown exponentially since we’ve purchased it originally. It grows
every year. We don’t always get the latest and greatest for a couple of years but it
definitely is evergreen still so I definitely don’t feel like it’s static.

Interviewer: Or just about the priorities of some of these developments, if you will.

Respondent: Yes and there are some things that are – I don’t know what the right word would be
but they had a module that we purchased and we were thinking it was one thing
and then, we end up not using it because it absolutely does not configure correctly
or doesn’t meet our needs or whatever and we end up going outside and doing our
own thing so I think there are a couple of modules that I think they had good
intentions and then maybe didn’t follow through with them well or something. I
don’t know so I have seen a couple of things like that that they could probably put
some attention to.

Interviewer: It’s like they tried to develop something but it seemed – in your view, is that just
because they didn’t manage to get it right or did they only do it let’s say for one
single kinds of purpose to do so and then, they didn’t think enough about how it
would be then more configurable across different users?

Respondent: That maybe it. I’m not sure.

Interviewer: So it sounds like one obviously for them to always have a look and a strategic think
about how they continue to develop and improve the software and then, it sounds
like a real back to communication and a real need to help educate and clarify to
users and people such as yourself in terms of what the different modules that come
up are and what their purposed are and which one could be a greater insight as to
the benefits and use cases of some of these modules.

Respondent: Yes, that would be great.

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Interviewer: That sounds like that’s probably one of the solutions is to be clearer on use cases
for certain things and then, understanding that other people can find new use
cases for that capability but at least, that helps contextualize things for people
upfront.

Respondent: That would be helpful.

Interviewer: I think I’ve asked you everything I was going to ask you. I know we’ve talked about
WERCS. Are you familiar by any chance with any of the others? I’ll just give you the
quick list. There’s UL-360, UL Prospector and UL Compliance Wire. Do any of that
strike a bell with you?

Respondent: I think I’ve heard of Prospector but I don’t anything about the 360 or the last one
that you mentioned.

Interviewer: Compliance Wire, okay, and then Prospector is something you’ve heard of. It’s not
something you’ve used personally or been exposed to.

Respondent: Correct.

Interviewer: Thank you so much for doing this. As part of this, as I’ve said, we’re reporting back
in aggregate so we’re hoping that this will result in positive actions on their side. I
really appreciate you taking the time.

Respondent: No problem.

Interviewer: Have a nice rest of the day.

Respondent: You too, thank you.

- End of Recording -

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