Saskatchewan’s motto reads “Our future is wide open.”
That could be the slogan of WBM Office Systems of Saskatoon, judged this year’s Solution Provider of the Year after bouncing back from trouble three years ago.
“We bought a company we shouldn’t have,” said company president Brian Fitzgerald.
“Profitability was sketchy” and it didn’t help that the SAP system it bought to help centralize financial systems wasn’t inexpensive to implement.
But come back it did.
Judges honoured the company’s efforts, supported by references, which showed it conquered a trying time by emphasizing excellent customer service and technical support.
“It feels good to be recognized,” said Fitzgerald. “Often people that work hard inside any company don’t get the recognition they need.”
The business has had to regularly re-invent itself since 1950, when it debuted as an office supply firm.
In 1984, when one of the original shareholders decided to retire, Fitzgerald, Garry Hardy (now CFO) and another man decided to buy his 60 per cent interest. The trio of controlling shareholders now includes vice-president Garry Laxdal.
Expanded into PCs
Almost immediately they decided to expand into PCs, servers and networking with partners HP and IBM.
Branches in Regina (1989) and Calgary (1995) followed. But it was the acquisition of a company in Edmonton that nearly did WBM in. Each branch ran as a separate division, causing administrative costs to soar.
The solution was to close the Edmonton branch and centralize administrative functions with an SAP enterprise resource management system.
Then the company began to aggressively work on improving customer care and support, contributing to another CEA award for Best Service Organization (see page 34).
Today, as its nomination papers noted, WBM has 94 employees, of whom 44 are members of the service solutions team. Between them they have 500 industry certifications.
The company counts 2,000 corporate clients generating about $25 million in annual revenues from its three core areas: telecommunications; hard copy imaging; and desktop, server and network integrations.
Over the next five years Fitzgerald wants to focus on technologies that are converging voice and data. To make that possible companies will need a lot of infrastructure, he said, which is where WBM believes will have an edge.
Asked why he won, Fitzgerald was modest. “We tell a good story,” he said.
The judges agreed.
Runners-up in the category were xWave of Halifax, followed by Navantis Inc. of Toronto