January 10, 2012
Long before landing contracts with high profile clients such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Penner realized rapid growth at his environmental software company could easily spin out of control.
Emerge Knowledge Design Inc. was benefitting from the popularity of its flagship system for managing data generated by recycling and solid waste management programs.
From a modest start in 2001, the Winnipeg company had begun landing business across North America and generating double-digit revenue growth after the launch of its system in 2004.
“The numbers continued to jump every year,” says Penner, EKD’s President and co-owner. “We needed to be better organized to handle that kind of growth.”
An environmental consultant with 10 years of experience behind him, Penner had identified a gap in the market. He noticed municipalities and government agencies were still using paper for the data-heavy reports they had to file on their environmental impact. At the same time, the receiving entity had to organize and analyze all that information.
“Millions of dollars are spent managing the waste we generate,” Penner says. “I knew there was a need for better systems to help understand what was being generated, how it was being managed, the costs and how they could be reduced.”
Penner created the product that would become the 14-employee company’s flagship offering—Re-TRAC, a web-based tool designed to help governments and organizations collect, organize, analyze and report recycling and solid waste data. Clients submit data online and the system has built-in tools allowing them to instantly analyze information as it comes in.
But while the Re-TRAC client base was growing every year, balancing the day-to-day operations with a strategic vision for the business was EKD’s biggest challenge. “As a smaller company, you are so busy with current projects that it’s hard to stop and review where you are and where you want to be in the long run,” Penner, 48, says.
A client of BDC Financing since 2004, Penner approached BDC Consulting for help. He knew he had to take a step back to ensure that the company’s profitability remained at a level consistent with anticipated growth in new clients and revenues.
The first step was to assess the company’s strengths and weaknesses. This led to changes aimed at improving its responsiveness to client feedback. “We are now faster and better at converting client requests into software changes.”
EKD also defined its future needs and plans, including how many additional employees were needed and when to hire.
With this bigger, strategic vision in mind, Penner developed a second major product—MyEcoVille—an environmental website template, used by governments, non-governmental organizations and municipalities to encourage recycling and sustainability efforts.
In the U.S., Re-TRAC is used by many county and state governments as well as the federal government and national organizations such as Keep America Beautiful. It’s also used by many state and Canadian provincial recycling organizations.
“We have users in every state in the U.S. and in a number of Canadian provinces,” Penner says. The system was used at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and its customer base keeps on growing.
Innovation is crucial for the company, Penner says. A second, improved generation of Re-TRAC—Re-TRAC Connect was launched recently. “Maintaining the status-quo and assuming that what works today, is going to work tomorrow, is a huge mistake,” Penner says. “You need to be innovating and challenging yourself to be better.”
Maintaining high client satisfaction is one of the big achievements of the company based in Winnipeg’s historic Exchange District. “Even during the recession, we lost only one client.”
Emerge anticipates a 25% revenue increase in 2012, after a period of slower growth, due mainly to the recession. This time the company is ready to tackle the challenges.
“These are exciting times for us,” Penner says. “We have applied all the lessons we have learned over the years and now we are taking the company to the next level.”
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