A modern touchstone: Citrine Technologies was brought to life by three accountants who wanted to push the edges of their individual envelopes—in this case, toward creating a custom software consultancy - Strategies

South Florida CEO, Dec, 2003 by Van Hutchinson

CPAs aren't supposed to be exciting, especially when their idea of fun is moving a few million lines of computer code around. But when a small company like Citrine Technologies can achieve triple digit growth in times when some of the biggest IT shops are shrinking, it lends new meaning to the phrase, "creative accounting."

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North Miami-based Citrine Technologies does not make orange juice, sell ugly cars or peddle lemonade. Its name is derived from a yellow stone popular at the dawn of modern Capitalism in the 17th century. Back then, superstitious bourgeoisie bursars kept the stones with their money in order to multiply their wealth.

The three modern bursars who founded Citrine in 1997, Harold Simon, Joel Boniske, and Mark Fenaughty, are all professional accountants who "wanted to do something a little different than what others were doing," says Fenaughty. "We saw an opportunity to make available to small and mid-sized companies the type of accounting systems previously available only to large companies."

Citrine's magic stone is not the customization of individual accounting systems, but rather helping customers choose the right systems to use in the first place. They then tie them together, so that diverse departments like purchasing, manufacturing and distribution can all access the same set of information, from any location. Like a general contractor, Citrine selects vendor/partners and coordinates system delivery and support. For any given project they might pull in Savant for Warehouse Management, vSync for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or Dell for hardware. Last year revenues came in at just under $2.5 million.

"What sets us apart is our 'Professional Edge' program," says Boniske, who leads sales and marketing. "We don't just send out a salesperson. We send out a salesperson. We send out a team of CPAs and MCSEs [software engineers] and go deep right from the get-go. Inevitably we help the customer discover processes that need to become more efficient." Citrine's deep dive has garnered clients such as Telemundo. Taurus International Manufacturing, the Miami Dolphins, the Florida Marlins, Pro Player Stadium, FMS (IHOP's Largest Franchisee), AutoNation, Eden Floral Farms and Continental Flowers.

Citrine orchestrated an intensive reengineering project for Miami flower whole-saler Continental Flowers, and it blossomed into a whole software suite dubbed Flower Power. Word spread like pollen within South Florida's extensive flower importer community and Citrine was able to plant several more Flower Power suites.

In the case of Continental Flowers, which had been struggling with a DOS-based system that only a few people could access simultaneously, a new real-time search feature for inventory radically cut the time to produce reports, respond to client requests and track sales information. Says Ofie Fernandez, Continental Flowers' comptroller, "Anyone can sell you software. It's the consulting company that you have to select carefully."

The same can be said for choosing partners. Citrine chose Great Plains, a software company which was acquired by Microsoft in 2001, to perform installation for large clients. Because of that link. Citrine rose through the ranks of Microsoft Certified Solution Providers and was recognized as one of 12 "Circle of Excellence" partners with Microsoft in 2001. And when the Regent of Redmond needed a beta tester for a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package, Microsoft chose Citrine, a coup for a relatively small shop of 15.

"There's a good reason to be partnered with Microsoft," Fenaughty says. "Right now you're seeing consolidation even among the tier one players like JD Edwards, People soft, and Oracle. If you ask yourself, 'Who's going to be around in five years?', you know one company is Microsoft." And, hopefully, Citrine.