Avatar Systems is turning 30!
As part of our Avatar 30 celebrations, we’re shining a light on the individuals who helped shape our company, our culture, and the solutions that have served the industry for decades. From the early days of OGAS and AS/400 to the launch of Providence, these team members have left a lasting mark on Avatar, our customers, and the future of oil & gas software.
In this series, we sit down with the people behind the legacy—the innovators, problem-solvers, and leaders whose dedication helped make Avatar what it is today. First up Jo Ann Loftin.
Kyle Brooks 0:03
Morning, Jo Ann, How's it going?
Jo Ann Loftin 0:05
It's good, very good. I hope you're well.
Kyle Brooks 0:09
I am. I'm better now. Thank you for having the time to meet with us here. So basically, you know what this is about. We're trying to, feature different people who have had big impacts on Avatar, you were my first pick. Tell us a little bit about your journey here at Avatar. How long have you been here? What brought you here?
Jo Ann Loftin 0:30
Well, I've been with Avatar 22 years. I was actually a client of Avatars before I came to work for Avatar. And Chuck Shreve, our owner, called me one day and asked me to come to work for him. And so that is what brought me to Avatar. When I came to Avatar, my job was supposed to be 400 Sport. I was supposed to support the Avatar 400 product. And that was really my job in a nutshell. And about a month and a half in, I called Chuck and I said, I need something else to do, good or bad. I don't know what that call was at this point 22 years later, because now I do a whole lot more than Avatar 400 customer support. But that is what brought me.
to avatar.
Kyle Brooks 1:15
Do you remember your first day?
Jo Ann Loftin 1:17
Scared to death
I had left a job. I'd been at 17 years. I had seniority. I knew what I was doing. I started on a Monday and we had user conference on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week. So I was walking into a brand new job and having to go before a group of my peers that I had been at user conference with in the past as a user to be in the
and they're going to have to listen to and train on that Thursday and Friday in Dallas at User Conference. And I remember thinking, what have I done to myself? What have I gotten into?
Kyle Brooks 1:58
Well, you know, I haven't known you very long, but I would tell you, Jo Ann, just from my perspective, you don't have many peers, if you know what I'm saying. There are a couple, I'm sure.
Jo Ann Loftin 2:00
Mhm.
Will.
Thank you.
Kyle Brooks 2:12
Well, that's great. So you had 17 years at Vernon Faulkner and a long run here. Do you have any other jobs? Did you work at the Dairy Queen? Anything else?
Jo Ann Loftin 2:15
Mhm.
No. When my husband was a state trooper, and we were stationed in Kaufman. And we got transferred back home to Tyler, I worked for a very small operator here named Philip Berry. It was a little family business. And that's when I started in oil and gas. They had bought a pipeline and they needed someone to help the gentleman with the pipeline accounting. And he taught me Lotus back in the day. And they were a Petroware client back in 1985. And so, yeah, that's a shocker to know that that's where I started was on Petroware and it was the old DOS version and I ended up full circle at Avatar.
Kyle Brooks 3:35
That is fate, I guess you could say its Providence. Ok Brace yourself.
this is a loaded question.
Jo Ann Loftin 3:40
Go on….
Kyle Brooks 3:42
Who's your favorite client?
Jo Ann Loftin 3:44
Ohh, Lord!
I have some really good clients. I, I'm...
Kyle Brooks 3:51
You can plead the 5th on this one. They probably know who they are if they're reading this.
Jo Ann Loftin 3:53
I do know who they are. I mean, I have some outstanding clients, especially on the Avatar 400 product. I've known those people so long. I mean, I've known some of these people 35 and 40 years. The thing that I think drives our management crazy is these people are my friends.
I mean, I know about their kids. They know about my kids. I mean, we've all grown up in the industry together and have seen so much change together. Who would have ever thought years ago we'd be pulling out electronic revenue data and doing everything with uploads to Excel and all the electronic things we do that the large majority of my clients are just starving for.
They want that. They want to deal with the automation. And I mean, I've got some excellent, excellent, excellent clients. They make me look good.
Kyle Brooks 4:39
Mmh.
Yeah, and...
Cool. Yeah, no, definitely. And that kind of is a natural segue into, what this whole celebration is about; where we were, where we are, and where we're going.
Could you kind of tell us a little bit about the origins of Providence, the journey?
Jo Ann Loftin 5:16
Well, when we first started talking about it, I thought Chuck had lost his mind.
As a company, looking at company, how we had grown through merger and acquisition, you know, he started with the Avatar 400 product and then he'd bought Petroware and then we bought Integra and then he thought well it makes sense that we would write a best of breed, a merge of all four products.
But when we sat down, several of us flew into Frisco. We were all in the Chuck's conference room there in Frisco. And we sat and we started with every single screen… What does AP do in every module? What does Revenue do in every module? Down to the field and all that, I thought, this is so overwhelming. There's no way we will ever get this done. And from those first few days It's taken us a long time. You call it a labor of love. It is, at this point, looking back, it's a labor of love. And those first few months and years when we were trying to figure out how to do this, it was so scary. But I will say, Chuck always believed. He always believed.
Jo Ann Loftin 6:41
He always put faith in the employees that we could get this done. And not to give him credit, but it really took that vision and that leadership to get it done.
Kyle Brooks 6:53
You, you know, I think...
Jo Ann Loftin 6:53
But to look at where we are now and what that software does and the way you can just get data down to Excel, you can get data down to a PDF. It's at your fingertips instead of having to train. In like the Avatar 400 product, you have to go to these libraries and download these reports and get it in Excel. The headers don't come down right. Our legacy products are as good as anything available in the industry.
The problem is that Oil & Gas , especially the backoffice is decades behind from a technology perspective.
Kyle Brooks 7:36
Yeah. No, just from, you know, my small time in the industry compared to yours, there's nothing like it. Definitely. You know, Joanne, this is Avatar 30. If you could give one message into the future to say Avatar 75 or Avatar 100,
Kyle Brooks 7:56
or the folks that are around then, you know, that speaks about what Avatar is, what would that be in your time here?
Jo Ann Loftin 8:05
Ohh.
Kyle Brooks 8:07
A message to the future. A simple statement for posterity and to carry forward about our time here.
Jo Ann Loftin 8:10
Believe.
Believe in the product, believe in the company, and believe in our culture.
I mean, we have some smart people that work here. Grow with the company and enjoy it. Enjoy your clients. I mean, yes, it's hard every day. We're busy. The clients know we're busy, but they also know why we're busy. And they believe in us and we believe in them and growing together.I mean, to the future, look at what we've done. I mean, you know, I'm not the young one here anymore. And one thing I've always, Chuck, is I tell Chuck and I wanted to leave this company better than we found. We started. You know, they'd been here several years before I started, obviously eight years, but that's one thing I wanted to do is watch this company grow and see what it could be when I am ready to leave. And so that's the thing I would tell everybody, anybody in this company is look what we've done and look what you can do if you all work together and pull together.
Kyle Brooks 9:17
Absolutely. No, that's fantastic. You know, I think that Chuck Shreve's is a very smart guy but his biggest gift it seems is attracting and keeping smart, good people around him. Because for a company this size, there's a lot of smart cookies around here.
Jo Ann Loftin 9:18
Yes. You are right, you are very true, that's very true.
Kyle Brooks 9:41
Would you have any reservations recommending Providence? I know you said your clients are your friends, but if anyone in your family, you have no qualms. Providence has the Jo Ann stamp of approval.
Jo Ann Loftin 9:46
Yeah.
Oh no, no. Yes, I am 100% behind Providence. I think all of our clients need to move to it. I think the longer they wait, the more they're going to regret it. If you're in, you know, when I was at Faulkner, we did version releases and I always wanted to be the first one to do the version release.
Jo Ann Loftin 10:10
I have some very large clients on the 400 side, the largest companies that Avatar has.
as clients, and I would recommend it to them in a heartbeat as well as my companies that have one person sitting in the office. It can meet everyone's needs. It's scalable. It has everything any of our customers need, whether they're just a little royalty owner or whether they're the largest operator or the largest trust company in the US. We can do it. I would never hesitate to recommend it.
Kyle Brooks 11:12
Awesome. You know, Joanne, I think you're a unique individual. Take that as good or bad. I mean, you are an oil and gas industry icon, a mother, a wife, all of that good stuff. But what is one thing that you think most folks don't know about you?
Jo Ann Loftin 11:17
I don't know. Ohh gosh.
That's a good one. I do CrossFit. That shocks a lot of people. I typically do CrossFit five days a week. I've learned that you need to take care of yourself. That's a big thing in life because we do work hard. And the good thing about my job is I leave here and I go work out. And I can leave everything from the day right there off sweating on the floor. I have 4 grandsons. I don't have any granddaughters. My kids are grown. I have two very successful children. I have lost one child. And the pride I have in my kids and my grandkids. I go to every, I go to every game, every soccer game, every baseball game. My daughter coaches and I'm at her games just like she was playing in high school. It's just crazy.
Kyle Brooks 12:31
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing this morning and for all you do. You are one of a kind Jo Ann.
Jo Ann Loftin 12:40
Your very welcome. I’m very fortunate to be here and to have such great clients. I am excited about the future of Avatar and Providence.