Despite the apparent rigours involved in securing a berth at Replicon, however, experience isn’t always required. “Inexperience is sort of thrived on here,” says Narayanaswamy. “We’re organizing a big event next month. We want to have 500 people there. The manager who’s in charge said, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ We said, ‘Yes, fine, no problem – subtle little detail.’ I’m not joking.”
That event manager may have needed a Tylenol for his headache – and that’s a phrase which serves, variously, as a business model, company catchphrase and real-world example of the “simple solutions” and “no-hassle experiences” which Raj sees as the uniqueness that Replicon provides its customers. The company’s flagship application, Web Timesheet, is first and foremost a timesheet, and Raj doesn’t know anyone who enjoys filling out timesheets. “But it’s very critical for companies to be able to employ those people and run their business efficiently,” she says. “So our USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is, ‘How do we make it all very easy for the end user?’”
Narayanaswamy nods, complaining that the software industry tends to focus on brain surgery and wonderdrugs. In other words, cumbersome overkill. “We’re saying, ‘No, for a headache you take a Tylenol,’” says Narayanaswamy. “‘You have a problem? You want it solved today? We have a solution that’s highly configurable and you can implement it tomorrow.’ So that’s the no-hassle experience. We had one customer recently who rolled out our solution for 2,000 people over one weekend. If it was the competition, it would have taken three to five days just to get the product up and running.”
“And a busload of consultants to figure out what the product does,” Raj chimes in. “Shouldn’t rolling out a timesheet solution solve the time problem?”
Of course, no hassle for the customer can bring a similar benefit to the provider. Selling entirely online with 95% of revenues coming from product sales rather than back-up services, it’s very much a low-maintenance model. While most organizations try at least to give the impression of valuing the personal touch, Replicon makes a positive virtue of its lack of gala luncheons with cyber clientele. “We have 1,800 customers,” Narayanaswamy beams, “and we might have met half of one percent of them face to face.”
As for the future, Replicon has recently set up an R&D branch in Bangalore, India to help develop a number of related new products due to come on stream in 2005 and beyond. And while the principals concede that outsourcing has earned a bad rap, they see it as a way to leverage talent that will ultimately allow for further expansion back in Calgary. In praise of the local business environment, Narayanaswamy goes so far as to say that Replicon couldn’t have been built as successfully anywhere other than Alberta. This sparks a two-way dialogue about Alberta that’s so enthusiastic it’s hard to be sure who was saying what.
“It’s got a good technical base, solid universities, a fairly young, highly educated and Internet savvy demographic.”
“Cost of living is low. Lifestyle is pretty good.
“Attracts a lot of people from outside.”
“Very entrepreneurial.”
“It’s quite multicultural. At one time we had 18 or 19 different languages that were spoken in the company.”
“It’s just a matter of thinking slightly differently and not focusing on oil and gas, focusing more globally.”
“It provided something unique.”
“Something in the water.”
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