Like a lot of children, Maury Marks can thank his parents for his success.
Not because they pushed him through school or taught him good values, but because they asked him to write better software to run their central Alberta car dealership.
Today Marks is president of Calgary-based Quorum Information Technologies, which was recently named one of two North American dealer management system suppliers to General Motors Corp.
Sales of its Windows-based Xsellerator software totalled only about $6 million last year, but he figures the publicity from inking that deal alone “has probably been worth $10 million.”
The GM endorsement means the company’s plans to expand in the U.S. is assured.
The future didn’t look so clear 10 years ago when Marks asked two colleagues he’d known when they were IT consultants at Deloitte and Touche in the mid-1990s to start their own software business.
Plea for help
Around that time the owners of Bob Marks Pontiac-Buick in Hanna, Alta. became fed up with the Unix-based system running their business and turned to their son for help.
Quorum was looking at several other industries to get into, Marks said, “but because I had the automotive background, my parents’ dealership could be a pilot site and the competitive landscape.”
There were only two companies making dealer management applications, he said. They each had to be bought in expensive modules that didn’t talk well to each other, Marks said. “We felt we had the best chance of succeeding in the automotive industry.”
“Had we known how much work it would be to get it delivered I don’t know if we would have started,” he reflected.
An early decision was to build a system that ran on a single database integrating sales, service, parts and accounting, running on Windows to take advantage of its point-and-click interface.
The first version took more than two years to put together – including partnering with suppliers for parts it couldn’t write, such as payroll and an electronic parts catalogue – and initially ran on a Sybase database. Xsellerator is now a thin client application running on Microsoft’s SQL Server.
To pay the bills the three partners formed another company to do systems integration.
They needed it because it took three years of honing before Quorum sold its second system.
“It wasn’t until four years ago that we started to get real traction and were putting down 25-30 systems a year across Canada,” said Marks. Two years ago it moved into the U.S.
Financing mix
Over the years financing has also come from a combination of public and private investors, some of whom were recruited by an Alberta accounting firm which helped Quorum list on the TSX Venture exchange.
Dealers who are customers also own 20 per cent of the company.
Meanwhile, Quorum decided to focus on GM dealers, first by adding its best practices and business rules, and later by modifiying its software to allow greater datasharing between dealers and GM Canada.
The company’s software, however, still rides on his mom and dad.
“My parents were the guinea pigs for my first version, and they remain the guinea pigs for all new versions,” he said.
“And they still invite me out for Christmas.”
