Article

Where Time Is Money
Magazine Plan Méga, Vol. 2, Top 20 Exportation

In just a few years, Tenrox has made its name in some forty countries with a unique software product for monitoring project time and expenditures

Competition is fierce in the software community, if only due to the number of new products that flood the market every month. Tenrox, a Laval based company founded in 1995 by four fresh McGill University computer engineering graduates, has managed the feat of earning a worldwide reputation in just a few years with a unique software product for monitoring project time and expenditures that performs better and costs less than similar offerings from the competition. So much so that last year the Software and Information Industry Association chose Tenrox’s product from a field of more than 800 rivals as the winner in the business software category of its prestigious competition. "This was the first time a Quebec company had taken a prize awarded by this noted association"  says software specialist Knar Najarian, Sr. Eng., of Tenrox. 

After two years of research and development, in 1997 Tenrox introduced to the market the first version of Tenrox Time & Expense, a bilingual time tracking management application. Gradually, Tenrox’s 50 employees kept improving the product to the point of releasing a new suite of software, Tenrox PSA in May 2000. Which offers a complete package for managing time, costs, billing and the budget process for projects.

Tenrox has had instant success on foreign markets. The firm is seeing its sales figures rise by 30% annually, with a spurt this year of 60%, and 80% of its sales made abroad. Only three years after introduction, the made-in-Quebec software is in use by more than 400 companies in some 50 countries, 80% of them in the US. Xerox, Sony International and AT&T are among Tenrox’s biggest customers. It was hardly surprising to see Tenrox win the Grand Prix 1999, for Exports in the Information and Communications Technologies Sector on the occasion of the Export Gala.

This rapid foreign expansion occurred principally by getting the product known via the Internet, which turned out to be a quick, cheap means of promotion as well as a highly effective sales tool, accounting for 90% of Tenrox’s business. The only Quebec firm offering project time and expenditure monitoring software, Tenrox enjoys a clear advantage over its mainly US-based competitors: the weak Canadian dollar as against Uncle Sam’s greenback.

"Most businesses competing in the world economy require access to wide area networks and the Web," explains Knar Najarian. "This has prompted the project management industry to provide solutions that include multi-site connectivity with real-time monitoring, reports generation and synchronized databases — because the monitoring and optimum use of a firm’s sometimes limited resources are more and more turning into success factors. Our software fully meets these requirements and needs, being the most complete on the market. There are software programs that enable you to manage only timesheets or else expenditures, payroll and billing. But ours integrates all of these applications."

Tenrox PSA is a simple to use, flexible series of time-monitoring tools that facilitate the monitoring of project costs and revenue. Employees can enter their time or professional expenses at any time from anywhere using a browser, electronic mail or a Windows based user interface. Project team members can also communicate with one another in real-time.

"Managers can access strategic information on the status of each ongoing project in real-time," says Knar Najarian. "The software’s various options help them derive both general and detailed views of work progress and time allocations, make budget estimates based on accurate calculations of costs and revenue, and analyze summary or detailed reports that can be produced to reflect more than 150 criteria, whether by project, by client or by week."

Another feature: Tenrox’s product has been designed so that it can be customized to each firm’s requirements, since the components are separate and independent. This design minimizes the changes that need to be made when integrating with a firm’s accounting systems and other databases.

A major asset: Tenrox has a solid supplier network led by Microsoft as well as a network of partners in several countries that include the United Kingdom, France and Australia.