Operator: Our next question comes from Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research.
Vincent Colicchio : Most of my questions have been answered. Just curious on the CredentialStream side. With the success you’re having, has there been any competitive response in terms of trying to match your differentiation there?
Robert Frist : Well, no. We have lots of things to do in our road map to continue to differentiate. But right now, I think we’ve got a really exciting product. And in fact to the point where, as I mentioned, organizations like Workday are thinking of us as a best of breed and bringing us into their deals. So, I’m excited about where it is. Now where it’s short is and we talked about this is some of its enterprise feature sets, particularly around data management reporting. Like if you’re a large organization with 50, 60, 70 hospitals, you have different demands on how you distribute information and you’re solving labor issues across markets and across regional deployments. And so, we’re going to get more sophisticated on that this year.
But those are the advances that we have. Now the true differentiators are still yet to come. So we’re beginning to incorporate some of the technologies of our platform, for example, the license service. I hope that by the end of the year, for example, will be using the license service that was built in CredentialStream to verify nurses license before we schedule them. And so we have that capability, as you know, in our platform to check licenses. And so it will be a further differentiation as we connect ShiftWizard to services like the license verification service that is a function of our hStream platform. So that’s an example of a differentiation yet to come that I hope is this year that will continue to distinguish us from our competitors.
And they are, of course, the road map full of those ideas as well.
Scotty Roberts : Vincent, are you asking about CredentialStream on that — your question?
Robert Frist : I think he was actually — I just got to know from someone. So I guess the same holds true for CredentialStream as it takes advantage of connectivity to the learning center, for example. We’re in the middle of going back to customers that have both our learning system and our credentialing system and showing them the interoperability of the early stages of interoperability between those. For example, how logical was it? But if you earn a credential in the learning network, it should auto populate as a credential into your credentialing system. And so the same kind of answer holds is that there are plenty of differentiation to come this year that show interoperability and several that are in place now that we’re beginning to market actively.
Vincent Colicchio : So Bobby, will you still respond to my question because I got cut off?
Robert Frist : I think in both cases, I try to give examples of both ShiftWizard and CredentialStream that are going to be increasingly competitively differentiated by how they access services of the hStream platform, whether it’s the hStream ID to create interoperability, for example, your data following you from one system into the other. The example I just gave was a learning credential earned in the learning system following you into the credentialing system and maintaining its primary source verification status. Or a scheduling system that relies on the platform technology to check a license before you’re scheduled and sort of verify your license is active, before we schedule you. And so those are 2 examples of interoperability that are, one is actively being marketed and the other is to come this year.
But increasingly, the differentiation will come from how these applications interoperate or operate together and how data moves between them and how service is built in the platform power up distinguished features in the application. This is true in learning, scheduling and credentialing. In all cases, we hope to further differentiate it. I think there’s also a kind of a broader value proposition of getting these applications interoperable. I think it’s more appealing to a COO, a CTO, CFO, when they see a suite of software working together instead of individual separately implemented tech stacks. And so, we’re looking for operational synergy, implementation synergy over the coming months and years.
Vincent Colicchio : And one last one. How would you characterize pricing in the acquisition market? Is it rich? Has it improved? What would you say?
Robert Frist : Well, let’s see. We didn’t do a deal in the last 13 months. And during that, I guess, I would say in the last quarter or 2, I think, a little bit of softening and some excitement that maybe deal pipelines can pick back up. But the private companies always hold on as long as they can to the past. And so maybe one of the concerning factors was that in the first half of the year. But I don’t know how to say it. If you have a hot company that’s a SaaS model and it’s emerging and growing fast, you’re going to be able to demand a premium for your business when you sell it. And so I think that is almost always true. Maybe fewer companies meet that criteria and they’re also burning cash. So I think those companies, there’s going to be some deals out there, I think as companies try to recap at lower market caps in the next year or so.
Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Robert Frist, CEO for any closing remarks.
Robert Frist : Thank you to our analysts for following our story and helping us tell it. Thank you to our 1,100 employees for making all this happen. We’ll look forward to our continued reporting and growth as a company. Thanks for going on the journey all of you shareholders. We’ll see you on the next earnings call.
Operator: Thank you for your participation. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.
