At the time this was written, SmartCOP, Inc. was doing business as CTS America.

Source: Pensacola News Journal Release Date: 11/03/2013

For 14 years it has been one of Pensacola’s best-kept secrets: a successful high-tech company that’s homegrown and employs some of the city’s best and brightest.

While CTS America has kept a deliberate low profile during that time, it’s hard to maintain anonymity when you’ve just won a highly competitive $30 million software contract with the state of Florida, beating out such tech giants as Motorola.

“Winning that contract was vital to us and vital to the area,” CEO Kay Stephenson said. “We are a relatively small company, but we play big.

“We have a national footprint and we’re now partnered with a rather large international company that will allow us to go after similar contracts in three or four other states,” he added.

Headquartered at 270 N. Palafox St., CTS also has attracted the attention of Mayor Ashton Hayward, who said the company “is a great example of the environment we are building in Pensacola for technology companies to succeed.”

The company’s new 10-year renewal contact with the Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will provide those agencies proprietary software for dispatching troopers and state officers. CTS won a similar 10-year contract with the state in 2003.

Moreover, the software gives law enforcement officers the capability of filing on-scene digital reports, booking suspects and running background checks from their patrol vehicles.

Their integrated suite of products also links up with jail management so arrested suspects can be booked on their way to jail.

If you’ve received a traffic violation in Pensacola or Gulf Breeze recently, it was CTS software that was used to handle the information necessary to process the citation.

“We just feel so strongly about the fact that we’re not just selling widgets, that our mission is extremely honorable,” Stephenson said.

“Our software allows an officer to run a (license) tag check, so before he ever gets out of the car, he knows if he’s stopped a bad guy or a person who has a gun permit or has a warrant outstanding.

“It gives the officer a better chance of going home that night,” he said.

CTS Public Safety Market Director Michael Snyder said, “Our products help reduce crime, increase public safety, and boost the efficiency of law enforcement in Florida and around the nation.”

Early years

Like many startup tech companies, CTS had humble beginnings.

Yet the business venture was fortified from the get-go by a solid business plan that focused on team building, customer service, hiring talent and constantly updating software products.

Despite its success, CTS’s origins are somewhat unusual.

In the annals of successful Pensacola-based software firms, few, if any, have had principal founders whose backgrounds were more wildly diverse.

It all began with Shane Lincke, a California-born surfer and Navy veteran with a knack for writing complex software and a love of Pensacola beaches.

He teamed up with Stephenson, a former head coach of the Buffalo Bills, who helped bring in noted Pensacola trial attorney Fred Levin.

In the 1990s, Lincke had written software programs for the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, and, later, for the Gulf Breeze Police Department.

As the demand started to grow for his software, Lincke saw an opportunity to form a business around his skill set.

Through a mutual friend, he was introduced to Stephenson, who had Pensacola roots and had recently returned to the city.

“When it started growing big, I went to Kay’s brother, Wayne Stephenson (a local CPA), who I knew. He introduced me to Kay,” Lincke recalled.

“I remember we met at the Village Inn on Ninth Avenue, and I said to Kay, ‘Can you help me?’ ”

At the time, Kay Stephenson had retired from football and was casually looking for some business opportunities in Pensacola.

Football connections

Despite his admitted lack of knowledge about the software industry, Stephenson was nonetheless impressed with Lincke’s vision and agreed to join forces.

“He (Stephenson) said just go back in your lab and make your stuff and we’ll set up the business side,” Lincke said.
A short time later Stephenson, a former Florida Gators quarterback, contacted Levin, who eventually provided the startup capital for CTS, then called SmartCOP.

Levin currently owns a majority share of the company.

“I called Fred and said ‘There’s something here might want to take a look at,’ ” Stephenson said.

“Fred liked the idea because it was a good business to be in, and it was something that was good for the community,” Lincke said.

Through Stephenson’s contacts with the Buffalo Bills, he managed to land former Bills quarterback and then-New York Congressman Jack Kemp on CTS’s board of directors. Stephenson and Kemp had been roommates during their playing days with the Bills.

Through Kemp, who died in 2009, Stephenson also attracted the attention of Bill Bennett, the former U.S. secretary of education.

Law enforcement customers

During the past decade, CTS has grown its customer base, now serving law enforcement agencies in Alabama, Montana, South Carolina and Georgia, and other agencies like the Florida Department of Transportation and Department of Agriculture.

And that growth has been spurred along by a staff of 65 technicians, more than a third of whom are graduates of the University of West Florida.

“We are proud that 22 of our current employees, including myself, are graduates of UWF and dozens of other graduates have benefited from paid internships at CTS over the years,” Lincke said.

Lincke said the quality of UWF computer science graduates has improved dramatically during the past decade.

“We used to have to hire headhunters to go find people who could write software,” Lincke said. “But then we started getting very good people out of the UWF programs.”

UWF graduate Jason Graves said he was attracted to CTS because of its reputation and the opportunities it affords.

“CTS does have quite a bit of room for advancement,” said Graves, 28. “It’s one of the few companies that actually recognizes when someone goes the extra mile.”