Dynamic Business Solutions sells expertise in software

Vermont Business Magazine, Jan 01, 2002 by Marcel, Joyce

Dynamic Business Solutions of Williston has made a name for itself by selling business software throughout New England. But what gets the company excited these days is that it is getting more and more recognition at home in Vermont.

Darci Smith, company president, and her partner, Rick Lunt, bought Dynamic Business Solutions, then called New England Business Software, in June 1995 from McAuliffe Office Products.

"There were five of us in the beginning," Smith said. "The two of us, and three people we inherited from the existing business. We haven't changed it that much. We've taken what we've bought and grown it and gotten a little deeper with the expertise."

The company now has 12 employees, and its sales have grown steadily. In its first seven months of existence, for example, it reported $200,000 in sales. In 2001, sales were $2 million. Between 1999 and 2000, sales grew by more than 20 percent.

The company sells accounting and business software for manufacturers as well as personal service organizations for example, software developers, programmers, lawyers and accountants.

"We're value-added resellers," Smith said. "We work with two major vendors, and both are on the cutting edge of this technology. They're large, terrific organizations with programs that allow us to get trained, so we can bring that knowledge to our customer base. We'll go into a business, took at its business software needs, make recommendations, and present four to six different products. We may enhance the software we sell, but we don't call it customization."

For example, the company recently provided the software for a company that sells alternative energy in the United States, as well as in foreign countries.

"They spend a lot of time setting their product up and teaching people how to use it," Smith said. "When they sell to a customer, they call it a project. Included in the cost of a project is a product and a lot of time spent working with the client. They want to track the material costs, the labor costs, travel expenses, and they want to see if that one project is costeffective or not. It's the same thing in our own business. We go out, sell software, put in training time, and have travel costs. We need to know about our own costeffectiveness, too."

The company also has a niche developing cost effectiveness figures for "process manufacturers."

"Process manufacturing is recipebased manufacturing, such as the products produced by chemical companies," Smith said. "At Autumn Harp, for example, where I used to work, the lip balm is a process - so much beeswax, so much oil, mix it up, pour it into tubes."

As computers become ubiquitous and both hardware and software need to be continually upgraded, companies like Dynamic Business Solutions are finding ever-increasing opportunities for growth.

"We certainly benefitted by the Y2K situation," Smith said. "Currently, we're benefitting from the fact that a lot of people are still on DOS and have to move to Windows products. DOS is becoming an obsolete platform, and the latest and greatest computers only come with Windows. In some cases, they are too fast for the DOS products. Our software vendors are starting to discontinue their DOS lines and are forcing people to go to Windows. In two to three years, you'll see DOS phased out." The future looks especially bright, Smith said.

"We're very excited about where technology is going and how our customer base can utilize it in an affordable way," she said. "There are PDAs (personal device add-ons) like palm pilots that allow customers to keep track of important stuff with very small, portable devices. Those are going to be big in the next few years. The use of the Internet has gone crazy. Our software's access to the Internet is going to be very important. The whole e-commerce thing is just emerging. It's very powerful. The first question we're often asked by new clients is, 'Can you handle e-commerce?"'

The company is a member of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility and offers its employees several unusual benefits.

"We're a little different from our competition in that we pay our people on an incentive-based compensation plan," Smith said. "Sixty percent of their salary is base; the other 40 percent is based on their contribution to the company. That includes, among other things, their efforts in keeping a customer happy. What that tends to do is attract highly motivated individuals. We're a bunch of really smart people who are highly motivated to work with our customers and keep them happy. The reason we've grown our revenue so much is that we retain our customers, as well as adding new ones. Also, employee's share the profits, and we exercise open-book management. So I would attribute the success of the company to the people who work here."

Four years ago, the company started focusing its marketing efforts in Vermont.

"Now we're starting to see it pay off," Smith said. "We're throughout New England, but one of the things we're very excited about is that we're starting to be more recognized in Vermont."