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Delivering One Customer at a Time This week we are looking more closely at the story of one of Canada’s fastest growing companies, Oasis Technology Ltd. Oasis is a very interesting story about how paying attention to one small contract can end up paying huge dividends for your business. When Oasis started up in 1990, they had a vision that was rather simple “to build software products for banks and financial institutions that enabled them to process payment transactions at a low cost.” Unfortunately, no one in Canada was willing to use their products so they initially focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. They were very busy delivering to their existing client base, when the now infamous call came into the offices. Ashraf Dimitri, the then President, CEO and co-founder of Oasis took the call. “Would you be willing to work with a bank in Saudi Arabia?” Then had never even heard of this bank before, Saudi Arabia was too far away and they were already very busy so the initial answer was a clear “NO”. The client continued to convince Mr. Dimitri about this unique opportunity. A year later, they signed the contract and started the work. Like most technology projects, they had significantly underestimated the time required to complete the project. Even though the amount of work far exceeded their capacity to deliver, they hired more staff and decided that they were going to deliver. Their reputation was on the line. Just after successfully delivering the technology project, another call came. This call was totally unexpected and sent shock waves through the company. What no one, including Mr. Dimitri knew, was that one of the Saudi Arabian bank’s key owners was a large U.S. bank. The call came from the CEO of the American bank and was stunning “We have been watching how you have delivered on this project with the Saudi bank. We like your product, and we particularly like the fact that you have doing everything humanly possible to deliver an excellent solution to the Saudi bank. We want the same level of commitment to excellent for when you deliver this solution to our bank," he said. The CEO was from Citibank, now part of Citigroup, one of the US’ largest banks. Citigroup has since expanded its worldwide operations and is now has sales of $17 billion US. Before it had a chance to fully deliver on the Citigroup contract, Oasis was purchased for $30M US cash by eFunds Corporation. The technology is being used on a global basis by Citibank. The lesson learned here was clear – be careful to pay attention to each and every customer. You just never know when delivering well on one contract may propel your company to the worldstage or open up opportunities that you could have never imagined. Steve Burns, CA, CMC, CFP, is the President and CEO of Burns Innovation Group Inc. and Steve Burns Inc. Chartered Accountant, which provide consulting and accounting services to entrepreneurs. Steve is also the Chair of the Economic Development Commission. You can reach Steve at 763-4716 |
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