"We successfully launched a new business initiative due, in large part, to Mike's contribution during our initial planning stages.  His understanding of the market place and experience in start-up business provided us with the needed direction to define and position our product competitively.  We likely would have spent considerably more time and effort, and may not have gotten our products to market in a timely way without Mike's assistance."

David Rees
Director, Product Development and Export Commerce
BC Systems Corporation

When a Crown Corporation of British Columbia and a group of programmers decided to become partners they soon realized they couldn't talk to each other.  The culture gap between government officials and computer experts was immense.  The two groups needed a to develop a plan and someone to help them realize it.

The Crown Corporation was BC Systems.  The programmers were a group of post-graduate students from the University of Victoria.

I was asked to help because the group felt that they needed to consult with an individual who was able to address high technology business, marketing and technical issues, and had experience motivating and leading groups.

First, I sat with the programmers and the bureaucrats who wanted to form the partnership and listened.  Each person described their vision of the product and the business they wanted to bring forth.  As each person spoke, we all heard that each person had a different product and a different business in mind.  I then initiated a process which helped them choose the roles they wanted to fill and the expectations they wanted to agree upon.

I helped them define their product and service offering, asked them what their partnership was to achieve, guided them to determine if their business was to be product or service based or both, and what these options meant to the type of revenue they could expect to generate.

After a few meetings, common objectives were set.  Through successive meetings the team learned how to measure success and set priorities.

With my help they targeted their stakeholders and how they would be served.  The final result was the creation of a business plan which helped them achieve their two year goals in less than a year.

Several years have since gone by.  I have not worked with the company since the first milestone was successfuly achieved.  BC Systems has been dismantled, and the startup company continued as PureEdge until IBM purchased it in 2005.  The company is now known as IBM® Workplace Forms™.