Vigilant's broad software product offering combined with targeted sales and technical training allowed Kiddle Enterprises to gain a share of the lucrative mid-size business market

by Andy Shaw

One-offs. Whether you're a value-added reseller of software or a freelance writer like yours truly peddling stories, selling one item to one client one at a time is not a terribly productive nor usually very profitable way to do business. But selling time and again to one happy software user or one satisfied magazine editor certainly can be. For such repeat clients you don't need to do all that front-end investing you do in getting to know a first-time buyer's needs and idiosyncracies. And that's something Calgary's Glenn Kiddle has learned to his profit.

Hobby into High Tech
Over a decade ago, Kiddle turned a university-days hobby into a high tech business now known and respected as Kiddle Enterprises. Originally a reseller of cellular phones, the expanding Kiddle Enterprises has widened its scope of products and services considerably. "We like to think of ourselves now as suppliers of technical support for small to mid-size businesses," says Kiddle.

But it is only fairly recently that, with the help of Vigilant Business Software and the Linux operating system, the enterprising Kiddle has been turning small business one-offs into a much bigger repeat business.

"Glenn took our Multi-site Linux Linux Training Course for the Chain Store Environment," explains Vigilant's president, Jon Mainwaring."And that course, I know, has enabled Glenn to grow his business in several directions including being able to target multi-site and chain stores." To understand why, adds Mainwaring, you'll need a better understanding of Vigilant's new Linux-ready software designed specifically for the owners and operators of more than one store. You also need to know that Vigilant has been refining its point-of-sale, inventory control, and other accounting software packages for nearly 20 years. Its rock-solid reputation for reliability and ease of use has built up an impressive roster of over 11,000 Vigilant users world wide. During its software's relentless development, Vigilant pioneered multi-site polling. It enabled multiple store and franchise owners to get an overnight reading of the day's transactions, cash, inventory, and other financial data at their remote locations.

Real Time Imperative
But to meet the needs of the new Millennium's faster paced business cycles, Vigilant directed Chief Technology Officer Dan Maloney to adapt Vigilant products so that users could witness what was happening in their various locations in real time. So Maloney turned to Linux. This readily available "open source" software held the promise of everything that real time financial software working with remote data would want to have. Linux was proven, constantly being made faster and more secure by programmers world-wide, and was fast. It is also the operating system of the Internet, with the ability to sit on one server and communicate with multiple remote locations by sending only small packets of key data back and forth and not trying to transfer great wads of information-laden files. That meant that a Vigilant application whose underpinnings were adapted to Linux could communicate data virtually as it was entered, not over high-cost large bandwidth, but over normal and inexpensive regular phone lines. Within a few months, Maloney had delivered on that Linux promise.

"Our Linux-ready software solves the classic small business owner problem of not being able to be in two places at the same time," says Vigilant's vice president of strategic development Jane Giggal.

And Giggal didn't come by that opinion lightly. She says, "Before we set the development in motion, we talked in depth to a lot of our users, several of whom had experimented with running Vigilant apps on Linux. And we knew that whatever version of Linux we chose, it had to be as steady and reliable as the overlying Vigilant software."

Adds Mainwaring: "We also knew from knowing our customers well that not only did they want their financial information in real time, it had to be available to them in a secure environment, the system had to be scalable, and it certainly had to be affordable."

Caldera is the Choice
With all that criteria in mind, Maloney, Giggal, Mainwaring and other Vigilant staffers agreed that their best bet was to base their new software on the OpenLinux operating system from Caldera International Inc. Kiddle says his sales of Vigilant running on OpenLinux have proven them right. "The ease and speed with which you can set up a system like Vigilant with Caldera is really quite something," says Kiddle. "Compared to the competition, to get Vigilant and Caldera up and running, we're talking about a few hours of time not a few days."

Vigilant will run on other Linux systems, but Kiddle reports that with only a couple of exceptions because of hardware incompatibility every new user of Vigilant's multi-site software has chosen to team it with Caldera. The variety of Kiddle Enterprises multi-site clients is testament to the versatility of the Vigilant/Caldera combo. Kiddle's clients include store chains in consumer electronics, ceramic tile, scrap metals, as well as oil-and-gas industry parts brokers. "That oil-and-gas broker, for example, has an outlet half way round the world in Kazakhstan. But an employee there can log on to Vigilant via the Internet, check the stock available at headquarters in Calgary, and then sell an order on the spot," says Kiddle.

Kiddle relates how another consumer electronics owner of two stores in Manitoba can keep doing business while far away on the road. "He can pick up an order from his voice mail while he's at a trade show in Vancouver, say, then go online in his hotel room with his laptop and print up a customer invoice at the store in Brandon."

Turning One-offs on to Repeat Business
All this is a long way of explaining of how Linux-ready Vigilant can get small businesses beyond tedious one-offs and into more profitable repeat business territory. The real time efficiencies exemplified above boost productivity and breed profits – the necessary precursors of business growth and expansion. And expansion in turn mean more easy-come revenues for resellers like Kiddle. Jon Mainwaring explains: "As a chain and a multi-site owners open up more stores in new locations they need more installations of their systems. As they do, owners are also definitely inclined to pay for more and more support each time a new store opens. Not only that, expansion creates new sales opportunities for the reseller who is already plugged into a client's network. As Glenn Kiddle has demonstrated, the reseller can begin providing multi-site clients with cost-saving access to other software and systems. As a result of Glenn understanding this, Kiddle Enterprises is now also an ASP (application service provider) to a number of his customers." It's a nice way to reduce reliance on those one-offs.