Systech Solutions Inc. Core Business: Software development and information technology services. Revenue in 1993: $200,000 Revenue in 2000: $13 million Employees in 1993: 2 Employees in 2001: 140 Goal: To develop and implement business software solutions for its customers. Driving Force: A rapidly growing, technologically diverse business environment. Systech Solutions co-founders Arun Gollapudi and Srinivasan Ramaswamy built their information services company on the notion that it’s not how much you know it’s how you use it A few days after Arun Gollapudi was laid off from his engineering job at IBM Corp., he realized he didn’t want to work for somebody else again. Puttering around his garage, Gollapudi called his good friend Srinivasan Ramaswamy, about joining forces in a new venture. “It sounded crazy, but I listened,” said Ramaswamy, also a veteran of IBM earlier in his career, who himself was looking for a new challenge, away from his information technology job at a West Los Angeles firm. The two men, both born in India, soon established Systech Solutions Inc., a company whose business model was simply to fix companies’ computer problems. By working out of Gollapudi’s garage and getting clients wherever they could find them, the company got off to a slow start. Today, just eight years later, the longtime friends are overseeing a $13 million business with 140 employees all over the country. Speaking at the company’s Glendale headquarters in a 22-story office tower along Brand Boulevard, Gollapudi said he sees the company’s growth continuing in the years ahead. “We stopped thinking about how much it’s going to grow because we’re surprised each time,” said Gollapudi, the company’s CEO. It was just two years ago that the company quadrupled its revenue from $2 million to $8 million, only to see it hit $13 million last year. The company’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Systech was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest growing companies for 2000 and 1999. And it landed in the No. 1 spot on the Business Journal’s list of fastest growing companies in the San Fernando Valley. To be eligible for the list, companies must be privately held and have had at least $200,000 in sales revenues in 1996 as well as a strong record of growth. “We were really happy about that honor, but we were also happy that we’ve been able to grow so much in such a short period of time,” Gollapudi said. The company now counts as clients such firms as American Express Co., Earthlink Inc., Nike Inc., Nissan North America Inc., Vivendi Universal S.A., Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and others. Systech’s growth led to the establishment of nine sales offices around the country, including offices opened so far this year in Portland, San Francisco, San Diego and India. The company’s core business, however, isn’t just fixing computer glitches or installing hardware or software. Systech works with companies to help them use their computer systems to solve strategic problems, Gollapudi said. “When Calvin Klein came to us, they had a very specific problem that we knew we could solve,” he said. The New York-based apparel maker wanted to study past fashion trends in order to better forecast future trends and determine sales projections for the company. The company needed to analyze past data as well as patterns in the company’s production cycle, Gollapudi recalled. Systech’s technicians then developed an application that allowed the company to regularly update a database of past trends and related information along with other data gathering to help with decision-making. Today, Gallapudi said Calvin Klein’s production, planning and distribution departments have access to the historical data and use it to make future projections about the industry. Connie Tisdale, director of special projects for Authentic Fitness Corp. in the city of Commerce, said her company has improved its overall performance due to Systech’s warehouse data tracking system. “We now have visibility at multiple levels into product sales, profitability margins and inventory for allocation,” she said. “It also enables us to have time sliced forecasts and track actual sales against them.” Authentic Fitness manufactures and distributes Speedo swimwear in North America. Rebecca Wong, project leader at Los Angeles-based Guess? Inc.’s data warehouse department, said Systech’s budgeting software has made her division’s job easier as well. “It used to take the whole morning and a huge stack of paper just to turn out a sales report,” she said. Gollapudi, who still does a lot of the marketing himself and meets personally with many clients, attributes the company’s success to its passion for the work. “You have to feel challenged and excited about work and our customers see that,” he said. Gollapudi’s partner and COO Srinivasan Ramaswamy said that the company’s 24-hour support hotline and its rapid response has been a key to much of its success. “People know that they can count on us,” he said.
