What is Your Ability To Innovate?

It was January 19, 2004, when there was an outburst of passion that exploded in our condo office unit. We saw a new article from eBusiness news about our product, the first-ever fully web-based accounting software in the Philippines. At that time, the term SAAS was named ASP or Application Service Provider.

We partnered with Ayalaport, a newly constructed data center in Makati to host our software and offered the tool in the market as subscription per month model.

We had our first client for the product, a bus company who used our accounting tool connected to a RAS dial-up connected to AyalaPort. But they only agreed to use it if we will develop a mobile bus ticketing application for them. It turned out our focus went to software development instead of product development.

Our second client was an accounting firm who has a team of accountants who is well-versed in Solomon software. They forced our product to be customized according to what they were used to be using.

We were supposed to be a product company but turned out to be a service delivery company. That has been our DNA up to this writing.

The term DNA in a business organization refers to the organization\’s ability to perform and innovate. It can be its core values, culture, personality, or how the organization behaves as a team.

DNA determines the company\’s productivity, profitability, and overall performance. But at times, the market behavior dictates the DNA of the company just like life and evolution. We evolve by adapting to change, the survival of the fittest. If you don\’t adapt, you die.

It is the job of the company leader, or the founder to choose the company\’s DNA based on his or her preference. If the leader mindlessly pursues projects without analyzing its effect on the organization, then it is when the market define you and not the other way around.

Hilsoft, for the longest time, has been around because of its customer-service centric nature. We construct and custom-fit solutions according to the customer need. Relevant to my recent post, \”The Ugly Truth About The Customized Software Business,\” there are challenges in that model that is not supposed to be complicated. It should be easy if the customer and the vendor, work harmoniously as a team, and very reliable.

With this realization, I am proud to announce that we are gradually steering the company towards being product-oriented as initially planned. We are going 100% SAAS in 3 years.