Although a newcomer to CDN’s Top 100 Solution Providers, Kamloops, B.C.-based Voda Computer Systems has grown accustomed to being recognized for its achievements in the IT industry.
At last year’s Channel Elite Awards the company took home silver for Best Channel Marketing Initiative and was also named one of the best service organizations. Recently Canadian Business magazine ranked Voda number 41 in its Hot 50: Canada’s emerging growth companies list.
Now in its fifth year of business, company president Andrew Watson attributes the success to a strong focus on customer service.
“That’s how we were able to grow so fast,” he said. “We started off doing break and fix work, mainly in hardware and software sales to surrounding areas, but my main goal was to do more in service,” he said.
In the last year Voda has expanded into the managed services space. “We still do break and fix, sell PCs and printers, but in addition to that we decided early on to get into the storage game, selling anywhere from mid to enterprise solutions,” Watson said.
“We diversified a bit to try to get our margins up, which has also enabled us to have deeper account penetration. Just selling a PC is one thing, but if it is a large organization, they need storage and security too.”
Currently, 50 per cent of the company’s profit comes from services, 40 per cent from hardware and 10 per cent from software. The company’s revenue goal this year is to hit $10 million.
“Our vision is to be a nationwide company,” he said. It has sales and service centres in Kelowna, Penticton, Grand Forks and Vernon.
“But in 12 to 18 months, we do have plans to expand into another city in B.C.,” he added.
Back to school
Watson and his partner, company vice-president Mark Zienowicz, also plan to invest heavily in staff training. Currently Voda has 33 employees.
“We’re the only company in the interior that services the enterprise, so we’ve invested in Legato courses, in VMware training and we’re going through our Cisco premier authorization program – all expensive things to do,” Watson added.
But, he said, the company is seeing the payoffs. “In the interior we can offer services to the larger corporations without them having to go to Vancouver or Calgary. These organizations can get things done locally.”
